this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023

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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

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PSA: anyone still looking to protest, promote fediverse, any form of rebellion ON REDDIT, the place to do it is r/pics. you can post anything with basically no censorship. as long as you mention John (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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r/pics is wide open to all kinds of anti reddit posts, calls for spez to resign, whatever you want with the current rules right now.

all it takes is John Oliver be featured in the image and title and you're free to post anything (but no porn or gore). go nuts!

the sub is in open rebellion and the mods don't delete critical posts. they even allowed a post calling out spez' history with child porn, to hit the frontpage of r/all! until an admin spotted it and had it removed. let that sink in.

it's because the mods don't act anymore, unless an admin tells them to, and by the time the admin sees a post on the frontpage, the damage is already done. it's malicious compliance from the users and mods! if your title doesn't trigger any bad words, the admins have no idea what's in your post until it's too late.

pics has 30 million subscribers and 8k are online. it's massive, and they upvote stuff to the frontpage, easily. some examples:

https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/85183/r-pics-calls-out-spez-history-as-jailbait-moderator-a-former

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/14k8ul7/thank_you_john_oliver_for_protecting_my_post_from/

but the mods can't post the critical content themselves! they need others to do it, so they can turn a blind eye. that's how this works, it's a coop game 😤🤝😤

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I deleted my posts/comment history, resigned as a mod, and logged out for good. The best protest you can do is leave at this point. Anything short of private, restricted, or NSFW-abuse only serves to drive traffic for them and allows them to continue to serve ads.

The John Oliver idea was clever but should have stopped after he responded. It is now only driving traffic to the site and giving them classic “haha isn’t the internet funny?” free marketing on news outlets. They’ve even explicitly said in interviews they don’t mind it at all. That’s not a protest. No one is upset to see John Oliver memes on one sub and be in on the joke.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well.. this is not quite accurate. It seems that people who are on only to shitpost and protest make less ads revenue for reddit, see https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/112071/Reddit-protest-plunges-user-engagement-site-activity-and-ad-portal

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s the blackout writ large. It says nothing about the pics protest specifically. Going private/NSFW has done by far the most damage as indicated by the admins swift and angry response to it. No one on /r/pics has been removed as mod over this. Dozens of others have.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's a better one that points to a connection between protest engagement and lower ad revenue : https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/88139/Reddit-traffic-returning-normal-sort-of

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I feel like maybe we are talking at cross purposes and possibly agree but that there is some misunderstanding over my original point.

Both of your articles are showing that going private and other tactics had a depressing effect on Reddit traffic, neither of these articles talk about pics and John Oliver, which is specifically what I was saying is ineffective. The articles are talking about the impact on traffic by subs going private, which means they do not come up in searches and they can’t run ads. I agree with the articles, hence why I said subs should go private/restricted/NSFW if they want to actually protest. In addition, users should consider not participating/mods should resign outside of specific cases such as NSFW abuse and highlighting the API changes.

From my earlier comment:

Anything short of private, restricted, or NSFW-abuse only serves to drive traffic for them and allows them to continue to serve ads.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like maybe we are talking at cross purposes and possibly agree but that there is some misunderstanding over my original point.

Agreed. I think this is the disagreement or misunderstanding.

neither of these articles talk about pics and John Oliver, which is specifically what I was saying is ineffective.

Yeah, my point was that the second article says that regular traffic looks like it's back to regular levels (which can't be the case for a private sub), but ad revenue is still going down.

Okay, so maybe traffic is waaay up because of the NSFW stuff? Seeing as some of the biggest subs went John Oliver rather than NSFW though... it seems unlikely to me that growing disparity between traffic and ads is all because of NSFW.

Rather, i would guess that the biggest part of the bump is John Oliver traffic, but that for reasons not clear yet, that traffic is bringing in less ad revenue than normal non-protest traffic.

I'm not the only one to come to that conclusion, see also https://kbin.social/m/reddit/p/528198/https-www-pcmag-com-news-as-reddit-crushes-protests-its-user-traffic-returns-to-normal-lol-we-re-all-great-and-powerful-piggies-aren-t-we#post-comment-934433

Anything short of .. restricted ... serves to drive traffic for them and allows them to continue to serve ads.

Hmm. They don't serve ads for restricted subs? Like the old content is still there, so there seems to be no technical reason for this. Odd that the admins seem to hate subs going private but are okay with them going restricted. Then again they're also recommending subs protest with john oliver so... this very much seems like a company that doesn't know what's good for them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I agree it’s odd but there’s a reason the sub I moderated wasn’t contacted in the opening days by the admins yet smaller ones that went private did!

If you track what the admins reacted to and didn’t it paints a very clear picture of what hits their revenue and what doesn’t.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree it’s odd but there’s a reason the sub I moderated wasn’t contacted in the opening days by the admins yet smaller ones that went private did!
Anything short of .. restricted ... serves to drive traffic for them and allows them to continue to serve ads.

Yeah. It is odd. Why would they not go after restricted if restricted means they lose ad money?

If you track what the admins reacted to and didn’t it paints a very clear picture of what hits their revenue and what doesn’t.

That only makes sense if restricted subs earn ad money for reddit.

Anyways they removed the mods of r/TIHI for leaving the sub private, but then shut it down for being unmoderated. Where's the revenue in that? I'm not confident at this point that reddit has an accurate picture of what's costing it money yet.

Finally, not hearing about more subs going NSFW but from the second article, ad traffic is still going down. So I think NSFW can not be the only driver of profitless traffic.

That said, it probably is reasonable to conclude that private and NSFW are the biggest revenue losers, and that's why reddit is coming down much more heavy handed on them. Good on the other protesters for keeping it up, but eventually reddit will come for them too. So I think long term we do agree - moving content to the fediverse and leaving reddit is the only way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah. It is odd. Why would they not go after restricted if restricted means they lose ad money?

Restricted does not stop ad revenue. It just means no new content, which depresses traffic. We get "insights" as mods and we saw a drop in user traffic after we went restricted. It was trending downward, but I no longer have access to it as I have resigned so even if I wanted to I can't show you the data points.

Anyways they removed the mods of r/TIHI for leaving the sub private, but then shut it down for being unmoderated. Where's the revenue in that? I'm not confident at this point that reddit has an accurate picture of what's costing it money yet.

The mod team was clearly not willing to play ball, so the only option for the admins - seeing as how they are clearly unwilling to compromise at all - is to remove the problem mods as they see them. The most obvious targets are those that are currently impacting traffic/ad revenue, as adweek demonstrated was a very real problem the moment subs went private en masse.

Finally, not hearing about more subs going NSFW but from the second article, ad traffic is still going down. So I think NSFW can not be the only driver of profitless traffic.

Never said NSFW was the only driver so not really sure how to respond to this.

it probably is reasonable to conclude that private and NSFW are the biggest revenue losers,

Agreed. And yes I definitely agree the only real option is to leave, as my original comment said! I'm not really sure what we are disagreeing about at the end of the day lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not really sure what we are disagreeing about at the end of the day lol

Haha, no worries. I think we mostly agree, and certainly we agree much more than we disagree.

I think my disagreement is just on this one point: that in the short or near-term, the John Oliver-style of protesting is an effective way of impacting reddit's bottom line.

I'm sorry to be a bother on this actually, but I feel it's really important for me to understand this point. If I'm mistaken about the above, then I need to change how I advocate accordingly. I could be doing a lot of damage by telling folks that John Oliver protests are effective, when they are not.

Restricted does not stop ad revenue. It just means no new content, which depresses traffic. We get "insights" as mods and we saw a drop in user traffic after we went restricted. It was trending downward,

Ah, gotcha. Restricted doesn't directly or as obviously shut down ad revenue like going private or going NSFW, but it does impact it by significantly reducing traffic. So basically the opposite of driving traffic. This makes sense.

but I no longer have access to it as I have resigned so even if I wanted to I can't show you the data points.

No worries. I'm more than happy to take your word for this. If anything, the fact that you're a former mod means you likely have insights into this that I should be willing to learn from.

Never said NSFW was the only driver so not really sure how to respond to this.

This is what your original comment said.

Anything short of private, restricted, or NSFW-abuse only serves to drive traffic for them and allows them to continue to serve ads.

From that, I would gather that there are three drivers here: reducing traffic (on which I would include going restricted, based on your comment above), going private, and going NSFW.

So the second article I linked to said that overall traffic was back to normal, pre-protest levels, but ad traffic was still down and trending downwards.

That doesn't work with the first driver (reducing traffic isn't compatible with overall traffic increasing), and the second driver, going private, ought to be reducing overall traffic as well. That leaves NSFW as the third and only driver to explain the difference between overall traffic rising but ad traffic dropping.

However, if we agree that NSFW can't explain all the difference, then there must be at least a fourth driver that helped increased traffic back to normal levels but still hurt and reduced ad traffic specifically.

From there, the original disagreement arises - I argue that this fourth driver must be John Oliver-style protesting. From your comments I believe you disagree with this.

But again, this is only short-term. Eventually, reddit will either learn how to make money off of the "protesting traffic" - or else crush it.

The important point for me here is - is it okay for me to encourage folks who aren't fully ready to leave yet to take part in John Oliver-style protests, or do I need to push for total disengagement? I know I must eventually switch over, but what I guess I'm asking is, has that time already come?

The fact that reddit seems to be dumb about going restricted makes me hopeful that reddit just also being dumb about John Oliver (rather than making full and normal revenues off of it). After all you explained very well how going restricted hurts reddit's bottom line by reducing traffic but reddit still isn't resisting it.

The mod team was clearly not willing to play ball, so the only option for the admins - seeing as how they are clearly unwilling to compromise at all - is to remove the problem mods as they see them.

Agree 100% but then they are left with the problem of who will run the sub.

The most obvious targets are those that are currently impacting traffic/ad revenue, as adweek demonstrated was a very real problem the moment subs went private en masse.

Yes but shutting the sub down for being unmoderated has the same effect, no? A real shot-yourself-in-the-foot moment there. Worse for reddit even, as in theory even if the mods were finally ready to cave in, they can't anymore.

reddit being dumb about the above makes me hopeful that reddit is also just dumb about John Oliver, rather than the alternative.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Appreciate your elaborating. I think the confusion about NSFW boils down to my meaning “or” and it coming off as “and.”

The problem with the John Oliver protest is that now it’s basically a game. In theory, if they did it long enough, people could get tired of it, but they aren’t there yet. And what made me become skeptical of it is that the Admins specifically said in an interview a few days ago that it doesn’t bother them in the slightest. They seem to enjoy it. Which is not what what we want.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

has anyone created a "to Fediverse I go" gifs with John Olliver's head 'shopped on? cuz.... that's probably the only thing worth it.

....naw you're right.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The best way to protest is to delete your comments/accounts, and never go there again. Anything else is just clicks for ads.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I somewhat disagree. The best way to protest is to try and get as many people to switch to Lemmy as possible to give this platform the opportunity to take off.

If you have a favourite niche community, create a Lemmy page for it and see if you can get the mods of the sub to advertise it or put it in the sidebar at least.

It’s going to be a bit of a ghost town at the start here until we can get some user growth and those niche pages are huge for it.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

Meh… I’m not going to spend any of my time going to whatever that other website is to “protest.” I come to news aggregators to read news. That’s why I’m on kbin now instead of that other website that killed 3rd party apps.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My thoughts when people still want to strike on reddit;

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Don't. The last thing we want is to associate the fediverse with some kind of anarchist world where everything is trash and everyone insults everyone. Leave the memers to reddit.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Already deleted my 17 years old account and nuked all it's comments, plus a couple secondary accounts, not going back there

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The best de- endorsement will come from people's experience on reddit as the quality of user engagement drops. There are people who genuinely will never give a shit and will stay there, but those are exactly the sort of lazy minds who made up the critical mass of the shallow "hivemind." Id rather we make this a community that encourages independent thought more than bandwagoning.

Don't waste your time engaging them on that platform unless you're a child, douchebag, or troll. If your posts are actually good content, it sends a mixed message that good independent thinking redditors are whethering the shitstorm. Your actions will speak louder than your words, and our collective absence from their platform will speak volumes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I don't use Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

They don't need the traffic, just use the fediverse instead.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

If you're planning on continuing protesting there, then yes. Only dedicate any posts and comments to the protest and for protest purposes. Otherwise, the best thing to do is delete and move on. Like other comments said, it's all just traffic for them, however if you're going to be there anyway, you may as well be there for a cause.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

My shit is deleted, and I'll not be going back. That's the absolute most I'll do for what's left that dumpster fire. Reddit was fun (no pun intended) while it lasted, and now it's time to move on.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

@Schluchtschiss

Only 'trusted' users can upload to r/pics. Here's a pic of John Oliver hiding in https://kbin.social/m/johnoliver

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Logging out of Reddit for last time today after this stuff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting /u/spez must be too scared of Oliver to take action. If that writers’s strike keeps going, this could be brutal.

[–] can 1 points 1 year ago

Writers strike could indirectly delay the IPO lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think r/pics is the only one holding the protest or are there others like it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The only way to get back at /u/spez is to promote [email protected].

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I decided that since they don't want me using the software of my choice to browse the website, I'd switch to the full intended experience. I'm only using the official software in its most updated form. When the experience is inferior to either web-browsing kbin, Lemmy instances, or Mastodon instances (or using Tusky to browse local views of mastodon instances), I just don't bother using it. When the ads bother me, I don't bother using it.

Then again, I also engage with every ad. After all, an advertiser decided that my interests must be in line with theirs, the least I can do for them is click on the linkout, and then ignore all upsells and monetary conversions. After all, if I've never spent money on Reddit, and have been a subscriber of FMHY and Piracy, the platform and the advertisers must know I'll never make a monetary conversion; so they must be targeting me for some other reason.

In a more realistic sense, I click on the ads because most advertisers pay on CPC, and by clicking the ads and not converting, you drive up the cost-per-acquisition, which means the campaign is weaker and poorly optimized. It's also a problem for brand-awareness plays because when you see the ad get linkouts without conversion or remarketable data, you can be pretty sure that people are now aware of the brand and will actively avoid it. It's a challenge all marketing faces, actually. You have to get them in a targeted way or you risk burning a future customer.

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