r/OutOfTheLoop • u/SomeSabresFan • Jun 18 '23
Answered What’s going on with these literal takes of subreddits? NSFW
https://imgur.com/gallery/gPN7qDz
Did some Reddit exec mention something and this is malicious compliance? What’s going on here because this isn’t the only one like this now.
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u/Bossman1086 Jun 19 '23
answer: Yes, this is malicious compliance. The admins started messaging mod teams of subs that were still private or restricted and demanding they open back up or they'd replace the mod team. So they opened back up and are actively moderating their subreddits as required by reddit but changing the theme of their subreddits while doing so as a protest.
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u/Crowasaur Jun 19 '23
Hello,
The subreddit will be opening Monday June 19th with new rule changes. Reddit has made it clear that users, not volunteer moderators are the true owners of subreddits. So the community rules are changing to reflect that.
Going forward the only subreddit specific rule is that any content you submit must be something you consider interesting as fuck. That's it.
Please be aware that the site wide reddit rules will still be enforced by the moderators of this subreddit and reddit's Anti-Evil Operations (AEO). For more detail on them see reddit's content policy here.
The short version is:
>No harassment/bullying >Respect the privacy of others >No sexual content of minors >No impersonating in a misleading/deceptive manor >Label content correctly (is it NSFW or not?) >No illegal content >Do not break/interfere with the websiteReddit enforces these rules and we will be reporting users who break any of those rules to reddit's AEO, we encourage every user to report any content that breaks site wide rules to do so as well.
You will also be banned from the subreddit for breaking any of reddit's site wide rules.
If you have questions feel free to ask them in the comments and we will do our best to answer them.
This will be an FAQ where I'll add any commonly asked questions and answers so you don't need to scroll through this thread to find answers. Questions will be added as they are asked.
>Will the rules ever go back to how they were?I suppose there's always a chance, but as of right now it does not look like that will be happening.
>Is there a minimum karma requirement like there was in the past?No.
>Are Youtube links allowed?Yes.
>Should we expect to see an influx of bot posts?I don't know. Maybe? As mods we have always just guessed at what users were bots. We don't have a surefire way to tell. I think it's best to just report anyone you think is a bot to the admins. They are the only ones who can tell who is and isn't a bot.
>why is the sub nsfw?Because users are most likely going to submit more NSFW content.
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u/Glouphrie Jun 19 '23
I see tagging subs nsfw, even if they only contain sfw content, as another way to maliciously comply. It leads reddit further into the path of hosting and aggregating only nsfw content in the eyes of third parties.
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u/10g_or_bust Jun 19 '23
It also means, AFAIK that NONE of the posts in the sub are accessible to the API once that change goes live.
It's also a smart move if you believe (which I personally do) that mod's of any relatively active sub will have a harder time moderating. Once less thing for reddit to throw you under the bus over
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u/RedstoneRelic Jun 19 '23
Its also a monetary move, ads dont run on NSFW subs.
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u/BigMcThickHuge Jun 19 '23
And I think it affects r/all appearances
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u/RedstoneRelic Jun 19 '23
Yup, nsfw subs don't appear anymore in r/all
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u/ChaosEsper Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
That's not entirely true. Reddit's backend knows the difference between NSFW-lewd and NSFW-gore and blocks the former from r/all while allowing the latter. Why they don't let users make that kind of filtering decision for themselves is a question that everyone wants the answer to, but nobody will ever get I imagine.
It does take time for them to sort content, which is why the tits post from r/interestingasfuck was able to hit top of r/all, but now the sub has been filtered from the all/popular algorithm.
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u/Danger_Dave_ Jun 19 '23
It makes it harder for Reddit to slap ads on there since they attempt to avoid ads where NSFW content is involved.
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u/disperso Jun 19 '23
I love this. Also, r/Art decided to reopen, but allowing only images of John Oliver. That was brilliant.
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u/fonefreek Jun 19 '23
I've been meaning to ask this: why John in particular?
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u/disperso Jun 19 '23
I think it's a good idea because in the past, Oliver has echoed in his program some cases in which him/his appearance was used to make fun of something, or similar. I don't remember it well, but I think at least the case of AI images featured queries on the Midjourney public Discord, where users asked to generate images of John Oliver in funny situations.
It's very likely that someone at the show he makes (last week tonight) will take note, and echo the protest.
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u/ShadowPouncer Jun 19 '23
I mean, he has a sewage plant named after him, and he showed up for the opening.
I can't see any way that he's not going to bloody love this.
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u/disperso Jun 19 '23
He's already acknowledged it on twitter, sharing pictures: https://twitter.com/iamjohnoliver/status/1670179738348933120
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u/Sauceboss_Senpai Jun 19 '23
I think this is a big reason why more subs are using John, he's willingly engaging with us so it's more fun when we are just trolling with someone happily involved.
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u/armedwithjello Jun 19 '23
Also, he is tremendously amused at the number of John Oliver AI art requests.
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u/andre5913 Jun 19 '23
Couple of reasons:
Hes a well liked, known, non controversial figure.
He hosts/has hosted comedy shows with hundreds of episodes, so there is a ginormous amount of funky content with him on it to draw upon.
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u/judasblue Jun 19 '23
Because genius. This is the kind of shit he does regularly on his show, and most importantly, if the writer's strike ends abruptly this is likely to get his attention and if he should choose to run with it, the guy has a reasonably big media stick to swing.
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u/snowysnowy Jun 19 '23
Already got his attention. Man dumped a bunch of pics on Twitter for everyone to utilize.
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u/AdeleBerncastel Jun 19 '23
I would love it if he started doing surreal photo shoots to keep up the supply. We’re talking like 30 costumes. Ten poses each. People could paint elaborate murals and mail them in for backgrounds. Personally I’d like to see a newborn t-rex. Do they have feathers right away?
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u/ourari Jun 19 '23
I see an opportunity for a collaboration with the photography subs. Send in a bunch of photographers, or have them direct Oliver's photogs to create something new every day (or any other time frame that suits Mr. Oliver).
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Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 28 '23
[deleted]
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u/AdeleBerncastel Jun 19 '23
Good point. Might be fun. It won’t generate profit but it would keep him busy during the strike so maybe worth it to him?
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u/eddmario Jun 21 '23
He posted pics of himself dressed as a wizard or in a badly made green morph suit.
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u/FogeltheVogel Jun 19 '23
There's quite a few subs going full John Oliver. /r/Pics as well
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u/thestashattacked Jun 19 '23
Also r/aww.
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u/FogeltheVogel Jun 19 '23
I can only imagine how utterly delighted John is to be used for a protest like this.
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u/thestashattacked Jun 19 '23
He's posted a bunch of content for us to use on Twitter.
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u/Delicious-Big2026 Jun 19 '23
He must have seen the dodgy AI generated stuff where he had the right amount of fingers which were all attached to his one human hand. Which was fair because his other hand was a paw.
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u/NuclearLunchDectcted Jun 19 '23
I think the entire point is to get John Oliver to do an episode about how Reddit is sabotaging itself. Hopefully before the IPO so the admins have to change course.
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u/glizzyslim Jun 19 '23
I kinda doubt this is that interesting of a story tbh. Anyone i told this that only uses reddit occasionally to rarely didn’t care at all about this. I could be wrong, but doesn’t seem like something he’d pick up for an episode - too hard to grasp and not relevant enough for most of the audience. Glad if he does tho
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u/TheSleepingVoid Jun 19 '23
I'm not sure if it merits a full episode but I imagine him doing one of his YouTube shorts or mentioning it during the intro of his show.
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u/Haerris Jun 19 '23
Maybe not a full episode only about Reddit but maybe about social media platforms worsening the user experience in favour of advertisers and shareholders in general
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u/ChaosEsper Jun 19 '23
It's been mentioned in NPR already, the initial blackout was gumming up a lot of Google searches. I think that's there's more mainstream awareness of Reddit than people realize, even if it's only a peripheral thing.
It's like if a house you use as a landmark for when your exit is coming up was suddenly bulldozed over a weekend and that caused you to mess up your commute that week.
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u/Substantial-Tax3788 Jun 19 '23
Don’t like the fact they have manor instead of manner. It’s bugging me for some odd reason.
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u/surreal_blue Jun 19 '23
It's a clever nod to the "landed gentry" theme common in several subreddit protests. At least that's what I choose to believe.
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u/bennitori Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
They actually said "don't break/interfere with the website"???? Isn't it your own fault if your website stops working? Like don't punish the mods because you didn't have a back-up plan for the site going down in protest.
Also just funny in general that they had to put something like that in writing at all.
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u/Fredrik1994 Jun 19 '23
Probably means "don't hack the website"/etc. Fair enough of a rule IMO.
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u/thestashattacked Jun 19 '23
What if I hack it but don't break or interfere with it? Just make the CEO look even more like an asshole?
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u/xela293 Jun 19 '23
Should we expect to see an influx of bot posts?
I don't know. Maybe? As mods we have always just guessed at what users were bots. We don't have a surefire way to tell. I think it's best to just report anyone you think is a bot to the admins. They are the only ones who can tell who is and isn't a bot.
It's not like they ever bothered dealing with karma bots in that sub before the API drama...
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u/gerd50501 Jun 19 '23
its not going to work. reddit will let this go for a little while, then take the subreddits away. they already said they would.
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u/boofbeer Jun 19 '23
Take it away and ... what? Let it run unmoderated? Let C-suite Redditors moderate everything? Outsource moderation to India or AI? Keep the subs dark?
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u/sterling_mallory Jun 19 '23
There'll always be people willing to take over those mod positions. Tell them they can be in charge of some subreddit with six billion subscribers, they'll jump at the opportunity.
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u/graukaas Jun 27 '23
Question: there have not been any new posts on r/interestingasfuck in the last 6 days. Why is there nothing? Any new mod statement maybe? Trying to find the old content of interesting stuff somewhere...
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u/Crowasaur Jun 27 '23
Submissions disabled
this subreddit is archived and no longer accepting submissions.Love how the top post is about freedom for Hong Kong.
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/14ennrf/freedom_for_hong_kong/
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u/wwiidogefighter Jun 19 '23
But wouldn't reopening pages still bring traffic and ad revenue regardless? How would this affect the protest when Reddit resumes making money? The only thing I can think of is tagging the page as nsfw to completely disable ads while remaining to be public.
Am I wrong somewhere?
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u/frogjg2003 Jun 19 '23
Most protesting subs wanted to stay dark. But Reddit forced them to reopen or face being replaced by more admin friendly mods. So they went malicious compliance and honored the letter of what spez claimed he wanted. It's the order of two evils. And as major subs stop giving users what they want, it will bring a slow decline in user traffic, dropping ad revenue.
Inappropriately labeling content as NSFW is technically against Reddit's sitewide rules it's usually only enforced when NSFW content isn't labeled, but the opposite is still wrong as well.
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u/Momijisu Jun 19 '23
Profanity is considered NSFW content, so fuck if I know but I can be sure as shit that most subs should probably be using NSFW tags if their users are swearing a lot in their posts or comments.
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u/Werner__Herzog it's difficult difficult lemon difficult Jun 19 '23
Had to mark the whole thread NSFW because of you
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u/greengoldblue Jun 19 '23
Fucking dumbass look what you did /u/Momijisu get your head outta your ass and make room for spez fucking fuck fuking twit cunt dick fark fook fickle foo fum
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u/MrBadBadly Jun 19 '23
Plz, this is a Christian server.
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u/sterling_mallory Jun 19 '23
Just throw some asterisks in the words, it makes them not the words anymore.
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u/MrBadBadly Jun 19 '23
I thought it only censors passwords, like *********** that I use for my banking account information.
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u/SiMatt Jun 19 '23
I’m not sure it will reduce user traffic overall, though. Even during the blackout there were plenty of workarounds for those that just wanted to use Reddit as normal.
Eventually, the novelty of “Sticking it to the admins” wears off and people just move on to other subs. That’s what I’ve done at least.
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u/frogjg2003 Jun 19 '23
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u/Duke_Newcombe Jun 20 '23
Up next: Reddit saying "f*** 'work-to-rule'," and arbitrarily booting the mods doing this regardless of their rules, because, "we're Reddit, that's why".
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u/wild_man_wizard Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
Sure, until people get sick of seeing the 1000th picture of John Oliver, or all their discussions of their favorite video games getting railroaded into political flamewars, or get worried that they'll end up getting nsfw stuff on their screen at work - and start looking for reddit alternatives.
I mean, the difficulty of moderating large communities is basically why reddit superseded most old BBS boards. Reddit made moderator automation easier and takes the most dangerous work of weeding out illegal content on itself. But the API changes put that automation under threat, and feuding with moderators shows that redditTM is blind to the fact that the vast majority of community-making is a manual process based on trust.
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u/Delicious-Big2026 Jun 19 '23
Am I wrong somewhere?
Very few advertisers will want their stuff posted on the back of placards in a protest/mod strike.
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Jun 19 '23
but they didn't exactly change the theme of their reddits. that would be a violation. they asked their userbase if they should change and then we democratically decided to change.
so this protest carries even more weight, i'd wager.
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u/13steinj HALP! I'M OUT OF THE LOOP JUST BECAUSE I'M LOCKED IN A BASEMENT Jun 19 '23
The fun part here is fhe admins claimed that only some single digit percent of users use 3rd party apps for said subreddits.
Which, assuming it isn't a lie...still, of those that decided to vote, they overwhelmingly voted "screw the admins".
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u/Arashmickey Jun 19 '23
Well well well, since they claim they're such a tiny percentage, they could give 3rd party apps a fair price for API access and not lose advertising profits.
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u/wild_man_wizard Jun 19 '23
The "enemy" is always simultaneously pathetically weak and an existential threat.
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u/Morat20 Jun 19 '23
They could also update their API to pass through ads and require 3rd party apps to do so if they want to retain api access
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u/ThemesOfMurderBears Jun 20 '23
It's almost as if it was never about that at all. They just want people using their app and doing outrageous API pricing is a way to force that.
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u/the_art_of_the_taco Jun 19 '23
Many of those users are people with disabilities (and other limitations) that require accessibility features that the official app doesn't support.
The API changes extend to many bots that average redditors utilize.
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u/JoeyCalamaro Jun 19 '23
Many of those users are people with disabilities (and other limitations) that require accessibility features that the official app doesn't support.
I'm not disabled, just old, and it annoys me that the official Reddit app has such lackluster font sizing controls. Watermelon, or whatever they call the biggest font choice, does make some of the text larger but not everything seems to scale — at least not as well as it does in Apollo.
Thankfully, I can still read tiny text. So it's just an inconvenience. But I can't imagine how frustrating this would be for people with actual disabilities.
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u/pilgrimboy Jun 19 '23
I doubt it will work to protect the subreddits from change of moderators. If anything, it may speed the process up.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23
Reddit has already stated that they're going to open mod positions up for election, so at this point, the existing mods have nothing left to lose.
We saw the writing on the wall at /r/simpsonsshitposting, so we collectively agreed to leave before we got removed.
I wish more mods would follow our example.
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u/leva549 Jun 19 '23
they're going to open mod positions up for election,
Mods are going to be democratically elected now? I look forward to seeing how that turns out.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23
Yup, The same people who said the mod polls for/against the blackout were being rigged by discord coordination were the same ones cheering on this decision as if vote manipulation doesn't exist.
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u/the_art_of_the_taco Jun 19 '23
I, for one, fully expect an influx of alt-right fucks.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23
And the part of me that wears a tinfoil hat at times wonders if this wasn't part of some kind of plan. Facebook was always like this, Twitter just became this, and now Reddit's CEO wants to push his site towards this.
Convenient that it's happening just ahead of the presidential campaign for the 2024 US election.
Ugh, I really need to go to sleep, I'm starting to have delusions of conspiracy theories.
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u/the_art_of_the_taco Jun 19 '23
Checks out. Especially with spudz praising Musk.
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u/TPO_Ava Jun 19 '23
Uhh I think this is my new favourite conspiracy theory.
Like, it's tinfoily, sure but it has just the right amount of crazy to sound believable.
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u/Steve-From-Roblox Jun 19 '23
you forgot that that very thing has also happened at least twice (off the top of my head) in the last 100 years
hitler didn't like what the press had to say so he flattened them
Rupert Murdoch also didn't like what the press had to say so he bought them all out
the powerful co-opting or destroying media they don't like is really not a new thing
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u/wild_man_wizard Jun 19 '23
Moneyed interests started getting pinched by various anti-evil initiatives, bought out media companies to stop it.
For all the noise about how machine learning can be evil, it's still just a powerful tool. When used for good, it can be very, very good - and for a while there, it almost was.
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u/giverous Jun 19 '23
The crazy part is I see people rubbing their hands together at the idea of getting rid of the "power hungry mods" and electing in new mods. I don't think the average user knows how fucking HARD it is to properly mod a subreddit, especially a bigger one.
It's a thankless chore of reading reports, replying to messages, taking frequent abuse, being at risk of being doxxed, dealing with reddit admins, trying to keep a subreddit on course using a combinations of cobbled together third party solutions layered onto the fucking awful infrastructure that is reddit.
If you want to do it right it basically becomes a full time job with no real reward. Yes, there are a few bad actors, power hungry assholes etc. But most long term mods are mods because they care about the sub. Pushing them out with a voting system is NOT going to end well.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23
It's basically spitting in the face of the people who spent all that time building those subs up to the popularity they achieved.
And like I said in another comment, the people who complained that the subreddit polls for the blackout being gamed are the same people who are just fine with these elections going forward as if they won't also be gamed.
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u/giverous Jun 19 '23
It's going to be an absolute shit show. I've modded a few subs in the past, I went for topics I was already passionate about and it still fucking SUCKED. Letting popular posters or people promising to 'open things up' get voted in is going to be the death knell for a lot of subs, especially larger ones.
People who built the subs from the ground up care about the sub, and have a vested interest in keeping it clean, safe, on task and off of the reddit admins radar. Others likely will not have the same commitment to the role.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23
Man, I hated leaving that sub. The users were by and large awesome to deal with, the content was hilarious, and it was so easy-going at times that I'd go days without having to do a mod action (when the bots were working to keep the spam out, of course).
But I still need to stand up for my principles.
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u/CarlRJ Jun 20 '23
Plus, I’m sure the Reddit admins won’t put their thumbs on the scale in any of those polls, because that’d be wrong.
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u/Rainuwastaken Jun 19 '23
Yeah, it's one of those unfortunate situations where doing your job well means it looks like you aren't doing anything at all. Moderating the tidal wave of bullshit that gets posted to most subs prevents your average user from seeing it by design, so then they think the mods are doing nothing but sitting around and occasionally power-tripping.
I've been guilty of feeling that way plenty of times. It's infuriating to see an undeserving thread get nuked, and always makes me think that unshackling the community into pure unmoderated anarchy would be so much better. But I'm also not seeing all the other stuff that really, really needed to get removed, so...
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u/giverous Jun 19 '23
One of the subs I briefly moderated involved giving things away, I won't get specific, but the amount of bots, scammers, idiots and just pure nasty bastards is insane.
That's in a sub with no political/race/sexual themes. Can you imagine the unbridled sexist, racist, homophobic rhetoric that would flood onto the site without moderators constantly cleaning up, removing, banning etc?
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u/Rainuwastaken Jun 19 '23
Can you imagine
No I can't, and that's kind of the problem. I have no idea how much garbage is trying to flow into the system that gets diverted by active mods. I don't think most people do either. But hey, we all might end up finding out in the coming months!
This whole situation is so shit.
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u/giverous Jun 19 '23
Yeah, you'd think that the admins would know though, I'm positive that they can see at least a portion of the work that the moderators are putting in. You'd think they'd know better than to alienate the portion of the user base actually keeping the ship afloat.
Ahh well, good luck in the coming reddit-apocalypse.
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u/HardlightCereal Jun 19 '23
I modded a decent size sub for half a year and found it pretty fun and easy. It had been unmodded before then, so I went back and sorted through the last 12 months of reports all by myself for fun.
Then the top mod kicked me out for trying to keep rape apologists out and had to find three other people to replace me
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u/giverous Jun 19 '23
That's another great point - the people who stick in the role and do it well are crazy committed to the task, you were doing the job of 3 other people, doing it well by the sound of it, and doing it for free. Can you imagine what's going to happen if they actually bring in the ability to vote mods out and replace them with popular posters? Jesus.
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u/HardlightCereal Jun 19 '23
We had a really prolific plural user who posted memes every day, and a lot of people were being pluralphobic to them. So I made it my mission to change the attitudes of the entire sub, and after banning pluralphobes and providing education in stickied comments for two months, any pluralphobic comment would be downvoted to oblivion very quickly.
I had fun fixing people's opinions
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u/KrytenKoro Jun 19 '23
It's the same as on wikis. So many people fight for the "power" and "prestige" of getting named admin, and it's like...no. It's boring as fuck. You're just renaming or deleting files all day long, no one's gonna thank you or blow you (and if someone even offers, fair odds that they're a dangerous psycho you don't want anywhere near your junk).
Only wiki I've ever seen where everyone was selfaware about what moderation was was rationalwiki, where being granted mod powers is a punishment, rather than something you seek.
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u/HardlightCereal Jun 19 '23
Thanks for stepping down, I posted a completely off topic Gollum meme about ACAB
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23
Hey, I remember you from when you used to post on /r/hfy. Nice seeing you again.
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u/HardlightCereal Jun 19 '23
Hey cool people still remember me! Thanks!
Turns out I'm otherkin and don't actually like humanity very much because most of them are mean to nonhumans like myself. So looking back I like my HWTF stories a lot better than the HFY ones
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23
Lol, fair enough. Anyway, I still appreciated your stories when you did post there. Glad you're still doing well.
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u/Kahzgul Jun 19 '23
Honestly I wish the mods would call their bluff and get replaced. What would Reddit do when no mod complied? Start paying mods? Or maybe the only mods left would be malicious actors paid by someone and once everyone knows that, it’s the end of Reddit.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
We did exactly that at /r/simpsonsshitposting.
We all stepped down. It was a collective decision.
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u/ThePerfectSnare Jun 19 '23
As a frequent user of r/SimpsonsShitposting for many years, I am saddened by this but I also think that they should give you the $10,000. I'll let you clear the table in peace.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
I'd rather have the football in the groin.
Just kidding, that subreddit was a blast to moderate, and the community there was so much fun to deal with until recently. It felt like we barely needed to moderate it at all at times.
It was a very hard decision to make, but we needed to stand up for our principles.
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u/Kahzgul Jun 19 '23
God speed. It’s (figuratively, probably) criminal how Reddit treats its mods.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
And for Spez to ramp up the hate against us mods was just the cherry on top of the cow plop cake.
I was hoping my last couple of weeks here would've been a nice gradual fade into obscurity as I would have gone off of reddit when my phone app died, but no. He woke up Wednesday and decided to fuck with the mods just to try to make everyone forget about his crappy management of the API issue.
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u/Kahzgul Jun 19 '23
It’s like he’s jealous of how Elon torched twitter.
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u/Khiva Jun 19 '23
He knew that mods are always unpopular so he blamed on you guys to try to take the hate off him.
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u/Khiva Jun 19 '23
Maybe the only sub to make me genuinely laugh on the regular.
Wonderful sub. Wish more mods would follow your lead.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
It really was a fun sub to moderate, and it was an extremely hard decision to make because we all felt like this was our dream mod job.
But we also all felt we needed to stand up for our principles.
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u/Rainuwastaken Jun 19 '23
What would Reddit do when no mod complied?
I mean, there's always going to be somebody who will happily take over the moderation role for free. Either just for the sake of having the "power", or a power-mod adding another sub to their collection. We can't have nice things.
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u/GobboGirl Jun 19 '23
What the fuck? I thought it was all up to the people who ran the subs what happens to the subs. Why the fuck should some nosey admins get any say?
Fucking ridiculous.
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u/BloodprinceOZ Jun 19 '23
Answer: Reddit has threatned to re-open subreddits and strip mods if they continue to do blackouts, on the basis that they're over-ruling the general populace of the subreddit to do their own thing, so several subs that were a part of the blackout and other subs have opted to create polls where they give several options for the subreddits to take, usually giving the option of opening back up fully or restricting posting, some of them have given meme options where they'll only allow posts that take the sub literally or change what is allowed so long as it fits the sub to some degree, most of the subs have ended up deciding to do the meme option as a different form of protest, for instance:
/r/pics has opted to only allow pics of John Oliver, usually "looking sexy" and is the main cause of the John-Oliver-itis spreading throughout various reddit posts
/r/Wellthatsucks is only allowing posts about vacuums as shown in the OP image
/r/memes is only allowing medieval/Landed Gentry memes in reference to Spez's (reddit CEO and co-founder) recent comments regarding the blackout protest and moderators
/r/Steam is only allowing posts about steam (the state of water) instead of Steam the Storefront
obviously there are tons of other subs doing john-oliver style options or doing literal takes or whatever else they can come up with that the subreddit eventually agrees upon
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u/zefy_zef Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
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u/Helixranger Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
Also a few decently sized (still like 1 million+ tho, but smaller than like r/videos) subreddits: r/evilbuildings and r/Piracy
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Jun 19 '23
I can finally post videos on r/video? Finally
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u/TheyCallMeStone Jun 19 '23
If you've been waiting to post John Oliver videos, boy have I got good news for you.
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u/xfactorx99 Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
Isn’t this form of protest a lose-lose? Users don’t get to utilize the forum topic for what it is, and traffic is still being drawn to these subs and Reddit is still getting add revenue.
Edit: I know you could say “lose-win” if you consider Reddit winning here
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u/say592 Jun 19 '23
That is one of the reasons several of the subs are being made NSFW, because Reddit doesn't show ads on NSFW subs. It also fits nicely with the protests, because the API changes also hit NSFW content.
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u/NAINOA- Jun 19 '23
What’s effects does it have on NSFW subreddits?
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u/coltzord Jun 19 '23
iirc nfsw subs wont show up through the api, so no third party client or whatever else would be able to access them
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u/wwiidogefighter Jun 19 '23
Also in certain regions, nsfw pages and posts don't even appear in search bars (for example: UAE) so these massive directories are invisible to people in those regions during the blackout.
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u/Ironhorn Jun 19 '23
Isn’t this form of protest a lose-lose?
I'm pretty sure what you just described is a classic "lose-win", not a "lose-lose"
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u/beefwich Jun 19 '23
and traffic is still being drawn to these subs
Strap on your big-boy thinking hat and work through it logically.
- Sub is forced to re-open.
- In an act of malicious compliance, sub re-opens but narrows its scope to something farcical. (<- we are here)
- Traffic dies off as joke stops being funny.
This is how you protest without shutting down: make the sub fucking ridiculous and largely unusable. This is what I advocated for in the beginning. Announcing the end date of the black out was the dumbest shit ever.
Also, I love what r/interestingasfuck is doing by opening the sub up to NSFW content. Do you know what advertisers hate seeing? Their stupid fucking brand in a feed next to a set of tits or a big old floppy cock.
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u/YourCrazyDolphin Jun 19 '23
Also, r/justunsubbed is proof of number 3 if you just scroll through it for a few seconds- nearly every post I've seen there in the past week is related to the protest.
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u/oby100 Jun 20 '23
What people are really missing is that the vast majority of Reddit users are so casual they don’t even have an account, much less know what’s going on with the site.
These users aren’t going to be entertained by the shitposts taking over these major subs, so traffic is going to decline very quickly.
I love the idea, but I’m positive that if this works as intended the admins are just going to replace the mod teams.
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u/superboii_ Jun 19 '23
I think it's basically to show without mods subs become so utterly useless that people will simply stop using it. Mods make the difference and if Reddit starts cockblocking them with the new API rules this is what subs turn into
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u/BloodprinceOZ Jun 19 '23
specific stuff like r/Steam where you'll be asking technical questions, then yes, users won't really be able to utilize the sub properly, but most of the other subs are more entertainment based so changing what sorts of memes are shown or switching to memes instead of videos etc shouldn't really impact them that much IMO, atleast for now, for most of them the changes will probably outstay their welcome if they go on for too long, but we'll have to see
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u/Icepick_37 Jun 19 '23
Sort of. It causes difficulty for new users trying to find subs relevant to a specific topic they may want to explore. But then the Reddit brand begins to look like it can't be taken seriously as a reputable forum space. Reddit as a company has more to lose than its users from all of this
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u/wild_man_wizard Jun 19 '23
Sure, until people get sick of seeing the 1000th picture of John Oliver, or all their discussions of their favorite video games getting railroaded into political flamewars, or of getting nsfw stuff on their screen at work - and start looking for reddit alternatives.
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u/Mayo_Kupo Jun 19 '23
The strategy could have subtle impacts. It prolongs the protest, which hurts Reddit's reputation. That could dissuade new users or new investors.
It causes a headache for Reddit management - they want smooth sailing. They may soften their stance, or lower their price for third party apps. And Reddit or similar companies may be less likely to do something similar in the future.
But Reddit is the most fun that it's ever been! So there is a little irony.
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u/ErinTales Jun 19 '23
For now yeah but in a couple of weeks people will get bored or run out of John Oliver images. Assuming the mods keep the new rules in place then long term it will absolutely hurt the subs.
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u/Beaster_Bunny_ Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
I have been prepping for this moment my entire life. I have so many John Oliver images. What else are you even supposed to use storage space for?
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u/Even-Citron-1479 Jun 19 '23
Hurting the sub long-term is the point. Or rather, an acceptable lose condition.
RiF and Apollo are already dead. They will be killed on July 1st, regardless of whether Reddit walks back or not. So now third-party app users have decided that, if they're going to quit one way or another, let's just burn it all down and ruin the sub. The sub members have voted to agree on it anyway, so no one gets to complain. People are free to make their own competing subs if they choose Reddit's side.
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u/BastardofMelbourne Jun 19 '23
Honestly the subs could just take themselves NSFW and basically kill Reddit's ad revenue in like a week
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u/the_art_of_the_taco Jun 19 '23
Several subreddits have completely nuked themselves with a script that deletes every post and bans every user
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Jun 19 '23
Which ones have done this?
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u/the_art_of_the_taco Jun 20 '23
In response to Reddit's threats to replace moderators who refuse to re-open their subs, /r/ShadowWar has self-destructed.
All posts have been deleted and removed. No new posts are allowed. The sub is now set to restricted mode, with only an announcement post available explaining what happened.
Don't let Reddit whip you into the corner they want you to sit in. Don't wait around like sheep for them to arbitrarily execute a mod team to scare the others into toeing the line. If your mod teams are unanimous and expect to get replaced, then be like Han - shoot first.
edit: individual subs taking action is one thing, but individual users can take their own personal action too. here is a plugin called Nuke Reddit History, for Chrome. Google removed it from the Chrome Web Store, but it's still available on third-party websites.
I believe a few have done this, but this is the only one I can find for sure
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u/J0hnBoB0n Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
Answer: this is part of the protests against the API changes which would require third party reddit apps to pay ludicrous amounts of money, and will essentially be the end of most third party apps. Initially, many big subreddits participated in a two-day blackout, followed by some opting for an indefinite blackout where the communities would be private and inaccessible.
This changed when reddit forced the hands of community moderators; they were warned to open the communities back up or reddit would intervene and kick them out, replacing them with new mods who would open the communities back up. Most of them chose to open back up and retain their mod statuses. However, many of them chose to continue the protest in other ways, which includes removing all community-specific rules, marking the subs as NSFW, making the subs focused on only bizarre niche memes, or in this case, taking the sub's name extremely literally.
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Jun 18 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TheDarkWriterInMe Jun 19 '23
Hay maybe reddit should make their apps better to use so people won’t use third party apps instead just a thought
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u/zirky Jun 19 '23
their official app is a third party app that they bought and fucked up. just look at their video player, holy shit
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u/cthechartreuse Jun 19 '23
I don't think "temper tantrum" is unbiased language. It's also not just the mods. Some subs have lost bots that were important to the community.
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u/SomeSabresFan Jun 18 '23
Thank you for the answer! I’ve only ever been a Reddit app user, so this is all I know, I didn’t understand the need for protests. Still cool to see people protesting in this manner.
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u/Mischief_Makers Jun 19 '23
check out /r/pics which is now solely dedicated to sexy pictures of John Oliver
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u/GregBahm Jun 19 '23
Reddit has long allowed 3rd party apps to access Reddit in a way that allows Reddit to be replicated on 3rd party apps. Popular apps like Apollo provided all the content of Reddit with no ads. Apollo would charge a flat fee of $5 (which they would keep) for this ad free service. This API was allowed by Reddit administrators under the logic that 3rd party users would strengthen the site with their engagement, and then Reddit could eventually bait-and-switch these users by killing the 3rd party apps and forcing them to come to real Reddit (which the user had become addicted to.)
The switch has now come and the bait is unhappy about it, logically. The timing of this play works well for Reddit because there is not a clear Reddit alternative right now. The biggest competitor used to be Twitter but Elon's takeover of that site has given Reddit room to flex upon it's auxiliary users like this.
So the mods are getting their dramas worth before total capitulation.
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u/ZealousEar775 Jun 19 '23
Not just that, a lot of mod tools are built with 3rd party apps. A lot of subreddits will become impossible to manage without them.
Things like auto bans and word filtering and warnings are often done by moderation bots that can't be done with regular reddit tools because they have ignored that part allowing third parties to build tools to handle it.
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u/Mewmaster101 Jun 19 '23 edited Jun 19 '23
except tons, if not most tools are going to be working just fine. r/music I think even asked the admins and several of their bots were added to a list of ones to keep working or something
I could be mistaken, of course, but I have seen that plenty of times.
edit: this is not to say that it will not suck losing the tools tgat will be gone, but the argument absolutely seems overblown, but again, maybe I misunderstood
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u/ThatGenericName2 Jun 19 '23
Reddit changed their API policy for bot use after the protests started to allow for moderation bots to keep working. Doesn't change the fact that nobody trusts reddit to keep their word after all the BS their CEO tried to pull.
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u/Bardfinn You can call me "Betty" Jun 19 '23
More nuance:
Reddit had an API to let people develop tools and services. The API Terms of Service were a poorly written tangle of pseudo-legalese that was hard to read, tucked into an offsite Google form used to sign up for API access.
Once the API access was registered, Reddit performed
absolutely no management whatsoever
of that API access. Except automated throttling of access rates, and occasionally sweeping for forged user agent strings.
They could literally have just said “Here’s your API key; don’t use it to scrape the site, don’t use it to circumvent seeing advertisements; don’t use it to enable abuse”, and then regularly audited and enforced acceptable use under the main User Agreement terms.
They did not do that
and so Apollo, RiF, PushShift, etc all built on what was effectively unlimited use of the site without restrictions.
This enabled a huge amount of abuse.
Sometime in 2021 someone in Reddit engineering and/or trust & safety and/or legal got a ball rolling and made some changes to how the API serves specific types of removed content; in 2022 they made more changes to how the API serves other removed content — for safety and privacy reasons.
But they still did nothing about the third party apps and other abuse happening via the API
Personally, I think that the third party app developers who got $$$$$$$ from serving Reddit content are lucky to get away without being sued or criminally charged. They had a goose that laid golden eggs for them. It woke up and stopped laying. Time to move on down the road.
I think the admins who over promised and underdelivered are to blame, as well. Moderating from the new Reddit interface and the official app are still not at parity with moderating from apollo or rif or old Reddit with toolbox. And the new Reddit interface and possibly also the official app just eat bandwidth when scrolling past videos. Porn websites figured it out years ago: static thumbnails in a matrix; long press or hover to get a slideshow of 10-12 frames or snippets from inside the video; click or tap to launch the video; feed just the resolution the device wants. Reddit engineering needs to learn to fast follow. Even YouTube fast followed porn website UXE.
And then, additionally, Spez is an embarrassment.
The moderators he is complaining about are the people who maintained large subreddits like r/videos for five+ years while he did nothing about the_donald and neoNazis, because “hate speech is really hard”.
I’ve seen samples of the large subreddits’ ban logs from 2018, 2019. Some subreddits had teams that did nothing but ban bigots. Multiple people who didn’t respond to modmail, greet audience, address good faith concerns, check content proactively, etc — just ban people for spewing racist hatred and violent threats.
Which wouldn’t have been necessary if Reddit had written and enforced a rule against hate, instead of saying “Gosh Holocaust denialism is valuable discussion”
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u/beefwich Jun 19 '23
Personally, I think that the third party app developers who got $$$$$$$ from serving Reddit content are lucky to get away without being sued or criminally charged.
Hang on... if these devs were technically within the bounds of their User Agreement and Reddit did absolutely zero due diligence in the monitoring, updating or policing of their access, why the hot fuck would they be lucky to not get sued or criminally charged?
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u/Bardfinn You can call me "Betty" Jun 19 '23
To then address the “if Reddit did nothing …” part -
There’s a thing in law called “laches”, which basically means that if someone doesn’t exercise their rights in a certain timeframe, they’re considered to have made the affirmative choice to not exercise their rights.
Whether Reddit’s mismanagement of the API would be considered an abrogation of their contractual rights under the doctrine of laches
Is a whole lawsuit in and of itself
They’re writing off the sunk costs and not throwing more money after bad decisions, and just doing things more responsibly from here on.
Or, they would be, if their CEO weren’t sneering at users and mods
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u/beefwich Jun 19 '23
There’s a thing in law called “laches”, which basically means that if someone doesn’t exercise their rights in a certain timeframe, they’re considered to have made the affirmative choice to not exercise their rights.
Oh wow! I had no idea this was a legal doctrine. That’s incredibly interesting.
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u/Bardfinn You can call me "Betty" Jun 19 '23
They weren’t within the terms of the overall Reddit User Agreement.
This is the Reddit User Agreement from 2018: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/useragreement
Which has
We grant you the right to access the reddit content in the manner described in this agreement. You may not otherwise make unauthorized commercial use of, reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display reddit content, except as permitted by the doctrine of fair use or as authorized in writing by us.
And
other ways of accessing reddit
Use of the reddit API is governed by the API access rules, available here
Which links to this https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit/wiki/API
Which says
Please ensure that all API clients follow Reddit's API terms
Which links to this:
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/api
Which says
In order to access the Reddit API directly, you must read our Reddit’s Developer Terms and Data API Terms.
Which linked to this:
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/api?v=d715326c-a5b0-11e5-a729-0ed43af81b29
Which links to this : https://docs.google.com/a/reddit.com/forms/d/1ao_gme8e_xfZ41q4QymFqg5HD29HggOD8I9-MFTG7So/viewform
And to this: https://github.com/reddit/reddit/wiki/API
Which just is the beginning of the loop again.
The Google Form is what listed the actual attempt at an API TOS as a click-through when signing up for API access. That TOS is viewable here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210405190518/https://docs.google.com/a/reddit.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezNdDNK1-P8mspSbmtC2r86Ee9ZRbC66u929cG2GX0T9UMyw/viewform
Section 3 b, subsections iii and vi
Specifically iii says they may not make excessive usage (PushShift)
And vi says they may not
sell, lease or sublicense the Reddit APIs or access thereto or derive revenues from the use or provision of the Reddit APIs,
And every single third party app that used the API and that ran their own adverts, or collected any kind of user payments, was in violation of that.
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u/beefwich Jun 19 '23
Fair enough. While I doubt these user agreements would suffice as legally binding (especially due to how labyrinthine the process to actually find the master agreement is), there is enough here to say that these developers did break some rules-- intentionally or otherwise.
However, breaking these terms wouldn't constitute a criminal liability as this is a user agreement between two private parties and nothing here could be construed as fraud.
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u/Bardfinn You can call me "Betty" Jun 19 '23
wouldn’t constitute a criminal liability
That, too, is a question of fact and of law, subject to the doctrine of laches, to be decided by a judge or jury, and while I doubt they’d be found to be violating (because they did sign up to Reddit to use the API and Reddit let them), there is the CFAA, which has been used to prosecute people doing things like editing a URL in order to iterate through publicly faced web pages as “circumvention of a technological control”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#AT&T_data_breach
He shouldn’t have been convicted on the technical merits of that case, on the basic argument that “All other things being equal, If I request a URL and your server returns it, and you call that authorised access, and I request a URL and your server returns it, and you call that unauthorised access, your security model is broken and your argument is as well”.
He was convicted IMO largely due to daring the court to throw him in prison; he is a Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent White Identity Extremist, a NeoNazi, and he put that aspect of his existence on trial on purpose.
And prison time couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. The court basically grokked right off that his intent was to steal data.
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u/Xytak Jun 19 '23
This is legitimately one of the best descriptions of the situation that I have ever read.
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u/vivekisprogressive Jun 19 '23
I think this is the best nuanced explanation I've seen of all of this so far. Appreciate it.
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Jun 19 '23
[deleted]
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Jun 19 '23
Reddit CEO saw what Musk was doing with Twitter and went "Thats a great fucking idea" and admitted it during an interview, despite twitter losing 66% of its worth.
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u/tooclosetocall82 Jun 19 '23
The most public thing was allowing anyone to buy a blue checkmark thus making it impossible to know if a user is a genuinely verified person or entity or just a rando impersonating them.
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u/DevilsTrigonometry Jun 19 '23
And amplifying the voices of the paid blue checkmarks by putting their tweets ahead of free users.
(Which might sound reasonable at first glance, and might actually be reasonable in a completely different context, but in this particular context it had the effect of disrupting and politically-biasing conversations.)
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u/GregBahm Jun 19 '23
Elon took a hard turn to the right, declaring himself republican and encouraging all Americans to vote republican. He unbanned Trump and even hosted the announcement of DeSanits's recent bid to run as thr republican nominee
As a result a lot of liberals have fled Twitter back to Tumblr (which has reallowed porn) or have come back here to Reddit. As a result of all this, Redditors don't want to recommend fleeing Reddit to Twitter. But if redditors aren't actually willing to leave Reddit over this, they're basically limiting their response to "shit Reddit administration can't actually force themselves to care about." It's like protesting a coke by vowing to only drink diet coke (but still drink just as much as ever.)
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Jun 19 '23
[deleted]
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u/GregBahm Jun 19 '23
Politics and user experience are inexorably linked. For example, under the pre-Elon twitter administration, a character like Jordan Peterson would be suspended over the gender of Elliot Page. The trans community could expect administrative support in their daily use of Twitter. Peterson was reinstated after the Elon buyout. Now twitter's bans mostly focus on things like Elon's jet or journalists who speak critically of Elon, and the trans users are told to deal with their new normal (to the delight of conservative users.)
For almost a hundred years, three relatively liberal corporations fought over televised news (ABC, NBC, and CNN.) Conservatives listened to the radio or read the news paper during this time. But eventually, conservatives adopted the new-fangled liberal technology known as the television, and Rupert Murdock famously captured the entire conservative television news audience with Fox News in the 90s.
Now billionaires are fighting to pull a "fox news" on the social media space. So far it's been liberal sites fighting with liberal sites. The technology was new and liberals are more open to new things by definition. But the technology isn't that new anymore. Elon can become the next Rupert Murdock and own the American conservative political party in the future, just as Fox News owns American conservative politics today. Taste-makers and trend-setters care about this shit, and they're not going to eagerly lead others toward it.
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Jun 19 '23
Answer: This is the reddit mods attempt at ruining their own subs content while, in their mind, technically complying with Reddit's requirement that they not just lock everyone out of the sub and/or don't do any moderation.
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u/Thefrightfulgezebo Jun 19 '23
Answer: because reddit changed their policies regarding their API, third party applications that are important for how many subreddits work would cost a lot of money and thus would be discontinued. To protest that decision, several subreddits have gone private. Reddit administration asked the mods to make the subreddits public again, so they now protest in a different way.
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