this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
1434 points (99.8% liked)

Malicious Compliance

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People conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request. For now, this includes text posts, images, videos and links. Please ensure that the “malicious compliance” aspect is apparent - if you’re making a text post, be sure to explain this part; if it’s an image/video/link, use the “Body” field to elaborate.

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I honestly don't know if this is allowed here but I thought this is malicious compliance at its finest.

If you don't want to drive traffic there I'll repost what the mods posted below:

POLL: Decide on the future of /r/Pics!

Hello, /r/Pics subscribers!

Boy, what a whacky time we've all had lately, huh? Reddit decided to kill off third-party applications, a protest got planned (and possibly exploited by bad actors), the site showed up in the news, various communities started opening back up, others decided to stay inaccessible, and then the CEO of Reddit implied that a bunch of moderators would be removed from their positions!

Crazy, right?

Anyway, we – the so-called "landed gentry" – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the "royal court," and they've told us that we need to run the subreddit in the way that its members want. To that end, we figured that the only reasonable thing to do was directly ask how you'd like things to progress from here.

Which of the following should we do?

  1. Return to normal operations

  2. Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy To be clear, if people choose the second option, screen-grabs from videos will be allowed (provided that there aren't any visible logos, inserted graphics, or other digital elements present). You could – if you wanted to – look through episodes of Last Week Tonight on YouTube, find moments featuring John Oliver at his sexiest, then post images of those moments here.

It's entirely up to you! Whatever the /r/Pics community decides is best, we'll respect!

Vote, friends! Vote now!

(You can vote by upvoting either of the comments in the thread below.)

Voting has now closed.

Our final tally is as follows:

Return to normal operations: -2,329 votes

Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy: 37,331 votes

It would seem that the community has spoken!

Henceforth, /r/Pics will only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy.

(Said images must adhere to all of the community's other rules, including those mandated by Reddit.)

Happy posting!

(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] Badger@lemmy.sdf.org 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Amazing work as always! Though I did have to check it out kind of defeating the purpose of the protest. I think the best way to achieve what they want is to just do a really shitty job in moderating. Let the entire site be over-run with scams / crypto bros / nazis.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

It already is, /r/all used to be current and now it's just a constant stream of spam posts.

You should be able to block a webpage and all users that share it. Relay For Reddit has a feature where you can select "other conversations" and see all the posts of a specific link. If I could then block everyone who posted a shitty "Elon runs an ETH competition" post... There'd still be a millions others.

Nazis everywhere, Spez left #the_donald alone to grow in scope. Fuck Spez

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[–] Remontoire@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Ahh brilliant.

[–] LillianVS@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

This is the way, we did it... - u/spez

[–] cura@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Malicious compliance from both the mods and the users! I dust off my account to upvote it.

[–] IBNobody@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

/r/pics is now too sexy to browse.

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[–] theUnlikely@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is great. Tomorrow I'll see what I can do with stable diffusion.

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[–] c2h6@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Genius! I wish every other sub did this.

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[–] LittleKerr@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The people has spoken. I love democracy

[–] athos77@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I am now desperately sad that the Writer's Guild strike is still on, because I'd love to see John Oliver's response to this. Particularly the bit where they added in something like, "This means that almost every image of John Oliver is permitted, because John Oliver is always sexy".

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[–] atypicaloddity@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] puck2@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago
[–] GreatBigJerk@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I hope all the subs have a variation on this.

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[–] peroleu@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sexy pics of John Oliver is better than 90% of the stuff posted there anyways. Glad to see them sticking it to Reddit, though.

[–] NSA_Server_04@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Absolutely crushing the direction they chose.

[–] Hypersapien@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

r/InternetIsBeautiful

[–] Shell@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Aahahaha this is hilarious

[–] Moskie@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I don't think this is a good idea. The point of the blackout is to hit Reddit where it hurts, by driving traffic down. This prank (partially) reverses the work of the blackout, by getting people back to the pics subreddit to post and see (John Oliver) pics. It turns the blackout into a joke. And I think is a step towards the community just moving on from the blackout without it actually having the long term effects that were intended.

I'm all for malicious compliance, but I think this is the wrong flavor of it.

[–] minimar@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I disagree, while driving traffic down is one way, filling the website with garbage is another way! Who wants to use a site full of nothing but sexy john oliver?

..wait. Bad example.

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[–] DulyNoted@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, it'll put Reddit in an odd place. Spez in particular has cited the Moderator Code as a justification to remove mods and instate his own.

THAT would be worse, since then instead of any blackout at all it's business as usual (while being slowly crippled from bad moderation and decaying user behaviours).

The John Oliver thing is an alternative to THAT. They are technically doing what the users want, which was Reddit's whole ammunition against them. Closing a sub of millions of people could be said as harming the site significantly enough that reddit steps in. Opening it and maliciously complying with the rules IS what the users want, so Spez will be hard pressed the wrest control of the sub while simultaneously saying he supports the protests in line with the Code.

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[–] Henrik@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Fantastic! Really good idea from the mod team.

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