The community is posting about steam, the water vapor, in retaliation. It's a beautiful thing.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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I love malicious compliance.
This is what I want to see from every subreddit that is forcibly reopened. The admins can try and force mods to 'do their jobs', but they sure as shit can't force what can be/gets posted!
The issue is some groups of mods are terribly afraid of no longer being mods - for whatever reason - so they don't join these efforts.
I was a mod of a 3m subscriber sub…. I do NOT get why mods would give a shit about being removed. Shits really no fun.
I dunno, I think just remaining closed would have worked better. This will attract additional attention to Reddit. Also, the subreddit wasn't 'forced' back open, the mods just caved under a bit of pressure from the admins (which we don't even know is true. why on earth are they asking the steam subreddit to open back up when there are so many largers subs still private?). Smells like slacktivism to me, and mods who don't want to lose their power. Meh.
They sent mail to every moderator of a closed subreddit I think. I wasn't specifically targetted. I doubt reddit would really care if /r/piracy opened back up, but they got the threat mail
I doubt reddit would really care if /r/piracy opened back up
You'd think so, but didn't the head mod get demodded?
It's funny, but I don't quite get the point of this. If you are boycotting Reddit then you shouldn't be going there to post about things. If you ARE going there, you are no longer boycotting. Reddit doesn't care what you post about. You are still participating in the site. It's just driving traffic back to Reddit, which harms the cause.
The point is the lurkers subscribed there are going to get bored of steam pictures and unsubscribe, if it happens to enough subs then a lot of the passive userbase will end up either spending less time or leave entirely. Since the vast majority of users are lurkers, it'll outweigh the number of people creating these rebellion posts and Reddit should see a net loss in traffic. At least, that's what I've gathered. Please don't shoot the messenger if I'm wrong or it's a stupid idea
I'll add that I think another aspect to this is: if the site declines quietly, you'll end up with users shrugging and either continuing to use it or not. Most people don't understand why this matters at all, and if the post quality declines it probably will be a lot like Facebooks decline. People knew it got worse, but the prevailing narrative is "that's just how social networks work, the kids are always jumping on the next thing".
By doing this, it makes it very clear that the mods and power users are pissed by actions taken by Reddit. People are starting to hear about it, but it's not common knowledge.
If people hear "Reddit users protested then left because of Reddit corporate", investors are going to be pissed, advertisers are going to find it less attractive, and (most importantly) when discord or YouTube consider their own anti-poweruser moves (which they're currently talking about) they'll remember "we need to be careful with changes or we'll have a reddit moment"
I think this all started with Musk and his instance that despite pissing off users left and right, he's made Twitter more profitable than ever and only kicked off bots and scammers. It's absurdly unlikely (not like he's releasing numbers and they are deciding to not pay bills).
But by creating that very attractive narrative, other social media companies are looking for their own ways blatantly grab cash
will reddit care that much? posting pictures of steam is still pageviews and engagement, which is really all they care about
I'm not sure how they are actually anticipating this not to go negatively. If they are pushing active moderators and replacing them, that seems like a PR nightmare waiting to happen on top of all of this.
So done with reddit I finally took the time to figure out how federated platforms work. Just started on kbin, and I've been seeing a lot more of what I actually want to see.
Kbin's been good to me as a replacement so far. I have my nitpicks but I also understand it's very early days.
considering how early it is, this place is very active
It’s surprisingly polished for how new it is too.
I love that it federates with lemmy too. So many options.
Yeah me too, still getting my head around the differences.
The people who care have left. The people who don't care stayed and they obviously won't give a shit. The only way they're going to give a fuss is when the content torpedoes, which it looks like it's already started.
Quality content creators are mostly gone from Reddit. Quality content submitters are mostly gone from Reddit. Quality content commenters are mostly gone from Reddit.
So what's left?
Mods who think they have value and for some reason care about their /r , and working for free.
Ads thinly disguised as posts. Bots spamming and upvoting those fake posts.
And nobody important reading.
The quality difference on lemmy/kbin is staggering. This is the perfect time to be part of it.
It's inevitable it will start to slide once critical mass of users have been reached though. I'm curious if federated and smaller instances will keep it agile and fresh and big corp influence free.
I care and I’m quite enjoying dipping in and adding to the (remarkably John Oliver themed) chaos.
People who are fed up need to not leave. They need to go become a mild nuisance. Give nonsense answers to people (those who need casual assistance anyway). Pollute the data without contributing anything useful. And use an ad blocker the whole time.
Engagement is activity which is numbers you can show for the IPO. It's also ad revenue. Best to not engage at all honestly.
I thought spez wasn't worried about reddit's bottomline with these protests?
What a weird way of showing that you're not concerned.
They mean nothing but we're going to keep putting out PR spin and do everything we can to squash the revolt.
I am ready and armed with Thomas the Tank Engine memes.
Thomas had never seen such bullshit before
but there are users advocating changing the sub to be about actual steam
istg if they do that, itll be one big ass troll to the reddit mod team 💀
but there are users advocating changing the sub to be about actual steam.
Look at posts in the last 10 hours, they all are lol. Yay!
What does it mean to force a sub open? Did Reddit remove the mods ability to make the sub private?
They’re removing the mods that keep it closed and install whomever they choose to run the newly reopened subreddit. That or sufficiently threaten the mods in place into making it open. Bad optics either way
They are sending mods messages that they need to open up their subs or they will replace them with mods who will open them.
There is a PSA Announcement at /r/Steam that reads:
As ya'll likely know, we've been dark to support the blackout against reddit's antagonistic behavior towards its own userbase.
The admins sent us a message today saying we must open or get removed, so here we are.
For those of you browsing this subreddit on non-official apps (Reddit is Fun, Apollo, Sync, Boost, etc), they will break on July 1st due to reddit's new policies.
We're opening back up but will leave permanent stickies in the subreddit and threads to keep folks in the know.
Our Discord server is active, don't forget to check it out.
Good luck and god speed.
Either open it up or they'd do the same they did on /r/piracy, ask if any of the mods is up to reopen the sub and remove the ones who aren't. Like this https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35555
The big admins just flip a flag somewhere. Probably remove the existing mods or threaten to do so if they close it again. I would then assume that either way the mods aren't going to be giving reddit free labor any more. Not sure what reddit's plan is to moderate at that point. Maybe get a scab mod to run things or something.
I never thought I could continue to enjoy reddit after what they did to Christian Selig and the other 3PA developers, but all this malicious compliance is delicious!
all this malicious compliance is delicious!
Indeed.
If Reddit Inc's tactic is to pry open private subs and inject patsy mods, then there is only one thing left to do: deface them to destroy their utility.
steam should be about water vapor,
piracy should be about swashbuckling
/pics is already nothing but "sexy pics of John Oliver"
/gifs is similar
I’m only going on there to support stuff like this, at least until Apollo is turned off. Then I’ll mostly be here.
Me too. I already nuked my (11-year-old) account and just pop in to watch the drama and see what subs are going where (when they divulge that).
Fuck
Next step would be moving beyond pictures of steam / John Oliver and simply jamming subreddits with worthless AI content which forced-back-but-striking mods would no longer remove; the more AI crap is there, the less useful the site is for training AI models, and the whole API scam goes out the window.
Honestly I think all of these subs should just spam the whole spez moderated jailbait thing and have nothing but that in the front page. Even if these subs reopen, they would ruin spez's image even more.
Does this scum even cares about himself anymore?
I thought spez wasn't worried about reddit's bottomline with these protests?
What a weird way of showing that you're not concerned.
I just broke my protest since the blackout began to see if PCGaming was still closed and it is. Nothing but respect for that team. Hope they see it through until reddit decides to go nuclear. I'll gladly create a new account to shit all over the new version.
The thing that bothers me is the number of people on the r/steam announcement commenting that the mods are doing this to hold on to power and have sold out to the admins. Speaking as someone who has previously run a community (though a much, much smaller one) there is a lot of hard work and effort that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that these kinds of internet spaces stay clean and healthy. It's easy to say "Look at the power-tripping mods", and yes those do exist, but to pretend that every mod is like that sells short the people who sacrifice of themselves for the betterment of the community. A lot of metaphorical and occasionally literal blood, sweat, and tears go into managing an online social space, which I can attest to. Does that excuse poor mod behavior? Never! However, we shouldn't cut off our own nose to spite our face. I just hope that we can stop fighting ourselves and direct our collective vitriol at the real perpetrators; spez and his cronies.
The point is more that the writing is on the wall for that website, and should just quit moderating them and go to one of the alternatives or come here. Saying oh well and giving in to this strong arming from the admins is just making it worse for them down the line.
It's time to jump ship. The longer these people keep denying that, the more power they give to the admins.
While I appreciate that point of view, and it absolutely feels that way, I can relate to the reluctance the r/Steam mods to torching everything. They have carefully cultivated the sub like a garden, and even though the local HOA (the admins) are threatening action, the mods aren't happy with the idea of immediately ripping out their prize-winning tulips and replacing them with cardboard cutouts just to be spiteful. I'm sure they want to try less extreme measures to salvage as much content as they can before making a riskier decision. Again, I get that things seem hopeless from the user side of things, but I know if I was in their shoes I'd be searching every avenue for a solution, even ones I wouldn't normally consider.
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