175
votes
Reddit communities are switching to NSFW to create some friction and rob Reddit of ad revenue
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- Title
- Some subreddits are now filled with porn to protest Reddit
- Authors
- Jay Peters
- Published
- Jun 20 2023
- Word count
- 618 words
Considering this newest developmemt, I have a feeling that we might be coming to a breaking point for the moderators. It seems all reasonable conversation has been met with fingers in the ears, lalalala from spez and the admins. I cannot imagine having to actually have a discussion between mods to lay fire to their carefully tended corner of the internet. Somehow I don't think spez and company expected it to ever come to this, nor do I think they possess the class or grace to find a way back.
The other day there was a thread on askreddit about the effects on the blackouts and it seems like the people who stayed are loud and incredibly uninformed.
The anti-mod circlejerk in particular was on full display. One notable subreddit opened back up and removed all the rules and most moderation and is now filled with porn, and a surprising amount of people actually believe that the porn was all posted by the mods.
That's just proof that the recipe for subreddit destruction works like a charm. If there are no mods, then very shortly there will be no subreddit - just the spam, reposts, shitposts, porn, and advertisements that make up 70% of all of the site's content when not removed by volunteers. It's not hard to walk away and let the children destroy their own playpen.
Reddit mods should just try an actual strike instead of a protest. Give reddit two weeks with zero rules, zero mod actions in the mod log, and a wide open subreddit. Let reddit's admins remove the porn and hate speech themselves if they want it gone. That will make Spez beg mods to come back.
No, reddit would simply remove the whole team for not maintaining the subreddit. And that wouldn't be egregious.
The way forward is to remove the blatant hate speech and spam but keep everything that's off topic and remove all subreddit-specific rules.
I'd say let them remove the whole team. It's not possible for them to find replacements, and they need to learn that lesson the hard way.
It absolutely will be possible for them to find replacements. Not very good ones, but that's what you get with scab labour.
If you mean "replacements" as in people who want their name on a modlist, sure. If you mean it as someone who can do the work at all... Probably not.
Exactly. Go ahead, open up that Automoderator config page and have a look.
I look forward to reddit's admins taking the time out of their busy day to teach classes to new moderators on how to use Automod and the rest of the site's half-baked tools. Any mods who get removed sure won't be taking the time to tell their replacements anything.
Reddit actually started offering moderator education courses you can complete on your own time last year. I've been modding for over a decade but took all of them because I wanted to know exactly what I'd be asking potential mods of my communities to do and whether or not it was even worth it in terms of saving me time when helping new mods learn the ropes.
The courses are: Mod 101, Mod 201 (both general overviews), Automod for beginners, and wiki for beginners.
The automod course is not thorough by any stretch of the imagination. I imagine most new moderators with no technical knowledge whatsoever (which in my experience is true of most applicants for mod positions these days) would finish the course knowing about as much as they did going in.
So yeah, even with those new resources reddit has built, if reddit replaces experienced mod teams with scabs most of those new mods won't be able to bang out a proper automod config to help carry the workload of a sizeable sub.
I think they fired most of the admins who worked to support mods one on one...
lol, I wouldn't be surprised if they did. That would certainly be a very "reddit" thing to do.
Right, but now that's all they're after. Stabilize the situation, end the protest they said they supported moderators' right to have.
But putting names on the modlist doesn't solve anything as far as the users are concerned, right? Without the mod tools and the skill to use them, the subreddit will still be flooded with junk.
The majority of the users, outside of a few enlightened, shit-posting subreddits, will be happy to get what they think is their old subreddit back, curse the fucking mods that took it away from them trying to keep it what it was, and only realize their mistake after everything has gone to shit and spez has won.
If everything goes to shit, Spez actually loses. Right now he has to sell reddit to investors, and his advertisers are already starting to slip. Reddit is in a weaker position than they were in before the protests started, and as long as the disruptions continue in some form, reddit's position is going to worsen. Mods just have to be willing to do the hard thing and go all the way in for the protest. Put the green badges on the line. Make the users with the red tags do all the work for a change and see how well they like it - and what the users have to say about that.
I suppose it’s trying to come up with a situation where spez loses but Reddit as a community doesn’t lose. I’m not sure if it’s possible. Like ibuprofen says, in this case it will all be too late.
So do a lot of mods pay for a VPS or something to host Automod, and then that Automod is using the Reddit API? And each instance of Automod has a carefully crafted configuration for that subreddit, but that configuration belongs to the current mods, because it's their VPS that the configuration is running from?
Because if that's how it works then, yeah, purging the mods isn't going to end well for Reddit
Nothing to do with automod...thats just a *.yaml file stored on reddits servers. Each subreddit does gets one but they can only write rules within the existing framework. No new functionality can be added.
I used to mod one of the largest tv subreddits and ran a $5/month droplet for years. My code managed flairs beyond what reddit does natively, added additional mod tools and allowed for subreddit games. For me, it was a chance to grow a community and develop my own skills. My skills improved and the sub did grow significantly while I was "head" mod to the point where we regularly hit the front page. So all told I don't regret the expense but, while I definitely got something out of the deal, I think reddit got the better return
Most users don't understand what they're using.
On the other hand, that's often the fault of others who haven't spent enough time educating them.
Scabs usually at least get paid. Maybe having a little internet fiefdom will be enough for some, but I don’t think it will be enough for most
They did just that. Whole mod teams have been removed from subreddits for turning them NSFW.
It wouldn't be reddit if the Admins didn't arbitrarily punish users despite them not breaking any rules.
Sometimes I wonder if Reddit itself is maybe astroturfing with bots, but then I figure that's too high-minded conspiracy and occam's razor says it's simply the loudest anti- remain.
Maybe not Reddit itself, but someone certainly is!Edit: yikes, there is at least one offensive reply that’s visible from that link but wasn’t visible to me when viewing from a mobile app/from my own home instance which may have that other instance blocked. Federation sure is complicated…👉 not a bot
incredible. The bots even learned how to do the passive aggressive rage quit from people down-voting their opinion. They truly are indistinguishable from the average redditor.
Well, let's be honest here. The average redditor is not exactly a high bar for an LLM to reach. :P
/ducks
Considering the founder of this site did a decent job with a fucking Markov chain, not even a full large language model, I don’t think the ducking is necessary.
I mean we are talking about the site population that thrives on copypastas and easily digestible memes. It’s not a high bar.
I mean… ahem. What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little punk?
Oh, this is real alright. Beware any user that follows a username pattern of Word/Word/Number, especially if it's not at least five years old.
That was some good lulz but it's not real. The user did write that comment but they did it as a joke. It's just a troll. Pull up their comment history, they mention it later on.
Okay, if that is for real, it is EPIC. Somehow we all know there are bots, but to have one so blatantly called out with a clearly defined "AI" formatted question just takes the cake. Yup, I do believe we are in full on, dumpster fire phase.
You were not wrong. I wasn't expecting it to be THAT bad.
One of the mods of r/knifeswap, a subreddit dedicated solely to posting knives and other EDC items for sale, was harassed to the point of quitting. I have never been so disappointed in a community I am a part of. Not surprised, unfortunately, but extremely disappointed.
It absolutely is to a degree. I've personally found bots (they're probably people, but organized to propagate a specific message) in the politics subreddit posting the exact same comments. You can take a quick glance through their comment history. It's pretty obvious.
Wondering when they come here :(
well that's the one upside to NOT having an easy to access API. makes it harder to make "user bots" that way.
But either way, as long as there's some thoughtful moderation, it shouldn't be too hard to control bots on a site like this. We're nowhee near reddit's scale where there are thousands at any given time.
As long as this place is invite only, it's too hard for them to get in, and too easy for us to sniff them out and ban them.
I have witnessed this exactly. The bot was instructed to post in various subs to make itself look real while peppering in some comments about how protest bad.
It derped here and there, and it wasn't a human troll or sarcastic quip. Obvious AI.
One of the subreddits listed was r/formula1. That was one of my subscribed subs, and that's a very tightly moderated community with a well behaved user base. I almost want tp sneak a peak but I'm holding firm. I doubt the mods there are posting porn, but who knows?
The content is basicially the same.
The header is pretty NSFW - not porn, but risque pictures heavily related to F1, such as botASS, Horner and Russell with their tops off, phallic front-wings and Flavio's thong. Oh, and they're bigging up Heinken's sponsorship of F1 as a reason for it to be NSFW - there are a bunch of Heineken sponsorship pictures all over the shop.
To be honest, I think they've played it very well. Everything is still F1 related. They've just accentuated some of the risquier parts as a justification.
This is especially humorous, because AFAIK Reddit co. has recently caused any drug-related sub (/r/drugs, /r/trees, /r/shrooms, etc etc) to be marked as NSFW by default, to have an age requirement portal they have to agree. I assume alcohol-related subs are required to be as similar.
What's even funnier, is that this is likely the same reason websites related to beer require you to click a button saying "I am 21 or older," just to prevent liability (IANAL and am in fact very dumb, so don't take my word for it though). But to just have some blanket tool be the fix is so funny and lazily implemented to me, lol.
honestly kinda pleasantly surprised that's one of the subs doing it! but to be fair, if I didn't have my principles I would hella subscribe for botASS
All posts in a NSFW subreddit are considered NSFW, with no way to mark them SFW. There's a button to unmark it, but it doesn't do anything.
Made it a bit annoying when I wanted to have SFW discussion threads in a NSFW subreddit I moderate but wasn't allowed to mark them as such, and then finding out that it's not a bug, it's a feature.
I too was a subscriber to that sub. I am a new member (20mins old) and was on Reddit earlier and the sub isn't there anymore but formula1.5 still is. I am sad at the loss of some of the subs, but am looking forward to finding other communities like them on here.
I’m on the same boat. Not going back after what the administration has done about it. It’s a dumpster fire.
The fact that absent mods results in instant porn floods is ... unexpected.
My understanding (as mod of a few small subreddits) is that automated tools do catch a lot of spam. I don't permit image posts, so no familiarity there, though automated porn-detection is A Thing.
The degradation model I'd suspected was that overall comment quality, topic focus, and civility would drift. Those are things far less easily managed automatically, and for which human mods are essential. (Again: these are the key issues I see on my own subs, the public ones of which have long suffered ... benign neglect, so to speak.) Still a worse experience, but one that would likely develop more slowly / be less immediately apparent.
Colour me surprised.
Frankly, I wasn't surprised. The lesson of the past decade was that there is no lower limit to how base human beings can be.
Oh, I've no doubt of that. A friend worked at a (now defunct) social network and ... has stories.
I just expected that the automated detection would be more effective. Spam and pr0n have pretty loud technically-detectable signatures.
undoubtedly. But does Reddit have that kind of tech? be it available to admins or mods? Given the whole point of these protests, I'd be surprised if the latter had it supplied to them by Reddit.
Even if they do, porn isn't against the global rules of reddit. They would never have reason to activate it outside of legal issues.
This. Reddit’s built in tools aren’t designed to block porn in the slightest. They do a pretty good job against spam, but actually kinda fail on nsfw spam.
It’s not because that’s what the users would post normally - I moderate a sub that allows both sfw and nsfw content normally, and the nsfw content is less than 5% of our posts.
The users are participating in the protest too. They were posting porn because they want reddit’s advertisers to pull out. The result we’re seeing now is extremely different from how a normal unmoderated subreddit situation would go.
r/interestingasfuck was filled amazingly quickly with OF type spammers. I guess the logic is shitloads of subs = perfect place to spam photos/vids in order to hopefully convert reddit views to OF subscribers.
It's not something I would have expected to happen so quickly, but is apparently a very good nuclear option if you want to ruin something that relies on community content.
In the case of r/interestingasfuck it's even more...interesting as fuck...because the sub is complete chaos now. It's just: incredibly low content image macros of people bitching about how bad the sub is/making fun of the nsfw posts; pics of people's dogs/cats with misleading titles; random OF promotional porn pics; and the occasional pic of some random dude's hairy asshole.
It's rather impressive actually.
I've never been a mod so take this comment as you well, but I imagine this is happening because people are very tired of seeing the communities crashing and burning at the whim of moderators who don't want to take a next step that might actually work: just leaving.
Admins are now removing mods that aren't falling in line, and some - like r/iOS - are resuming normal functions. It's no surprise that users are fed up with that because if you've been protesting for this long, why aren't they continuing? Well, they are afraid of being removed as mods. But if mods, especially on the large defaults, just up and left, it would actually do a lot more than anything else that has been attempted to maybe have an effect about the goals of the protest.
Edit: Just trying to say that showing what not having any moderators looks like is probably the only tool left if the toolbox of those still protesting. Anything less is not going to work nor be enough.
That implies that the users would follow. I'm not so optimistic.
I think those users simply don't care and want to be comfortable. And ultimately they are the collective will of the site, so it is what it is. Maybe they stay no matter what and put up with the downfall, maybe they leave if/as spammer take over their communities (which I feel is the next step), and maybe some already left.
But I will mention one factor of this: I can't help but find it a tad ironic about how reddit was a supposed champion of "The great resignation" and supporting strikes and labor unions. And then they get their chance to act on that ethos and you see how many don't act very differently from the scabs they rant about on places like Antiwork.
I think the only thing that demonstrates is the fallacy of assuming that a diverse group of n million people will have a uniform opinion or response to any given situation. Just because a movement gains some traction in one part of the site doesn’t mean that the whole user base is in favor of it, or even that the movement itself represents more than a small vocal minority of users.
I guess the same applies to mods. Just because some want to leave, and a few hundred do, doesn't mean there will be some supposed "mass walk", as some redditors are criticizing mods of not doing.
You are right that it is wishful thinking. Maybe not a fallacy, but I have yet to see an internet event where the vast majority of users supported the action and absolutely tanked traffic. Because most users just open an app and browse for a few minutes. Maybe if some celebrity called to action, but I'm still not sure that's enough.
I think a big issue is a lot of subreddits were closed without any explanation why, literally no mention of it. There were surprisingly few subreddits closed responsibly with an explanation as to what was actually going on. I think there could have been a better reception to the blackout if every sub that participated actually put an explanation as to what was going on.
I saw that the anti-mod sentiment grew after the two days of blackout, so for me it's not hard to believe this is all astroturf/shills.
People all of a sudden telling mods to stop bloodsucking? Come on
I hope advertisers and future investors are watching closely. If this is how they're treating the content creators and people who actually run the site, I'd be concerned with how my ads are being sene and if it's money well spent. I'd also be worried about the day they turn on the advertisers and share holders as well.
They expected it, assigned a dollar value to it, and determined they'll make more money weathering the storm. That's what their behavior is indicating.
And I think part of that determination is the success Netflix had after blocking password sharing.
This is just the nature of how capitalism ruins things.
Awkwardtheturtle (one of Reddit's most prolific and most tyrannical power mods, and somebody who the admins were basically in cahoots with) was suspended from Reddit earlier today. I am not making this up either, check his Reddit profile.
Spez is playing a dangerous game by backstabbing the very caretakers who put in countless voluntary hours. He has pissed on a live nest of giant hornets.
I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Looks like he's been in the news. I'd wager the admin team had mixed feelings about him judging from that colorful little history. They may just be taking this opportunity to get rid of turtle because he's become a timesink for them. Like or hate, anyone they have to spend their limited time on becomes a liability. I'll look forward to seeing turtle's response.
Oh snap. I don't think spez gives a flying hootinanny anymore. It's actually really sad to see this but it seems to be the life cycle of certain internet entities. But I will not be surprised when they delay or cancel their IPO because they slit the throat of their golden goose. Oh well, you get what you pay for, and by NOT paying moderators, this is where we are.
I've been checking back in on Reddit the past few days (may as well enjoy the last week I'll have access using RiF).
I'm definitely noticing a ton more comments of users just being blatantly anti-mod/anti-3rd party, potentially even pro-Reddit. Seems like the majority of "loud" users are using the official app and because their experience is being affected they just want the changes to take effect now and for 3rd party apps to disappear, and "annoying" mods to be replaced with shills and Quislings.
I've passed the point of caring, the site was going to hell in a handbasket anyway, the API changes will take effect at some point whether it's in a week or they're delayed for a month or a year, or two and now even other users are essentially telling me and tens of thousands of others to just piss off because they can't get their daily fix of dire discussion, crap memes, ragebait and reposts.
Did you see the NSFW post in r/interestingasfuck that hit the top of r/all yesterday?
It was OC from an OF creator, specifically made to mess with Reddit and Spez.
I feel like that's the kind of protesting I can get behind.
Yeah, I saw that yesterday haha. Seems like a few subreddits have taken the idea and rolled with it as well.
Yet another new development; Reddit has begun removing, and suspending, mod teams of subs who have gone NSFW. I'm (was) a mod on a decent sized sub that went NSFW.
They cite two conflicting reasons for this:
and
For context, that particular subreddit did have NSFW-content on it to begin with, it definitely wasn't a "previously safe-for-work" space. Many rules (including ones against NSFW content) were relaxed, and the community was marked NSFW to ensure that people who don't want to see NSFW content don't see it. Regardless, their content policy does state that even with just excessive profanity, subs should be marked NSFW, so it's funny they're angry that subs are marked NSFW.
It's pretty likely they're looking for any reason to boot mod teams and restore subs that allowed more NSFW content in protest, so they can retain their revenue.
Message Source (Screenshot)
And the fire continues to rise. I guess it was inevitable but calling the enablement of their own site feature "malicious" certainly rings as desperate.
But it's tagged NSFW, they just don't have to click it.
And then there is the switcharoo where obviously NSFW communities are switching to a "Christian Minecraft Server" theme and it's hilarious.
I think it's worth noting that some subs held votes, which means that the people explicitly DID "want to see it".
It seems like a good way to go about it - they would be technically aiding the community's goals, while simultaneously proving that the majority dislikes what the admins are doing.
I feel like I'm in the minority of reddit mods/users in thinking that the admins axing those mod teams was the right call.
It was involuntary pornography, it was malicious in nature to an extent that it went beyond malicious compliance.
I don't know what any of those mod teams were expecting to happen, but them being removed swiftly is the least surprising drastic measure reddit has taken during this entire protest, IMO.
Technically, sure. But did changing the setting from normal to NSFW alter the 22 million subscribers status? When 20+ million people subscribe to a subreddit that is very much a previously safe for work place, and their feed starts being populated with NSFW overnight, I just don't see how any expected it to go any differently than them being purged.
22 million being r/mildlyinteresting, the biggest sub so far that has had it's team purged
But seems those mods are back now? At least some? I checked before and the mod list was empty but now it's populated.
You are very much technically correct.
I'm just going to leave this conversation saying that it's still very much unsurprising to me that this happened. I just don't see how literally any other outcome from going NSFW was possible. Those mods went scorched earth, mods are not protected in any way, so reddit very understandably replied by going scorched earth in return.
The best part about it is that it's Reddit's earth they're scorching. Sun Tzu spez most definitely ain't.
Yup. The mods can just go elsewhere, or take a break for a while, which probably would be healthy for most of them.
The best response for spez would have been to wait it out. The users absolutely would have gotten bored of the protest and returned more or less to normal in a couple weeks, max.
Apparently the /r/mildlyinteresting moderators were removed by mistake, as absurd as that sounds, according to this comment on /r/ModSupport which appears to be from a member of the mod council. I guess the Reddit admins are having a tough time telling /r/mildlyinteresting and /r/interestingasfuck apart...
At least as of the time I'm posting, all of the mildlyinteresting mods only have modmail permissions, so they'd be unable to do any actual moderation or change anything about the subreddit. They're back on the list, but not really moderators at all.
Well, at least that isn’t surprising.
I was on the mod council 3 years and it’s very clear that many, many admins do not use reddit.
So yeah, them confusingly nuking mildlyinteresting tracks
You may have your terms mixed up. That phrase is usually used to describe subjects who did not consent, not users being subjected to it.
How so? I'll also use this time to mention that Reddit users have wanted granular NSFW flairs for this exact reason. Some people may want to opt out of sexually explicit content but see violence or medical procedures or whatnot. some subs like r/interestingasfuck always allowed NSFW content but banned pornagraphic stuff (if you want a clearly NSFW but important example from before this started).
Maybe if they improved their site they could have prevented this... It's also not their fault that marking a sub a NSFW makes all other posts marked as such.
It looks like i do have my terms/understanding of that mixed up, my bad. That does change things as I always thought that report reason was one that was about the viewer, not the subject. I don't know, this is far too real-time for me to really get a thought out opinion before things change, so I'm just going to shut up and watch.
That's understandable. At the end of the day we as individuals aren't going to change the course here.
But I want to emphasize that I didn't mean to reply in an aggressive way to discourage your views. I'm very biased myself in this whole event, but I absolutely understand how this may seem like unnecessary drama and a non-issue to others. Especially those that rely more on reddit as a quick resource for answers than a community hub.
But I also do find schadenfreude in these long asked for features (or rather their lack of) by users are being used against them.
I won't say anything about whether it was the right call or not, everyone can have their own opinions on that. However, we did mark our entire sub NSFW to ensure that this would not happen. By default, all users are opted-out of seeing NSFW content, they would have to explicitly opt in for this content to be shown. The content is also blurred until the users clicks on it (unless they have a client configured to do otherwise), which serves as an extra barrier. I believe more than enough measures were taken to prevent unaware or involuntary parties from seeing NSFW content.
Although, Reddit did themselves toggle off the R18 setting without notice to anyone (either user or mod), that we had to correct ourselves after we noticed. That action Reddit took could very well have exposed someone to the NSFW content on the sub.
That’s not what involuntary pornography is. Involuntary pornography is when a recording is made of a consensual sexual act without the consent for the recording to happen (for example, revenge porn).
You clicking on a nsfw flagged post when you didn’t want to see nsfw content isn’t against reddit’s site wide rules. NSFW content not being properly marked is against the rules, but it’s not against the “involuntary pornography” one, and that’s also not what happened here.
Yeah, someone else pointed that out and I responded to it, here.
I encourage you to read other comment replies before adding your own to make sure you are not adding additional noise to the topic. Yes, I realize I'm doing not much more than adding my own noise with this reply as well.
You can also edit your original post to fix the mistake and prevent more misunderstandings. If you wish to preserve the original text, you can even
strikethroughon the old text to keep it intact while adding a more correct term.Or, people joining in on a conversation can get the full picture of said conversation by reading all of the replies, not relying on a higher level comment being edited however many times to show a full picture of a conversation that is laid out clearly in front of then to read.
Not to get into a back-and-forth over this, but its also possible that two people opened the page up before any replies were made, one posted a comment, and the other left the tab open for a few hours before reading and posting their comment. Regardless, its probably not worth fretting over.
It’s not, and I’m sorry for being pretty passive aggressive in tone with my reply, wasn't called for at all.
Somebody on r/subredditdrama is gathering info about it in this thread
Reddit has removed the mod teams from several big subreddits and banned the mods.
This is likely in response to them going NSFW.
I see spez is a free speech absolutist (tm) like his idol Musk.
edits: trying to format text while stupid
I have bad news if they think this is going to end any time soon, it'll only get worse and worse after the 30th when the API actually goes through.
It is getting worse and I believe we will see things deteriorate more before the 30th. The 30th will most likely result in a small drop of users to the service and another wave of outrage in threads about how people have to use the official app.
Credit to @Wes from the Reddit Megathread:
"The admins are now nuking entire mod teams for malicious compliance. /r/InterestingAsFuck, /r/MildlyInteresting, and /r/ShittyLifeProTips have had their entire mod teams removed, and suspended for 7 days.
It seems they're currently targeting subs that have switched to NSFW and allowed pornography, but things are now escalating dramatically."
Edit: Changed "from another post" to direct link of thread.
Can someone explain the John Oliver thing to me? I've glanced at the front page a couple of times, and seen it mentioned, but I have no idea why everything is him, now.
Parenthetical: I am really going to miss /r/outoftheloop
Just to piss off the admins, /r/pics was told they had to reopen and follow the rules. They asked the Redditors what the rules should be and someone said /r/pics/ should only allow pics of "Sexy John Oliver" as a ludicrous idea, and that's what they did. Everything else was being nuked apart from John Oliver pics, preferably sexy. This abides by the admin rules while at the same time being maliciously compliant.
Other subs have followed suit with /r/wellthatsucks only allowing vacuum cleaners, etc.
Honestly I kind of like the new r/pics. There's so much more creativity now, and the ones that reach the top tend to be either really good and interesting or at the very least funny.
Its mildly entertaining (or at least was for a bit), but it doesn't take much to realize that that protest isn't actually a protest. Changing your sub to a John Oliver sub is still driving clicks and giving reddit the ad revenue they desperately want. In fact if anything I'd hazard a guess that the John Oliver iteration of /r/pics is driving a bit more traffic than the traditional /r/pics. Its shocking how sitewide the mods of reddit have continually kept fumbling the bag with this protest. That is assuming it was ever actually about anything more than virtue signaling in the first place.
I have read multiple posts by casual users admitting they unsubscribed from the pics subreddit because they didn't like it any more. So there is an impact there.
Please tell me that someone set the header image to Mega Maid.
It's part of the protest. So that their sub is technically active, some mods are only allowing sexy John Oliver pix. And John Oliver is embracing it by posting photos on his Twitter for people to use.
this is 100% on-brand for things he and his own production team do on the regular. there was like zero chance he wouldn't embrace this
I'm looking forward to this, and the death of reddit, being a main topic of an episode of his show once the writers get paid and the strike is over.
Unfortunately what I'm seeing in some of the bigger subreddits that I used to frequently browse is people are just angry and asking for the mods to be removed. They are also complaining about any malicious compliance rule changes. Understandable (but disappointing) if you've only ever used the official app or the website and don't know how much behind the scenes effort goes into moderating a larger community.
Spez has demodded all of /r/interestingasfuck and unNSFW'd protest subs.
At what point does everybody switch to Lemmy out of protest and leave Reddit in the dust?
Lemmy isn't user friendly enough to be a viable alternative to reddit. "It's easy for me to understand" is not going to apply to the vast majority of users who are non-technical. It was designed by devs and it shows.
It's really not that much different to Reddit. I'd actually consider it the closest we've had to a Reddit-like since Voat and Ruqqus were still around - before those websites got commandeered and driven down by white supremacists.
The only part that's going to confuse your average Joe is the idea of decentralization and federation. Lemmy doesn't make it easy to discover communities outside of your local instance in its community browser, and having to type in 'subcommunity@instanceurl' to access a community whilst logged in to your normal instance doesn't really help either. Kbin is somehow even worse in terms of how comments are laid out and can only be viewed in pages of 25 at once.
Another thing that really hurts both platforms is the fact that unlike Mastodon, you cannot (yet) migrate your account to another instance, meaning that you run the very real risk of committing to a community that either defederates from everybody else, or shuts down because they cannot afford hosting costs or just wanna call it quits. Beehaw is a very good example of the former where the admins completely split itself from the fediverse because they wanted to be more like a fediverse equivalent of Tildes than a Reddit competitor.
Still better than Mastodon, which is even more unintuitive and has failed to gain any kind of major foothold over an imploding Twitter.
In terms of apps, I don't think Kbin has any because it's a relatively new platform. Lemmy has Jerboa but it's somehow an even shittier experience than the official Reddit app. You can't even go into your inbox and reply or view context of a comment unless you're running the latest app version, which isn't even on Google Play yet.
That being said, Lemmy and Kbin have absolutely fucking ballooned in users and are only going to grow even more as Spez devolves into even more of a power-tripping despot.
It's very different from new reddit, which is what the vast majority of the site uses. What might be a small issue to technical users (understanding instances, knowing how communities work) will absolutely drive off the bulk of casual users who just don't care - all they see is "confusing thing" they don't understand. The barrier for entry is high in terms of being able to navigate and understand it.
Unfortunately a lot of those sign ups are bot accounts exploiting a bug with the API.
I don't know if they just can't handle the influx of new users and it's overwhelmed, but I have not been able to get registered with any instance of Lemmy. Whenever I try to register, I get a spinning busy wheel and... nothing. The one site where I got some sort of response back after maybe a week or two was beehaw.org, but apparently my request to join wasn't detailed enough, I'm not sure if I was supposed to type up an essay, but my request was rejected. I had typed up a few sentences saying I was quitting reddit because of shenanigans and wanted to try beehaw, but that wasn't good enough. I've kind of given up at this point.
Check your spam folder with Beehaw or try logging in with your saved credentials.
Also, they defederated from the others. I'd consider joining Lemmy.world
As for the slowness, apparently Lemmy World was in debug mode. They disabled it and the responsiveness of their site went up fifty-fold.
Try the kbin instances. I was able to make an account on one very easily.
Yeah, granted I didn't give Lemmy much of a chance but I found it initially confusing and when I tried to register I had the same experience as you (Except I don't know if I ever got a response from beehaw). Then I found this site and so far this one is a lot more intuitive.
So far other than being smaller than I would like (as in I can easily run out of content and harder to talk about things like specific video games if I am interested in a particular one), this one has been fine so it's probably where I'll stay.
I support any sort of creative protesting and I think this is a good idea, a sort of r/maliciouscompliance move that I can get behind. "Oh, you're forcing subreddits back open... ok, well it's back open... with porn."
I've been off of reddit since June 12 and will continue to do so until June 30. I'm assuming Spez&crew aren't backing down, so at that point I'll be purging 10+ years worth of posts/comments/accounts, then just walking away entirely. I remember there being a pre-reddit world where I actually browsed across different sites on my own. I'll miss the convenience, but Spez & Reddit's behavior over the past few weeks has really convinced me to just walk away.
Yeah the convenience of reddit is really amazing, but it's honestly all thanks to the community. Without the community, reddit is nothing.
Yeah, and it just feels like Reddit's behavior has been really dismissive of the community, especially third-party apps. They'll take Narwhal from my cold, dead hands (or just effortlessly deactivate it, but whatever).
One thing that got me was the argument that spez made, "Reddit was never designed to support third-party apps." BUT, Reddit's own "official" app was previously a third-party app, Alien Blue. They bought it out in 2014, rebranded it, and released it as their own official app. Reddit's own official app is a third-party product.