Reddit is only valuable because of the content users provide. If you don’t post valuable content, the site is worthless. Reddit can force subs back open, but they can’t force users to submit the content that makes the site valuable to begin with.
This is what Reddit forgot. They don't implicitly provide any value, it's the community that provides the value. Reddit is just the place where people happen to post.
So...do we know if Reddit iself is behind flooding subs with comments about how mods are being jerks and hurting the communities pointlessly? It's weird, the same kinds of comments in every sub I'm in. Also lots of comments about how Lemmy is too complicated. 😆
Realistically nothing is stopping them from doing so it’s their own policies which is kinda dumb af. All they’d have to do is prevent ads from brands that don’t want to be associated with it from showing there.
The fact they don’t show advertisements on NSFW subs/posts just tells me their advertising tools and targeting are absolutely sub par.
They don't want to deal with the legal implications of it. Spez has said ad nauseum that they don't want to risk 3PA providing NSFW content to users that Reddit is not allowed to serve because they don't want to be held responsible for that. Especially now that some US states are requiring actual ID verification for 18+ content.
While Spez is a lying weasel, I don't doubt that Reddit is worried about NSFW-related lawsuits, bad press, and ad revenue impact.
And, the next step after having control of the content is to further restrict it.
Actually they do care. These 2 does not go together:
We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor. and this one will pass as well.
Force-reopening subreddits, removing moderators.
(Un)fortunatelly they still can't get over their beliefs that Reddit is still good old Reddit and that they can proceed as public trading company. I am honestly interested what is the tipping point for them until they (attempt to) stop their bullshit.. 😂
I like this more than what r/piracy and r/memes did, (especially r/piracy^) as the content now being produced in those subs is still "quality" content that won't deter users from Reddit.
What needs to be done, (assuming Reddit mods refuse to risk giving up their power) is to pollute the homepage and r/all with so much crap that people refuse to use the website.
^ r/piracy rant, taken from my Reddit comment: (made before switching to lemmy)
spoiler
You have given up the protest.
You are helping Reddit twofold: Continuing to provide content, (even John Oliver content is still content) and removing unwanted content. (The discussion of digital piracy)
At this point you might as well remove the megathread as well.
Welcome! if you're new to the fediverse, I have a quick intro stickied in this sub. The main difference is looking for communities across different instances, not just on lemmy.world.
I really enjoy this form of protest. The "landed gentry" is giving the users what they want. I really hope that more communities do what /r/interestingasfuck and /r/justnomil have done to deprive Reddit of its advertising revenue.
unfortunately that type of thing drive traffic to the site so its better to do thing that drive traffic down. I would imagine allowing NSFW content and moderating less would be a great start. If they don't care about you or what you do actively do it badly malicious compliance as best you can. learn from the dissenters in nazi germany. Find ways to stifle them without detection.
A lot of advertisers will pull their ads if there is adult content anywhere in view with thier ad. Flooding Reddit with a bunch of nsfw stuff, even if tagged and fuzzed out, will choke out a good bit of ad dollars
Same. I never subbed to pornographic subreddits, so when I saw a lady broadcasting her breasts on my front page, I had to do a double take. And then I made this post here xD
I wonder if all this malicious compliance is also gonna screw with all that AI research people were interested in doing, if all the topics have essentially shifted....
This is the best way to harm reddit. More than a decade of carefully organized human sorted and ranked data by topic on. Destroy that data, it's ranking, it's sorting - you destroy the value going forward
People get suckered into the sunk-costs fallacy all of the time, and managers of large communities are going to be extra prone to it when they're told they'll have "their communities" taken away from them.
Remember, these people are fighting to "save Reddit". They see the possibility of having corporate friendly scabs take over as a community-destroying and a Reddit destroying proposition.
The event horizon of a black hole is the 2-dimensional surface across which the possibility of turning back is eliminated. At that point, space and time become so twisted that there is no longer an "outwards" direction. Every road leads in. But in supermassive black holes, that event horizon is so far away from the centre that the actual tidal forces -- the forces which pull things apart when they're near large gravity sources -- are remarkably weak. You would not notice the difference between being 1 km above the event horizon and 1 km beneath it. If you weren't being careful, you could cross that event horizon without ceremony and without realizing you'd doomed yourself.
This is how it is with big services, too. The thing that makes them irrelevant happens long before revenues or usage decline. In fact, there's likely still growth! But there'll be an inflection point in the acceleration that those who don't know what to look for won't even notice. Then it could take months, or even years, for things to turn around and decay into nothing of value.
These mods are trying to save something that has already experienced its killing blow. Something that will cease being what it was long before it ceases to be. Something that has already quietly -- though not too quietly -- slipped past the event horizon.
I do think if they open with malicious compliance, it’s better than if they open with moderators that wanna replace and wanna do their best to keep the sub going
The sub is now /r/InterestANDFuck. I'm sure this is worse for Spez than the John Oliver sub changes, which I also approve of. Everyone knows advertisers love NSFW content being just out there for anybody to stumble upon.
@Kombat Yes, it's nice to see the funny rules some subs are coming up with, including all the John Oliver stuff, but I'd like to see more of them just get rid of their rules and allow porn or whatever people want to post. I think that would be much more economically damaging to the company, especially after the mainstream media starts describing Reddit as a porn site.
I love that all of the massive subs are just going full r/worldpolitics at this point. No wonder lemmy/kbin are still growing exponentially after the blackout technically ended, the front page must be completely ruined by all of the huge subs doing this shit.
Yeah, no rules is definitely the way to hurt Reddit as a company, but I can see why some mods aren't as willing to go full no rules quite just yet. They're likely still holding onto hopes that they'll be able to return to business as usual and it's easier to recover from a flood of memes than it is from being a porn sub.
That being said, I imagine we'll see this even more come next month.
What I realised to maybe as equally damaging is if all the original NSFW subs started allowing only SFW content. This would drive the fairly isolated but big userbase of those subs away.
Honestly, Reddit would probably like a few less NSFW subs. They've always had sort of a love-hate relationship with them. They don't want to deal with adult content at all, but they also don't want to go full Tumblr and drive half their user base away.