š¢Entire mod team on r/mildlyinteresting (and more subs) removed and locked out of their accounts after changing their rules upon community's request. (They're also switching subs BACK to SFW)
EDIT: GO DM MODS OF YOUR FAVORITE SUBREDDITS AND POLITELY ASK ABOUT MIGRATION!: something as simple as "Hey, I love this community but I no longer use reddit, will you guys be making a community on Kbin or other alternatives? Let me know please, thanks." will work!! We need more voices encouraging migration!
If Reddit is taking the mantle of determining valid content and is editing and changing posts for users without their consent, doesnāt that run the risk they fall afoul of the Safe Harbor clause of DMCA?
IMO theyāre getting mighty close to editorial control.
I have to add though that the form of protest proposed by that mod team is pathetic.
"only YOUR pictures of suggestive vegetables, must still be OC"
Either shut the sub down or burn that shit down by turning it into a porn sub. This little "we're gonna be creative, we're gonna allow suggestive vegetables!" mischief is pathetic af.
The dumbfuck bootlickers who're "yay my content coming back" are fucking cringe. I hope the new people who mod the subs are alt-right trash who will push their shitty ideology onto the subs.
The most mindboggling thing about all of this to me is if Reddit had just improved their own app to be up to par with the multitude of 3rd party apps out there, none of this would have been an issue. They could've migrated everyone over to the official app easily with just a better experience. If a single person can wrangle an app together that outperforms the official one in a month, Reddit has no excuses. Personally, I'm delighted all of this has happened, as it's allowed for multiple viable alternatives to be populated. Which I've been wanting for a very very long time.
Interesting to see the interplay between power and civil disobedience.
It was naive to expect reddirt to bow down (which is why many thought the protest was pointless), but still the right thing to continue the protests.
What it does is, it forces the power to show face, and it creates a dilemma. Do they
let the protest continue? That's an option, if the protest can be ignored. If the protest is too much of an obstruction, this is not an option.
give in to the demands? Clearly the worst option, else there wouldn't be any protest
use force to remove the protest? A good option if enough people don't care, the best option if people even condone the use of force.
Maybe you already noticed, I'm talking about something else, something bigger.
(1) Is why regular demonstrations (in themselves) have little effect; they can be ignored. They must be a stepping stone to further escalation, else you get statements like "this one will pass as well". The people protesting must be committed and follow through.
(2) Must be won in battle. There will be no gifts. It has to be the least painful option for the authorities, and remember it was their most painful option at the beginning.
(3) Very much depends on solidarity. With which side does civil society solidarize itself? Does it favor the force-applying authorities, because they remove an annoying obstruction to business as usual? Are the protesters the good guys, because they are fighting for a just cause and a better future?
Neutrality on this stance indirectly supports the stronger part, usually the authorities (which are in a position to use force). Using force has no real downsides (oversimplified), unless society heavily condemns it. By 'condemning,' I mean supporting the protests, ideally through participation.
Maybe after experiencing this with your once-favorite social media provider, you can see the next climate protest / civil disobedience with different eyes.
This morning's news about the r/mildlyinteresting team being reinstated and unsuspended by a different admin - that's confirmation that there's internal conflict going on. Protests don't work, my ass.
The next move should be contacting all the mods of all the subreddits you love and get them the information on a migration. Set up a place for them to land and offer to have them mod here if they want to move everyone.
I have done that with my favorite subs already. Hopefully the mods respond and set up home here.
I can't say I'm surprised we've arrived at this point but still... If this is the precedent set then there's surely not much more that can be done. Thing that sort of sickens me is seeing just how many people are immediately lining up to take over as mods for these subs, but maybe I'm just naĆÆve.
Oh my God spez has resorted to outright deleting some of the colossal moneymaker subs, that will do more permanent damage than a user blackout ever could. This is quite possibly the funniest thing I've seen from that shitsite in years.
At a time like this, I am at least glad that I was never a mod there, and I don't have to go back there to try and deal directly with that toxic corporate business anti-culture.
If I had invested years of love's labor into a community, only for this to now occur, to realize I am being regarded as little more than trapped prey by a site I trusted, it would be tearing my guts in all possible directions.
GO DM MODS OF YOUR FAVORITE SUBREDDITS AND POLITELY ASK ABOUT MIGRATION!
Please don't do this. I'm a moderator of a sub (won't say which one). From a personal standpoint I'm happy to use both platforms. Vilify me if you will. But I do not want to see messages from users asking if we're going to migrate. That's pestering and it won't go well if that particular subreddit isn't into it.
Hilariously, a subreddit that I mod, with less than 700 subscribers and like, 4 slightly active users (3 of whom are mods), just got the threatening modmail. We only went private as a gesture of solidarity, there's maybe one post a week so it's not exactly a bustling community. I'd made the sub public for about an hour every couple of days in an effort to avoid this sort of thing, guess it didn't work.
The protest should've been to alert people of moving communities and Reddit alternatives from the beginning, despite the moderators having power, the admins are essentially like "bruh we have absolute power, your power is nothing"
This was not and should not've been surprising in the slightest... Anyone shouldve been able to predict this from the moment spez decided to get all shitty about the dev of Apollo, from the moment he stated "were profit driven until profits arrive" and then did the thing that honestly might help make money but not as much as the ideas that would've keeps third part app devs around
Honestly there were red flags from the beginning, mods were just too engrossed in the power they thought they had, and had the idea that no one could take it away from them. As a result they failed to set the true purpose of the protest. They failed to realise their power was an illusion, and that to keep it they either needed to comply or try to take their community and move elsewhere, and use this protest to advertise where to go next.