Reddit's response about the actions they took against the subreddits (note: r/mildly interesting DID NOT encourage nsfw content and their suspensions and removal have been revoked by a diff admin)
It's crazy how reddit's run like it's a 1-2 year old startup still trying to figure out how guidelines, communication, consistent rule enforcement, etc. work.
It's becoming more and more apparent the site's success was despite the company running it, not because of it.
As much as Steve has already shown he's willing to lie outright (especially we characterizing his talks with the Apollo Dev) I really can't put it past Reddit to lie about the mods "encouraging" porn posts.
It's only because they were default subs.
A while back one of the news subs (r/world news? ) got flooded with porn and basically switched to a random anime porn type of sub. That caused the population to migrate to r/anime_titties for all their news needs.
Now when it happens to a special sub though it's a problem?
This is just a standard “clearing house” measure. Remove the dissidents, ignore the howls of complaint.. surround yourselves with “yes men” and then you are set
@minnieo@tchambers It sounds like Reddit got their feelings hurt when mods they thought they knew and trusted acted outside the social contract and did something they didn’t like. Hmmmm wonder what that reminds me of.
I can't blame reddit admins on this one. I support the protest and users shifting to Lemmy. But the sudden NSFW content is clearly going to get reddit to take action. Just the obvious response in my opinion. Just like killing third party apps causes a user base to leave. 🤷♂
The unfortunate thing is that in a lot of cases, the "Big Stick" approach actually worked. Many reddit moderators that were "leading" the protests caved under threats of replacement from the admins. Maybe it's because they're addicted to the little bit of power being a moderator over a reasonably sized community gives you. Maybe they're just set in their ways and expected reddit to roll back their API changes. I can't say. The one that really pissed me off was r/selfhosted. Like, your entire thing is autonomy and a very technical microcosm of DIY culture, but the second you're faced with the possibility of just migrating to one of a million different other, self-hosted options, suddenly it becomes "too much of an inconvenience?" Totally pathetic.
Haha fuck reddit. They will keep on changing the rules or apply them in even more retarded ways. The end of the month when all the api stuff dies can't come soon enough.
None of these communities violated rules. They didn't just encourage users to post NSFW content, they switched the subreddit setting to NSFW which works with the visibility user controls reddit has had for years.
It does highlight the futility of waging a war with the owner of a platform on their platform though. These mods did everything right: abiding by all rules, ensuring by vote that their user communities overwhelmingly support the changes. But it doesn't matter. Because it's reddit, the admins hold all the cards. This has been kind of fun to watch and there's really some brilliant moves by mods in these cases, but at the end of the day for real results the only way to win is to build a better community elsewhere.
Reddit is totally justified in this. The users are actively and maliciously trying to hurt Reddit. However, this is in response to many many completely unjustifiable actions from Reddit. Mostly the lies.
If they had just come out and said "we're killing the API in 6-12 months", as others before them have done, they would have seen much less pushback, but they had to lie over and over again about "not killing 3rd party apps" and "working with developers".
I mean, as a parent, I sort of agree that pushing sexual material to subs that weren't in the past, sort of a dick move.. but at the same time, removing/firing people who were moderating the sub for free, is just stupid... What's going to stop people from still posting porn/nsfw material to these subs now that their normal gatekeepers are gone?
Wild, they are acting like the users didn't actively vote for this.
Anyway reddits worst problems are to come, once API is revoked, lemmy will actively just be a better platform overall even with its growing pains, it will be a slow drain for reddit.