Bad example, reddit blackouts did work
Comment on YSK about Changing your Profile Picture to Clippy
mmmm@sopuli.xyz 1 day agoI concur - I agree with the sentiment, but this seems so… pointless. Remember the Reddit blackouts? Some people migrated to Lemmy but I doubt the number of new members ever increased in the same proportion as it did in those days, some horrible mods were sacked (like u/awkwardtheturtle from r/art) and some subs were closed by their mods, but Reddit just reinstantiated those subs to another admins (r/unexpected on the top of my head at the moment) and… shit’s even worse than ever and they keep earning their profit as usual, if not even more. In the end the “protests” and blackouts did absolutely nothing for them.
qevlarr@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Kinda bad example: the server you are posting on (lemmy.world) literally started during the time of the subreddit blackouts, and other servers’ user count shot up 5x, 10x or more. It’s likely the surge would be muted without it, and even if more than half left Lemmy and returned to Reddit, it was still the first time it could even be considered a competitor. Its a positive and concrete resulf that came of it.
I dunno what changing a profile pic can do, without more of a goal than, “get a CEO to look at clippys and think its funny”. It would have a positive effect if it was even something small like telling people to change the profile and donate $1 to EFF.org
safesyrup@feddit.org 1 day ago
but the only reason the reddit blackout did not kill reddit is because a large portion did not care or was ok with what was happening. the same applies here and your sentiment is part of the problem that no change is happening. (well i also want to say that even if everyone would have a clippy as their profile picture, it would not change things directly)
Suspiciousbrowsing@kbin.melroy.org 1 day ago
Well you're incorrect, without the protests I would still be using Reddit. Just because it doesn't completely collapse the system doesn't mean it's been ineffective
3abas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Fair, it got your attention, which I think is worth it.
But as they mentioned, Reddit is doing fine, and making more revenue than ever. The premise of the clippy protest is to scare the CEOs into submission, exactly like the reddit blackouts, but that wasn’t the result of the blackouts and that won’t be the result of YouTube users changing their avatar to clippy.
The only thing that will scare them is users actually migrating away, which again didn’t happen enough with the reddit exodus, it didn’t get a massive blow like digg did. Users are too complacent now.
I’ll still change mine in case it gets one user’s attention enough to start them down the Louis rabbit hole and make them understand the problem of corporations owning all your data, with the hope they will self motivate to leave these platforms entirely, but it ain’t gonna get any CEOs attention when they wake up and see everyone on slack has clippy, they’ll laugh it off.