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Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests

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Comments

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  • wrekone@lemmyf.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    …we cannot allow actions that deliberately cause harm

    Seems like that’s about the only actions Reddit execs have taken over the last several years. Glad I left when I did.

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    • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My account was banned because I kept reporting people and it was easier to get rid of the complainer than it was all the bigots she was complaining about… but… now I feel very “You can’t fire me, I quit” about it

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  • 7e9hajyvdub0@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is not a smart choice, they do know that the alternative to peaceful protests like this is violent protest right? They want to challenge that or do they think it won’t be done because it’s “illegal”, that didn’t stop these guys now did it?

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    • STOMPYI@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Removed by mod

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      • redditrassholes9344@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        that’s auto-moderation for you, really gives high hopes for the people claiming automated is the future. Cyber attacks for all services who do this. If a store used automated systems to kick me out I’d throw a brick through their window.

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  • secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don’t get why people don’t just leave

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    • Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This was the last straw for me, running Redact right now.

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      • bitchkat@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I had to laugh when I got banned from a sub because I used redact.

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    • pyre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      because other people haven’t left yet

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      • secret300@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        ah the old catch 22

        that is the right use of that term right?

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  • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    So rather than allow subs to remain preserved while the replace the mods in place they will push subs to shit on themselves in this latest bout of enshittification.

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  • archomrade@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It just occurred to me that convincing someone of leaving a social media site is a lot like convincing someone to leave a big city.

    They have friends there and have grown accustomed to the vibrant and diverse activities, but realistically nothing they do or have there can’t be replicated in a smaller town, a smaller media site.

    They’re liable to put up with a lot of shit to stay with their community, but eventually people get pushed out and find greener pastures and a quiet space for themselves elsewhere. At least, that’s what I attribute to what I perceive to be a higher average age on the fediverse.

    I’m too old to find the constant stimulation and activity attractive anymore, and I much prefer the freedom to move around and be choosy about my media choices.

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    • ellypony@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Man I just turned 20. I’m sick of everything I do online being dictated by commercial interests. I feel like an old man. I just want my applesauce and my bingo, and to not be bothered and lumped into the white middle class 20 year-old advertising demographic.

      ( please stop bombarding me with scare tactic election ads google )

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      • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I lied about my age online a WHILE ago and I’m going to let you know old farts get bombarded too.

        Its gotten better since my old persona died I think (you know over 120 is just out of most marketers age ranges).

        I hate ads with a passion, if a friend shows me a video and an ad pops up I show them how to use fence and ad blockers on their phone right away.

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  • Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You know what’s not impossible? Leaving that shit hole and never coming back.

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    • Tja@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And moving to a different, more decentralized shithole?

      Lemmy has the same power tripping admins and mods, just more of them and each with a new and unique bias. You don’t hate AI? Ban. You acknowledge certain genocide? Ban. You made fun of my typo? Ban.

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      • Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Wrong instance I guess. Yeah, Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad and hexbear are toxic as hell, but there are really nice instances out there. I chose dbzer0 and it’s great here. We also have many interesting threads about locally hosted FOSS AI. db0 himself is quite involved in this topic, he’s the initial author of things like AI Horde. Basically everyone on db0 I’ve seen acknowledges the active genocide that’s being conducted by the Israeli fascists government. Other topics on the instance are anarchism and of course piracy.

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      • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Public modlogs and federation help fight this.

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      • Asetru@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        You did not make fun of my typo? Believe it or not, also ban.

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      • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Unlike the reddit, you can always make your own completed instance and host your own complete communities and nobody will ever ban you.

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    • redditrassholes9344@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s not a good method though on it’s own, there needs to be effort to undermine them. And since they don’t want to do peaceful protests, the only option left are the more violent and less legal ones. The ones that compromise their platform and its data.

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    • stupidcasey@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      True but how do you get the message out when they control the media?

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    • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s possible but reddit isn’t the only one looking for engagement, so are individual users. If a site has more users, it has more engagement and content. It is also not impossible to drop the lemmy name when you do go back there to make people aware of the alternative.

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      • Yoink@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Someone dropped the name lemmy over there, so now I’m here checking it out. Screw reddit, man.

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    • doingthestuff@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My thought exactly. They can always do like me and nope the fuck out of there.

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      • dafo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I left and joined Lemmy. After a couple of months of being flooded by politics in /c/memes, actually it’s everywhere and very little new content I started going back. Now I doomscroll both. I usually head to reddit after a couple of posts which portray me as a fascist because I’m not a Marxist.

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  • 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Mods could just make a filter to remove everything new anyway. The concept of mods being unpaid volunteers means they get to fuck with reddit if they really want. They already had that issue with some subs just starting to allow porn during the first api protest. Sure reddit can just churn through to newer friendlier mods like the first time but they’re not going to be able to crush all the dissent and drama from moves like that.

    But actually I think reddit has a bigger problem than protests. They tweaked their algorithm recently and it is going the way of facebook now, I’ve been getting 0 upvote day-old posts shown to me. They’re probably getting more engagement but I don’t think redditors are going to put up with that level of enshittification as easily as other social media where people are locked in by friends and followers.

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    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If you can’t meaningfully curate your feed then Reddit has lost all value.

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  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I wonder how much longer it will be before Reddit has to start paying people to moderate the subreddits since no one will want to do it for free anymore.

    Who am I kidding, there are so many people that are already taking their payment in the HOA like authority being a mod gives them that will never happen.

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  • macattack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    There’s an irony seeing Redditors creating threads and complaining about it as if they did anything during the API-gate saga

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  • eee@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m sure there will be ways around it. Mods can automod-delete every comment, change the rules of the sub to only allow posts of nonsense, or nit moderate at all.

    The main problem is that protests don’t succeed at reddit because people like moderating for free for some reason. Strangely Reddit has more leverage over mods than mods have over reddit.

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  • affiliate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    so many leaders are forgetting what the point of protests is. yes, protests are annoying if you’re a leader. but they’re better than the alternative. that’s the whole point.

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    • redditrassholes9344@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      People haven’t been using the alternative, and that’s the problem. Reddit and tech giants have grown complicit. They do not believe people would do it to them, or they think they could survive thousands of people trying to do it to them, if one can then many can.

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      • uis@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        youtu.be/rimtaSgGz_4

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    • Signtist@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      They’re better than the OLD alternative, which was total boycotting at best, and torches and pitchforks at worst. The NEW alternative is complaining about it for a week or two, then continuing on without making any changes at all. They don’t mind the new alternative.

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      • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I have made like, idk, maybe three reddit posts in the past year. Apart from incredibly specific niche topics which don’t have enough folks here to get a good answer, I don’t use Reddit.

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      • uis@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Something Great and something French

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      • redditrassholes9344@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The old alternative is better IMO, makes change happen one way or another. Specifically the unsanctioned, and non-peaceful protests. Boycotts don’t work in the days of ad-revenue, since ad-revenue funded companies have immunity from user dissatisfaction in that regard (can replace a substantial amount of users with bots that look at ads and they still get ad-revenue).

        What we need are old-fashioned style pitchforks and fire protests against them, but in the digital age, using cyberwarfare, like this.

        (reposted because SJW deleted my others)

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      • 7e9hajyvdub0@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The old alternative is better IMO, makes change happen one way or another. Specifically the unsanctioned, and non-peaceful protests. Boycotts don’t work in the days of ad-revenue, since ad-revenue funded companies have immunity from user dissatisfaction in that regard (can replace a substantial amount of users with bots that look at ads and they still get ad-revenue).

        What we need are old-fashioned style pitchforks and fire protests against them, but in the digital age, using cyberwarfare, like this.

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      • fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The quality on Reddit has really gone down with content creators disillusioned or gone, fake content everywhere (I’ve seen almost an entire scrollable thread copied comment-for-comment), and so many users wiping their comments.

        The owners are acting like everything is fine, but I think there’s a good chance it keeps hollowing out until the appeal isn’t there even for casual users. They can’t really turn back at this point, they burned the bridge.

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      • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        You can’t even make an allusion to torches and pitchforks on Reddit. Legit, they’ll ban ya.

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      • Cataphract@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        But that complacency isn’t happening to everyone. A lot are just festering, slowly digesting more incredulous and radical propaganda/influencers. Every ones base reality of the events that are happening over the country is getting completely skewed by the new types of outlets like tiktok that they flock to because of the lack of accountability by our elected officials and journalists/news organizations.

        During just this last hurricane Helene I’ve heard more anger and outrage about the government than anything to actually do about what’s been hit or what the people and rescue workers are actually doing. This is how we get mass shooters and assassinations becoming more prolific, people aren’t just complaining and going about their day. They’re nodding and grinding their teeth while smiling.

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      • affiliate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        i’m not yet sold on this “old vs new” thing. while i do agree that it would be better if people were more engaged/active about boycotting things and pulling out the pitchforks, my understanding is that hasn’t been the historical precedent in situations like this. the pitchfork stuff certainly did happen quite a lot in the past, but my understanding is that it was for more extreme problems than a social media company shutting down third party apps (which many people didn’t even know about). but then again, it might be hard to compare this to the company transgressions of the past.

        my understanding is that frustration is building, and if things continue in this direction, they will reach a tipping point where people do actually stop using the website all together and switch to alternatives. and, this ban on protests will give the reddit executives much less information on how close things are to that tipping point. (not to mention that the ban itself will probably accelerate things.)

        but i could be mistaken about this, and i’m open to changing my mind on it.

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      • Mubelotix@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The new alternative is becoming obsolete

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    • TeddE@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Or just agree with what your betters want you to think, obviously. </s>

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  • socsa@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Heil piss baby Spez

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  • tostos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    dont worry r/worldnews allwasy ready for the mission.

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    • P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Are you sure you wrote this correctly?

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  • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It’s amazing to me that so many people are willing to work as unpaid moderators so that Reddit’s investors can make more money.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If all mods quit that’d be perfect. Reddit has shown they’ll replace mods when they actually need to (or want to). But if no regular users wanted to pick it up then they’d have to pay admins to moderate. I don’t think we’ll see it though. There’s always going to be someone who wants it enough who has enough time for whatever reason.

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      • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Reddit has shown they’ll replace mods when they actually need to (or want to).

        But, their business model doesn’t work unless those mods are working for free. So, while they may replace mods, unless people keep signing up to work for free to help a for-profit company deliver value to its shareholders, eventually it’s going to collapse.

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    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There was this one post for a call for mods about “doing a social good for the community”.

      Like bro, this is a video game subreddit. And you’re doing it for free, to help another dude get really rich.

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ideally, it would be because they care for the community they moderate, which I believe is the reason most mods do it.

      Then you have creatures like awkwardtheturtle, who knows what motivates them.

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      • dditty@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I would assume Awkward is motivated by narcissism and/or because they’re a power-hungry freakazoid, but who knows? 🤷

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      • fluxc0@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        it’s power. power motivates and corrupts.

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  • goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Reddit worked with mods ahead of announcing this change, Nestler tells me in an interview. The same day Nestler and I talked, for example, she said that she had spoken about the changes with Reddit’s mod council, which has about 160 moderators.

    Didn’t they boot out everyone that wasn’t a suck up?

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    • Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      160 mods representing all subreddits? Yeah that’s entirely power mods who would tow the line

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  • IvanOverdrive@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The best protest is to stop moderating. Lie flat. Let the subreddit go to shit.

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    • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      People tried that.

      reddit corporate will remove those mods and ask which other mods want to be super duper awesome and be able to say they moderate another N thousand users per day for zero pay. And people leap at that.

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      • bishbosh@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Scabbing for reddit mod clout is utterly wild.

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      • mp3@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        At least you’re not the sucker doing it for free for the shareholders anymore.

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    • realitista@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s what I did with all mine.

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    • socsa@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The problem is that this opens the door to far right bootlickers who a salivating at the idea of turning reddit into an even farther right shithole.

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      • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        lol no if anything they’ve become far left shitholes.

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    • ntma@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Reddit mods are such cucks for power that they cave when it’s threatened to be removed

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    • lorty@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Many subs did that, so reddit substituted the mods for others that do as they are told.

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      • vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The dndmemes protests were a pretty incredible thing while they lasted. The mods changed the subreddit to “nsfw” because that disabled most of the monetization. Then Reddit admins told them the subreddit obviously wasn’t really nsfw and to change it to accurately reflect the subreddit content.

        …so the mods changed the subreddit rules to allow actual nsfw content and people went nuts. In multiple senses of the term.

        Of course “accurately reflecting the subreddit” wasn’t what Reddit really cared about. They wanted to preserve the advertising stream for a popular subreddit, and this did the opposite of that. Reddit admins soon after basically said “remove nsfw content, restore the subreddit to what it used to be, do what we say or we’ll replace you with a mod team of our own choosing”.

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    • johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      A lot of subreddits have done that. The problem is nobody notices…

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    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Reddit would close the sub for being unmoderated until someone asks to be the new mod

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      • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        mission accomplished? That has the same effect as making it private, doesn’t it?

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    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s when I knew we lost. When power hungry moderators felt threatened and, instead of standing in solidarity with its users, caved to corporate demands.

      “But we’ll be able to still protest. Every Tuesday.”

      Hell are those protests still going on? I highly doubt it.

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      • creamy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Moment that “protest” started I knew it would last like a month tops.

        Most people don’t even care about third party apps.

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  • BMTea@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Reddit is one of the most infiltrated and astroturfed site. I have absolutely no confidence that the leadership are interested in addressing that. When there were suspicions it was anti-US actors, they had to take action because the government would get involved. But we all know that such pressure doesn’t exist for other astroturfing actors, state and private.

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    • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The Lebanon subreddit might as well be a zionist propaganda reddit.

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  • GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But the protests made it clear that letting moderators make their communities private at their discretion “could be used to harm Reddit at scale” and that work on this feature was “accelerated” because of the protests.

    Because Reddit admins deserved that harm. We’ve handed them all this free data and resource and they decided it was theirs.

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    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      “Those who make community protest impossible will make hacks inevitable."

      ― John F. Kennedy, pretty much

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  • GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    …I’m gonna go ahead and say it.

    I like it better here.

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    • MintyFresh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The lack of commercialization being shoved down and up your orifices is really nice.

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    • Kalysta@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This place feels like old reddit. When we could have actual discussions and not just be downvoted by bots. It’s so much better here

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      • GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        And you can still tailor it to yourself. Instances have different mindsets to different topics and things they allow or don’t and there’s tons of people to agree with or disagree with but everyone is cordial.

        I just don’t have a reason to go back

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  • MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oh No, anyway.

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  • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Fuck spez

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  • peereboominc@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What is reddit? Never heard of it.

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  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Bots and locked down curated content vs. hive-minded rhetoric that circumvents anything resembling nuance at all.

    Gotta admit, there aren’t many good choices here.

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  • kinkles@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I soft quit Reddit last year and deleted all my profile’s comments and posts. I only kept it around because I had heard Reddit was restoring deleted posts and I wanted to make sure mine were gone for good. After several months I stopped checking.

    This article made me finally pull the trigger and go in to delete my account. Surprise surprise, two pages of old comments had been restored.

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  • SatyrSack@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    More than a year after the protests, Reddit is essentially back to normal.

    [citation needed]

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They’re about to make another wildly unpopular move. Get your popcorn ready.

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  • FruitLips@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Fuck Spez, & long live Lemmy.

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  • alphapuggle@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    “While we are making this change to ensure users’ expectations regarding a community’s access do not suddenly change, protest is allowed on Reddit,” writes Nestler. “We want to hear from you when you think Reddit is making decisions that are not in your communities’ best interests. But if a protest crosses the line into harming redditors and Reddit, we’ll step in.”

    Yall have very clearly demonstrated that you do not care about the communities best interest, and you have no interest in hearing what we think. Fuck Spez and good riddance to reddit

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  • djsoren19@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’ll bet $50 this is because they plan on pulling the plug on old reddit soon, and don’t want to allow the inevitable protests.

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