Reddit: open /r/pics or else. Mods: OK but you didn't say how
Reddit: open /r/pics or else. Mods: OK but you didn't say how
Hello, /r/Pics subscribers! Boy, what a whacky time we've all had lately, huh? Reddit decided to kill off third-party applications, a protest got...
I honestly don't know if this is allowed here but I thought this is malicious compliance at its finest.
If you don't want to drive traffic there I'll repost what the mods posted below:
POLL: Decide on the future of /r/Pics!
Hello, /r/Pics subscribers!
Boy, what a whacky time we've all had lately, huh? Reddit decided to kill off third-party applications, a protest got planned (and possibly exploited by bad actors), the site showed up in the news, various communities started opening back up, others decided to stay inaccessible, and then the CEO of Reddit implied that a bunch of moderators would be removed from their positions!
Crazy, right?
Anyway, we – the so-called "landed gentry" – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the "royal court," and they've told us that we need to run the subreddit in the way that its members want. To that end, we figured that the only reasonable thing to do was directly ask how you'd like things to progress from here.
Which of the following should we do?
-
Return to normal operations
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Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy To be clear, if people choose the second option, screen-grabs from videos will be allowed (provided that there aren't any visible logos, inserted graphics, or other digital elements present). You could – if you wanted to – look through episodes of Last Week Tonight on YouTube, find moments featuring John Oliver at his sexiest, then post images of those moments here.
It's entirely up to you! Whatever the /r/Pics community decides is best, we'll respect!
Vote, friends! Vote now!
(You can vote by upvoting either of the comments in the thread below.)
Voting has now closed.
Our final tally is as follows:
Return to normal operations: -2,329 votes
Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy: 37,331 votes
It would seem that the community has spoken!
Henceforth, /r/Pics will only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy.
(Said images must adhere to all of the community's other rules, including those mandated by Reddit.)
Happy posting!
Definitely allowed. For now, anything that fits in the spirit of malicious compliance is fair game, it doesn't have to be text only too.
Is this real?! What episode is it from!
yes, it's real. it's from the episode on coal from june 2017: https://youtu.be/aw6RsUhw1Q8?t=1443
He will probably get wind of this and cover it on his show 🤣
Only if it shows John Oliver looking sexy while marrying a cabbage :-)
My cabbages!
And then people will go check it out.
Ironic engagement is still engagement.
I personally think the best "maliciouscompliance" act mods can do in the long term is to switch up all the subs.
So technology will be used for gardening, gardening will be used for android, android will be used for coffee, coffee used for pcgaming, etc. It'll make everything really confusing for new users and help slow their growth.
Update on the vote results, for people who don't want to go there:
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Pro John Oliver: 61.7k
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Return to normal: -13.7k.
The redditors have spoken. Also r/gifs do this as well.
I like the malicious compliance but I find that to be a bad way to do a poll. Better would have been one comment with the text "Upvote if you want John Oliver pics, downvote if you want it to go back to normal".
The way they did it if one group only upvote their alternative and the other also downvotes the opponent then the result isn't representative. Or at least could be claimed not to be.
Let's assume that everyone who upvoted their option also downvoted the alternative.
The group A, has |A| number of individuals. Group B has |B| number.
Option A: |A| - |B| Option B: |B| - |A| Option A = |A| - |B| = -(-(|A| - |B|)) = -(|B| - |A|) = -Option BThe results would be opposites of each other and would highlight the opinion of the majority anyway.
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Spez really should have read r/maliciouscompliance a bit before he bit off more than he could chew
Spez has the brain of a goldfish.
That's a classic reddit moment. There's such a good community on that website, it's tragic that reddit wants to use that against itself.
These kind of protest won't reduce the traffic on the platform though. They might even gain traction and increase it. If it's not linked to reduced ad revenue, I'm afraid it's counter-productive.
I think it will reduce traffic at some point, when the lurkers are getting tired of John Oliver pics
who the fuck could ever get tired of that? idiots and losers that's who.
the odds are stacked against the mods and the users, but any little bit of resistance is useful.
Yeah they should've gone with something even more specific - like pictures of Joe Biden eating ham sandwiches. Something with limited content options so that the sub is essentially forced to become inactive.
I think their way was better. It lets the giant number of subscribers have fun and engage, while also screwing the Reddit execs. They'll eventually get bored and it will be the same result.
Individuals traffic is not what is valuable to the current Reddit management. Good AI training data is what is valuable and this is not good AI training data.
The ultimate Troll love for posters would be to include ALT-text descriptions of the photos which are completely irrelevant. This will (of course) inconvenience the blind community, but if they are only photos of sexy John Oliver, it wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience.
Only having pictures of John Oliver is definitely an improvement over normal r/pic.
I thought so too. Such a big default sub is pretty useless.
You didn't like "I haven't beaten my wife in 6 days!" With a picture of a thumbs up, no face or anything?
This is actually the reason I'm here on Lemmy now. I love John Oliver but with all the other dark subreddits it was a bit much, and already had been looking into it. Led to Lemmy by too much sexy John Oliver.
Stupid sexy Oliver!
Glorious :) I hope John Oliver picks this up in his show...
Plot twist: John Oliver is secretly a mod of r/pics.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he was. That's totally in character for him :)
the writers are still on strike. don't know where they are in the negotiation process.
Can't wait for that first episode after the strike though. It's going to be glorious, I just know it!
This may be the best highlight of spez incompetence 🍿 For everyone talking smack on the moderators, this is exactly what they should be doing. Malicious compliance. Make it hard for Reddit to know what is going on. Love to see it.
archive.ph link for those who don't want to give reddit traffic.
30,052,708 John Oliver Enthusiasts - Lolol
Btw I edited my post to link to your link instead
Thanks, didn't think of that!
Glad you posted this - its the epitome of malicious compliance! And a fantastic form of protest too. With Reddit admins threatening to demote mods unless they re-open subreddits, this move takes away that ammo. Additionally, after the initial boost in activity due to novelty, the sub will get stale quickly and users will think of migrating to other platforms like lemmy or kbin. I'm all for it!
Edit: This is what I'm talking about. Here is one of those Reddit refugees now!
https://lemmy.world/comment/273363
Welcome, @[email protected]!
Thanks! It still feels weird, I had my account for a long time and have a fair amount of karma, but the site has been going to shit for a while and enough is enough. This feels like the very early web or fidonet and I’m stoked to be here.
Has John Oliver already had an episode about spez's enshittifying of reddit? Because if not, I guess this is one way to make him at least mention it on Last Week Tonight. xD
Unfortunately, no new LWT episodes until the Writer's Strike is settled...
Looks like a few other subs have joined. r/gifs and r/art did the same poll
I've never been so happy to browse old.reddit /r/pics with an ad-blocker on.
Incredible move. But I doubt it'll last. Reddit is going to became 9gag and iFunny very soon. Rest in peace old reddit. It was fun while it lasted.
The point is to hit reddit where it hurts - ad revenue. There will be a slight spike in interests as people laugh, then the lack of original content will cause people to be bored. New subreddits will have to be created and built from the ground up. Moderating a subreddit with 40m subscribers is hard.
Spez needs to realize that going to war with the users is a dumb move.
He will not realize that, because he wants money and he'll get it. On the one hand, Reddit was fun. On the other hand, it's archaic for the reasons we're experiencing right now. Progress.
Spez is thick as fuck but reddit will likely IPO and be just fine, this was a battle that didn't need to be fought.
Spez is a bad leader and his goals lie contrary to reddit's mission statement.
I left last time, I think it was the Victoria thing, and I joined Voat and that quickly went to shit. Reddit will get what they want from this which is more mainstream use.
I visited 9gag last week for the firdt time in maybe 8 years...wow the boomer humour and aggressive bigotry rivals Facebook
Wow you ain't kidding! Its White nationalist this, and White nationalist that! They're going to replace us! /s
fucking lol!!!! big ol thumb to the eye of the High SlimeLord himself, /u/spez
spez can go suck a bag of musk dicks.
Musk is such a good flavour though... I used to buy a buck's worth of musk sticks for the train ride home... don't debase musk flavour for that sad ween
This is brilliant! I had just took a look at /r/pics without logging in and can see its just now filled with John Oliver pics
I haven't laughed this hard in so long. The malicious compliance is epic. John Oliver can't buy PR like this, and he has got to be one of the few people that can appreciate being the face of something like this.
/r/gifs currently is following suit! If you still have a reddit account go vote ASAP! (Also unsubscribe from all your "business as usual" subs as possible, immediately, if you can't delete your account immediately for whatever reason)
/r/showerthoughts is also doing something similar.
Voting is done, they're doing the same hahahaha
Oh this is absolutely hilarious.
Took a peek and it doesn't look like there's any recent posts on /r/gifs ? Like, sort by new and everything other that 5 reddit is killing itself posts is at least 19 days old. What's up with that?
Now this is the definition of malicious compliance!
This sure as hell is!
oh my god i love this. it would be a shame if all other subs followed suit...
Quite a few subs had polls today for how to run, one of them was r/showerthoughts voting on which days to be open and had a comment for each day for the next week for open and each day for the next week for closed and it was unanimous of (exactly equal numbers) all upvoted days closed and all downvoted days open.
Here for those who still have accounts to show their solidarity. That is not close!
/r/gifs is doing what /r/pics did.
that is really fkn funny
/r/apple could've only allowed discussions about fruit.
But instead they decided to return to normal operations - they're in the group of mods unreasonably afraid of losing their position as mods, which is honestly quite bizarre.
I understand building a community and wanting to keep at it (I moderated 3 large Brazilian subreddits) but at this point, you just want the title - because you've already lost control, trust, and quality.
you mean a subreddit made to bootlick a corporate entity is bootlicking a corporate entity? woah
Mods of anything to do with Apple should be in most support. Spez specifically came after the developer of the most popular iOS app.
I guess they don't care as long as they can still put that they moderate a popular Apple subreddit on their resume lol
they’re in the group of mods unreasonably afraid of losing their position as mods, which is honestly quite bizarre
Not thaat bizarre. People like being in positions of power.
Omg I really hope some of those pictures make it over here.
You have the power to create the first lemmy community for this purpose.
Get thee behind me Satan. It's 3 am, I have insomnia and I might just be sleep deprived enough to do it. 😂
maybe we need a johnoliverpics community...
I love this kind of justified pettiness. I am pretty petty myself, and its something that I guess is a supposed bad quality, but it can be so much fun.
Brilliant!
Whoever thought of this deserves a prize
This is the spirit. Might as well have fun protesting if you're not giving up just yet.
Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.
Reddit has NEVER been profitable. It's the classic:
- Takes a bunch of venture capital funding
- Builds a huge user base
- Get bought
- Parent company tries to figure out a way to make money off of you.
- When they can't, they try to spin you off and IPO you.
- You have your "oh shit" moment and realize you actually have to be profitable now.
This is the crap that caused the dot-com bubble in the late 90s.
Their current business model is unsustainable.
They're doing the API war out of sheer survival.
The sad part is, we all went along for the ride, using the service and filling it with useful information, never wondering if it was still going to be there a decade or two later.
Reddit wants to IPO. Having gone through the IPO process twice now with a company, I can tell you, the only thing that matters is money in the bank. The more money you have in the bank, the more you can charge for your IPO. When I worked at CompUSA back in the 90s, we didn't pay any of our creditors for something like 6 months before the IPO to swell the bank accounts. I remember the week before the IPO, we had almost nothing in the store, because we owed everyone money. 30 days after IPO, trucks came rolling in again with product.
You can't delete r/pics, they would just restore it.
This unfortunately is the truth, at the end of the day they will just find new moderators who wont be acting for the users or at least the majority. I'm a mod and although I want this to work and it may still have some impact realistically mods are powerless. Only users talking with their feet can really make a long term difference and there isn't a like for like replacement yet..
Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.
Hard disagree with your first sentence. As @[email protected] explained, Reddit would just force re-open it.
And as explained in my comment, this is causing Reddit users to switch over to Lemmy due to the protesting subs getting stale: https://lemmy.world/comment/289241>
Wow, I totally forgot about CompUSA. I used to love going there as a kid, back when Apple had that underdog appeal. Now I'm a FOSS maxi (just don't look at my iPhone...).
CompUSA was a shitty place to work.
They're doing the API war out of sheer survival.
That would be true if they made i fees reasonable or at least gave more time. This change caused mobile apps to shut down. The revenue from that is $0.
Amazing work as always! Though I did have to check it out kind of defeating the purpose of the protest. I think the best way to achieve what they want is to just do a really shitty job in moderating. Let the entire site be over-run with scams / crypto bros / nazis.
It already is, /r/all used to be current and now it's just a constant stream of spam posts.
You should be able to block a webpage and all users that share it. Relay For Reddit has a feature where you can select "other conversations" and see all the posts of a specific link. If I could then block everyone who posted a shitty "Elon runs an ETH competition" post... There'd still be a millions others.
Nazis everywhere, Spez left #the_donald alone to grow in scope. Fuck Spez
Ahh brilliant.
This is the way, we did it... - u/spez
/r/pics is now too sexy to browse.
needs to be marked as NSFW.
Malicious compliance from both the mods and the users! I dust off my account to upvote it.
Genius! I wish every other sub did this.
some others are - check out /r/gifs and /r/showerthoughts
Hahaha I hope this catches on, it's funny as hell
Oh lol cool!
I love democracy
Spezmusk would classify this as an act of the landed gentry!
The people has spoken. I love democracy
I am now desperately sad that the Writer's Guild strike is still on, because I'd love to see John Oliver's response to this. Particularly the bit where they added in something like, "This means that almost every image of John Oliver is permitted, because John Oliver is always sexy".
didn't spez want democracy? He said he was going to allow people to vote out mods lol. You want democracy, you get it!
Awesome!
Sexy pics of John Oliver is better than 90% of the stuff posted there anyways. Glad to see them sticking it to Reddit, though.
I hope all the subs have a variation on this.
Why a variation? What's wrong with sexy John Oliver?
Nothing. Are you saying there is something wrong with badass John Oliver? Or with evil John Oliver? Stop typecasting him. He is more than just his sexy looks!
Hope in one bucket and shit in the other.
Let me know which one fills up first.
That being said: fuck /u/spez
Absolutely crushing the direction they chose.
“John Oliver Supports the Reddit Protests’ Use of his Image” - https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/reddit-protests-john-oliver-pics.html
r/InternetIsBeautiful
Aahahaha this is hilarious
also the case on r/piracy
Fantastic! Really good idea from the mod team.
Dammit, I do NOT need any more temptations to go back to Reddit!! DAMN YOU SEXY JOHN OLIVER!!
John Oliver, the savior of reddit?
Just waiting for the inevitable AI generated NSFW John Oliver influx.
Just did my part and posted a sexy John Oliver image
I can’t see what they did, my browser says it can’t establish connection to the server. Sounds like reddit admins took whatever it was down?
hahaha that's brilliant
As a fan of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, I love this idea.
I do wanna hear what John Oliver has to say about this.
God dammit I guess I'll make an exception for /r/pics.
Well, the people have spoken 😂
The mods are just doing what people want, innit? This is perfect!
Is Reddit having issues again right now? I can’t load the site properly in the last 5 mins
This is just hilariously amazing
Love this from the mods.
Haha, love it.
I don't think this is a good idea. The point of the blackout is to hit Reddit where it hurts, by driving traffic down. This prank (partially) reverses the work of the blackout, by getting people back to the pics subreddit to post and see (John Oliver) pics. It turns the blackout into a joke. And I think is a step towards the community just moving on from the blackout without it actually having the long term effects that were intended.
I'm all for malicious compliance, but I think this is the wrong flavor of it.
Nah I disagree. Turning things less serious is not necessarily a bad thing. People will visit to check it out but long term it will get stale and die off.
When it gets stale then they'll have to decide whether to move on from the protest and go back to normal or continue in some other fashion. I think once the current "news cycle" is over they'll just go back to normal, but perhaps with 3PA shutting down in a couple weeks, they'll get a boost in spirit and keep it going.
I disagree, while driving traffic down is one way, filling the website with garbage is another way! Who wants to use a site full of nothing but sexy john oliver?
..wait. Bad example.
Well, it'll put Reddit in an odd place. Spez in particular has cited the Moderator Code as a justification to remove mods and instate his own.
THAT would be worse, since then instead of any blackout at all it's business as usual (while being slowly crippled from bad moderation and decaying user behaviours).
The John Oliver thing is an alternative to THAT. They are technically doing what the users want, which was Reddit's whole ammunition against them. Closing a sub of millions of people could be said as harming the site significantly enough that reddit steps in. Opening it and maliciously complying with the rules IS what the users want, so Spez will be hard pressed the wrest control of the sub while simultaneously saying he supports the protests in line with the Code.
THAT would be worse, since then instead of any blackout at all it’s business as usual (while being slowly crippled from bad moderation and decaying user behaviours).
I view that as the next step in this protest: proving to Reddit that the previous relationship Reddit had with its organically grown volunteer moderation system is (was) quintessential to what made Reddit good. If instead Reddit thrives in a context where those moderators are simply replaced with Reddit stooges, then I guess we'd be proven wrong, about whether this protest mattered at all. Either way, the outcome will act as a transparent display of what Reddit's true value is, which I think is a useful thing for everyone to know.
Yes but all the blackout really achieved was replacing the normal top content with content from subs that didn't blackout.
A blackout prevents action. It prevents the usefulness.
A satiric malicious compliance focus does not categorically prevent activity, but does prevent general activity. It prevents the usefulness and value of the subreddit too.
When you are at risk of losing the blackout by losing control of the subreddit. it's the only thing you can do. It's the next best and next most effective thing.
Fair and honest poll. Good on them.
Absolutely glorious! 😂😂
I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. Absolutely brilliant.
Truly brilliant. I give tons of credit.
Wonder who came up with the idea.
This is amazing!
Lol very nicely done!
so juicy, hats off to them.
I gotta go back to Reddit now. Haven’t been on /r/pics for years.
This is glorious 🤣
Lol.. XD
This is AWFUL— now I want to go to Reddit 🥲
r/debatereligion requires all posts to be in Latin, same spirit.
lol that is such a good idea. Good job to them
You have confirmed my words. Moderators consider themselves "nobility" who have the right to make decisions for the rest of the cattle. That was the point of the "protest.
The "cattle" were asked if they wanted to resume business as usual. They overwhelmingly voted no.
I have no idea how you can come to this conclusion. It stands directly opposite to the text.
They made a vote. And acted upon it. How is that "making decisions for others"?