explodingkitchen

Don't know how others are seeing the image with your post, but for me, the thumbnail is squinched up horizontally, making the little Reddit dude look like a naked dementor standing on a burning hellscape. Or maybe I'm just projecting a little...

This is nothing. July's going to be insane.

Anyone who feels their Reddit experience is being ruined can create new subs to host the content they want to see, and I encourage them to do so. I guarantee it will be an educational experience, especially for anyone who's never been a mod.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them do, right around July 1. It's good to see some of them are already setting up new communities in the Fediverse. Hope that catches on.

I'm thinking Reddit's handling of this is going to be a case study for executive MBA programs in the future, as in, "What not to do."

I... don't really care? This isn't Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Saying that spez has been sacked ain't gonna fix things.

Here's the URL of the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14cr2is/alternative_forms_of_protest_in_light_of_admin/

and here's the text of the message:

Greetings all,

We've started the protest this Monday, in solidarity with numerous people who need access to the API, including bot developers, people with accessibility needs (r/blind) and 3rd party app users (Apollo, Sync, and many more). r/humor in particular has made a great post regarding protesting in support of the blind people.

Despite numerous past policies and statements, in support of the mods' right to protest, we have witnessed many attempts this weeks to force subreddits to open (examples: 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

In light of this, we recommend to all those supporting this cause that you take the following steps:

review other softer forms of protest (some of them mentioned here);

take appropriate measures to consult with your community;

decide on a course of action, that complies with the ever more draconian admin policies, but still helps send the message that reddit needs to do better on the list of our community demands.

Here is a short list of actions that many subs are already engaging in:

private days (example - Touch Grass Tuesdays, or on the weekends);

restricting the topic of the forum (example: restricting to just pictures or gifs of one personality );

narrowing the topic of your forum (see the example of r/Wellthatsucks;

widening the topic of your forum (see the example of r/interestingasfuck);

marking the subreddit temporarily NSFW or switching to allowing NSFW content. Changing this setting should not be taken lightly (it would be against the TOS); however, if content in your sub happens to also include "nudity, pornography, or profanity", please take appropriate steps to warn users, including temporarily marking your community as NSFW. This has the undesirable effect of reducing your community's reach and visibility but, per the Moderator Code of Conduct, it is our duty as moderators to ensure the safety of those viewing our content and provide appropriate warning to anyone who may incidentally view any mature content (see the example of r/Toyota)

linkedin campaign - commenting on the linkedin posts of reddit with info about this protest (demands, and how reddit admins punished protesting mods);

inform reddit advertisers of the current issues;

modifying image posts requirements (all image posts must include an album, and the first picture must be protest-related);

prepare moving the forum to another platform:

    https://kbin.social/

    https://join-lemmy.org/

    https://squabbles.io/

    https://tildes.net/;

promote reddit alternatives in the sidebar;

content as usual in an open sub, but the title includes protest language;

remove all sub rules and let the community curate content through up-/downvotes;

open sub and pin anti-staff message (list of unfulfilled promises, terrible decisions), and add to sidebar;

automod sticky on every thread promoting Reddit alternatives;

have automod make scheduled posts about the protest;

increase the age and karma posting requirements through automod;

turn off discovery settings, and popping up on r/all.

As usual:

do not allow or promote harassment of people or communities;

do not allow illegal content, or content that breaks TOS.

We have to work within the limits imposed by reddit, but there is still plenty of ways to get the message to reddit and mass media about the important issues of the protest, that will affect the quality of content on reddit, how people with disabilities can access the site and how mods can fulfill their duties.

It "makes sense" if you view Reddit by looking only at the total number of Reddit users and not considering differing levels of engagement. If you've got tens of millions of people subscribed to a sub, it's easy to let your ego take the wheel and say, "Fuck 'em! So what if we lose a million users? We've got plenty more!"

It doesn't make sense if you realize that the "users" most likely to be alienated by your actions are the moderators and regular contributors whose participation creates the community of that subreddit. You've got the mods, who handle the bombthrowers, and the regular contributors who shape the sub in their own way by being mostly on-topic and mostly helpful. They're often the ones who throw the ball back into the ring before the mods have to step in, and some of them are pretty entertaining, too.

IMO, Reddit is likely to lose a disproportionate share of mods and power users and spez doesn't get that. I think he believes all users are fungible, and they're not. He thinks he can tough this out and things will blow over. He's wrong. Reddit won't disappear, any more than Twitter has, but I sure as hell wouldn't buy stock when the IPO happens. If it happens.

Everything I've seen thus far is typical of the early days when a contingent of people leave a platform they were once invested in but have left because they were unhappy/dissatisfied...

there will be different perceptions of the abandoned platform, and the larger it was, the bigger the spectrum will be. Reddit was huge; where you hung out is going to shape your impressions of how good/bad it was.

there will be people eager to recreate the communities they enjoyed, and they'll be looking for something just like what they left

there will be people eager to try something totally different

there will be people hurt and angry by the event(s) that caused them to leave, and that will be expressed in different ways, and for different lengths of time. During the initial transition, the former site will be mentioned--a lot--and often with anger/bitterness. Over time, that dissipates, although there will be some people bitching about the old platform until the heat death of the universe. Basically, how you react to shitty things IRL will be echoed here, because guess what? This is another facet of RL.

"And the Lord God said, 'Let there be internet,' and there was pwnage. And it was good."

There's more than one kind of fan. Just sayin'

The die was cast when Reddit decided to put the 3rd party apps out of business. Doubling down on that is only accelerating the decline. We've now reached the point where even if Reddit did some serious backpedaling, it wouldn't get some of its content creators back.