Reddit: open /r/pics or else. Mods: OK but you didn't say how

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?

  1. Return to normal operations
  2. 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!

Nerogar,

Looks like a few other subs have joined. r/gifs and r/art did the same poll

Senseibu,
@Senseibu@feddit.uk avatar

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

darkmugglet,

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.

Henrik,

Fantastic! Really good idea from the mod team.

harbo,

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?

redballooon,

I gotta go back to Reddit now. Haven’t been on /r/pics for years.

Shell,

Aahahaha this is hilarious

Rogue_General,
@Rogue_General@lemmy.world avatar

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, @exixx!

exixx,

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.

plazman30,

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:

  1. Takes a bunch of venture capital funding
  2. Builds a huge user base
  3. Get bought
  4. Parent company tries to figure out a way to make money off of you.
  5. When they can't, they try to spin you off and IPO you.
  6. 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.

Starmina,

You can't delete r/pics, they would just restore it.

n3rding,

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..

c2h6,

All these antics can help get people bored with the site though.

n3rding,

Really we don't want to force users off, we want users to want to leave because of how reddit treats it's free labour and content or for reddit to actually work with the subs it's demonizing

takeda,

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.

plazman30,

This change sucks. But, from what I read, Reddit have NEVER been profitable. If they were smart, they would modified the API so it included ads. I don’t think Reddit is long for this world. Even if these protests were effective, reddit is eventually going away. They’re too big to make a profit now.

takeda,

When you say “NEVER been profitable” is there a reliable source for that or is it spez?

Hosting a link agregator is cheap, it is purely just text. Yes they now host images and videos, and I think they shouldn’t do that if the cost is a problem, also they could always discontinue it.

Going back to the API. If they really need cash they could work with developers. They could reduce the fees and give 3 months heads up like they have been asked.

The whole spectacle didn’t sound “we need money to survive”, it sounded like “we could make more money from users by forcing them to switch to our crappy app, by shutting down 3rd party apps”

plazman30,

seekingalpha.com/…/4477033-reddit-unprofitable-de…

Nevertheless, like many IPOs, Reddit remains unprofitable. The question for investors is whether Reddit can achieve minimum viable economies of scale and achieve profitability. So far, there are no indications that this will happen.

There are few other sources that say reddit is unprofitale.

takeda,

What I’m saying is that their core service doesn’t cost much to run. They could have small team to run everything and would make a lot of money, but their goal is to make it a billion dollar business, when it is not.

BTW: I also find the article funny, on one bad it says they are seeking $15 billion valuation, then it says it doesn’t generate money. So that creates a question, how come a company that doesn’t generate a profit costs $15 billion?

plazman30,

That happens all the time with publicly traded companies. This is the reason why we had the dotcom bubble burst in the last 1990s.

heliumlake,
@heliumlake@lemmy.world avatar

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...).

plazman30,

CompUSA was a shitty place to work.

Rogue_General,
@Rogue_General@lemmy.world avatar

Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.

Hard disagree with your first sentence. As @Starmina 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>

Remontoire,
@Remontoire@lemmy.world avatar

Ahh brilliant.

puck2,

Awesome!

raltoid,

Update on the vote results, for people who don't want to go there:

  • Pro John Oliver: 61.7k
  • Return to normal: -13.7k.
NotYourSocialWorker,

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.

lich_hegemon,

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 B

The results would be opposites of each other and would highlight the opinion of the majority anyway.

cloudwalk,

r/theydidthema-- oh.

Right.

ramennoodle, (edited )

you can't both upvote and downvote the same item. the last option you selected is the only one that's counted at any given moment.

edit: wait, i see. if they're separate comments, you could just upvote the comment you like and downvote the comment you don't. i was assuming one comment that said upvote or downvote.

solarvector,

It would exacerbate the swing but wouldn't change the result

And I don't think maliciously compliant mod is interested in statistical representation.

NotYourSocialWorker,

I agree with you, it would legitimate the results though. Not that I believe that Reddit cares about that either.

Tsunami45chan,
@Tsunami45chan@lemmy.world avatar

The redditors have spoken. Also r/gifs do this as well.

raspberriesareyummy,

Glorious :) I hope John Oliver picks this up in his show...

aceshigh,
@aceshigh@lemmy.world avatar

the writers are still on strike. don't know where they are in the negotiation process.

Perhyte,

Can't wait for that first episode after the strike though. It's going to be glorious, I just know it!

Perhyte,

Can't wait for that first episode after the strike though. It's going to be glorious, I just know it!

tburkhol,

Plot twist: John Oliver is secretly a mod of r/pics.

raspberriesareyummy,

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he was. That's totally in character for him :)

wotsit_sandwich,

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.

LillianVS,
@LillianVS@lemmy.world avatar

This is the way, we did it... - u/spez

thedarkfly,

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.

raoulvolfoni,
@raoulvolfoni@kbin.social avatar

Look at the alternatives. It's either this kind of protest, or returning to normal operations or losing their sub.

Freesoftwareenjoyer,

Another alternative: redirect people here

c2h6,

Yeah they should have tried to get people out.

VoterFrog,

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.

AFKBRBChocolate,

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.

seeCseas,

the odds are stacked against the mods and the users, but any little bit of resistance is useful.

DrGunjah,

I think it will reduce traffic at some point, when the lurkers are getting tired of John Oliver pics

metaStatic,

who the fuck could ever get tired of that? idiots and losers that's who.

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