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!

tallwookie,
@tallwookie@lemmy.world avatar

fucking lol!!!! big ol thumb to the eye of the High SlimeLord himself, /u/spez

CynAq,
@CynAq@kbin.social avatar

spez can go suck a bag of musk dicks.

screamin,

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

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.

geoffervescent,
@geoffervescent@kbin.social avatar

/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)

LenticularTorsion,

Voting is done, they're doing the same hahahaha

eee,

Oh this is absolutely hilarious.

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

/r/showerthoughts is also doing something similar.

theusualuser,

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?

7ime1ock,

It might be a problem on your end. I'm looking at sub and I see posts of John Oliver.

qat,

I see it too! This is the best form of protest ever.

Bero,
@Bero@kbin.social avatar

you probably were on /r/gif instead of /r/gifs

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>

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.

personalife,

Now this is the definition of malicious compliance!

LenticularTorsion,

This sure as hell is!

RomeCallen,

that is really fkn funny

kadu,
@kadu@lemmy.world avatar

/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.

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

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.

ergifruit,

you mean a subreddit made to bootlick a corporate entity is bootlicking a corporate entity? woah

JshKlsn,
@JshKlsn@lemmy.ml avatar

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

seeCseas,

oh my god i love this. it would be a shame if all other subs followed suit...

Alue42, (edited )

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.

ewe,
@ewe@lemmy.world avatar

https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/14b5i8h/poll_vote_for_rshowerthoughts_hours_of_operation/

Here for those who still have accounts to show their solidarity. That is not close!

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

/r/gifs is doing what /r/pics did.

lowleveldata,

This is the spirit. Might as well have fun protesting if you're not giving up just yet.

Aviandelight,
@Aviandelight@lemmy.world avatar

Omg I really hope some of those pictures make it over here.

kiwifoxtrot,
@kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world avatar

You have the power to create the first lemmy community for this purpose.

Aviandelight,
@Aviandelight@lemmy.world avatar

Get thee behind me Satan. It's 3 am, I have insomnia and I might just be sleep deprived enough to do it. 😂

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

maybe we need a johnoliverpics community...

tst123,
@tst123@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    LenticularTorsion,

    It's gold, Jerry, gold!!

    seeCseas,

    /c/unexpectedseinfeld

    grehund,

    Brilliant!

    hejsan,

    Whoever thought of this deserves a prize

    dystop,
    @dystop@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    Badger,
    @Badger@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    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.

    Squizzy,

    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 alone to grow in scope. Fuck Spez

    seeCseas,

    It already is, /r/all used to be current and now it’s just a constant stream of spam posts.

    and that's the whole point of this!

    eatham,
    @eatham@aussie.zone avatar

    I can't find r/all

    Squizzy,

    And this will become the same if it catches on, either it will die slowly or remain very niche or it will be victim to the same shit as reddit.

    Reddit was astroturfed and spammed and that doesn't seem like something the fediverse can fight any better.

    tom42,
    @tom42@lemmy.one avatar

    What a fantastic, creative and constructive reaction. Respect for the mods!

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