A ton of moderators have been making changes to their subreddits’ rules (e.g., only allowing certain posts, going NSFW, loosening rules a ton) to protest without getting kicked out. Do you think this strategy of turning a subreddit into shitposts is effective or not?
I’m curious to see what the people in this community think, so please share your thoughts.
My opinion is that these forms of protest, while fun, don’t actually help. Most bring more attention and activity to the sub if anything, giving Reddit more ad revenue (which is really all they care about). And the few that are actually harmful (e.g., allowing NSFW content) are being shut down by Reddit.
It’s been made clear that Reddit doesn’t care about what its users want and is willing to reorder, remove, and shadowban moderators to protect profits, so I’d like to see more people moving away from the platform. Even if the alternatives still need development and are missing important features, mods should start making plans to establish communities outside of Reddit.
I don’t think subreddits have really much of a choice. If they just close completely, they’ll get forced open and the mods replaced and presumably it’s going to be business as usual for the most part. With the rule changes, they put reddit in a very uncomfortable position.
It’s a bit less clear what individual users should be doing though.
While I understand that many moderators want to continue the protest, I just don’t think this strategy works. It gets news attention, yes, but as I’ve mentioned, I imagine it generates plenty of ad revenue for Reddit through the increased activity from everyone wanting to check it out. I don’t think Reddit minds all that much—it’s not like they mind the press from removing moderators.
Instead, I’d rather see moderators use their position to urge people off Reddit and advertise alternatives like kbin, lemmy, & squabbles. Better yet, they could start making plans to make communities there (like how r/blind has established its own lemmy instance).
The individual users should just be leaving, like (presumably most of) the people in this magazine have done. Moderators don’t need to shut down subreddits for people to stop support inconsiderate companies.
I’m kind of skeptical about that. Lots of people check reddit frequently because they expect interesting content. How many times a day are you going to check a subreddit filled with just pictures of John Oliver, and how long are you going to keep coming back? I don’t think the average person is really going to be that motivated to use a subreddit like that normally.
Even if some people might come to check it out right at the beginning it’s going to get stale really fast.