The subreddit r/steam, about the digital game storefront, received as many other subreddits a notice to open the community again, or else the mods would be replaced by those who abide.

The mods followed suit posting the following automod message under every new post:

As ya’ll likely know, we’ve been dark to support the blackout against reddit’s antagonistic behavior towards its own userbase. The admins sent us a message today saying we must open or get removed, so here we are.

For those of you browsing this subreddit on non-official apps (Reddit is Fun, Apollo, Sync, Boost, etc), they will break on July 1st due to reddit’s new policies. We’re opening back up but will leave permanent stickies in the subreddit and threads to keep folks in the know.

Our Discord [contains link to https://discord.gg/steam] server is active, don’t forget to check it out.

Good luck and god speed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

On visit, you quickly notice there is a community wide effort to focus on the literal topic of the given name and post about vapors, steam trains, and kitchen appliances. While posts about the gaming platform get downvoted.

  • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2051·
    2 years ago

    This blackout has really shown which subs have actual in-touch moderators, and which ones are just the admins’ puppy dogs

    A while ago, I had a comment auto-removed on WPT and got a message it was because my account was “not in good standing.” When I messaged the WPT mods, they explained that they were test piloting a new tool the admins plan to use. For example, if you have a throwaway email address, no email address, or are connecting via VPN, you may be “not in good standing.”

    With things like that on the horizon, even if they roll back on what they’re doing now, we’re still not likely to have a very good time on that site.

    I can’t blame the mods who are trying to make change through protest (and who may not even be aware of the “not in good standing” BS), but I don’t plan to stick around, and I don’t foresee a very bright future for reddit at all.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        8 months ago

        That explains why I got banned a while back and was told I violeted the TOS, but the crime they listed (Abusing the report button) was neither in the TOS nor something I actually did.

    • Cynosure@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      2 years ago

      Honesty I think the big political subs are incredibly bot infested. Political content is an amazing way to make people mad and get them to spend more time on a platform, increasing engagement and letting reddit deliver more ads. It’s not like it would be the first time they used bots to drive engagement and make communities look bigger.

      • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.oneEnglish
        32·
        2 years ago

        The whole site is bot infested! Especially the large subs, but I’ve personally had scambots pop into my posts even on smaller subreddits.

        People who say they won’t leave reddit because “there’s no good alternative” really have their head in the sand about how bad it really is. Nearly every alternative I’ve seen suggested is at least better than reddit (except for the really far-right ones like voat).

        • enragedchowder@lemmy.caEnglish
          17·
          2 years ago

          Pretty much any big sub is totally unusable. The only reason to be on Reddit is for the niche hobby subs

            • Reoru@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              2 years ago

              I absolutely resonate with both your comments, it’s the best function reddit served imo. The big mainstream subs were just content factories to create posts to doomscroll through.

        • Cynosure@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          2 years ago

          The bot problem is probably domestic. Reddit has much more to gain from artificially driving engagement than any “foreign adversary”.

      • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
        251·
        2 years ago

        Don’t forget that for many years reddit was the home of the most inciteful Donald Trump propaganda platform with r/t_d.

        • goatEnglish
          213·
          2 years ago

          and dont forget reddit is also the home of the most inciteful Chinese propaganda platform with /r/sino

    • zalack@kbin.social
      14·
      2 years ago

      To try and be charitable to the WPT mods: that sub is a magnet for bots and bad actors. All those measures sound like a shotgun approach to combating spam to me.

      I really don’t envy having to moderate a large politically oriented sub like that. I imagine it burns you out fast to being open and fair-minded in how you approach moderation due to the sheer avalanche of bullshit you’re confronted with cleaning up.

      • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
        18·
        2 years ago

        I do understand that point of view, but the fact that they’re piloting a really invasive tool on behalf of the admins and subsequently refused to go black – these make me feel far less charitable

      • Nepenthe@kbin.social
        7·
        2 years ago

        Combating bots by banning anyone without an email is understandable and seems doable for the near future, but like it would mostly be a hiccup for the people churning them out.

        Google ignores any periods in an email address, so if you want to sign up with the same email all you have to do is fill it with differently-placed periods. What are they gonna do? Ban everyone who shares your name from having a reddit? Ban Gmail? If they did, there’s still the plus trick that isn’t specific to gmail

        • TechnoBabble@lemmy.world
          7·
          2 years ago

          The plus and period thing isn’t difficult to filter out in their email check.

          But I do agree that requiring emails is a non-issue for spammers.

          I mean, look at any other platform that requires email, and they’re all covered in spam.

    • QuestioningEspecialy@kbin.social
      12·
      2 years ago

      A while ago, I had a comment auto-removed on WPT and got a message it was because my account was “not in good standing.” When I messaged the WPT mods, they explained that they were test piloting a new tool the admins plan to use.

      I’mma need some sauce for dat pasta. That’s too wild to not post screenshots.

    • quortez@kbin.social
      153·
      2 years ago

      I can’t imagine a website so anti-CCP it utterly internalized the social credit meme (despite it being somewhat more nuanced in reality, I still don’t approve of it, just learned it gets exaggerated in the west) would take well to an invisible ‘reputation system’ that demands data collection and punishes privacy actions.

      The vibes continue to deteriorate.

  • Hypersapien@lemmy.worldEnglish
    119·
    2 years ago

    Reddit is trying to go to war with the kind of people responsible for Boaty McBoatface and they think they’re going to win.

    • Fihn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      494·
      2 years ago

      Reddit execs don’t care when people post like this. They aren’t browsing the sub, all they see is user engagement is back up and that’s a win. They can sell that to advertisers as a win. If you showed them the page they’d think it’s weird but they probably wouldn’t know it have ever been any different.

      The only win to be had with the sub re-opening is to post nothing at all.

      • nexguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        28·
        2 years ago

        Hardly anyone is going to spend hours browsing pictures of steam and engaging with it vs actual content so this certainly is not great for reddit.

        • underisk@lemmy.mlEnglish
          91·
          2 years ago

          Yeah but that’s not what they’re doing. They’re doing a contrarian circlejerk that’ll get boring after a few days or until the next thing happens with the steam platform that they all want to talk about. There’s already a highly upvoted post there about the UI update.

  • DarthRedLeader@lemmy.worldEnglish
    642·
    2 years ago

    I think these malicious compliance subreddit responses are as fun as the next person, but honest question: doesn’t this work out in Reddit’s favor? They don’t care what’s posted as long as content is being generated and traffic being driven to their site, right?

    • Aurix@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      80·
      2 years ago

      There is the nuance to it. The subscribers did not sign up for this initially. Therefore they will have to build a new community up which certainly won’t have as many subscribers for a very long time and none of the post history.

      At the same time posts actually asking about the Steam platform get downvoted heavily and thus dissuade further interaction.

      Effectively the sub becomes useless, just the same as if it had stayed closed. It will drop in engagement in the long term.

      The John Oliver memes attract more mainstream attention and clearly signal to investors the platform is not healthy, irrespective of the traffic it causes.

      With more and more subreddits joining in on this, the All page gets flooded with shitposts annoying everyone. Those who stay certainly won’t want to deal with this all the time and unsubscribe.

      Of course group dynamics are unpredictable at times, but reddit is certainly more in turmoil than whatever traffic.

      • Chailles@lemmy.worldEnglish
        39·
        2 years ago

        Not to mention that the argument that moderators are acting in bad faith against what the users want isn’t really holding up if a rather decent chunk of active users are in favor of doing this.

        • Ramen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          17·
          2 years ago

          r/pics held a poll and their users CHOSE the john oliver memes. other subs are doing something similar, giving ‘go back to normal’ as an option because otherwise the admins might just remove them anyway for not giving users a real choice.

          • Ramen@lemmy.worldEnglish
            153·
            2 years ago

            i truly thought going to a different site would at least mean no more ‘this!’ comments :(

      • DarthRedLeader@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        2 years ago

        Thanks, I was missing that point of view but I see what you mean.

        I guess the way I see it is that, right now, people are enthusiastically joining in, which is still driving a sense of community. I guess I’m not as convinced that, long term, people will be driven to make new communities. I feel like the more likely scenario is that people will grow bored and go back to their normal, everyday posting.

        Edit: I do agree the invester point is definitely one I didn’t consider and is definitely a huge factor to all of this. Of course, it goes without saying that it at least signals the turmoil at Reddit and brings more attention to it. Not all press is good press in this case.

        Whatever happens, I fully intend to sit back and enjoy watching the drama unfold.

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          10·
          2 years ago

          I feel like the more likely scenario is that people will grow bored and go back to their normal, everyday posting.

          I think it’s more likely people will get bored and just stop going to reddit. Right now the ones taking part in the protest are the creators and hard core users, while the casual users either aren’t taking part or are just not using reddit right now.

          Longer term this will destroy reddit on google searches ruining one of the major drivers of traffic.

          In the short term it’s a question of if the casual users get tired first and stop going to reddit, or the hard core users get bored of trolling spez. If the former happens first then reddits non-troll traffic dies off and when the hard core users get bored and leave and then there will be almost nobody left.

          Ultimately in order for the protesters to win they don’t need to permanently destroy reddit, just to effectively shut it down for the next 6 months or so as literally this entire thing, both the changes reddit instituted and the backlash, is about the IPO. Spez was looking to pump the value quickly so he could cash out and so he went with some incredibly aggressive and anti-user policies that he hoped would generate a massive revenue spike and look good to investors. Instead the users are giving spez a boot to the teeth and reminding him that he has nothing without them.

    • Furbag@lemmy.worldEnglish
      412·
      2 years ago

      Not really. The traffic they’re getting from it is unsustainable and any would-be investor who is paying attention will notice this. This is really more a tactic to shatter the narrative that the mods do not represent the will of the general user and they are forcing the protests onto them.

      • DarthRedLeader@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        I don’t know why I keep forgetting about the upcoming IPO, but the point about investors is definitely a good one. I do agree that whatever happens, this is a huge signal that Reddit admins have fallen out of favor with their userbase, which is certainly not tenable for functional company.

        Honestly, I’d be shocked if Huffman is still CEO in 6 months.

      • pizzaboi@lemm.eeEnglish
        71·
        2 years ago

        Would they? I’d assume they’re getting most of their info from spaz, who will just point to the dip and then “see, number go up.”

        • scutiger@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          IPO’s are risky for the investor. If the company is overvalued before the IPO, a huge chunk of money invested disappears almost immediately as the stock drops. So the big investors will be doing their research before putting their money in.

    • andobando@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 years ago

      It depends on what happens next. Short term there definitely isn’t any harm. Longer term if the content stays as is it gets stale and dies. On the other hand if the people keep finding creative ways of posting content in this “new” format it seems like it breathes life into the site*___*

  • DesTeufelsAvocado@feddit.deEnglish
    46·
    2 years ago

    It makes me sad to see what happens on Reddit, but actions like this keep my hopes up. Not for Reddit itself, but for the community and its people, wherever it will be. :)

    • UnicornKitty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 years ago

      It’s good to see people are still willing to fight any kind of bs in droves like this. I was worried that would fade when the stress of the pandemic did. But it hasn’t. We need people to fight to make the changes happen that we’ve known needed to happen years ago.

    • Protegee9850@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      2 years ago

      There will be scabs eager to volunteer their time as moderators - at least for now - solely for the perceived power.

    • Badass_panda@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      2 years ago

      The rationale is: profit. Ultimately reddit relies on users for content, and they’re hoping if the remove the organisers of the strike (the mods) and replace them with scabs, that the users will stop striking.

    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.oneEnglish
      8·
      2 years ago

      It seems more like they just want to give mods the illusion that they can make executive decisions about the subs they run so that they’ll work for free to Reddit’s benefit.

      • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        A few days ago, Reddit said that they “supported communities’ decision to go private” (or something like that). Now that communities actually did it, they’re backtracking.

    • Hypersapien@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      Subreddits being controlled by the mod and community is just reddit’s public face. Behind closed doors, the reddit admins see themselves as the masters.

    • Hypersapien@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      2 years ago

      Subreddits being controlled by the mods and community is just reddit’s public face. Behind closed doors, the reddit admins see themselves as the masters.

  • sin_free_for_00_days@lemmy.oneEnglish
    381·
    2 years ago

    On one hand, I really wish there was a RES add-on for Lemmy. Just so I could filter out the cascade of posts about reddit. I left the site and don’t give a shit if it burns or not. On the other hand, this is pretty funny to read about.

    • Spacecraft@lemmy.worldEnglish
      121·
      2 years ago

      I’ve been considering making something like RES for Lemmy. Not sure if I really have the time, but if nobody else steps up to it in the next couple of weeks, I’ll see if I can.

        • Spacecraft@lemmy.world
          91·
          2 years ago

          I’ll probably do both. Not everything from RES would be accepted into lemmy-ui, I think.

          • Steak@lemmy.ca
            4·
            2 years ago

            RES was so fucking good. You could do pretty much anything you wanted with it the features were endless.

          • Tywele@feddit.de
            2·
            2 years ago

            I think as long as you implement features as options it shouldn’t be a problem.

        • ewe@lemmy.world
          6·
          2 years ago

          Exactly. We don’t really need RES for lemmy because we have lemmy-ui project. It’s all out of my wheelhouse, but with community contributions, there’s a lot of awesomeness that could be added to it as optional elements.

        • Spacecraft@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 years ago

          I’m not well practiced in Rust, but that is a good idea. I have been meaning to learn Rust. Although an extension does allow for features that may not be accepted into Lemmy.

  • wotsit_sandwich@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    2 years ago

    I love these wonderfully petty reactions to the Reddit issues.

    Are there any other good examples out there for me to enjoy (I have already seen r/pics.)

      • ewe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        It’s perfect. It really should just be ONE thing that all the subs do (like john oliver related content). This will be funny to start, get old, and people will still enjoy posting it but it just won’t end, they’ll stop coming and reddit will die in a pile of John Oliver’s sexiness from across all the big subreddits.

  • GhostCowboy76@lemmy.worldEnglish
    33·
    2 years ago

    The best way for the Reddit community to fight back is to leave to another community. In order for that to happen the Fediverse options have to keep growing and improving, like they are, so that people leaving feel comfortable knowing they have a good option. Reddit will be dead in 6 months.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      I agree, although it can’t hurt to also accelerate that process by making it unbearable for scabs and normies to use the site. It also helps by setting a precedent for any future centralized social sites (like squabbles) who may try to profit off their users or go to war with the internet. Maybe it might even make them open to the idea of federation (probably not but at the very least it’ll make them leery of doing stuff like Reddit, unless they’re just blatantly stupid like Huffman is).

    • Aurix@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      12·
      2 years ago

      Is that so? Looks to me this moderator is in on it. Or which post do you refer to?

        • Chetzemoka@kbin.social
          23·
          2 years ago

          I mean, looks like no matter what the current mods do, Reddit is determined to silence the organic community-driven protest. Eventually mods will have to play ball or be replaced, but this current attitude of “look admins, we’re doing what you want, it’s the users who are not” delays that inevitability in a way that does in fact support the community users in their desire to protest. All the mods quitting right now in anger would just be replaced with new boot licking mods who would ban these protest posts immediately.

          I don’t think there’s any way for the community to win in the long run, but the current mods half-ass playing ball is allowing the protest to continue for now

  • d_bradr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    2 years ago

    Epic sub bouta get pretty poetic. Wonder if we can pull it off with other subs. Trees being about trees, Rimjob Steve being about a man named Steve who makes vehicle rims, Piracy with actual pirates, Cats vs tech being about cats actively destroying pieces of technology etc

    • Chocrates@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      2 years ago

      Trouble is there is both trees and marijuanaenthusiasts subs so that would kinda cancel each other out

      • d_bradr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        As if marijuanaenthusiasts is filled with enthusiasts and not just stoners. There’s a big difference between a gourmand and somebody who just loves eating

        • Chocrates@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 years ago

          Not sure if I am missing the joke but that sub is about trees, the tall woody plants that give you shade and not the kind that get you high.

    • Fluba@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Rimjob Steve? Am I missing out or should I just not dive into that rabbit hole?

      • d_bradr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        Rimjob Steve is about situations like a guy named PeeIsSquirt giving you financial advice