Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible
Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible
It’s going to be a lot harder to pull off massive protests.
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Not like the privating protests ever had much in the way of teeth anyway. The overwhelming majority of mods weren't willing to actually leave, so it was just puffery. Any mod who was on reddit during the API protests and is still there has proven they will cave to whatever rules reddit throws at them.
This is the stupid part. I left and didn't go back. I still end up there searching the odd problem online, but I don't necessarily need it. The one sub I modded, when I was last checking, has had quite a bit of spam and self-promotion "watch my new YouTube video" shit going on. I wasn't the only one doing anything on the team, as it was like 30k+ members, but it was alow traffic sub. But they don't do the weekly discussion threads, the repost bots were rampant.
All to make more money. I don't know why people stayed. All that huffing and puffing, just to cower and fold.
Privating protests definitely had some teeth in the short term, but not in the long term. In the short term, it targeted what Reddit and other social media sites value most: user retention. By privating subreddits, people would be denied access to the content they want (while being served ads), so they'd click off the website. That's why it's gone now. It's sad people are still volunteering their time for the profit of investors. I would, though, argue that privating subreddits was one of the most effective online protestings of recent history
Privating protests definitely had some teeth in the short term, but not in the long term
Toothless.
Effective how? Reddit went through with everything they had planned. It could have been an effective form of protesting if more mods had actually been willing to leave the site or at least their modding job for good.
mods had actually been willing to leave the site or at least their modding job for good.
A lot of mods left. You can definitely see the quality of moderation dropping
Ok granted, that may be true. I wouldn't be able to tell as I left in June '23 and never looked back. But from what I read about the protests back then, I seem to remember that only few subs had to have their mod team replaced by Reddit. I think if more mod teams of big subs had been willing to call it quits as a team, the disruption could have been bigger.
In the end though, I don't know if any form of protest can be effective in this kind of situation as Reddit holds all the cards, and if they are dead set on enshittifying, nothing will stop them. What mods and users should do is just walk out.
What mods and users should do is just walk out.
Indeed