Things are moving fast again, so this is going to be another quick and dirty post… Reddit is now removing mod teams without any pretense of speaking for mode…

  • HonorableScythe@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    There’s no way to effectively protest a corporation on its own platform. It controls the platform, it can and will change the rules or enforce them unequally just to shut you up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

    I feel sort of bad for the bootlickers who are trying to take advantage of the situation for their own ends. With the precedents being set, they’re going to have even less authority to run the subs when it’s done and their sucking up will mean nothing.

    The only good move is to leave.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      I mean, I kinda feel like this is a way to effectively protest, because even if they can heavy handedly force you to shut up, you can at least force them to actually do that. The more visibly reddit tries to stamp out dissent, the more people will notice them doing that, and the more upset those people will be. Unlike the irl equivalent, there are few stakes for most people in being involved in this kind of digital protest. At the worst, you get banned there and move somewhere else, which you probably were going to eventually do anyway if youre angry enough to protest reddit like this.

      Doing things that force reddit’s hand, like making subs nsfw, harms them in some way no matter what: either they do nothing, and lose ad revenue and potentially anger people who just wanted their subs to be what they were, or they capitulate, losing them whatever they wanted to do in the first place and showing precedent for the future, or they try to force things back to normal, and fuel the anger against them even further due to people having feeling restricted. It might not kill the site (even digg and tumblr and such still exist, its very hard for a sufficiently big social site to actually die completely), but it can erode its userbase and grow that of competitors, which reduces the potential revenue the site can make.

      • Tashlan@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Found the person who studied civil disobedience.

        I had a teacher who would go to a protest at the School of the Americas annually to get arrested. I didn’t understand what he meant when I was a teenager that when he said the point was to make them arrest you.

    • SamC@lemmy.nz
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      1 year ago

      There’s no way to effectively protest a corporation on its own platform. It controls the platform, it can and will change the rules or enforce them unequally just to shut you up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

      You can still make it painful for them on the way out. They are using up a shitload of resources dealing with this, and it will be hurting their image and valuation. The more Reddit has to stomp on its users, the more damage they do to their brand in the long run.

      You can’t win, but you can go down fighting, and possibly take Reddit down with you.

      • Tashlan@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        You can still make it painful for them on the way out

        My father used to tell me “Don’t let anyone fuck you for free,” that if someone wants to give you a parking ticket or bill hike or whatever, to contest it, to make it costly and time consuming for them so it’s not “free” to take things from you.

        He would then usually tell the story of a family friend that killed himself in his car instead of letting it get repossessed.

            • PupBiru@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              as an ethos, the story doesn’t help though… they not only took his car but also his life, and all he did was make it annoying for them?

              that’s the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face

    • Adama@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      True but they can go anytime. In the meantime they’re making a fuss, keeping the issue alive in the news and making Reddit take action instead of making it easy for them.

      E.g. “If you want me gone fire me because I’m not quitting so you can save face.”

    • Guy_Fieris_Hair@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      On one hand, causing chaos on reddit and ending up in the news is maybe good?

      On the other hand that drives traffic to the site. Quietly leaving and bitching somewhere else will do nothing.

      Best case is that video strike where people go just long enough to upload 1gb videos of white noise to tax their servers without adding any content.