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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!

  • concealmint@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Incredible move. But I doubt it’ll last. Reddit is going to became 9gag and iFunny very soon. Rest in peace old reddit. It was fun while it lasted.

    • darkmugglet@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      The point is to hit reddit where it hurts - ad revenue. There will be a slight spike in interests as people laugh, then the lack of original content will cause people to be bored. New subreddits will have to be created and built from the ground up. Moderating a subreddit with 40m subscribers is hard.

      Spez needs to realize that going to war with the users is a dumb move.

      • orcrist@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        He will not realize that, because he wants money and he’ll get it. On the one hand, Reddit was fun. On the other hand, it’s archaic for the reasons we’re experiencing right now. Progress.

      • Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        Spez is thick as fuck but reddit will likely IPO and be just fine, this was a battle that didn’t need to be fought.

        Spez is a bad leader and his goals lie contrary to reddit’s mission statement.

        I left last time, I think it was the Victoria thing, and I joined Voat and that quickly went to shit. Reddit will get what they want from this which is more mainstream use.

        • darkmugglet@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          I would argue that this whole thing will delay or devalue the IPO. Institual investors will look at this rather public fight and question his leadership. And the whole attempt at damage control makes him look bad. The only investors that will look past this fiasco are those who are doing the long play, and even then, they likely won’t want Spez involved.

          From a risk perspective, Reddit has just highlighted it’s biggest risk: the volunteer moderators. The only way Spez will be able to fix that is to replace moderators with AI or paid moderation teams. At an estimated value of $3.4M, and a company that is not profitable, that increases the risk in terms of the business model.

          In general, social media is inherently flawed for profits. The path to monetization is ads and data, and the fact that Spez is now squeezing the users make me think that the value of the data and the ads is not producing the returns to compensate for dumb ideas like the NFT project.

  • Badger@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      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 #the_donald alone to grow in scope. Fuck Spez

      • seeCseas@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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!

  • Rogue_General@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Glad you posted this - its the epitome of malicious compliance! And a fantastic form of protest too. With Reddit admins threatening to demote mods unless they re-open subreddits, this move takes away that ammo. Additionally, after the initial boost in activity due to novelty, the sub will get stale quickly and users will think of migrating to other platforms like lemmy or kbin. I’m all for it!

    Edit: This is what I’m talking about. Here is one of those Reddit refugees now!

    https://lemmy.world/comment/273363

    Welcome, @[email protected]!

  • Moskie@lemmy.worldBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think this is a good idea. The point of the blackout is to hit Reddit where it hurts, by driving traffic down. This prank (partially) reverses the work of the blackout, by getting people back to the pics subreddit to post and see (John Oliver) pics. It turns the blackout into a joke. And I think is a step towards the community just moving on from the blackout without it actually having the long term effects that were intended.

    I’m all for malicious compliance, but I think this is the wrong flavor of it.

    • DulyNoted@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Well, it’ll put Reddit in an odd place. Spez in particular has cited the Moderator Code as a justification to remove mods and instate his own.

      THAT would be worse, since then instead of any blackout at all it’s business as usual (while being slowly crippled from bad moderation and decaying user behaviours).

      The John Oliver thing is an alternative to THAT. They are technically doing what the users want, which was Reddit’s whole ammunition against them. Closing a sub of millions of people could be said as harming the site significantly enough that reddit steps in. Opening it and maliciously complying with the rules IS what the users want, so Spez will be hard pressed the wrest control of the sub while simultaneously saying he supports the protests in line with the Code.

    • andobando@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Nah I disagree. Turning things less serious is not necessarily a bad thing. People will visit to check it out but long term it will get stale and die off.

    • Kissaki@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      A blackout prevents action. It prevents the usefulness.

      A satiric malicious compliance focus does not categorically prevent activity, but does prevent general activity. It prevents the usefulness and value of the subreddit too.

      When you are at risk of losing the blackout by losing control of the subreddit. it’s the only thing you can do. It’s the next best and next most effective thing.

  • Senseibull@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Senseibull@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Is Reddit having issues again right now? I can’t load the site properly in the last 5 mins

  • Tom@lemmy.oneEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

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

    • JoeKrogan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Now videos should do the same but with rick astly…“you know the rules and so do I”

    • SSTF@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      And then people will go check it out.

      Ironic engagement is still engagement.

      • dystop@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I personally think the best “maliciouscompliance” act mods can do in the long term is to switch up all the subs.

        So technology will be used for gardening, gardening will be used for android, android will be used for coffee, coffee used for pcgaming, etc. It’ll make everything really confusing for new users and help slow their growth.

        • SSTF@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          No this all seems too clever by half and is just putting more eyes on Reddit. People are drawn to drama. If mods were serious, they’d delete or pull all of their custom plug ins and delete their accounts. Let Reddit have the subs. Unfortunately a huge number of mods won’t actually endanger their positions, which means Reddit corporate has the ultimate leverage in the end. Just go. I respect the mods who have left. If more of them did it would leave a true void.

          Image being Reddit corporate and waking up tomorrow and 5000 subreddits were open but all the mods and their mods tools were gone. No big dramatic pranks or drama from the mods, just a classy exit.

          • aceshigh@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            i agree. this is kind of a temper tantrum coming from the mods that will result in more eyes on reddit… the only way to win, is to not play.

            • girthero@lemmy.oneEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              How about sexy John Oliver promoting Lemmy? Make reddit delete the post instead of the mods.