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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!

  • dystop@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Definitely allowed. For now, anything that fits in the spirit of malicious compliance is fair game, it doesn’t have to be text only too.

  • concealmint@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    2 years 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
      6·
      2 years 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
        5·
        2 years 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
        11·
        2 years 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
          6·
          2 years 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.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      I visited 9gag last week for the firdt time in maybe 8 years…wow the boomer humour and aggressive bigotry rivals Facebook

      • girthero@lemmy.oneEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Wow you ain’t kidding! Its White nationalist this, and White nationalist that! They’re going to replace us! /s

  • Tom@lemmy.oneBEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

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

  • Badger@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    3·
    2 years 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
      4·
      2 years 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
        2·
        2 years 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
    3·
    2 years 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]!

    • exixx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Thanks! It still feels weird, I had my account for a long time and have a fair amount of karma, but the site has been going to shit for a while and enough is enough. This feels like the very early web or fidonet and I’m stoked to be here.

  • Sens@feddit.ukEnglish
    3·
    2 years 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
      3·
      2 years 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.

  • Raltoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Update on the vote results, for people who don’t want to go there:

    • Pro John Oliver: 61.7k

    • Return to normal: -13.7k.

    • NotYourSocialWorker@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I like the malicious compliance but I find that to be a bad way to do a poll. Better would have been one comment with the text “Upvote if you want John Oliver pics, downvote if you want it to go back to normal”.

      The way they did it if one group only upvote their alternative and the other also downvotes the opponent then the result isn’t representative. Or at least could be claimed not to be.

      • solarvector@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        It would exacerbate the swing but wouldn’t change the result

        And I don’t think maliciously compliant mod is interested in statistical representation.

      • lich_hegemon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Let’s assume that everyone who upvoted their option also downvoted the alternative.

        The group A, has |A| number of individuals. Group B has |B| number.

        Option A: |A| - |B|
Option B: |B| - |A|

Option A = |A| - |B| 
         = -(-(|A| - |B|))
         = -(|B| - |A|)
         = -Option B

        The results would be opposites of each other and would highlight the opinion of the majority anyway.

        • Ramen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          you can’t both upvote and downvote the same item. the last option you selected is the only one that’s counted at any given moment.

          edit: wait, i see. if they’re separate comments, you could just upvote the comment you like and downvote the comment you don’t. i was assuming one comment that said upvote or downvote.

  • thedarkfly@feddit.nlEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    That’s a classic reddit moment. There’s such a good community on that website, it’s tragic that reddit wants to use that against itself.

    These kind of protest won’t reduce the traffic on the platform though. They might even gain traction and increase it. If it’s not linked to reduced ad revenue, I’m afraid it’s counter-productive.

    • seeCseas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      the odds are stacked against the mods and the users, but any little bit of resistance is useful.

    • raoulvolfoni@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      Look at the alternatives. It’s either this kind of protest, or returning to normal operations or losing their sub.

    • DrGunjah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I think it will reduce traffic at some point, when the lurkers are getting tired of John Oliver pics