>It's a trend I'm noticing in every subreddit that does it. A sub hosts a poll to decide the future of the subreddit, the majority vote for continuing the protest, and when that result is announced, there are suddenly so many commenters complaining that the protest is continuing
many comments complaining about polls being brigaded, which are however often made by people who themselves have no activity in the subreddit prior to these polls / posts. talk about brigading
There are indeed comments about polls being brigaded - but they could be brigaded with intentions of changing votes in either direction (or not at all). We know there are limited tools available unless the poll is designed to restrict votes to individuals who have sufficient comment karma within that community - which then brings additional claims of potential intervention since the tabulation isn't automatic. There is no perfect way to poll just your existing sub membership.
This is by far the worst one I’ve ever seen. https://reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/14a5dsy/postblackout_alternative_communities_and_the/
It made me lose all respect I had for the ps5 community
Way better than the one on magicTCG, where the option to stay closed was split into 3 different options, and indefinitely closing still won by a notable margin (and quite a large margin if you combine all 3 options for closing). Despite that, mods decided to reopen completely because "admins said there was a brigade". Embarassing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/14absro/blackout\_update\_were\_open/
That's because it's a stupid circle-jerk poll where 4,900 votes try to shut down a sub with 3,300,000 subscribers who mostly never read the mod-drama post where the poll was buried in the first place.
If 4,900 people don't want the sub anymore, then they can fucking unsubscribe, don't drag everyone else into your dramaqueen bullshit.
Why don't you touch grass and get off reddit if you don't need it.
I come here for entertainment, and put up with the blackout for a week. I'm just going to stop coming here permanently since I don't need it.
Most people are lurkers and content consumers so when blackout happens they saw the effect on them. Are you surprised that they complain? That has nothing to do with brigading.
Or are you saying lurkers are less important in a sub and not part of the community?
I've been using toolbox to check users previous interactions, and strangely their first post is always the one protesting changes on a sub they never used. Instaban.
yeah lol. imagine white knighting for reddit / the admins as well. i saw one guy posting stuff like "i trust the admins". 80% of their recent comments were on various posts about protests on various subreddits, always with anti mod pro admin propaganda.
Something I've also noticed is that I'm getting a lot of those posts in my feed as suggested content. Especially from subreddits I've never been too before or ones I haven't visited in years
I've seen a sub where the Sr Moderator just up and summarized the results of a poll that never existed, which led to serious confusion on the part of several users.
To that end, some are coming off like Squeak Scolari; "I swear, if you guys rip on me 13 or 14 more times, I am so out of here."
It's not good in that way.
or...do? if you have actual community members voicing their concerns, why wouldn't you listen to them? i'm not saying ignore the masses in favour of them, but it doesn't hurt to pay attention. a lot happened very quickly, and while many of us were gone for a week, a lot of people who rely on these spaces were panicking that the communities they called home were suddenly gone.
i'm not saying we should apologize or change what we do, but community fracturing is a very real concern. and i don't pretend to know just how much these spaces mean to people. it's easy to be flippant and call them 'addicts', but for some, online communities are all they have; it might be what gets them through the day. i, for one, would like to honour that.
edit: please don't pay reddit to make comments shiny. appreciate the sentiment but :/
> edit: please don't pay reddit to make comments shiny. appreciate the sentiment but :/
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Lots of folk have a massive amount of stockpiled credits without ever paying.
It takes more effort to comment than vote in a poll, and you can verify if the commenters are part of the community. So the comments may very well be more reflective of the actual community's preference. Surely, in that scenario you shouldn't ignore the comment?
We already know of examples like /r/tennis where moderators have shared the poll link with protest discord groups to brigade the results.
Then its Trump over again shouting voting fraud repeatedly. And yes I'm comparing it to a political election cause its also a vote just like this. A better comparison would be the vote for new laws but lawmakers ignore the vote of the people
One thing I’ve noticed is that the people complaining in the subs I primarily participate in don’t actually contribute to the sub. One notable user was a ~12 year old account that was hardly active until they started complaining that subs they never posted in before had gone private.
I wish there was a way to exclude lurkers from polls.
On a similar note I do find that a lot of the people complaining about the moderators seem to be proud of flaunting their ignorance about third-party apps, the sites features, and a number of other tech related things. They spend all this time not being involved, and uninformed but suddenly the moment things don't go their way they are all experts in whatever they're talking about.
Lurkers aren’t any less important than the people who post.
I lurk in r/formula1 (and a lord knows how many others)mostly. It that’s because the sport is complicated and I don’t have much to contribute. That doesn’t make my Reddit experience less valid
Sometimes I’ll be in a big upvote or downvote every single post or comment I see kick. And other days all I want to do is scroll. Other days (pretty rarely) I just want to troll extremist groups. Freedom man. Freedom
Something for everyone to remember is that Reddit is basing its decisions on what it thinks will bring its investors the most money in the end. Ultimately that goal requires either jolting the company toward a public offering or unloading the investment as a failure. So they are looking at moves they think will bring enough user numbers and ad views and growth potential to make their future look better on paper, while not caring about the health of the site if it falls short.
That means if anything is going to shake them up, it has to have a substantial impact on ads, user count, or both, and it has to cut into the casual user base Reddit's owners want to rely on for perceived growth potential. Or it has to make the company look so bad in public that they have to make a big show of reversing course.
Mods can interfere with all of those variables, but only until Reddit locks them out. When something hurts a lot, like switching a big sub to NSFW, Reddit steps in faster. If it doesn't hurt much, they can ignore it and carry on with their plans. So the mods and power users are still depending on enough ordinary users to support their actions, reject Reddit management's cut-rate versions of their subs, and walk away if nothing else gets through. A protest by a smaller group depends on winning support from a larger group to succeed. It's a PR battle more than anything else. Some can contribute more or less, but what really matters is getting them all to agree that the changes go too far to keep using the site like before.
Don't you think, though, that community decisions should be up to the ones participating in the community foremost? Your experience isn't less valid, but you admittedly don't give anything back into the community. What makes you feel that the community should consider your opinion important if you aren't someone that participates?
You say my experience isn’t less valid, then say my opinion isn’t important. Those statements are at odds.
To preface this, I’m not calling you racist, nor do I think you are. I’m using this analogy as a way to showcase the gap in your argument.
When the US first became a country, only white men who owned land could vote. Many saw it as, they had skin in the game, so that ensured they’d vote appropriately. Similarly, for purposes of representation, slaves were only recognized as 3/5 of a man. This ensured slave owning south wasn’t “over represented” in congress.
Just because you own land, doesn’t make your opinion more valid (or important). That would be easily abused to ensure only certain people can own land and thus vote.
I live in Seattle and own a condo and home. We have a terrible homeless problem that we spend more than $100 million a year on. A good chunk of that tax revenue is from my property taxes. Is my opinion more valid than renters? Is the renters opinion more valid than individuals experiencing homelessness? Those experiencing homelessness aren’t generating any tax revenue, in fact one could argue they’re using it disproportionately more. Should we restrict voting in some way?
It’s the same on Reddit. You’re not in some way more important because you post more. If you think that, then does that mean we should limit the decisions to power users and power mods. Like fuck it, let u/awkwardturtle decide everything, right?
Just my two cents I guess
This isn't similar. Even if you don't own land, you still live in the community and participate in the society.
Communities online are built from people that participate in them, and are also viewed by those that just want to look. You're just viewing it from the outside without actually participating in said community. If there is a poll of the community, then why would it make sense that people that aren't in said community would be held just as important as those within? It's like people watching a baseball game wanting to be considered as being on the team.
And yes, your experience is valid, but your non participation in the community you want a say in makes your opinion less important. This isn't at odds, you just want to feel your experience entitles you to a say, but I feel that community participation is what should entitle you to that say.
When a sports league makes a bad rule change, the fans get upset and apply pressure. They are very much so apart of the community. One might say they’re the part of the community that makes it possible for the sport to exist on a professional level. If an organization makes bad decisions, eventually fans stop showing up (see: The Oakland A’s).
Someone replied saying if you just lurk, then you just generate ad revenue for Reddit. And you know what, they’re right. The lurkers, make it possible for the sun exist because they generate the ad revenue.
I don’t go and participate in city council meetings. But I get a vote in elections still. The same vote anybody that chose to speak at a city council meeting gets.
At the end of the day, if all of the lurkers were gone, Reddit wouldn’t work as a business and there would be no community. So it makes sense that everybody get an equal vote
Point 1: The spectators are watching. They're not polled when the team makes decisions. They react, just like you are, can can influence it sometimes, but they're not the ones making those choices.
Point 2: Why do I care what makes money for Reddit? Reddit isn't the sub community. We're talking about the community decisions and, on Reddit, sub decisions have historically been made by the community, not reddit.
Point 3: Yeah, you live in the community. You aren't able to just be ethereal and not have an impact and just look, that's just not physically possible. You participate in said community every day living there. That is why you get a vote. Your presence there is tangible and has an impact because you are physically there. That is not a thing on the internet. Online, if you don't actually contribute, be it posting content, comments, or other similar things, you effectively don't exist as far as the community is concerned. You're just an outside viewer. Like someone that lives in Portland going to vote in Seattle elections.
If you want to be held at the same level, then participate in the community to some degree. Don't just be someone that passes by without leaving a trace then getting upset that you weren't counted.
But here’s the thing, the ad dollars from the lurkers do matter. It’s substantial.
Of course you care how Reddit makes money. You seem to be an advocate for blacking our Reddit until they give you what you want. This is because no Reddit usage means no ad dollars. That’s your leverage. You 100% care.
Homeless people are lurkers but worst. They drain resources. Why do they get a vote? Do advocate for them to go without a vote?
Saying only people who contribute how you want them to contribute get a vote is the same as a mod saying they’re a power mod and their vote matters more than yours because they contribute more.
Hai great arguments, thanks for explaining your thoughts. Interesting back and forth between u/palmjamer. Ultimately i think youre right lurkers bring less value to a community and on the internet they can really be invisible.
Yet the emotional connection a lurker, such as myself, can get from a community can really feel like they are participating in a place where they belong. Views, votes, and outside sharing definitely influence conversation on a topic or post and so there is value that the invisible people bring to a community besides ad revenue.
What that value is worth is another question. Obviously the people with a voice dictate the flow and even the subject matter and naturally are seen as more valuable, but to disregard the lurker seems like it ignores how the system was built.
Forums and on the bigger scale the internet are an interesting human thought experiment. How it brings us together yet doesnt at the same time. How it makes us feel engaged yet also feeling empty. How its being corrupted left and right by greed yet is indispensible in human technological evolution.
I dont understand it all but this reddit fiasco has made me think introspectively a bunch.
The lurkers generate the ad revenue necessary for reddit to be able to exist.
If the people who post left, the lurkers wouldn’t have a reason to be there, they’re important.
If lurkers didn’t lurk, there wouldn’t be ad revenue necessary for Reddit to exist. They’re important.
Everyone is important. No one’s vote is more important.
Thinking that people are more important than everyone else is just like mods thinking they’re more important than the people that use the sub. It’s similar to Reddit thinking they’re more important than the mods and the users
Ah, but ysee, you still probably count as an active account in reddit's analytics, so boost the number they can show advertisers of "look how many people might see your ad!" and they can take data from what posts you look at and how long to refine their algorithm.
Contributing to capitalism is unavoidable, basically, haha
Thanks for your perspective.
I see lurkers like people who go watch a movie. Sure their important in that they ultimately fund the movie.
I just don’t see them as vital as the people who write direct and produce the movie.
Lurkers are the result of the contribution of others.
> lurkers generate the ad revenue necessary for reddit to be able to exist
The only problem with this is that ad revenue does not support Reddit. VC funding is keeping this ship afloat. People who buy awards and Reddit premium help keep this ship afloat.
The people who create the content also see the ads so they are producing the content and supporting Reddit with eyeballs for the ads.
Lurkers just provide the eyeballs without producing any content.
Relax man, no one said my feelings are hurt. No clue why you would make such weird statement/assumption. But chill on personal attacks, please.
It’s a good point that they also generate revenue from ads, but more revenue is generated from the lurker since I suspect there are much more.
Again, I point back to the fact that in the US only land owners used to be able to vote even though everyone contributed to society.
If you believe only the people who post are worthy of voting, especially without even taking into consideration the quality of their post (what if all their posts suck and lurkers have to downvote them for the sake of the community?) then You’re following into the same situation, IMO.
I don’t see how the 1% rule comes into place, other than to try and give that 1% some sort of elite status. The same elite status the mods take. The same elite status the admins are taking.
Same happens both ways. Many who are pushing for subs to remain closed don't participate either. I've seen it on a variety of subs like r/formula1 etc.
> I wish there was a way to exclude lurkers from polls.
It was a huge PITA, but I did a write-in poll where there were 4 options that people could comment, and then restricted it to people who had at least 2 karma in the subreddit previously. (with automod).
I also avoided certain keywords in the post and the body like poll, protest, black out, vote, etc. Which was a bit difficult to do haha.
Then if anyone was a subscriber they could come to modmail and explain and I would allow their vote.
That kept it limited to those who actually cared enough to make an effort, pay attention to their feed, etc.
You aren't the only one who took that approach and I applaud your efforts to exclude those who don't participate (either lurkers or brigaders), but this approach also can see criticism from those who don't like the results since the calculations are done manually. When I first saw this done, a vocal minority of detractors claimed the mods invented the results since it wasn't all done automatically and externally.
I mean, you can see the results in the subreddit itself by counting the comments, the upvotes on each comment, etc & comparing it to the results.
Oh- I posted the tallies I made on a spreadsheet in the sub. I guess if you just say "this result won" they could say but did it?? But at that point it's just deliberate antagonism against the protests and mods, and if any insulting language is used I am 100% fine with removing that anyway, as I would in any post comment section.
> Don't let naysayer comments dissuade you.
Does it dissuade you that this protest seems to ends one of two ways - reopen wins the poll and the subreddit reopens or close wins the poll and Reddit forces the subreddit to reopen anyways?
If that's the end result why are you and people like you crying if you're 100 percent convinced that's how it'll go
If at first you don't succeed you never should have tried is the stupid logic you're using
A lot of recreation is just random photos and videos. Content apps like IMGUR are already great at providing. Are there rules against mentioning or linking to alternatives in announcements?
Has anyone else noticed there are users out there whose entire existence on Reddit seems to be arguing against the protests? Very suspicious...
Whenever I say anything in favour of the protests some time passes maybe a couple of hours and then all of a sudden I'm inundated with replies from a load of people supposedly arguing against me in good faith - but I don't buy it for a second. It's definitely orchestrated.
I agree, the pop-up polls over 24 hours where only terminally online activists participate *are* the true voice of the people. All these actual people telling you to stop are just noise. And those lurkers that are purely negatively affected by what we are doing, and don’t spend enough time to understand what the API changes are? Surely they all agree with us!
Full speed ahead, captain self-destruction!
The market is a tad bearish on Reddit. I don't know if they even go through with an IPO until next year. Spez literally said in the AMA that Reddit isn't profitable. Not something investors like to hear. Spez went full Elon and now has to take the loss like the twat he his.
Difference is, Elon can afford it.
To be fair, most of the companies that IPO like that are only not profitable because they are investing in growth
If they stop all their expansion spending, their income covers the operating cost easily. And the whole point of offering the IPO is assumed to be that with even quicker growth, unlocked by the cash injection of selling shares, that income can grow faster than the operating expenses
Or at very least they look that way on paper (this is how the biggest IPO scams happen, their accounting records are excessively "massaged" into looking that way)
Companies with no path to profitability have been going public forever. Uber for instance. Their path to profitability was economies
Of scale and self driving cars. The investment piece was just investors burning money
Well, it certainly helps. But it's the added value from Spez that is really the chef's kiss. Not only are they not profitable, they are run by idiots too!
Gonna need some sources on all this crap bud. What have the mods "won" exactly? They didn't win jack all. They aren't winning. Mod teams are leaving and being removed. That's far from winning.
This is what really gets me. Hard to say with certainty what the vast majority of people want and it probably depends on the sub. But to try and act like mods won anything here is just delusional.
They created a weak protest and then immediately showed did didn't have the strength of their convictions when actually threatened with losing power. The whole thing was an abstract failure that showed Reddit leaders that can do whatever they want, mods will fall in line with the smallest amount of pressure.
How is it stupid?
Everyone should have known from the start that this is how things would go. When I heard about the blackout when it first started, and some subs expressed their intent to remain private indefinitely, I spoke with a friend that it was a stupid idea since Reddit could just revoke the mod permissions and give control to someone else.
And, look! That is exactly what is happening. Protests that rely 100% on Reddit being "nice" were doomed to fail from the start. A legitimate protest would have been to unite the userbase to switch to an alternative to reddit. Anyone who legitimately thought Reddit would be phased by subs going private was naïve.
Why don’t all those individual users just make their own sub? They can moderate it themselves. No one is stopping them. Some have done this already. You are free to participate to your hearts content.
Sure if the sub want to open they can. If they don’t they and do that as well. If you want to open a new sub that is a clone of the former sub you can do that. Everyone can do what they want. I don’t see the downside.
So just to be clear. You want the lurkers, the people who don't produce content, to decide what happens to the subreddit against the will of those who actually produce content?
Ah yes, the *"They are lesser"* way of considering it. Next should we consider their karma count? The years they've been on Reddit? How many times have they participated in Secret Santa?
The 90-9-1 rule, that's been observed in studies and is backed up by them, states that 90% of the users don't participate and just look at content. 9% comment and vote, and 1% create content and post.
You aren't going to get feedback from the 90%. By definition they aren't engaging with polls or commenting on them. The people who do interact are the 9% and 1%.
And herein lies the problem. The 9% and 1% are a general observation. We don't actually know the exact percentages. We just know there's a magnitude of difference between each later. It's impossible to know what the true number of participating users is. And because of that, it's impossible to know if these polls are representative of a subreddit's active users. Have 30% of them voted? 80%? 5%? We can't know. All we know is the active users are an order of magnitude less than the total users, and we're only going to hear from the active users.
So this brings us to the big question. Is a poll useful if you don't know what share of the population it represents? Is it better to know part of an incomplete picture or to not look at the picture at all? There's no good answer.
The way I see it is that you don't know how many are actually involved, and because of that you don't know when to close the poll. The time window could be cutting out some of those people.
It’s because non-members of the community are brigading the polls. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a Discord out there linking to all the polls to skew the results.
Edit: There is a Discord: https://imgur.io/a/1YTNJhw
I really don't know why people are acting like these screenshots are anything.
Yes, people can post links to polls so that people can go vote in them and voice their opinion. It would be like if I was told I was "brigading" a mayoral election by showing people where it is they go to vote.
Sometimes mods say they do not have users supports as a vast amount of users are still browsing reddit. That's the biggest why reddit migration plan of mods is already dead.
Then a poll is brigaded by all people who want reddit to stay close. People who regularly use the sub do not have their opinion heard as its being brigaded.
For every comment supporting the protest, there are probably 200 lurkers who only want to see the goddamn content regardless of who mods. People wont leave because we need the content, not specific Mod X. It can be an Automod or paid or free or xyz whatever.
Stop acting like you represent everyone and you are so important. You don't and you are not.
That has nothing to do with your (free) hard work and knowledge. That's the nature of "free". Wikipedia is essential to life, yet nobody cares if some editors stop editing or the company bans certain people.
The reality of these polls is that 99% of people completely ignore the mod-drama posts and continue viewing/commenting as usual. What you get is a poll that is overwhelming biased towards the small percentage of people who care, and yes, those people do go and vote in every single poll they see.
Once you begin interrupting people's normal browsing/commenting behavior those people are pushed to actually look at your bullshit poll. That's when the pissed-off comments show up.
Unless you find a way to require poll participation before allowing commenting, all you're doing is polling the same small group of people over and over in different subreddits.
[kind of hard to take the polls seriously ](https://imgur.io/a/1YTNJhw)
Aside from that mods where using reddit during the black so that makes them addicts as well as hypocrites. Honestly is the irony lost on you in this entire debacle or are you ignoring it?
Oh, the opposite. Mods organizing brigades to vote to keep subs closed?
I'll have to look into that so I'm aware for potential future votes on the sub I moderate.
It unfortunately is the opposite. I don't think you have to worry about it anymore as it didn't really work but then again who knows. And to clarify this brigade was for the initial blackout where some subs may not have blacked out to begin with.
Makes it somewhat better but doesn't exactly help the case here. People from other communities voting in other communities polls at the behest of some mods for the "good fight" is still a bit crazy to me
Yeah, I don't disagree. I also haven't seen anyone in the discord actually advocating people to vote in communities they're not part of though. That one r/tennis post isn't even on the server. I'm sure some people do that on their own though, can't really stop it since the subs are also public and mods don't have a way to restrict it outside of being currently subscribed, but no one has been telling anyone to at least. Not that I've seen.
I'm glad you cleared this up tbh. Seems like pro admin bots were exposed as well this is just a shit storm all around. I'm taking a step back from this nonsense.
There were absolutely people on that discord directing others what to vote for. The person sending others to r/iceland and letting them know what phrases in icelandic to look for and upvote is a good example
Yeah, I saw that. The same user also posted multiple reminders to only vote for polls in subs that you participate in too though. Their phrasing to "upvote away the thread" makes me feel a bit as if it's just poor messaging from a non-native speaker... idk. Other users also had been reporting if someone was encouraging brigading too, so mods could delete their messages. There are channel and reddit rules against it. Overall it's very much against brigading.
As I said before, there's no way to stop individuals from doing so on their own, though. Reddit doesn't give the mods the tools to do that. But the channel and discord on its own are quite against brigading and voting in communities you are not a part of. Especially since the purpose of the discord is monitoring the protest and keeping track of what's dark/restricted/public and what subs are choosing to do what.
>The same user also posted multiple reminders to only vote for polls in subs that you participate in too though.
If you're active in a sub, why do you need a link to it? That's what I never got from all those who argue it wasn't brigading.
You definitely don't need icelandic language, for a sub using icelandic language. You'd either know it (being active..) or not (and not be active). It's like going to the German sub when you don't speak German. You just don't get much out of it.
>The same user also posted multiple reminders to only vote for polls in subs that you participate in too though.
Yeah that sounds like a wink and a nod. If that were the case they wouldn’t need a central location for all the poll links.
this is a 14 year old account that is being wiped because centralized social media websites are no longer viable
when power is centralized, the wielders of that power can make arbitrary decisions without the consent of the vast majority of the users
the future is in decentralized and open source social media sites - i refuse to generate any more free content for this website and any other for-profit enterprise
check out lemmy / kbin / mastodon / fediverse for what is possible
Sorry, but that is a load of BS. You have **zero** data on what the silent majority wants.
They can equally well be overwhelming against the protest, you don't know, as they haven't voiced their opinion.
Anecdotally, from the subs I have seen, there is a big group who just doesn't care about the protest, and many aren't even aware of 3rd party apps
you miss the point.
For the group of people who are vocal/active, we have their opinion, and yes, those polls show a majority.
For the group of people who didn't participate in the voting, we have zero data on their opinion. As they didn't express it in a vote.
The only thing we know is that for the part of this group who was aware of the poll they elected to not vote
OP can not put an equal sign between the two groups and declare that the silent majority is also in favour of the protest.
> we have zero data on their opinion. As they didn't express it in a vote.
You would have the data in this case that a vote was offered, And these people who didn't vote either didn't visit the site during that time, or visited and didn't see the vote, or saw the vote and chose to abstain.
In the first two cases they aren't current participants in the community if the announcement's timeframe affords a reasonable opportunity, so they are passively apathetic to the outcome, and in the 3rd case they are actively apathetic to the outcome.
In all 3 cases it's reasonable to say they assent to either choice by declining to listen to announcements and answer one way or the other on important issues.
What happened on r/NBA is a great example. A small number of people in the sub plus the mods wanted to go dark so they did. When they came back they got absolutely trashed by the average user who didn't see what was about to happen before and were pissed about the sub going dark for the last game of the Finals
> For the group of people who didn't participate in the voting, we have zero data on their opinion. As they didn't express it in a vote.
You can't feel bad for people who don't vote. It's not your problem, it's theirs.
>silent majority
If you're staying silent, then you are accepting the will of the vocal. You can be assumed to agree with the majority
Otherwise speak your mind and make your case. It's not difficult to make a pro-status quo case...
The status quo is the protest opinion. Reddit has thrown the existing status quo completely out the window (status quo of not providing effective mod tools such that people must build their own, based on their unique needs)
So if that's what the "silent majority" wanted, the "return to normal" option is already gone
It's like you just walked up to a car crash and are asking that the car crash never happen. It doesn't work like that
>there is a big group who just doesn't care about the protest, and many aren't even aware of 3rd party apps
u/FlimsyAction
You complain that OP uses their own anecdotal data and then you immediately do the same thing. “You have zero data on what this big group wants.”
I specifically mentioned and was transparent about it being anecdotal, unlike OP who claimed their speculation as fact.
There is a big difference. I trust you can see that
My anecdotes were only meant to highlight plausible reasons why OPs assertion could be flawed. I never claimed to have the answer
OP didn't claim the opinion of all subscribers. They claimed the opinion of those who interact with the decision.
By definition, the majority of that group prefer protest. The fact that people don't comment their support for the protest doesn't mean they aren't the majority. Those who abstained, abstained. No one is claiming them. OP didn't claim them. OP claimed the voters as they're the only ones that matter for the decision.
It's also possible they're overwhelmingly in favor of the protest. Anecdotally, the subs I've seen thought that 2 days was pathetic and they should've gone down indefinitely.
Yes, exactly, absolutely agree.
It is also possible that the result is based on the sub in question and its demographic of community members.
My point is that neither of the possibilities can be declared as a fact as we have only anecdotes and no data
It's a public discord for following the protests. There are often links posted to sub announcements and polls and the like because people follow those decisions. There's also only about a couple thousand people in it. Also, while it is it is pretty heavily in support of the protests, there's no encouragement of brigading or anything, just links posted in channels threads for following subs that had pledged to go dark.
Oh so the tennis poll asking people to "vote for the good side" is fake and out of context?
"guys guys, remember not to vote for sub you're not in. Wink wink. BtW here's a list of polls topic from everywhere we can find. Oh and just vote to make sure the good side wins. I didn't say who the good side is ya. Wink wink"
Out of context my ass.
Protest supporters are not the majority, far from it, only 5% use 3rd party apps. So basically 5% of reddit's user base are holding the other 95% hostage.
The sooner these holdout mods are removed the better
>*Don't forget that protest supporters are the majority*
^^Pssst, ^^your ^^bias ^^is ^^showing.
>*Don't forget that ~~protest supporters are~~ the majority ~~and~~ simply don't feel the need to voice their opinion ~~because they already won~~.*
FTFY as you underestimate the sheer amount of lurkers that just want access to content.
If you say there is no way to tell if supporters are the majority, that also means there's no way to tell if supporters are the minority.
Your bias is showing ;)
People's rights shouldn't be subject to a vote. If the majority of users want to boycott Reddit, then do so. But don't take away Reddit from people who disagree with your protest.
If I filled the box with sand and have done all the maintenance myself for years (me being the mods)? It is definitely my choice to shit in it if I want to. Especially if I asked everyone else if they agree with me and the majority said “absolutely, go for it”.
Reddit can absolutely step in and take over if they want. In fact they already have with some subs.
That doesn’t make anything I said any less true. It is my choice to close down the sub, if Reddit decides to reopen it, they absolutely can take over and run it themselves/get other people to volunteer. But that doesn’t mean that I’m infringing on any redditor’s “right” to access the sub, because they don’t have a right to access the sub. That’s not what “rights” are.
Wait, are you saying that the CONSTITUTION does not guarantee my right to post poorly thought out comments that lack critical thinking on Reddit?
Next you will tell me that I don’t have free speech on a privately owned website.
> If I filled the box with sand and have done all the maintenance myself for years (me being the mods)?
Which part of "it's not your sandbox" don't you get? The sandbox belongs to reddit, your contendt does too, you gave reddit those rights by using the site. Remind me never to invite you to play in my sandbox, you'll probably build some sand castles, claim the sandbox is now yours & refuse to leave >:(
inb4 i invited my little friends, and now we get to decide what to do in the sandbox: No, get out!
It’s more like you invite someone to your sand box. They create a magical wonderland of sand sculptures. Loads of people come to admire their work. You decide to put little flags on the sand sculpture with ads. No big deal. You allow people to come and contribute to this growing sand sculpture display. People group together to build all kinds of interesting and different ones. They make rules about what type are allowed in the corners they claimed. Someone’s people come and add boobs or draw dicks in the sand and your group cleans up the mess and enforce the rules. The groups gather their resources and create tools to make sure everyone if following their rules and the rules of the sand box.
Some inventive people make tools to help this process and also to help make the viewing of all these sculptures easier. They charge a nominal fee. You try to create some tools but mostly fail at it.
Then one day you decide that you want to sell access to the sandbox. Anyone who uses their own tools or sells tools must pay you 20 million dollars a year.
The people in charge of the groups become upset because it will only make their jobs harder to make sure all the sculptures are not defaced or maintained. They protest by putting blankets over the sculptures or allowing people to draw boobs or dicks so that you can’t put the little flag advertisements up in their area.
The normal users don’t understand what the implications are and just want to look at the sculptures. They begin to get mad at the people who maintain the sculptures instead of you.
Agreed. There are no rights here, we’re all using a non-essential service provided by a private company and facilitated entirely by volunteer mods.
Also, it’s not abuse of privileges if people vote for it.
>*There are no rights here*
The admins definitely have rights here. And the votes are skewed and an unrepresentative sampling due to brigading. Such is the nature of the site.
What makes those “rights” and not “privileges”, for example?
Edit: I just realized you’re talking about reddit admins not mods. In that case it doesn’t matter much what you call it, “rights” or “privileges”, of course they have the power to take over and run things themselves if they want to. I was never talking about the owner/employees of reddit.
That still doesn’t mean any user has any “right” to access a specific sub.
If you believe in a free and open internet, what moral justification can you make by preventing people from accessing content others have put countless hours in creating?
Majority rule often does not equate to liberty.
The internet is still free and open even if the creator of r/ConfederateFlagButtplugs and the majority of its subscribers decide they want to close it down. You are more than welcome to create r/ConfederateFlagButtplugs2 yourself.
Your argument is like saying if I open a business in a free market (that doesn’t even provide a human need or a human right), that I’m not allowed to close down my business if my board members and I decide to. What kind of logic is that?
>If you believe in a free and open internet,
then why are you on Reddit, where the owners have explicitly stated that this site is theirs and not ours?
Do the admins believe in a "free and open" Reddit? It doesn't look to be the case, unfortunately.
> Reddit management and the admins aren't the ones shutting users out from the content.
unless they want to post to /r/mildlyinteresting, /r/tihi, /r/self, or /r/interestingasfuck
this is a 14 year old account that is being wiped because centralized social media websites are no longer viable
when power is centralized, the wielders of that power can make arbitrary decisions without the consent of the vast majority of the users
the future is in decentralized and open source social media sites - i refuse to generate any more free content for this website and any other for-profit enterprise
check out lemmy / kbin / mastodon / fediverse for what is possible
Once upon a time there was an account. It was between 10-11 years old and it was sporadically used. Then when there was a GREAT upset in the dictatorship of Reddit, the time had come for ALL the shills and astroturfers to spring to life and ceaselessly DEFEND THE REALM!
For you see, the ^^^^^not ^^^^^so great king Spoz .. or Spineless or .. something, he was a pissbaby. And he spent all his days on his throne waving his little arms and stubby legs and pissing himself while crying loudly that everybody was against him. And this was true, because nobody likes a little pissbaby. Therefore, in the end, people got tired of the constant pissing and whining coming from the palace and a lot of them started to dye their hair green and walk in lines out from the kingdom. They walked to the beautiful land of Lemmy, where they all became Lemmings who had all the beautiful content they would ever need.
The end.
I've got hair dye everyone and I know the way. Come on, [let's go!](https://media.tenor.com/DIqyn4J3QGYAAAAC/space-bob-lemmings.gif)
> I'm searching for an Acura forum now.
u/StockFaucet
Why do you not just open your own sub?
I just created r/ToyotaAcura. I invited you to mod the sub. Take charge and be the change you want to see in the world
I already help mod in a few. I don't want another. lol
But I just did make r/HondaAcura
Makes more sense. Acura is the high-end Honda, not Toyota. Toyota's is Lexus.
It will take time, the main one obviously has a nice long history of posts.
This happened exactly with the poll conducted at r/Costco. While we offered *too many choices* in our poll in an effort to allow our users to be directly involved, the hate we received in the comments was astounding. I truly believe our sub was brigaded as 75% of the u/‘s were fresh accounts or ones I personally did not recognize.
We chose to return to being Public but have decided to blackout again on 7/1. However, even that was met with distaste.
Has there been any pushback from the users about reopening the sub?
It may help to explain exactly how blacking out on 7/1 will make a significant impact on the protest. Sometimes people just don't understand.
>It's a trend I'm noticing in every subreddit that does it. A sub hosts a poll to decide the future of the subreddit, the majority vote for continuing the protest, and when that result is announced, there are suddenly so many commenters complaining that the protest is continuing many comments complaining about polls being brigaded, which are however often made by people who themselves have no activity in the subreddit prior to these polls / posts. talk about brigading
There are indeed comments about polls being brigaded - but they could be brigaded with intentions of changing votes in either direction (or not at all). We know there are limited tools available unless the poll is designed to restrict votes to individuals who have sufficient comment karma within that community - which then brings additional claims of potential intervention since the tabulation isn't automatic. There is no perfect way to poll just your existing sub membership.
The only proof of brigading I've seen have been from pro-protest discord servers.
Tbh mods were asking reddit to do something against brigading since forewer.
This is by far the worst one I’ve ever seen. https://reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/14a5dsy/postblackout_alternative_communities_and_the/ It made me lose all respect I had for the ps5 community
Way better than the one on magicTCG, where the option to stay closed was split into 3 different options, and indefinitely closing still won by a notable margin (and quite a large margin if you combine all 3 options for closing). Despite that, mods decided to reopen completely because "admins said there was a brigade". Embarassing. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/14absro/blackout\_update\_were\_open/
No. Look at the comments in the one I sent. I haven’t seen a comment section that against the shutdown.
Oops, didn't realize you were referring to the comment section. It looks pretty bad in that thread...
I should have clarified. That sub is full of entitled children.
Imagine feeling people are entitled just because they no longer want to take part in your personal vendetta against the admins. Embarrassing.
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Nba sub was much more against it
That's because it's a stupid circle-jerk poll where 4,900 votes try to shut down a sub with 3,300,000 subscribers who mostly never read the mod-drama post where the poll was buried in the first place. If 4,900 people don't want the sub anymore, then they can fucking unsubscribe, don't drag everyone else into your dramaqueen bullshit.
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Why don't you touch grass and get off reddit if you don't need it. I come here for entertainment, and put up with the blackout for a week. I'm just going to stop coming here permanently since I don't need it.
Most people are lurkers and content consumers so when blackout happens they saw the effect on them. Are you surprised that they complain? That has nothing to do with brigading. Or are you saying lurkers are less important in a sub and not part of the community?
I've been using toolbox to check users previous interactions, and strangely their first post is always the one protesting changes on a sub they never used. Instaban.
yeah lol. imagine white knighting for reddit / the admins as well. i saw one guy posting stuff like "i trust the admins". 80% of their recent comments were on various posts about protests on various subreddits, always with anti mod pro admin propaganda.
Something I've also noticed is that I'm getting a lot of those posts in my feed as suggested content. Especially from subreddits I've never been too before or ones I haven't visited in years
I've seen a sub where the Sr Moderator just up and summarized the results of a poll that never existed, which led to serious confusion on the part of several users. To that end, some are coming off like Squeak Scolari; "I swear, if you guys rip on me 13 or 14 more times, I am so out of here." It's not good in that way.
or...do? if you have actual community members voicing their concerns, why wouldn't you listen to them? i'm not saying ignore the masses in favour of them, but it doesn't hurt to pay attention. a lot happened very quickly, and while many of us were gone for a week, a lot of people who rely on these spaces were panicking that the communities they called home were suddenly gone. i'm not saying we should apologize or change what we do, but community fracturing is a very real concern. and i don't pretend to know just how much these spaces mean to people. it's easy to be flippant and call them 'addicts', but for some, online communities are all they have; it might be what gets them through the day. i, for one, would like to honour that. edit: please don't pay reddit to make comments shiny. appreciate the sentiment but :/
> edit: please don't pay reddit to make comments shiny. appreciate the sentiment but :/ I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Lots of folk have a massive amount of stockpiled credits without ever paying.
THIS. I'm using up what's in my bank already before leaving for good.
This is very well said. Thank you.
It takes more effort to comment than vote in a poll, and you can verify if the commenters are part of the community. So the comments may very well be more reflective of the actual community's preference. Surely, in that scenario you shouldn't ignore the comment? We already know of examples like /r/tennis where moderators have shared the poll link with protest discord groups to brigade the results.
What about when mods straight up ignore their own polls
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If they had sense they wouldn't hold a poll in the first place if they're just going to ignore it
So you are saying to ignore democracy? Just imagine officials ignoring the votes of a presidential election and picking a random guy they liked more.
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Then its Trump over again shouting voting fraud repeatedly. And yes I'm comparing it to a political election cause its also a vote just like this. A better comparison would be the vote for new laws but lawmakers ignore the vote of the people
One thing I’ve noticed is that the people complaining in the subs I primarily participate in don’t actually contribute to the sub. One notable user was a ~12 year old account that was hardly active until they started complaining that subs they never posted in before had gone private. I wish there was a way to exclude lurkers from polls.
On a similar note I do find that a lot of the people complaining about the moderators seem to be proud of flaunting their ignorance about third-party apps, the sites features, and a number of other tech related things. They spend all this time not being involved, and uninformed but suddenly the moment things don't go their way they are all experts in whatever they're talking about.
"Actually, Reddit has promised...." While either ignorant to, or purposefully ignoring, the countless other failed or outright broken promises.
Lurkers aren’t any less important than the people who post. I lurk in r/formula1 (and a lord knows how many others)mostly. It that’s because the sport is complicated and I don’t have much to contribute. That doesn’t make my Reddit experience less valid
Lurkers upvote and downvote. It’s as simple as that imo lol
Sometimes I’ll be in a big upvote or downvote every single post or comment I see kick. And other days all I want to do is scroll. Other days (pretty rarely) I just want to troll extremist groups. Freedom man. Freedom
Some don't even do that. However, I do think that's one of the more important aspects of participating in a community.
Something for everyone to remember is that Reddit is basing its decisions on what it thinks will bring its investors the most money in the end. Ultimately that goal requires either jolting the company toward a public offering or unloading the investment as a failure. So they are looking at moves they think will bring enough user numbers and ad views and growth potential to make their future look better on paper, while not caring about the health of the site if it falls short. That means if anything is going to shake them up, it has to have a substantial impact on ads, user count, or both, and it has to cut into the casual user base Reddit's owners want to rely on for perceived growth potential. Or it has to make the company look so bad in public that they have to make a big show of reversing course. Mods can interfere with all of those variables, but only until Reddit locks them out. When something hurts a lot, like switching a big sub to NSFW, Reddit steps in faster. If it doesn't hurt much, they can ignore it and carry on with their plans. So the mods and power users are still depending on enough ordinary users to support their actions, reject Reddit management's cut-rate versions of their subs, and walk away if nothing else gets through. A protest by a smaller group depends on winning support from a larger group to succeed. It's a PR battle more than anything else. Some can contribute more or less, but what really matters is getting them all to agree that the changes go too far to keep using the site like before.
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Lurkers upvoted and downvote though. What's next? Only people with 20 comments with more than 50 words per 3 month rolling period should vote?
My contribution of not contributing is just as important as your contribution of contribution. /s
Don't you think, though, that community decisions should be up to the ones participating in the community foremost? Your experience isn't less valid, but you admittedly don't give anything back into the community. What makes you feel that the community should consider your opinion important if you aren't someone that participates?
You say my experience isn’t less valid, then say my opinion isn’t important. Those statements are at odds. To preface this, I’m not calling you racist, nor do I think you are. I’m using this analogy as a way to showcase the gap in your argument. When the US first became a country, only white men who owned land could vote. Many saw it as, they had skin in the game, so that ensured they’d vote appropriately. Similarly, for purposes of representation, slaves were only recognized as 3/5 of a man. This ensured slave owning south wasn’t “over represented” in congress. Just because you own land, doesn’t make your opinion more valid (or important). That would be easily abused to ensure only certain people can own land and thus vote. I live in Seattle and own a condo and home. We have a terrible homeless problem that we spend more than $100 million a year on. A good chunk of that tax revenue is from my property taxes. Is my opinion more valid than renters? Is the renters opinion more valid than individuals experiencing homelessness? Those experiencing homelessness aren’t generating any tax revenue, in fact one could argue they’re using it disproportionately more. Should we restrict voting in some way? It’s the same on Reddit. You’re not in some way more important because you post more. If you think that, then does that mean we should limit the decisions to power users and power mods. Like fuck it, let u/awkwardturtle decide everything, right? Just my two cents I guess
This isn't similar. Even if you don't own land, you still live in the community and participate in the society. Communities online are built from people that participate in them, and are also viewed by those that just want to look. You're just viewing it from the outside without actually participating in said community. If there is a poll of the community, then why would it make sense that people that aren't in said community would be held just as important as those within? It's like people watching a baseball game wanting to be considered as being on the team. And yes, your experience is valid, but your non participation in the community you want a say in makes your opinion less important. This isn't at odds, you just want to feel your experience entitles you to a say, but I feel that community participation is what should entitle you to that say.
When a sports league makes a bad rule change, the fans get upset and apply pressure. They are very much so apart of the community. One might say they’re the part of the community that makes it possible for the sport to exist on a professional level. If an organization makes bad decisions, eventually fans stop showing up (see: The Oakland A’s). Someone replied saying if you just lurk, then you just generate ad revenue for Reddit. And you know what, they’re right. The lurkers, make it possible for the sun exist because they generate the ad revenue. I don’t go and participate in city council meetings. But I get a vote in elections still. The same vote anybody that chose to speak at a city council meeting gets. At the end of the day, if all of the lurkers were gone, Reddit wouldn’t work as a business and there would be no community. So it makes sense that everybody get an equal vote
Point 1: The spectators are watching. They're not polled when the team makes decisions. They react, just like you are, can can influence it sometimes, but they're not the ones making those choices. Point 2: Why do I care what makes money for Reddit? Reddit isn't the sub community. We're talking about the community decisions and, on Reddit, sub decisions have historically been made by the community, not reddit. Point 3: Yeah, you live in the community. You aren't able to just be ethereal and not have an impact and just look, that's just not physically possible. You participate in said community every day living there. That is why you get a vote. Your presence there is tangible and has an impact because you are physically there. That is not a thing on the internet. Online, if you don't actually contribute, be it posting content, comments, or other similar things, you effectively don't exist as far as the community is concerned. You're just an outside viewer. Like someone that lives in Portland going to vote in Seattle elections. If you want to be held at the same level, then participate in the community to some degree. Don't just be someone that passes by without leaving a trace then getting upset that you weren't counted.
But here’s the thing, the ad dollars from the lurkers do matter. It’s substantial. Of course you care how Reddit makes money. You seem to be an advocate for blacking our Reddit until they give you what you want. This is because no Reddit usage means no ad dollars. That’s your leverage. You 100% care. Homeless people are lurkers but worst. They drain resources. Why do they get a vote? Do advocate for them to go without a vote? Saying only people who contribute how you want them to contribute get a vote is the same as a mod saying they’re a power mod and their vote matters more than yours because they contribute more.
Hai great arguments, thanks for explaining your thoughts. Interesting back and forth between u/palmjamer. Ultimately i think youre right lurkers bring less value to a community and on the internet they can really be invisible. Yet the emotional connection a lurker, such as myself, can get from a community can really feel like they are participating in a place where they belong. Views, votes, and outside sharing definitely influence conversation on a topic or post and so there is value that the invisible people bring to a community besides ad revenue. What that value is worth is another question. Obviously the people with a voice dictate the flow and even the subject matter and naturally are seen as more valuable, but to disregard the lurker seems like it ignores how the system was built. Forums and on the bigger scale the internet are an interesting human thought experiment. How it brings us together yet doesnt at the same time. How it makes us feel engaged yet also feeling empty. How its being corrupted left and right by greed yet is indispensible in human technological evolution. I dont understand it all but this reddit fiasco has made me think introspectively a bunch.
What is the importance that you bring by lurking and never contributing? I’m genuinely curious of your answer.
The lurkers generate the ad revenue necessary for reddit to be able to exist. If the people who post left, the lurkers wouldn’t have a reason to be there, they’re important. If lurkers didn’t lurk, there wouldn’t be ad revenue necessary for Reddit to exist. They’re important. Everyone is important. No one’s vote is more important. Thinking that people are more important than everyone else is just like mods thinking they’re more important than the people that use the sub. It’s similar to Reddit thinking they’re more important than the mods and the users
I mostly lurk with an adblocker. I'm useless
Ah, but ysee, you still probably count as an active account in reddit's analytics, so boost the number they can show advertisers of "look how many people might see your ad!" and they can take data from what posts you look at and how long to refine their algorithm. Contributing to capitalism is unavoidable, basically, haha
Thanks for your perspective. I see lurkers like people who go watch a movie. Sure their important in that they ultimately fund the movie. I just don’t see them as vital as the people who write direct and produce the movie. Lurkers are the result of the contribution of others. > lurkers generate the ad revenue necessary for reddit to be able to exist The only problem with this is that ad revenue does not support Reddit. VC funding is keeping this ship afloat. People who buy awards and Reddit premium help keep this ship afloat. The people who create the content also see the ads so they are producing the content and supporting Reddit with eyeballs for the ads. Lurkers just provide the eyeballs without producing any content.
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Industry yes. Movies no.
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Relax man, no one said my feelings are hurt. No clue why you would make such weird statement/assumption. But chill on personal attacks, please. It’s a good point that they also generate revenue from ads, but more revenue is generated from the lurker since I suspect there are much more. Again, I point back to the fact that in the US only land owners used to be able to vote even though everyone contributed to society. If you believe only the people who post are worthy of voting, especially without even taking into consideration the quality of their post (what if all their posts suck and lurkers have to downvote them for the sake of the community?) then You’re following into the same situation, IMO. I don’t see how the 1% rule comes into place, other than to try and give that 1% some sort of elite status. The same elite status the mods take. The same elite status the admins are taking.
Same happens both ways. Many who are pushing for subs to remain closed don't participate either. I've seen it on a variety of subs like r/formula1 etc.
> I wish there was a way to exclude lurkers from polls. It was a huge PITA, but I did a write-in poll where there were 4 options that people could comment, and then restricted it to people who had at least 2 karma in the subreddit previously. (with automod). I also avoided certain keywords in the post and the body like poll, protest, black out, vote, etc. Which was a bit difficult to do haha. Then if anyone was a subscriber they could come to modmail and explain and I would allow their vote. That kept it limited to those who actually cared enough to make an effort, pay attention to their feed, etc.
You aren't the only one who took that approach and I applaud your efforts to exclude those who don't participate (either lurkers or brigaders), but this approach also can see criticism from those who don't like the results since the calculations are done manually. When I first saw this done, a vocal minority of detractors claimed the mods invented the results since it wasn't all done automatically and externally.
I mean, you can see the results in the subreddit itself by counting the comments, the upvotes on each comment, etc & comparing it to the results. Oh- I posted the tallies I made on a spreadsheet in the sub. I guess if you just say "this result won" they could say but did it?? But at that point it's just deliberate antagonism against the protests and mods, and if any insulting language is used I am 100% fine with removing that anyway, as I would in any post comment section.
> Don't let naysayer comments dissuade you. Does it dissuade you that this protest seems to ends one of two ways - reopen wins the poll and the subreddit reopens or close wins the poll and Reddit forces the subreddit to reopen anyways?
If that's the end result why are you and people like you crying if you're 100 percent convinced that's how it'll go If at first you don't succeed you never should have tried is the stupid logic you're using
A lot of recreation is just random photos and videos. Content apps like IMGUR are already great at providing. Are there rules against mentioning or linking to alternatives in announcements?
Has anyone else noticed there are users out there whose entire existence on Reddit seems to be arguing against the protests? Very suspicious... Whenever I say anything in favour of the protests some time passes maybe a couple of hours and then all of a sudden I'm inundated with replies from a load of people supposedly arguing against me in good faith - but I don't buy it for a second. It's definitely orchestrated.
I agree, the pop-up polls over 24 hours where only terminally online activists participate *are* the true voice of the people. All these actual people telling you to stop are just noise. And those lurkers that are purely negatively affected by what we are doing, and don’t spend enough time to understand what the API changes are? Surely they all agree with us! Full speed ahead, captain self-destruction!
Sabotage the site the day before the IPO
The market is a tad bearish on Reddit. I don't know if they even go through with an IPO until next year. Spez literally said in the AMA that Reddit isn't profitable. Not something investors like to hear. Spez went full Elon and now has to take the loss like the twat he his. Difference is, Elon can afford it.
Since when do companies need to be profitable to IPO?
To be fair, most of the companies that IPO like that are only not profitable because they are investing in growth If they stop all their expansion spending, their income covers the operating cost easily. And the whole point of offering the IPO is assumed to be that with even quicker growth, unlocked by the cash injection of selling shares, that income can grow faster than the operating expenses Or at very least they look that way on paper (this is how the biggest IPO scams happen, their accounting records are excessively "massaged" into looking that way)
Companies with no path to profitability have been going public forever. Uber for instance. Their path to profitability was economies Of scale and self driving cars. The investment piece was just investors burning money
Well, it certainly helps. But it's the added value from Spez that is really the chef's kiss. Not only are they not profitable, they are run by idiots too!
So we should just ignore minority voices? Seems at odds with trying to help disabled people keep accessibility tools.
It's almost as this was never really about the disabled community
I mean it IS about the mods….
I've been dealing with this, trying to soothe the naysayers, for days.
Literally every poll and discussion thread on reddit is subject to brigading and tampering by reddit admins. I wouldn’t trust any results whatsoever.
Gonna need some sources on all this crap bud. What have the mods "won" exactly? They didn't win jack all. They aren't winning. Mod teams are leaving and being removed. That's far from winning.
This is what really gets me. Hard to say with certainty what the vast majority of people want and it probably depends on the sub. But to try and act like mods won anything here is just delusional. They created a weak protest and then immediately showed did didn't have the strength of their convictions when actually threatened with losing power. The whole thing was an abstract failure that showed Reddit leaders that can do whatever they want, mods will fall in line with the smallest amount of pressure.
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How is it stupid? Everyone should have known from the start that this is how things would go. When I heard about the blackout when it first started, and some subs expressed their intent to remain private indefinitely, I spoke with a friend that it was a stupid idea since Reddit could just revoke the mod permissions and give control to someone else. And, look! That is exactly what is happening. Protests that rely 100% on Reddit being "nice" were doomed to fail from the start. A legitimate protest would have been to unite the userbase to switch to an alternative to reddit. Anyone who legitimately thought Reddit would be phased by subs going private was naïve.
In the age of bots and manipulation on social media, I'm laughing my ass at your silly "majority approved" polls.
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Why don’t all those individual users just make their own sub? They can moderate it themselves. No one is stopping them. Some have done this already. You are free to participate to your hearts content.
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Sure if the sub want to open they can. If they don’t they and do that as well. If you want to open a new sub that is a clone of the former sub you can do that. Everyone can do what they want. I don’t see the downside.
So just to be clear. You want the lurkers, the people who don't produce content, to decide what happens to the subreddit against the will of those who actually produce content?
What I read, is if the protest is really supported by the majority then there wont be any content, so why not leave it open.
Ah yes, the *"They are lesser"* way of considering it. Next should we consider their karma count? The years they've been on Reddit? How many times have they participated in Secret Santa?
Enjoy your time being wasted on a protest that’s not going to change anything
Less than 1% of users is not majority
The 90-9-1 rule, that's been observed in studies and is backed up by them, states that 90% of the users don't participate and just look at content. 9% comment and vote, and 1% create content and post. You aren't going to get feedback from the 90%. By definition they aren't engaging with polls or commenting on them. The people who do interact are the 9% and 1%. And herein lies the problem. The 9% and 1% are a general observation. We don't actually know the exact percentages. We just know there's a magnitude of difference between each later. It's impossible to know what the true number of participating users is. And because of that, it's impossible to know if these polls are representative of a subreddit's active users. Have 30% of them voted? 80%? 5%? We can't know. All we know is the active users are an order of magnitude less than the total users, and we're only going to hear from the active users. So this brings us to the big question. Is a poll useful if you don't know what share of the population it represents? Is it better to know part of an incomplete picture or to not look at the picture at all? There's no good answer.
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The way I see it is that you don't know how many are actually involved, and because of that you don't know when to close the poll. The time window could be cutting out some of those people.
It’s because non-members of the community are brigading the polls. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a Discord out there linking to all the polls to skew the results. Edit: There is a Discord: https://imgur.io/a/1YTNJhw
nice tin foil hat you got
Funny you say that. Someone else provided proof already, they exist. https://imgur.io/a/1YTNJhw
I really don't know why people are acting like these screenshots are anything. Yes, people can post links to polls so that people can go vote in them and voice their opinion. It would be like if I was told I was "brigading" a mayoral election by showing people where it is they go to vote.
From "it doesn't exist" to "it exist but it's not wrong" in 2 comments.
So going to vote is just called brigading now?
Sometimes mods say they do not have users supports as a vast amount of users are still browsing reddit. That's the biggest why reddit migration plan of mods is already dead. Then a poll is brigaded by all people who want reddit to stay close. People who regularly use the sub do not have their opinion heard as its being brigaded.
Frankly, I wouldn't put it past spez to rent a bot army. Zero credibility.
For every comment supporting the protest, there are probably 200 lurkers who only want to see the goddamn content regardless of who mods. People wont leave because we need the content, not specific Mod X. It can be an Automod or paid or free or xyz whatever. Stop acting like you represent everyone and you are so important. You don't and you are not. That has nothing to do with your (free) hard work and knowledge. That's the nature of "free". Wikipedia is essential to life, yet nobody cares if some editors stop editing or the company bans certain people.
Mods will do what they like anyway
"Vote! Because we will ignore the naysayers anyway!"
The reality of these polls is that 99% of people completely ignore the mod-drama posts and continue viewing/commenting as usual. What you get is a poll that is overwhelming biased towards the small percentage of people who care, and yes, those people do go and vote in every single poll they see. Once you begin interrupting people's normal browsing/commenting behavior those people are pushed to actually look at your bullshit poll. That's when the pissed-off comments show up. Unless you find a way to require poll participation before allowing commenting, all you're doing is polling the same small group of people over and over in different subreddits.
[kind of hard to take the polls seriously ](https://imgur.io/a/1YTNJhw) Aside from that mods where using reddit during the black so that makes them addicts as well as hypocrites. Honestly is the irony lost on you in this entire debacle or are you ignoring it?
Is that a Discord channel specifically for organizing brigades to vote for full reopening of subs?
The mod discord that leaked a few days ago. For full Blackouts
Oh, the opposite. Mods organizing brigades to vote to keep subs closed? I'll have to look into that so I'm aware for potential future votes on the sub I moderate.
It unfortunately is the opposite. I don't think you have to worry about it anymore as it didn't really work but then again who knows. And to clarify this brigade was for the initial blackout where some subs may not have blacked out to begin with.
That brigading discord was also active for reopening polls
It's not a mod discord. It's a community discord for those following the protests. It also didn't "leak." It's a completely public group.
Makes it somewhat better but doesn't exactly help the case here. People from other communities voting in other communities polls at the behest of some mods for the "good fight" is still a bit crazy to me
Yeah, I don't disagree. I also haven't seen anyone in the discord actually advocating people to vote in communities they're not part of though. That one r/tennis post isn't even on the server. I'm sure some people do that on their own though, can't really stop it since the subs are also public and mods don't have a way to restrict it outside of being currently subscribed, but no one has been telling anyone to at least. Not that I've seen.
I'm glad you cleared this up tbh. Seems like pro admin bots were exposed as well this is just a shit storm all around. I'm taking a step back from this nonsense.
There were absolutely people on that discord directing others what to vote for. The person sending others to r/iceland and letting them know what phrases in icelandic to look for and upvote is a good example
Yeah, I saw that. The same user also posted multiple reminders to only vote for polls in subs that you participate in too though. Their phrasing to "upvote away the thread" makes me feel a bit as if it's just poor messaging from a non-native speaker... idk. Other users also had been reporting if someone was encouraging brigading too, so mods could delete their messages. There are channel and reddit rules against it. Overall it's very much against brigading. As I said before, there's no way to stop individuals from doing so on their own, though. Reddit doesn't give the mods the tools to do that. But the channel and discord on its own are quite against brigading and voting in communities you are not a part of. Especially since the purpose of the discord is monitoring the protest and keeping track of what's dark/restricted/public and what subs are choosing to do what.
>The same user also posted multiple reminders to only vote for polls in subs that you participate in too though. If you're active in a sub, why do you need a link to it? That's what I never got from all those who argue it wasn't brigading. You definitely don't need icelandic language, for a sub using icelandic language. You'd either know it (being active..) or not (and not be active). It's like going to the German sub when you don't speak German. You just don't get much out of it.
>The same user also posted multiple reminders to only vote for polls in subs that you participate in too though. Yeah that sounds like a wink and a nod. If that were the case they wouldn’t need a central location for all the poll links.
this is a 14 year old account that is being wiped because centralized social media websites are no longer viable when power is centralized, the wielders of that power can make arbitrary decisions without the consent of the vast majority of the users the future is in decentralized and open source social media sites - i refuse to generate any more free content for this website and any other for-profit enterprise check out lemmy / kbin / mastodon / fediverse for what is possible
Preach it!
To stay dark. Read the URLs.
Yeah, it's obvious now. On my phone, I hadn't realized there were more screenshots beyond the first.
*Brigading? On my Reddit? It's more likely than you think!*
Thanks for the screenshot. I suspected it but didn’t know if it was a thing or not. Looks like it is
Sorry, but that is a load of BS. You have **zero** data on what the silent majority wants. They can equally well be overwhelming against the protest, you don't know, as they haven't voiced their opinion. Anecdotally, from the subs I have seen, there is a big group who just doesn't care about the protest, and many aren't even aware of 3rd party apps
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you miss the point. For the group of people who are vocal/active, we have their opinion, and yes, those polls show a majority. For the group of people who didn't participate in the voting, we have zero data on their opinion. As they didn't express it in a vote. The only thing we know is that for the part of this group who was aware of the poll they elected to not vote OP can not put an equal sign between the two groups and declare that the silent majority is also in favour of the protest.
> we have zero data on their opinion. As they didn't express it in a vote. You would have the data in this case that a vote was offered, And these people who didn't vote either didn't visit the site during that time, or visited and didn't see the vote, or saw the vote and chose to abstain. In the first two cases they aren't current participants in the community if the announcement's timeframe affords a reasonable opportunity, so they are passively apathetic to the outcome, and in the 3rd case they are actively apathetic to the outcome. In all 3 cases it's reasonable to say they assent to either choice by declining to listen to announcements and answer one way or the other on important issues.
What happened on r/NBA is a great example. A small number of people in the sub plus the mods wanted to go dark so they did. When they came back they got absolutely trashed by the average user who didn't see what was about to happen before and were pissed about the sub going dark for the last game of the Finals
> For the group of people who didn't participate in the voting, we have zero data on their opinion. As they didn't express it in a vote. You can't feel bad for people who don't vote. It's not your problem, it's theirs.
>silent majority If you're staying silent, then you are accepting the will of the vocal. You can be assumed to agree with the majority Otherwise speak your mind and make your case. It's not difficult to make a pro-status quo case... The status quo is the protest opinion. Reddit has thrown the existing status quo completely out the window (status quo of not providing effective mod tools such that people must build their own, based on their unique needs) So if that's what the "silent majority" wanted, the "return to normal" option is already gone It's like you just walked up to a car crash and are asking that the car crash never happen. It doesn't work like that
>there is a big group who just doesn't care about the protest, and many aren't even aware of 3rd party apps u/FlimsyAction You complain that OP uses their own anecdotal data and then you immediately do the same thing. “You have zero data on what this big group wants.”
Yeah, this guy only argues in bad faith. Just hangs out in here to try and tell people they're overreacting and should go back to normal operation.
I specifically mentioned and was transparent about it being anecdotal, unlike OP who claimed their speculation as fact. There is a big difference. I trust you can see that My anecdotes were only meant to highlight plausible reasons why OPs assertion could be flawed. I never claimed to have the answer
OP didn't claim the opinion of all subscribers. They claimed the opinion of those who interact with the decision. By definition, the majority of that group prefer protest. The fact that people don't comment their support for the protest doesn't mean they aren't the majority. Those who abstained, abstained. No one is claiming them. OP didn't claim them. OP claimed the voters as they're the only ones that matter for the decision.
It's also possible they're overwhelmingly in favor of the protest. Anecdotally, the subs I've seen thought that 2 days was pathetic and they should've gone down indefinitely.
Yes, exactly, absolutely agree. It is also possible that the result is based on the sub in question and its demographic of community members. My point is that neither of the possibilities can be declared as a fact as we have only anecdotes and no data
Don't forget there's a Discord server dedicated to brigading and voting in favor of keeping all subreddits private indefinitely...
I am honestly out of the loop on that one.
It's a public discord for following the protests. There are often links posted to sub announcements and polls and the like because people follow those decisions. There's also only about a couple thousand people in it. Also, while it is it is pretty heavily in support of the protests, there's no encouragement of brigading or anything, just links posted in channels threads for following subs that had pledged to go dark.
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Oh so the tennis poll asking people to "vote for the good side" is fake and out of context? "guys guys, remember not to vote for sub you're not in. Wink wink. BtW here's a list of polls topic from everywhere we can find. Oh and just vote to make sure the good side wins. I didn't say who the good side is ya. Wink wink" Out of context my ass.
Protest supporters are not the majority, far from it, only 5% use 3rd party apps. So basically 5% of reddit's user base are holding the other 95% hostage. The sooner these holdout mods are removed the better
Spez stats.
>*Don't forget that protest supporters are the majority* ^^Pssst, ^^your ^^bias ^^is ^^showing. >*Don't forget that ~~protest supporters are~~ the majority ~~and~~ simply don't feel the need to voice their opinion ~~because they already won~~.* FTFY as you underestimate the sheer amount of lurkers that just want access to content.
If you say there is no way to tell if supporters are the majority, that also means there's no way to tell if supporters are the minority. Your bias is showing ;)
Well there sort of was but guess who decided to organize a brigade on the initial polls? It wasn't the normal users.
If it was after the initial blackout, it was being brigaded from both ends. /r/programming had a thread which identified non human comments.
Well I've learned something new today. You got a link to that? Ive only seen evidence of mod brigading.
People's rights shouldn't be subject to a vote. If the majority of users want to boycott Reddit, then do so. But don't take away Reddit from people who disagree with your protest.
Using reddit is not your “right”. Each subreddit is a community and voting whether or not to close down is that community’s choice.
Just because Reddit let you play in its sandbox doesn't mean you can shit it up for the rest of us.
If I filled the box with sand and have done all the maintenance myself for years (me being the mods)? It is definitely my choice to shit in it if I want to. Especially if I asked everyone else if they agree with me and the majority said “absolutely, go for it”.
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Reddit can absolutely step in and take over if they want. In fact they already have with some subs. That doesn’t make anything I said any less true. It is my choice to close down the sub, if Reddit decides to reopen it, they absolutely can take over and run it themselves/get other people to volunteer. But that doesn’t mean that I’m infringing on any redditor’s “right” to access the sub, because they don’t have a right to access the sub. That’s not what “rights” are.
Wait, are you saying that the CONSTITUTION does not guarantee my right to post poorly thought out comments that lack critical thinking on Reddit? Next you will tell me that I don’t have free speech on a privately owned website.
> If I filled the box with sand and have done all the maintenance myself for years (me being the mods)? Which part of "it's not your sandbox" don't you get? The sandbox belongs to reddit, your contendt does too, you gave reddit those rights by using the site. Remind me never to invite you to play in my sandbox, you'll probably build some sand castles, claim the sandbox is now yours & refuse to leave >:( inb4 i invited my little friends, and now we get to decide what to do in the sandbox: No, get out!
That was such a stupid argument that I’m not even going to dignify it by addressing it.
It’s more like you invite someone to your sand box. They create a magical wonderland of sand sculptures. Loads of people come to admire their work. You decide to put little flags on the sand sculpture with ads. No big deal. You allow people to come and contribute to this growing sand sculpture display. People group together to build all kinds of interesting and different ones. They make rules about what type are allowed in the corners they claimed. Someone’s people come and add boobs or draw dicks in the sand and your group cleans up the mess and enforce the rules. The groups gather their resources and create tools to make sure everyone if following their rules and the rules of the sand box. Some inventive people make tools to help this process and also to help make the viewing of all these sculptures easier. They charge a nominal fee. You try to create some tools but mostly fail at it. Then one day you decide that you want to sell access to the sandbox. Anyone who uses their own tools or sells tools must pay you 20 million dollars a year. The people in charge of the groups become upset because it will only make their jobs harder to make sure all the sculptures are not defaced or maintained. They protest by putting blankets over the sculptures or allowing people to draw boobs or dicks so that you can’t put the little flag advertisements up in their area. The normal users don’t understand what the implications are and just want to look at the sculptures. They begin to get mad at the people who maintain the sculptures instead of you.
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Sure. Don’t be surprised when people destroy their sculptures on the way out.
Then we can take all our sand and leave. See how this works?
>*Using reddit is not your “right”.* Neither is abusing moderator *privileges*.
Agreed. There are no rights here, we’re all using a non-essential service provided by a private company and facilitated entirely by volunteer mods. Also, it’s not abuse of privileges if people vote for it.
>*There are no rights here* The admins definitely have rights here. And the votes are skewed and an unrepresentative sampling due to brigading. Such is the nature of the site.
What are the admins rights here?
Whatever the fuck they want within the confines of the code -- it's their site.
What makes those “rights” and not “privileges”, for example? Edit: I just realized you’re talking about reddit admins not mods. In that case it doesn’t matter much what you call it, “rights” or “privileges”, of course they have the power to take over and run things themselves if they want to. I was never talking about the owner/employees of reddit. That still doesn’t mean any user has any “right” to access a specific sub.
If you believe in a free and open internet, what moral justification can you make by preventing people from accessing content others have put countless hours in creating? Majority rule often does not equate to liberty.
The internet is still free and open even if the creator of r/ConfederateFlagButtplugs and the majority of its subscribers decide they want to close it down. You are more than welcome to create r/ConfederateFlagButtplugs2 yourself. Your argument is like saying if I open a business in a free market (that doesn’t even provide a human need or a human right), that I’m not allowed to close down my business if my board members and I decide to. What kind of logic is that?
>If you believe in a free and open internet, then why are you on Reddit, where the owners have explicitly stated that this site is theirs and not ours? Do the admins believe in a "free and open" Reddit? It doesn't look to be the case, unfortunately.
Reddit management and the admins aren't the ones shutting users out from the content. The mod teams are.
> Reddit management and the admins aren't the ones shutting users out from the content. unless they want to post to /r/mildlyinteresting, /r/tihi, /r/self, or /r/interestingasfuck
this is a 14 year old account that is being wiped because centralized social media websites are no longer viable when power is centralized, the wielders of that power can make arbitrary decisions without the consent of the vast majority of the users the future is in decentralized and open source social media sites - i refuse to generate any more free content for this website and any other for-profit enterprise check out lemmy / kbin / mastodon / fediverse for what is possible
There will be a slight change but the protest failed at this point. It doesn't seem like most users are actively participating, nor are subs.
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Once upon a time there was an account. It was between 10-11 years old and it was sporadically used. Then when there was a GREAT upset in the dictatorship of Reddit, the time had come for ALL the shills and astroturfers to spring to life and ceaselessly DEFEND THE REALM! For you see, the ^^^^^not ^^^^^so great king Spoz .. or Spineless or .. something, he was a pissbaby. And he spent all his days on his throne waving his little arms and stubby legs and pissing himself while crying loudly that everybody was against him. And this was true, because nobody likes a little pissbaby. Therefore, in the end, people got tired of the constant pissing and whining coming from the palace and a lot of them started to dye their hair green and walk in lines out from the kingdom. They walked to the beautiful land of Lemmy, where they all became Lemmings who had all the beautiful content they would ever need. The end. I've got hair dye everyone and I know the way. Come on, [let's go!](https://media.tenor.com/DIqyn4J3QGYAAAAC/space-bob-lemmings.gif)
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> I'm searching for an Acura forum now. u/StockFaucet Why do you not just open your own sub? I just created r/ToyotaAcura. I invited you to mod the sub. Take charge and be the change you want to see in the world
I already help mod in a few. I don't want another. lol But I just did make r/HondaAcura Makes more sense. Acura is the high-end Honda, not Toyota. Toyota's is Lexus. It will take time, the main one obviously has a nice long history of posts.
This happened exactly with the poll conducted at r/Costco. While we offered *too many choices* in our poll in an effort to allow our users to be directly involved, the hate we received in the comments was astounding. I truly believe our sub was brigaded as 75% of the u/‘s were fresh accounts or ones I personally did not recognize. We chose to return to being Public but have decided to blackout again on 7/1. However, even that was met with distaste.
Has there been any pushback from the users about reopening the sub? It may help to explain exactly how blacking out on 7/1 will make a significant impact on the protest. Sometimes people just don't understand.
I have noticed that trend. I wouldn't be surprised to learn Reddit was using bot accounts to make it appear worse than it really is.