A ton of moderators have been making changes to their subreddits’ rules (e.g., only allowing certain posts, going NSFW, loosening rules a ton) to protest without getting kicked out. Do you think this strategy of turning a subreddit into shitposts is effective or not?
I’m curious to see what the people in this community think, so please share your thoughts.
My opinion is that these forms of protest, while fun, don’t actually help. Most bring more attention and activity to the sub if anything, giving Reddit more ad revenue (which is really all they care about). And the few that are actually harmful (e.g., allowing NSFW content) are being shut down by Reddit.
It’s been made clear that Reddit doesn’t care about what its users want and is willing to reorder, remove, and shadowban moderators to protect profits, so I’d like to see more people moving away from the platform. Even if the alternatives still need development and are missing important features, mods should start making plans to establish communities outside of Reddit.
Reddit content generation is provided by users (and reuploaded by bots) and Reddit as a company sets up AmAs. Content cultivation is provided by moderators. Sometimes for April Fools, Reddit would have fun community events that really pumped the numbers (they didn’t do it this year, however).
The vast majority of the content is user’s. User’s goofing and doing the John Oliver stunt or posting pictures of actual steam and valves on /r/Steam is STILL content engagement and still gives positive numbers. Slapping users hands and telling them to behave will drive people away.
When something happens to a community and people start leaving, you’ll still have content, but it won’t be nearly as good as it once was. Facebook used to be EVERYONES go to for event planning and keeping up with old friends and sharing what you were up to. People would share 1000s of pictures of their lives and people would comment on them. Then, thr community got mega toxic and your average user found a new home. Check out the Facebook usage stats. Quarterly user’s plateued in 2020 when everyone was mega hostile to each other during the 2020 election cycle and it never got better. Facebook is still there, but are you really using it like you used to?
When your business is reliant on the community, you do everything you can to make that community happy and using your platform if you are interested in long term viability of your product. Maybe /u/spez suspects that nothing lasts forever and the writing is on the wall and just wants to cash one last big paycheck before he goes and bangs hookers in Thailand, but he’s still a douche for trying to capitalize on something he has like 0.5% in making. He’ll disappear like Tom from MySpace and we’ll all move on. Shame it ended like this.
image below: Facebook quarterly users
The Facebook comparison really resonates with me. I’ve always been the type of person to just throw pictures of my kids on Facebook for my family’s benefit, but was never a daily user. During the reddit blackout, I checked Facebook a few times and realized that it is a complete shell of its former self. Browsing it is literally “ad, ad, content not relevant to me, 6 day-old post from a distant friend, ad, ad, repeat.”
It’s not like these companies just die and turn off forever. It’s a slow and gradual death that’s easy not to notice if you’re not paying attention. A lot of redditors are acting like it’s still business as usual, but they can’t see that it’s starting to go downhill.