I honestly don’t know if this is allowed here but I thought this is malicious compliance at its finest.
If you don’t want to drive traffic there I’ll repost what the mods posted below:
POLL: Decide on the future of /r/Pics!
Hello, /r/Pics subscribers!
Boy, what a whacky time we’ve all had lately, huh? Reddit decided to kill off third-party applications, a protest got planned (and possibly exploited by bad actors), the site showed up in the news, various communities started opening back up, others decided to stay inaccessible, and then the CEO of Reddit implied that a bunch of moderators would be removed from their positions!
Crazy, right?
Anyway, we – the so-called “landed gentry” – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the “royal court,” and they’ve told us that we need to run the subreddit in the way that its members want. To that end, we figured that the only reasonable thing to do was directly ask how you’d like things to progress from here.
Which of the following should we do?
-
Return to normal operations
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Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy To be clear, if people choose the second option, screen-grabs from videos will be allowed (provided that there aren’t any visible logos, inserted graphics, or other digital elements present). You could – if you wanted to – look through episodes of Last Week Tonight on YouTube, find moments featuring John Oliver at his sexiest, then post images of those moments here.
It’s entirely up to you! Whatever the /r/Pics community decides is best, we’ll respect!
Vote, friends! Vote now!
(You can vote by upvoting either of the comments in the thread below.)
Voting has now closed.
Our final tally is as follows:
Return to normal operations: -2,329 votes
Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy: 37,331 votes
It would seem that the community has spoken!
Henceforth, /r/Pics will only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy.
(Said images must adhere to all of the community’s other rules, including those mandated by Reddit.)
Happy posting!
Is this real?! What episode is it from!
yes, it’s real. it’s from the episode on coal from june 2017: https://youtu.be/aw6RsUhw1Q8?t=1443
Ah, probably my favourite episode! I’ve never been a big fan of john oliver purely because I find him aggressively unfunny, but showing everyone the ridiculous cease and desist letter with “Let us neither cease, nor desist” is amazing.
It’s edited
no, it’s actually not edited. that exact frame appears at 23:03 in the episode on coal from june 2017: https://youtu.be/aw6RsUhw1Q8?t=1443
“Bob” was replaced with “Spez”
Yes it was edited. But the base image is real. It also resulted in a lawsuit.
oh, i don’t notice that, thanks!
Where they SLAPPED each other.
Definitely allowed. For now, anything that fits in the spirit of malicious compliance is fair game, it doesn’t have to be text only too.
Update on the vote results, for people who don’t want to go there:
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Pro John Oliver: 61.7k
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Return to normal: -13.7k.
I like the malicious compliance but I find that to be a bad way to do a poll. Better would have been one comment with the text “Upvote if you want John Oliver pics, downvote if you want it to go back to normal”.
The way they did it if one group only upvote their alternative and the other also downvotes the opponent then the result isn’t representative. Or at least could be claimed not to be.
It would exacerbate the swing but wouldn’t change the result
And I don’t think maliciously compliant mod is interested in statistical representation.
I agree with you, it would legitimate the results though. Not that I believe that Reddit cares about that either.
Let’s assume that everyone who upvoted their option also downvoted the alternative.
The group A, has |A| number of individuals. Group B has |B| number.
Option A: |A| - |B| Option B: |B| - |A| Option A = |A| - |B| = -(-(|A| - |B|)) = -(|B| - |A|) = -Option BThe results would be opposites of each other and would highlight the opinion of the majority anyway.
r/theydidthema-- oh.
Right.
you can’t both upvote and downvote the same item. the last option you selected is the only one that’s counted at any given moment.
edit: wait, i see. if they’re separate comments, you could just upvote the comment you like and downvote the comment you don’t. i was assuming one comment that said upvote or downvote.
The redditors have spoken. Also r/gifs do this as well.
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archive.ph link for those who don’t want to give reddit traffic.
30,052,708 John Oliver Enthusiasts - Lolol
Thanks, didn’t think of that!
Btw I edited my post to link to your link instead
Dammit, I do NOT need any more temptations to go back to Reddit!! DAMN YOU SEXY JOHN OLIVER!!
John Oliver, the savior of reddit?
Just waiting for the inevitable AI generated NSFW John Oliver influx.
hahaha that’s brilliant
Genius! I wish every other sub did this.
some others are - check out /r/gifs and /r/showerthoughts
Oh lol cool!
Hahaha I hope this catches on, it’s funny as hell
I’ve never been so happy to browse old.reddit /r/pics with an ad-blocker on.
“John Oliver Supports the Reddit Protests’ Use of his Image” - https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/reddit-protests-john-oliver-pics.html
/r/gifs currently is following suit! If you still have a reddit account go vote ASAP! (Also unsubscribe from all your “business as usual” subs as possible, immediately, if you can’t delete your account immediately for whatever reason)
Took a peek and it doesn’t look like there’s any recent posts on /r/gifs ? Like, sort by new and everything other that 5 reddit is killing itself posts is at least 19 days old. What’s up with that?
you probably were on /r/gif instead of /r/gifs
It might be a problem on your end. I’m looking at sub and I see posts of John Oliver.
I see it too! This is the best form of protest ever.
Voting is done, they’re doing the same hahahaha
Oh this is absolutely hilarious.
/r/showerthoughts is also doing something similar.
I gotta go back to Reddit now. Haven’t been on /r/pics for years.
Glad you posted this - its the epitome of malicious compliance! And a fantastic form of protest too. With Reddit admins threatening to demote mods unless they re-open subreddits, this move takes away that ammo. Additionally, after the initial boost in activity due to novelty, the sub will get stale quickly and users will think of migrating to other platforms like lemmy or kbin. I’m all for it!
Edit: This is what I’m talking about. Here is one of those Reddit refugees now!
https://lemmy.world/comment/273363
Welcome, @exixx@lemmy.world!
Thanks! It still feels weird, I had my account for a long time and have a fair amount of karma, but the site has been going to shit for a while and enough is enough. This feels like the very early web or fidonet and I’m stoked to be here.
This may be the best highlight of spez incompetence 🍿 For everyone talking smack on the moderators, this is exactly what they should be doing. Malicious compliance. Make it hard for Reddit to know what is going on. Love to see it.
Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.
Reddit has NEVER been profitable. It’s the classic:
- Takes a bunch of venture capital funding
- Builds a huge user base
- Get bought
- Parent company tries to figure out a way to make money off of you.
- When they can’t, they try to spin you off and IPO you.
- You have your “oh shit” moment and realize you actually have to be profitable now.
This is the crap that caused the dot-com bubble in the late 90s.
Their current business model is unsustainable.
They’re doing the API war out of sheer survival.
The sad part is, we all went along for the ride, using the service and filling it with useful information, never wondering if it was still going to be there a decade or two later.
Reddit wants to IPO. Having gone through the IPO process twice now with a company, I can tell you, the only thing that matters is money in the bank. The more money you have in the bank, the more you can charge for your IPO. When I worked at CompUSA back in the 90s, we didn’t pay any of our creditors for something like 6 months before the IPO to swell the bank accounts. I remember the week before the IPO, we had almost nothing in the store, because we owed everyone money. 30 days after IPO, trucks came rolling in again with product.
You can’t delete r/pics, they would just restore it.
This unfortunately is the truth, at the end of the day they will just find new moderators who wont be acting for the users or at least the majority. I’m a mod and although I want this to work and it may still have some impact realistically mods are powerless. Only users talking with their feet can really make a long term difference and there isn’t a like for like replacement yet…
All these antics can help get people bored with the site though.
Really we don’t want to force users off, we want users to want to leave because of how reddit treats it’s free labour and content or for reddit to actually work with the subs it’s demonizing
Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.
Hard disagree with your first sentence. As @Starmina@lemm.ee explained, Reddit would just force re-open it.
And as explained in my comment, this is causing Reddit users to switch over to Lemmy due to the protesting subs getting stale: https://lemmy.world/comment/289241>
Wow, I totally forgot about CompUSA. I used to love going there as a kid, back when Apple had that underdog appeal. Now I’m a FOSS maxi (just don’t look at my iPhone…).
CompUSA was a shitty place to work.
They’re doing the API war out of sheer survival.
That would be true if they made i fees reasonable or at least gave more time. This change caused mobile apps to shut down. The revenue from that is $0.
This change sucks. But, from what I read, Reddit have NEVER been profitable. If they were smart, they would modified the API so it included ads. I don’t think Reddit is long for this world. Even if these protests were effective, reddit is eventually going away. They’re too big to make a profit now.
When you say “NEVER been profitable” is there a reliable source for that or is it spez?
Hosting a link agregator is cheap, it is purely just text. Yes they now host images and videos, and I think they shouldn’t do that if the cost is a problem, also they could always discontinue it.
Going back to the API. If they really need cash they could work with developers. They could reduce the fees and give 3 months heads up like they have been asked.
The whole spectacle didn’t sound “we need money to survive”, it sounded like “we could make more money from users by forcing them to switch to our crappy app, by shutting down 3rd party apps”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4477033-reddit-unprofitable-despite-growth
Nevertheless, like many IPOs, Reddit remains unprofitable. The question for investors is whether Reddit can achieve minimum viable economies of scale and achieve profitability. So far, there are no indications that this will happen.
There are few other sources that say reddit is unprofitale.
What I’m saying is that their core service doesn’t cost much to run. They could have small team to run everything and would make a lot of money, but their goal is to make it a billion dollar business, when it is not.
BTW: I also find the article funny, on one bad it says they are seeking $15 billion valuation, then it says it doesn’t generate money. So that creates a question, how come a company that doesn’t generate a profit costs $15 billion?
That happens all the time with publicly traded companies. This is the reason why we had the dotcom bubble burst in the last 1990s.
This is brilliant! I had just took a look at /r/pics without logging in and can see its just now filled with John Oliver pics
I haven’t laughed this hard in so long. The malicious compliance is epic. John Oliver can’t buy PR like this, and he has got to be one of the few people that can appreciate being the face of something like this.
