Reddit Gives Final Warning to Subreddits Using NSFW Protest Tactic
The social media platform is once again threatening to crack down on entire moderator teams of several subreddits for permitting NSFW content.
I just have to laugh.
Fuck reddit! I'm here now!
Right? The first few days I was worried it just wouldn’t be the same, but the slower upload of content here has made me browse when I want to without over browsing endlessly. The less active comment sections means I can interact with more people without being buried…it’s just better. And I’m excited to see it grow
Quality has been dramatically better here than Reddit has been for many years. Finding people actually discussing the post in the comments is rare on Reddit, you have to sift through endless lines of off topic puns and memes being promoted by bots for karma farming. The goal of comments on Reddit is to be funny, not interesting or useful. The fediverse is more like Reddit eight or nine years ago, when they were figuring out their control algorithms, building their own bot network to game their own site (remember the subreddit where the reddit-built bots used to exclusively talk with each other for practice? I wonder what those bots are doing today...), and learning how to control the flow of information on their page while also finally making some things more stable.
I'm really curious if any parts of the fediverse can avoid the same pitfalls that Reddit eagerly jumped into. It's probably doubtful since once the advertisers get here, greed will win. It always does. But maybe.
Amen to that! I'm not a super prolific poster here either, but compared to reddit I'm WAY more active, and it feels mre fun too. In 15 years on reddit I have only made 2 threads as far as I can remember, but on Lemmy (and Squabbles) I've been sharing my house plants recently and it feels great!
Yes, the community is much smaller, but also much kinder,and I the average age feels higher here too (I have zero data on it, but just judging by the writing style it feels like there's a whole bunch of people roughly my age (40+) around these parts).
Quality over quantity everytime for me.
On top of that, I feel far more incentive to comment, upvote, and just generally engage here.
Overall this feels like a less hostile environment, without the clickish groupthink that had an army of bots or trolls out to downvote you.
People have mentioned the higher complexity of getting set up on instances as a barrier to entry for the masses. I say wonderful. I'll take a small community of diverse, engaged people over the mobs of span, trolls, and parrots.
Leaving reddit for lemmy feels like finding a nice person who cares after being in along abusive relationship. Never realised how bad it was, or how good it could be.
Is it temporary? Who knows, but I'd rather spend my time making this into what I want then ever looking back.
That's an interesting POV I hadn't really considered before. I'll probably go to Reddit when I need some kind of niche info on something, but stick to Lemmy for just discussion and general time killing, which was my main use for Reddit anyway.
It's a shame how shabbily reddit's board and u/spez (and his lackeys) have treated reddit's users and mods. They benefited enormously from free content and hours of unpaid moderation, yet they chose to throw it all away.
This screams “Please stop this and go back to doing work for free.” They keep threatening but know they need the free labor.
Exactly. And it's driving me crazy how many mods are caving. Like, I get that you care about the community and want it to continue on, but will it even be the same now that you know how little control you actually have? Will it survive the next insane, profit driven decision Reddit makes and refuses to negotiate on? Just rip the band-aid off now like /r/interestingasfuck and others did and let them remove you. We've seen that they can't actually replace what was lost, so let them try.
Them replacing mods is what scares me the most. My subreddit is for advice for stretching piercings. If I continued to protest or even outright deleted my subreddit, and they restored it and replaced the mod team, what quality of moderating should I expect? Like I get it on meme subs, not hard to moderate that sort of content. But I know damn well they aren't going to get people with experience relative to the more specific subs.
If Reddit goes down, what articles will pcmag decide to write about then?
And what will people post on lemmy about?
Lemmy is already busy complaining about meta
Don't worry we'll find something
Hilarious! You gotta admit though, it's kind of like Watching Pawn Stars on the History Channel. Like wtf is this?
Elon and Mark.
Beans, apparently.
Probably things posted here, except they’ll have some trouble sorting out the instancing stuff at first
I got quotes by a PC gamer article after commenting about a random , obscure battlefield rip off was announced for steam a couple of months ago.
I was very surprised upon finding it after a username google.
Thanks….I guess?! My comment was just a random nothing burger (well what’s changed there). Well done ‘journalists’!
They can always rely on AI-written shitpost articles.
RIP EmKay videos lol
I'm disappointed how few subreddits are daring to call their bluff, or put their full weight behind migrating. It's clear they actually aren't able to replace moderators that easily.
r/interestingasfuck still doesn't have moderators. It's been closed for 18 days now.
not so easily to find free labor when you bully them right u/spez
Seriously. I never want to hear how hard it is to mod a subreddit with existing mod tools again. They've rolled over for spez (which is their right) and they don't get to complain about it anymore.
It's for the reason you names that I'm extra disappointed in the mods that "stepped up".
“We are now stuck in a difficult position as we do not want the community to die”
Feels to me like they dug their own grave and now complain that the user's are problem.
What are they expecting after they remove moderators and remove the nsfw status? That the users keep posting? They aren't dumb and I could imagine that some or most people will probably stop posting there.
They think people are there because they love the site. They forgot they love the site because of the content and community. Reddit management dug their grave and jumped in it.
There is a whole set of users who apparently think the mods are in the wrong and that Reddit is right. Whether these are real users, and not armies of bots using ChatGPT to generate content, is up for debate. (But they're definitely bots lol)
I very much fear there’s a lot of real people. Ones that act like asses and get banned from dozens of subs, then complain about mods being dictators or something. Others who think anyone can be a mod and they’re throwing a “”“temper tantrum”””. Others that think it’s just about losing apps with no ads.
It’s full of people who don’t understand, and don’t want to understand the extent of the problem, and I really doubt it’s all AI unless they’re actively giving prompts like “make a comment against the protest, but in the most entitled way possible”.
Pretty sure that quote was from the mods of that subreddit, not the reddit admins.
Why? Why would you want something you love to continue to exist on a platform that sees you as nothing more than free labor.
People are wayyyy to attached to thier social media identies.. I'm like a rat on a ship.. any signs of trouble I'm overboard to the next vessel.
I understand the veterans subreddit. While I never went to that sub, I assume it's a good place for veterans to come and help and support each other.
But the others like Pics or TIHI etc...yeah I'm with you on that.
Oh no, people are quite dumb. There's a lot still that are unaware or just don't care about the drama. I'd wager those people are the ones still on Reddit.
How does that make them dumb? If anything, the fact that they're indifferent to it just means they have other priorities in life.
TPA users were like 3% of the site, dude.
What are they expecting after they remove moderators and remove the nsfw status? That the users keep posting?
Seems like they're thinking exactly that. However, I expect many communities (especially niche communities) to revolt and start spamming unrelated content and straight up porn (or worse -- gore). The current mechanism is to replace the mods with supermods (aka the ones who moderate over 100 communities or something) but I wonder if they will be able to effectively moderate that shit without going private.
It's quite hard to guess what will damage reddit the most. I hope that many niche communities collapse and migrate, but the issue also lies in mainstream communities. One thing is NonCredibleDefence moving. Another thing is stuff like r/manga (which went for a blackout but didn't do much beside it).
Lemmy is good, I hope more people move here, but so far it's gonna be reliant on migrants from reddit and possibly twitter, which is not exactly a good plan
Yes
or else what? They'll bring in paid moderators to do an actual job?
That would invalidate their position as "we're just a platform and not liable for the things our users post". They'd have to take responsibility then and I'm not sure they've got the resources for that.
"This is your final warning, please migrate to FOSS platforms"
It's amazing how fast Reddit went from my favorite place to be online to a trash heap
It's somehow worse than ifunny
TBH I Don't care about reddit now, I'm more into lemmy or squabble now. If its user base grows or declines I Don't care, I'm out of reddit and I'm not going back.
Yeah after getting used to the not-totally-assholes community of lemmy I'm not going back to reddit. The community there kinda sucks
You have been banned from [random large subreddit] for pointing out something that threatens the hivemind POV.
Honestly, that was my biggest problem with the community. Granted, that's great when someone is being a genuine asshole, but over the last decade or so, it has become a little ridiculous.
Honestly stopped caring about Reddit years ago. Mostly just used it to keep up to date on game releases. As long as I have a community-ran source for gaming news, I'm pretty happy.
Reddit are past the point of no return for me. They could reverse all their API changes but I'm not going back. They've show their true colours.
Yep. Duck those ducking duckers. I'm out.
I'm thinking your name should be Dr. Peking. And I'm not sure why.
for me it was learning there was somewhere else to go. Reddit has been garbage for a long time that if you dont argee exactly with someone with a little bit of power you get kicked out of subreddits
The final warning was enough to cause the moderators for r/Military—a forum partly devoted to helping veterans—to stop operating as a NSFW subreddit. “We are now stuck in a difficult position as we do not want the community to die,” the moderator team wrote.
Cowards.
I dont know what everyone was expecting. Enduring nonsensical rules, shitty working conditions and incompetent authority figures is about the most military thing there is.
Fr. Surprises me that military personnel of all people would be so fragile. Don't give in. Post "hey we're moving to Lemmy, see you there" and fucking go. It's 2023 going to a new site is the easiest thing in the world, it's not like 1999 where most of the forum would have difficulty doing that..
I don't think that's fair. People can come here if they want. They can hate Reddit if they want. Let's not demonize communities that decided to reopen is best for their community. It doesn't need to be some judgement "Fuck everyone who didn't come to here".
That's fair. It still makes them cowards though, word definitions don't change because we want harmony.
It's cowardly to make a stand against the admins and then just roll over when they tell you to sit down and shut up. Doesn't matter if it's Reddit or anywhere else.
Agreed. I’m actually really enjoying the filter right now. I mean, I want reddit to fall apart too, but I am more interested in lemmy succeeding, and they are different wants.
I mean, they've got their priorities right. It's reddit's fault that they're killing their own communities. We should try to reach out in subs like this and help them set up on lemmy.
Did you wear the uniform? What are you doing to help prevent the 22 suicides a day among our service members?
This is what the military subs have had to weigh when making these calls.
They can pack it up and move here where they won’t be pushed around like pawns. It’s be pretty easy to leave instructions on how to migrate.
I did not, although my father did. It's pretty grandiose to claim that a subreddit is helping prevent military suicides.
So it’s everyone else’s responsibility to protect people subjected to Israeli wars by the lapdog US government?
Reddit is slowly dying. Major nerd communities like r/startrek migrated already. And remaining users will soon realize that their feeds are becoming more and more lifeless. Kinda like twitter feels since Elon.
Where did they go?
they're here and growing. star trek@startrek.website
I've been hanging around on /r/StreetFighter since the SF6 beta dropped, and I honestly just wish they'd freaking move to Lemmy already or something. I dunno what other forums even exist for the fighting game community at this point outside of Reddit :(
Reddit is slowly dying
But it isn't. It's growing and it will keep growing. Only a tiny percentage gives a shit about privacy and decentralization.
That said, I already much prefer Lemmy.
this is sad when years of work, sweat and commitment wasted WITHOUT GETTING PAID to keep a community alive and full of information to get stamped and threatened by a dickhead
"It’s not OK to show people NSFW content when they don’t want to see it,”
You know what else isn't ok!!!!! Fucking over the entire population of reddit users to churn over some short term profits!
I hope spez buys a yacht or something!
People still use Reddit?
The grand majority of reddit users have more in common with tictok users than forum users. The lowest common denominator is the biggest user base.
They doom scroll and satisfy their addiction, many are kids, they really don't really care about information manipulation, quality content, discussion quality....etc
So they will stay, and the niche groups, those that care and contribute in quality ways, tend to be pushed out.
I think it sure is interesting that data vampires exist but that they also don't care about the quality of their food.
I bet there are hundreds or maybe thousands of these data vampires on here right now scrolling and searching for the text and image based content they use to sustain themselves.
They live amongst us.
edit: this is not sarcastic, but playful
Just bots trying to prove the dead internet theory is real.
Get back to work or I'm going to give you more free time!
Gotta love the ones that are actually NSFW that they want changed to not. Naked selfies is pretty much the tip of the iceberg with Cyberpunk, with a lot of gore and violence and sex underneath. And there's some truly fucked up shit that I don't even want to describe that's there too, as a side quest continuation of main story events.
Isn’t this the admins like third final warning?
What is this, Dragon Ball Z's Freeza arc?
"The planet will blow up in FIVE MINUTES"
Buu saga was worse. Buu went from evil to purely evil to evil incarnate to evilest evil to personalized evil ad infinitum.
Funny but Reddit actually has executed entire mod teams, and will continue to do so
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I wonder if public freakouts was told to remove the NSFW tag. That sub definitely should have been NSFW all along.
My sub did switch to NSFW after the API change, but its definitely one that qualifies to have been NSFW the whole time, as its a subreddit that features stretched piercings, including all types of genitalia. In our 'Final Warning', reddit claims that our sub doesn't qualify to be NSFW, proving that they didn't even check the content within.
NonCredibleDefense is also in that situation. Often the popular posts are literal war footage including death or sexual assault. Recently they changed it back to SFW to comply with reddit's request. Regardless of the content of each individual post, that subreddit as a whole is not appropriate for minors given the very nature of it.
I only go to Reddit now because of one or two forums that don't exist on here yet, But the more I see stories like this, the more I'm inclined to just say screw it and nuke my account.
Honestly, at this point, my plan is to nuke my account. The only communities on their that I really check that aren't on here have devolved into mindless rage-bait. Probably a so-long and good riddance situation.
No one regrets getting banned from digg.
Do it. I did it when BaconReader stopped working, if they're not going to do the bare minimum of caring about their users I'm not doing the bare minimum of caring about my content on their platform. It also makes it easy to not use it again.
Indeed.
There's a schedule I rely on that gets posted on Reddit, but I just stay logged out and see it that way. I've asked on their Discord if they'd also post it on Lemmy or Mastodon, but they haven't replied. It's a very slow Discord though.
I haven't nuked my account yet simply because I think it could do some good. I was a power user and I went back in and pinned a note to the top of my profile telling people to come to Lemmy. So anyone who looks me up, and I frequently got responses in months-old threads, so that's not impossible, will see that. If it convinces even a couple of people, it's worth it.
I did something similar to that with my Twitter account, that and while I stopped using it in November of last year I didn't want to delete it right away in the off chance that things changed and it got better. But after a few months I figured anyone that wanted to find me on Mastodon would have found me and Twitter wasn't any better, so I hit the nuke button. I get ya'.
I just got the data packet I requested from my 10+ year old account. I'm going to try downloading/opening it tomorrow, and if it works (I really want to see what I was talking about 10 years ago) I'm out.
I encourage others to do the same! I've heard that you should nuke all your high value posts and comments by editing them to just "." before deleting, to ensure there's no contribution even if reddit restores the data, which is apparently something they've started to do.
Id love to know what you wanna see here,
lol i think reddit is fucked
You think?
We should direct everyone on Reddit to Lemmy. Then, (this is copy pasted, I'm not a bot) add an option to the third party apps for Lemmy so you can opt in to ads that support your instance and the platform. Force me to use your bullshit app so you can make more money? Fuck you. I came here from Reddit. But I'd opt in to ads to support something that is clearly better.
No ads, ads are evil.
Feed me a donation link.
Why not both? If you want to support with donating, cool. If you'd rather support by enabling ads, cool. I can see it might be a slippery slope.
Why can't we just pay them with money? I block every ad I can, because everything is better without ads.
If there is no option for paying outside of using me as a datapoint, I'm going to be a freeloader.
Also, respectfully to all those here gathered, fuck reddit. It's over. It doesn't love us and never did.
I tried to use reddit and their official app for the last two days before today just to see how actually bad it was. It was nice seeing the communities that I had grown to frequent for the last 12 years. However:
I deleted that shit after the 5th "hegetsus" ad that I saw this morning. Fuck that shit and fuck that shit hard. Like, way to know your audience lmao. Never touching that app again.
It doesn't help our adoption that supposedly pro-fediverse people are purposefully not recommending Lemmy on Mastodon posts because they don't like a community or some developer that works on lemmy
Don’t really care what they do anymore tbh.
I agree. A part of me just wants to see Reddit completely death spiral because that means, people finally stood together for something and made a huge difference. That doesn’t seem to happen in my country so seeing it happen to Reddit gives me some hope that people do actually stand up for their beliefs somewhere!
I just got bored with reddit trying to make money through their users.
Make all posts require mod aproval to make sure you comply with not allowing anything NSFW.
This is the way lol
i'm still using Reddit for porn, but for other topics i already spend more time on Lemmy. the switch is tough, but they definitely can be replaced.
Even porn looks more boring, not sure if it's just me or content really suffered from all this.
Are you sure it's not a natural result of increasingly depraved fetishes? :D
Dude porn was working fine on rif untill like yesterday, i have a moded reddit app but i still refuse to use it. As a side note lemmymsfw is starting to be a good replacement (atleast for me).
I just read the article. I wonder how many bootlickers and corporate apolgists are going to say anything.
This is hubris is really good for the fediverse. I had a relatively piddly account at only 80,000 in karma but I I still closed my account. Good riddance to that last piece of corporate social media. The next thing I want to see is something similar to Pinterest in the fediverse space but it may end up being redunant.
I find it sad for all the useful information on that website ( which, if you come across, do repost it on a lemmy community! ) and the subreddits dedicated to helping others out. It would be great if we could build that on the fediverse, but I can imagine wanting to reach as many people as possible when you're helping out veterans for example.
I was wondering about this, whether just taking some of my interresting or more sucesfull posts and discussions and reposting them to lemmy communities, maybe even summarizing the best comments from Reddit, would be a worthwhile endeavor. If so, it would be best to not do it at once, but gradually over the next weeks or months.
But you are right, I'll definitely do that for obscure questions I had that were answered in a helpful way, so I can finally start writing "lemmy" instead of "reddit" after every google search.
I did it when I was looking up information about lore books from a video game and someone posted all the books as PDF's in a comment 4 years ago. Thought that was a great example of something I could repost!
Indeed for years now I always searched for say "best TV Reddit" and got good answers instead of advertising
It's funny that they think they can't be replaced. It will take a while but 5 years from now Reddit will be the MySpace of social news of they don't stop bullying their users.
Five years is too generous, I think. At the end of the day, Reddit is just a forum and forums aren't profitable. Unlike the time of the Digg migration, the technology and platform have been commoditized.
It could be profitable if they just stuck to the basics. Having 2000 employees is ridiculous, they're trying to do too much.
So let the admins have to figure out new mods for all these huge subs. It'll be a shit show. Either they'll have to pay internal people or they'll get people that can't mod for shit.
Also with BotDefense leaving Reddit, whoever takes up the modding duties will have a much harder time moderating overall. They'll be less experienced, less invested in the community, and have a much harder time moderating.
Plus, I view those mods as spineless for caving the protest and making it possible for spez to boot the original mods simply to "keep the content coming"
Mfer there's the literal entirety of the internet available, your precious TIFU can wait a few weeks, everything is okay.
That's the biggest shoe to drop so far, imo
I've been thinking this. I get that reddit is a huge platform, but that's exactly why we should let them figure out their own mess. It's not our problem.
I wonder if internally, they're panicking.
I sure hope they do, but most of all, I hope that specifically Spez is panicking.
I just got my data takeout request granted (110 MB) yesterday, so time to follow up with a GDPR request to then nuke everything. It's the only way to make sure.
I’m still waiting. How long did it take for you?
About 3 weeks I think.
How did you place the takeout request? Would like to do the same thing.
How did they send it out to you, via message or email.
I submitted my gdpr a couple weeks ago, but my accounts all used temp emails that I can't access anymore so I wouldn't get it if they sent it there.
My data takeout request was a download URL delivered by a message. I can't submit a GDPR request yet since Reddit allows you one request per 30 days.
The normal data export request gives you a pm with a link with an expiration date.
What is this? The Final Final Final Final Last Warning before the Last Final Final Final Final Last Final Warning?
I think the next step is to announce privatization of subreddits. Take a week to get all active members approved and then go private until they take the protests seriously or the site just stops growing and dies off
Then the admins will just override them and force the subs public. They’ll also remove the mods and appoint new ones. The only thing anyone can do is stop posting and leave.
But at least we are doing everything we can to inform everyone about what’s going on, why it’s bad, and why we’re upset. We also let them know that there’s a place to go where we can rebuild what’s lost.
Moderators there are volunteers, responsible for curating the content that users post... The mods just need to limit their responsibility and only enforce the site-wide rules.
Allow their subs to devolve to shitposts and memes.
Reddit is already dead. It just might be a few years before Spez and co figure it out.
They already threatened to stop this.
After the blackout, it seems the Admin sent out a generic message to mods of every private sub giving them a deadline to reopen, regardless of whether that sub had already been private prior to any talk of a blackout. Examples give in this post.
They should just migrate to other platforms or join us. I don’t understand why would they stay on a website hostile to its users like this. They want to protest on the same platform that is the source of the problem…
Because Reddit is an addictive pattern. I’m still getting used to post-Reddit life. It’s been very very similar to quitting smoking for me. It’s been genuinely disruptive to my life. I get why people just want to maintain the status quo on their personal lives rather than figure out how to move forward
People get complacent and resist change.
Admins think NSFW means sexually explicit? Wrong it means Not Safe For Work, so gaming subs qualify. Entertainment subs, especially swimsuits or violent topics qualify.
It is hard to give up on Reddit because of they have the size/traffic advantage. If enough activity occurs on platforms like this over time, more will be tempted to jump ship.
I would add that the explosion of third party apps is going to be huge as well. The whole decentralized/multiple instance can be a bit challenging for some. Giving use an app that behaves like the old Reddit apps will ease the transition.
I literally only use Reddit for porn, and whilst Relay was working and still is, I get a warning that this isn't possible unless I use the official app, or the website... All my mobile usage from Reddit has pretty much disappeared.
They should have back tracked, but doubling down is a death sentence for me. They can keep having posts, but 99% of them are already reposts from other sites - Reddit as a whole may as well be a combined Facebook style echo chamber and Tik Tok archive, because these days it doesn't feel like it's much else.
does everyone only use reddit for porn?
like shit i only use reddit for porn now i thought i was weird.
unless we're both weird
I use Pornhub like a regular person. I’m not gonna get off to some 15 second gif or go browsing through someone’s profile to see the same video reposted in 30 different subs
I used it for other stuff but when porn popped up on my feed I'd often forget about that other stuff and go down a rabbit hole of "damn, she's bad af! Anymore of her?" And whatnot
I ONLY did that bc Boost had a handy download button and made it super simple to collect the videos I liked. Before that I never used redshit for porn as when I jack it I just go to the hub or w/e as redshit's format regarding porn is too inconsistent for my liking. I'm picky, and will only find about 1 out every 50 women to be my type regardless of sub.
Just wasn't worth wasting my time on. However, with the download ability? If a baddie popped up I'd go through the profile and put the best videos in the spank bank to jack it to later.
Now Boost is dead. I hate the official app with a passion. Wouldn't use it if it were excellent bc of the huge "F YOU!" The site gave me and really doubt they've even implemented the download feature to the official app yet.
Hilarious how it took them so long to add a download feature. For many years i'd constantly see people tagging the video downloader bot or whatever or asking "where can I download?" And thought it was crazy that redshit and so many apps STILL hadn't implemented an easy download function when Boost has had it since day 1 of my use and always been so damn simple
I learned that if you create your own subreddit, it bypasses the restriction.
This is the problem with people that think in terms of being "management". Management will always have an adversarial relationship with everyone else in an organization simply because they think they have to. The longer they stay in those positions the worse it gets.
I hope they like their strict editorial control they're enforcing.... I'm sure that doesn't do anything to affect their Section 230 protections.
Best idea I’ve seen so far is to comply - and let the nsfw posts just keep on coming. Show the advertisers how their ads are being shown next to nsfw, and see how that goes.
I’m not sure Chumba Casino really cares what their ad ends up next to tbh
I can understand that mods of communities like r/Military feel that they have a duty to serve their community and are worried about no longer being able to do so, unless they comply to the Reddit diktat. But there is an alternative they should embrace - come and join us on lemmy! You can build your community again, in a much safer haven.
Reddit decides to “crack down” on the protests instead of realizing that it’s all because they’re being jerks.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
"Post more porn!"
"The internet is for porn"
Just grab your dick and double-click...
Intrinsic truths out there.
Wasn't there once the CEO of a hard drive manufacturer companies who said in an interview "our hard drives are for porn"?
I didn't get any! I got it for the Private sub before. I demand my blackmail from modcodeofconduct. I should send some "FuckYouSpezs" around and see what happens. If anyone from Reddit monitors this, the sub in question is /r/mushing
They’ll be put on double SECRET probation!
I don't get why more people don't just use ad blockers. The Reddit staff wouldn't even know what's happening until it's too late.
Maybe they already know, that’s why they are purging the third party app and try squeeze money until ship is sank