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Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible
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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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so many leaders are forgetting what the point of protests is. yes, protests are annoying if you're a leader. but they're better than the alternative. that's the whole point.
They're better than the OLD alternative, which was total boycotting at best, and torches and pitchforks at worst. The NEW alternative is complaining about it for a week or two, then continuing on without making any changes at all. They don't mind the new alternative.
The new alternative is becoming obsolete
I sure hope so, but I don't see much changing. I guess we'll see by looking at where Reddit is at business-wise by next year. People were saying it was doomed last summer after the 3rd party app fiasco, and their daily traffic has only gone up since then. I've long since lost all faith in the masses making the best choices for themselves.
well the number of bots has certainly surged....
Although the quality has noticeably decreased. The number of bots has shot up a ridiculous amount.
The quality on Reddit has really gone down with content creators disillusioned or gone, fake content everywhere (I've seen almost an entire scrollable thread copied comment-for-comment), and so many users wiping their comments.
The owners are acting like everything is fine, but I think there's a good chance it keeps hollowing out until the appeal isn't there even for casual users. They can't really turn back at this point, they burned the bridge.
i'm not yet sold on this "old vs new" thing. while i do agree that it would be better if people were more engaged/active about boycotting things and pulling out the pitchforks, my understanding is that hasn't been the historical precedent in situations like this. the pitchfork stuff certainly did happen quite a lot in the past, but my understanding is that it was for more extreme problems than a social media company shutting down third party apps (which many people didn't even know about). but then again, it might be hard to compare this to the company transgressions of the past.
my understanding is that frustration is building, and if things continue in this direction, they will reach a tipping point where people do actually stop using the website all together and switch to alternatives. and, this ban on protests will give the reddit executives much less information on how close things are to that tipping point. (not to mention that the ban itself will probably accelerate things.)
but i could be mistaken about this, and i'm open to changing my mind on it.
You can't even make an allusion to torches and pitchforks on Reddit. Legit, they'll ban ya.
I have, never, in my life, posted any serious encouragement of violence on reddit.
I've still been banned for it like 50 times because I pissed off a mod
But that complacency isn't happening to everyone. A lot are just festering, slowly digesting more incredulous and radical propaganda/influencers. Every ones base reality of the events that are happening over the country is getting completely skewed by the new types of outlets like tiktok that they flock to because of the lack of accountability by our elected officials and journalists/news organizations.
During just this last hurricane Helene I've heard more anger and outrage about the government than anything to actually do about what's been hit or what the people and rescue workers are actually doing. This is how we get mass shooters and assassinations becoming more prolific, people aren't just complaining and going about their day. They're nodding and grinding their teeth while smiling.
I have made like, idk, maybe three reddit posts in the past year. Apart from incredibly specific niche topics which don't have enough folks here to get a good answer, I don't use Reddit.
The old alternative is better IMO, makes change happen one way or another. Specifically the unsanctioned, and non-peaceful protests. Boycotts don't work in the days of ad-revenue, since ad-revenue funded companies have immunity from user dissatisfaction in that regard (can replace a substantial amount of users with bots that look at ads and they still get ad-revenue).
What we need are old-fashioned style pitchforks and fire protests against them, but in the digital age, using cyberwarfare, like this.
(reposted because SJW deleted my others)
Even archive.org can't resolve archive.ph
Something Great and something French
People haven't been using the alternative, and that's the problem. Reddit and tech giants have grown complicit. They do not believe people would do it to them, or they think they could survive thousands of people trying to do it to them, if one can then many can.
https://youtu.be/rimtaSgGz_4
Protests: a pressure valve to release steam. You gotta let them get out there and march around for a little bit. Let them walk it off. Then proceed to implement the next new tyranny a little bit at a time.
The violent ones produce change one way or another. They're significantly less desirable for leaders, and that's kind of the point.
Or just agree with what your betters want you to think, obviously.