1255
Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible
(www.theverge.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
1255 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
59070 readers
3472 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
They're about to make another wildly unpopular move. Get your popcorn ready.
Let's be honest with ourselves - no, it won't be wildly unpopular. This change affects very few people and the people still using Reddit at this point likely won't care much, and I have doubt any future change would cause much outrage either.
Because think about this - who is actively complaining and gnashing their teeth about the continued downward spiral and still scrolling, posting, moderating there at this point? I'd love to believe more people would jump ship - but if it ever happened it would take a far larger-scope fuckup than anything we've seen so far.
You know they're going to keep escalating.
The fact that they felt the need to do this says a lot.
Not in any way the average user cares much about.
The causal social media user cares for two things:
A constant uninterrupted stream of content
Dopamine in the form of upvotes/likes/what have you
If these two things aren't interupted, 90% of users won't care.
Then why go to the trouble of making this change?
Because Reddit is in the unique position where a small amount of users can affect a vast swathe of their platform - moderators.
Most mods don't care, by volume. The ones that do are often also the ones that are more active, more engaged, and more entwined with communities outside Reddit.
During the protest last year, polls come back favorably pretty much everywhere to shut down - but after the shutdown actually happened, a tidal wave of lurkers who never vote and never comment came out of the woodwork to complain and call it all stupid. Public opinion of all users is likely against practically any protest that could happen.
I don't like it, but that's how it is. The best realistic outcome is that a large contingent of content creators and more informed users leave the site - but how many of those are left that haven't already vamoosed and are still willing to leave under some unknown worse circumstance?