r/steam (maliciously) complies with the call to open again

Aurix@lemmy.world to Malicious Compliance@lemmy.world – 1455 points –

The subreddit r/steam, about the digital game storefront, received as many other subreddits a notice to open the community again, or else the mods would be replaced by those who abide.

The mods followed suit posting the following automod message under every new post:

As ya'll likely know, we've been dark to support the blackout against reddit's antagonistic behavior towards its own userbase. The admins sent us a message today saying we must open or get removed, so here we are.

For those of you browsing this subreddit on non-official apps (Reddit is Fun, Apollo, Sync, Boost, etc), they will break on July 1st due to reddit's new policies. We're opening back up but will leave permanent stickies in the subreddit and threads to keep folks in the know.

Our Discord [contains link to https://discord.gg/steam] server is active, don't forget to check it out.

Good luck and god speed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

On visit, you quickly notice there is a community wide effort to focus on the literal topic of the given name and post about vapors, steam trains, and kitchen appliances. While posts about the gaming platform get downvoted.

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This blackout has really shown which subs have actual in-touch moderators, and which ones are just the admins' puppy dogs

A while ago, I had a comment auto-removed on WPT and got a message it was because my account was "not in good standing." When I messaged the WPT mods, they explained that they were test piloting a new tool the admins plan to use. For example, if you have a throwaway email address, no email address, or are connecting via VPN, you may be "not in good standing."

With things like that on the horizon, even if they roll back on what they're doing now, we're still not likely to have a very good time on that site.

I can't blame the mods who are trying to make change through protest (and who may not even be aware of the "not in good standing" BS), but I don't plan to stick around, and I don't foresee a very bright future for reddit at all.

What a great idea. Just use an algorithm to ban any unprofitable user. Can't lose!

That explains why I got banned a while back and was told I violeted the TOS, but the crime they listed (Abusing the report button) was neither in the TOS nor something I actually did.

Speaking of segues, I didn't realize I'd been on lemmy for ten months already. Huh, look at that!

Honesty I think the big political subs are incredibly bot infested. Political content is an amazing way to make people mad and get them to spend more time on a platform, increasing engagement and letting reddit deliver more ads. It's not like it would be the first time they used bots to drive engagement and make communities look bigger.

Worse than bots. Active foreign influencers.

The bot problem is probably domestic. Reddit has much more to gain from artificially driving engagement than any "foreign adversary".

The whole site is bot infested! Especially the large subs, but I've personally had scambots pop into my posts even on smaller subreddits.

People who say they won't leave reddit because "there's no good alternative" really have their head in the sand about how bad it really is. Nearly every alternative I've seen suggested is at least better than reddit (except for the really far-right ones like voat).

Pretty much any big sub is totally unusable. The only reason to be on Reddit is for the niche hobby subs

And unfortunately, those are the ones most difficult to find alternatives for.

I absolutely resonate with both your comments, it's the best function reddit served imo. The big mainstream subs were just content factories to create posts to doomscroll through.

Can confirm. You don't need to go far to find dog-piling groupthink ruining discussion.

Don't forget that for many years reddit was the home of the most inciteful Donald Trump propaganda platform with r/t_d.

and dont forget reddit is also the home of the most inciteful Chinese propaganda platform with /r/sino

Ah. So basically China's Social Credit system, but for Reddit.

https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality

Often, the SoCS is merely invoked as a metaphor: either to depict some technological threat at home or to portray a techno-dystopian China.

This is symptomatic of a tendency to see China not as a real place with real people, but as an abstract “negative opposite” of “us”.

Interesting article, but according to it there where some pilot studies that tried to penalize citizens based on their social score. So I don't think the meme is entirely wrong.

To try and be charitable to the WPT mods: that sub is a magnet for bots and bad actors. All those measures sound like a shotgun approach to combating spam to me.

I really don't envy having to moderate a large politically oriented sub like that. I imagine it burns you out fast to being open and fair-minded in how you approach moderation due to the sheer avalanche of bullshit you're confronted with cleaning up.

I do understand that point of view, but the fact that they're piloting a really invasive tool on behalf of the admins and subsequently refused to go black -- these make me feel far less charitable

Combating bots by banning anyone without an email is understandable and seems doable for the near future, but like it would mostly be a hiccup for the people churning them out.

Google ignores any periods in an email address, so if you want to sign up with the same email all you have to do is fill it with differently-placed periods. What are they gonna do? Ban everyone who shares your name from having a reddit? Ban Gmail? If they did, there's still the plus trick that isn't specific to gmail

The plus and period thing isn't difficult to filter out in their email check.

But I do agree that requiring emails is a non-issue for spammers.

I mean, look at any other platform that requires email, and they're all covered in spam.

I can't imagine a website so anti-CCP it utterly internalized the social credit meme (despite it being somewhat more nuanced in reality, I still don't approve of it, just learned it gets exaggerated in the west) would take well to an invisible 'reputation system' that demands data collection and punishes privacy actions.

The vibes continue to deteriorate.

A while ago, I had a comment auto-removed on WPT and got a message it was because my account was "not in good standing." When I messaged the WPT mods, they explained that they were test piloting a new tool the admins plan to use.

I'mma need some sauce for dat pasta. That's too wild to not post screenshots.

https://i.imgur.com/U79L2kV.jpg

There ya be

When did this happen? During the blackout? You say "a while ago" and I'm just curious.

This happened 3 weeks ago, just before things really started to get ugly on reddit

The mods of r/NBA continued using the sub during the blackout and discussed the NBA finals and Denver's parade.

The moral fortitude of most pro sports fans is abysmally low, so that tracks with my expectations

Reddit is trying to go to war with the kind of people responsible for Boaty McBoatface and they think they're going to win.

Reddit execs don't care when people post like this. They aren't browsing the sub, all they see is user engagement is back up and that's a win. They can sell that to advertisers as a win. If you showed them the page they'd think it's weird but they probably wouldn't know it have ever been any different.

The only win to be had with the sub re-opening is to post nothing at all.

Hardly anyone is going to spend hours browsing pictures of steam and engaging with it vs actual content so this certainly is not great for reddit.

Yeah but that's not what they're doing. They're doing a contrarian circlejerk that'll get boring after a few days or until the next thing happens with the steam platform that they all want to talk about. There's already a highly upvoted post there about the UI update.

If the mods are true to their word they should be deleting anything related to the steam gaming platform because now its a sub about steam engines

I think these malicious compliance subreddit responses are as fun as the next person, but honest question: doesn't this work out in Reddit's favor? They don't care what's posted as long as content is being generated and traffic being driven to their site, right?

There is the nuance to it. The subscribers did not sign up for this initially. Therefore they will have to build a new community up which certainly won't have as many subscribers for a very long time and none of the post history.

At the same time posts actually asking about the Steam platform get downvoted heavily and thus dissuade further interaction.

Effectively the sub becomes useless, just the same as if it had stayed closed. It will drop in engagement in the long term.

The John Oliver memes attract more mainstream attention and clearly signal to investors the platform is not healthy, irrespective of the traffic it causes.

With more and more subreddits joining in on this, the All page gets flooded with shitposts annoying everyone. Those who stay certainly won't want to deal with this all the time and unsubscribe.

Of course group dynamics are unpredictable at times, but reddit is certainly more in turmoil than whatever traffic.

Not to mention that the argument that moderators are acting in bad faith against what the users want isn't really holding up if a rather decent chunk of active users are in favor of doing this.

r/pics held a poll and their users CHOSE the john oliver memes. other subs are doing something similar, giving 'go back to normal' as an option because otherwise the admins might just remove them anyway for not giving users a real choice.

THIS!

i truly thought going to a different site would at least mean no more 'this!' comments :(

Thanks, I was missing that point of view but I see what you mean.

I guess the way I see it is that, right now, people are enthusiastically joining in, which is still driving a sense of community. I guess I'm not as convinced that, long term, people will be driven to make new communities. I feel like the more likely scenario is that people will grow bored and go back to their normal, everyday posting.

Edit: I do agree the invester point is definitely one I didn't consider and is definitely a huge factor to all of this. Of course, it goes without saying that it at least signals the turmoil at Reddit and brings more attention to it. Not all press is good press in this case.

Whatever happens, I fully intend to sit back and enjoy watching the drama unfold.

I feel like the more likely scenario is that people will grow bored and go back to their normal, everyday posting.

I think it's more likely people will get bored and just stop going to reddit. Right now the ones taking part in the protest are the creators and hard core users, while the casual users either aren't taking part or are just not using reddit right now.

Longer term this will destroy reddit on google searches ruining one of the major drivers of traffic.

In the short term it's a question of if the casual users get tired first and stop going to reddit, or the hard core users get bored of trolling spez. If the former happens first then reddits non-troll traffic dies off and when the hard core users get bored and leave and then there will be almost nobody left.

Ultimately in order for the protesters to win they don't need to permanently destroy reddit, just to effectively shut it down for the next 6 months or so as literally this entire thing, both the changes reddit instituted and the backlash, is about the IPO. Spez was looking to pump the value quickly so he could cash out and so he went with some incredibly aggressive and anti-user policies that he hoped would generate a massive revenue spike and look good to investors. Instead the users are giving spez a boot to the teeth and reminding him that he has nothing without them.

Not really. The traffic they're getting from it is unsustainable and any would-be investor who is paying attention will notice this. This is really more a tactic to shatter the narrative that the mods do not represent the will of the general user and they are forcing the protests onto them.

I don't know why I keep forgetting about the upcoming IPO, but the point about investors is definitely a good one. I do agree that whatever happens, this is a huge signal that Reddit admins have fallen out of favor with their userbase, which is certainly not tenable for functional company.

Honestly, I'd be shocked if Huffman is still CEO in 6 months.

Would they? I'd assume they're getting most of their info from spaz, who will just point to the dip and then "see, number go up."

IPO's are risky for the investor. If the company is overvalued before the IPO, a huge chunk of money invested disappears almost immediately as the stock drops. So the big investors will be doing their research before putting their money in.

It depends on what happens next. Short term there definitely isn't any harm. Longer term if the content stays as is it gets stale and dies. On the other hand if the people keep finding creative ways of posting content in this "new" format it seems like it breathes life into the site*___*

It makes me sad to see what happens on Reddit, but actions like this keep my hopes up. Not for Reddit itself, but for the community and its people, wherever it will be. :)

It's good to see people are still willing to fight any kind of bs in droves like this. I was worried that would fade when the stress of the pandemic did. But it hasn't. We need people to fight to make the changes happen that we've known needed to happen years ago.

I don't understand the rationale behind admins compelling mods to reopen the subreddits. Aren't subreddits meant to be created and managed by the Reddit community? Shouldn't it be the community's decision to either close it or continue running them?

The rationale is: profit. Ultimately reddit relies on users for content, and they're hoping if the remove the organisers of the strike (the mods) and replace them with scabs, that the users will stop striking.

There will be scabs eager to volunteer their time as moderators - at least for now - solely for the perceived power.

At least until the spambot onslaught begins and they start to find it incredibly difficult if not impossible to keep up with the endless flow of spam due to their lack of assistance tools and beneficial third party apps.

This is how I am protesting. For all my subs, we have switched off all our moderation tools.

It seems more like they just want to give mods the illusion that they can make executive decisions about the subs they run so that they'll work for free to Reddit's benefit.

A few days ago, Reddit said that they "supported communities' decision to go private" (or something like that). Now that communities actually did it, they're backtracking.

Subreddits being controlled by the mod and community is just reddit's public face. Behind closed doors, the reddit admins see themselves as the masters.

Subreddits being controlled by the mods and community is just reddit's public face. Behind closed doors, the reddit admins see themselves as the masters.

On one hand, I really wish there was a RES add-on for Lemmy. Just so I could filter out the cascade of posts about reddit. I left the site and don't give a shit if it burns or not. On the other hand, this is pretty funny to read about.

I've been considering making something like RES for Lemmy. Not sure if I really have the time, but if nobody else steps up to it in the next couple of weeks, I'll see if I can.

Why not just contribute the features you want to Lemmy itself?

I'll probably do both. Not everything from RES would be accepted into lemmy-ui, I think.

RES was so fucking good. You could do pretty much anything you wanted with it the features were endless.

I think as long as you implement features as options it shouldn't be a problem.

Exactly. We don't really need RES for lemmy because we have lemmy-ui project. It's all out of my wheelhouse, but with community contributions, there's a lot of awesomeness that could be added to it as optional elements.

I'm not well practiced in Rust, but that is a good idea. I have been meaning to learn Rust. Although an extension does allow for features that may not be accepted into Lemmy.

I kind of figured something like that would pop up. I don't have the skills to even know where to start.

I love these wonderfully petty reactions to the Reddit issues.

Are there any other good examples out there for me to enjoy (I have already seen r/pics.)

r/art is now only allowing artsy John Oliver pics...

It's perfect. It really should just be ONE thing that all the subs do (like john oliver related content). This will be funny to start, get old, and people will still enjoy posting it but it just won't end, they'll stop coming and reddit will die in a pile of John Oliver's sexiness from across all the big subreddits.

The best way for the Reddit community to fight back is to leave to another community. In order for that to happen the Fediverse options have to keep growing and improving, like they are, so that people leaving feel comfortable knowing they have a good option. Reddit will be dead in 6 months.

I agree, although it can't hurt to also accelerate that process by making it unbearable for scabs and normies to use the site. It also helps by setting a precedent for any future centralized social sites (like squabbles) who may try to profit off their users or go to war with the internet. Maybe it might even make them open to the idea of federation (probably not but at the very least it'll make them leery of doing stuff like Reddit, unless they're just blatantly stupid like Huffman is).

Epic sub bouta get pretty poetic. Wonder if we can pull it off with other subs. Trees being about trees, Rimjob Steve being about a man named Steve who makes vehicle rims, Piracy with actual pirates, Cats vs tech being about cats actively destroying pieces of technology etc

Trouble is there is both trees and marijuanaenthusiasts subs so that would kinda cancel each other out

As if marijuanaenthusiasts is filled with enthusiasts and not just stoners. There's a big difference between a gourmand and somebody who just loves eating

Not sure if I am missing the joke but that sub is about trees, the tall woody plants that give you shade and not the kind that get you high.

Wait

Cats vs tech is not about cats destroying Tech??????

From what little I've seen it's about cats being amazed or freaked out by tech

Rimjob Steve? Am I missing out or should I just not dive into that rabbit hole?

Rimjob Steve is about situations like a guy named PeeIsSquirt giving you financial advice

This is going to be interesting in the long term for a lot of subreddits when people sort by top posts. Similar to when ever sub had a net neutrality post stickied

Nothing better than looking for some good NSFW content, going to the top of all time, and seeing nothing but net neutrality posts

I'm glad those were there but they did lead to some funny situations

From an ad revenue point of view, does this matter? Posts/ views/ clicks are all the same to them, no?

People will eventually stop visiting if a subreddit no longer contains content that is interesting for them.

Why funny, this just gives Reddit noise and numbers regarding blackout and numbers

u/spez tries to paint it was just mods trying to be powertripping and not standing for the communities. This refutes the sentiment along with the reactions of /r/pics and the likely coming r/aww action.

That though process won't even cross their mind. More like "See? The reopened communities are very active and actually generate MORE clicks now. We were right to force them open!". Only if the new direction would produce less clicks or advertisers are bothered by it ("I wanted to advertise my camera in r/pics but the new direction makes it unprofitable") they might look into where that "sabotage" is coming from and care about it.

I was surprised that r/godot didn't turn into a discussion devoted to Samuel Beckett.

People can complain all they want about reddit, as long as it's on reddit, reddit is fine with it. People do the same about twitter, youtube, facebook all the time and it doesn't hurt shareholders.

This is terrible! I went to /r/steam to learn about steamed hams but they were clearly grilled! I'm not even sure they were hams?!? 1 star, would not visit again!!

Would be nice if along with that link to Discord, they had a link to an alternative! I'll try not to spoil a good thing though.

Loving this age of anti-Reddit malicious compliance creating content for Lemmy!

I wish some of these subs would stand their ground and make the admin replace them. That would cause the admin seven bigger headaches down the line, because a lot of the mods they impose would likely not be as good, not be as committed, and would be less strict in moderation, leading to a big pain for advertisers who suddenly would see lots of content next to their ads that is very not good.

I kinda like the idea of no moderation at all

Quiet quitting the mod position lol