Reddit Communities Switching to NSFW as a Form of Protest

Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 194 points –
Reddit Communities Switching to NSFW as a Form of Protest
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I don't think these protest will turn Spez's head and I'm sure new communities will pop up to replace the old ones with time -- but I'm certainly enjoying the show.

Let's just hope Reddit bleeds enough users to make this the new Reddit.

That's what this is all about. Nobody's trying to change spez's mind. A lot of people were begging for a Reddit alternative for YEARS, now we finally have an opportunity to make one. They could roll back the API pricing tomorrow but for me it wouldn't matter.

yeah reddit is dead to me. i've always felt that social media sites should be considered a commons where companies cannot profit off of the content

this was just the catalyst for a lot of people to be exposed to this idea and now the idea is exponentially spreading. we're still in the early days, but I think this is the future. or at least it's one potential future

reddit was amazing a decade ago. dunno what all happened but it became a cesspool of toxicity and abuse of power that i was just waiting for another alternative to come along and save us OGs from.

Reddit's always been a mixed bag of good stuff and cesspool toxicity. A decade ago it had subs like r/jailbait and r/coontown.

Nostalgia remembers the good stuff and forgets the shit.

It's not that I don't remember all the trolling that has happened since the Internet's inception (I was there) it's just that it used to have its time and place and people used to respect that, Reddit included. If you didn't want to see the toxicity, you just didn't visit those subs. It only started bleeding into everything else within the recent past.

I believe the purpose is not to change spez's mind, we know he won't, it's to scare off advertisers and investors.

Ads cannot be served on NSFW subs, some ads vendors are already backing off, see how investors are happy about that.

And yes, it's highly entertaining :D

It isn't to turn Spez's head, but Reddit's owners.

I wouldn't be surprised if board members are looking this whole debacle to see where it lands before the IPO. Reddit still isn't profitable, and the killing of API access doesn't seem like it will earn the money to be worth this aggravation. Spez is making a very public bet regarding API.

And I don't think Lemmy is ready to become the new Reddit. There are still too many foundational issues that need to be resolved that would crush Lemmy in its current form.

Apparently Reddit is now switching these new NSFW subs back to being SFW.

My current view of Reddit is that I hope they crash and burn.

Easy solution is to switch it back and organize with users to spam porn on it when it's switched, and keep up the momentum. Either the admins have to shut down the subreddit to clean it up - which hurts their bottom line, they are unable to keep up - which hurts their bottom line - or they switch and breach contract with advertisers - which hurts their bottom line

New plan:

Everyone spam pictures of anuses to demonstrate what assholes reddit are being.

Seems dangerous to turn off that NSFW switch. You might run ads on porn and get some angry advertisers. Heck, you might get some users who have settings for only SFW content who end up getting exposed to that.

Now my home all nsfw, and most of it john oliver. Uts good tho, made community found nothing on reddit and start to migrating here.

I'm thinking of going back to Reddit. Sexy John Oliver in abundance? Sounds like a deal.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but with subreddits going NSFW, it means that the content won't be displayed in 3p apps only? Seems like this will help push users to the official app?

The way I understand it, is that advertising money is not put into NSFW content on the site, so by making every big sub NSFW they are effectively punching reddit in the wallet and trying to make their IPO fail.

@McBinary

@ulu_mulu @mac

Additionally the only requirement to view nsfw stuff is that they can validate that your account has opted in to viewing it.

3p apps will see it if you're signed in.

Not yet, it's the API change that will remove NSFW content from 3rd party apps starting July 1st, but apps will be dead anyway.

It's supposed to make the site less desirable to advertisers. Reddit has continually restricted more and more of its nsfw content over the years in an attempt to appease advertisers, so this is a... provocative step in the opposite direction.

@mac

@ulu_mulu

If the apps still exists (which they won’t) they won’t see NSFW content. Since the subreddits are flooded with porn, only the 3rd party app will have those filtered out and see the actual content of the subreddit without wading through pages and pages of porn.

The compliance of r/formula1 is amazing, and so well written I was nodding my head agreeing with the points about the danger of the sport- I wonder now if they were to go back to nsfw if there would be reddit policy changes needed or how they would handle "undo"-ing the reasons for going nsfw.

Pierden el tiempo, a veces prescindir y migrar es mejor.

I don't speak Spanish but I tried google translate:

They waste time, sometimes doing without and migrating is better.

Migrating is indeed better but it's not always easy for big communities, it takes time, damaging revenues in the meantime is not a bad thing, in my opinion.

google translate:

Efectivamente, migrar es mejor, pero no siempre es fácil para las grandes comunidades, lleva tiempo, perjudicar los ingresos mientras tanto no es algo malo, en mi opinión.

And also making it so casual users cannot ignore the protest. Make the site unusable and people will be forced to migrate away.

I think the whole point is to annoy the users. It seems to be working though since many are getting angry and unsubscribing from the subreddit.

Google Translate:

Creo que el objetivo es molestar a los usuarios. Sin embargo, parece estar funcionando, ya que muchos se están enojando y cancelando su suscripción al subreddit.

@ulu_mulu I feel this will end with nsfw just flat banned on reddit or possibly a mass purge of moderators and an attempt to reign in the wild west this sets up for the new moderators. Though certainly a kick in the wallet for reddit

There were more than 20 thousands mods participating in the blackout, good luck replacing them all, tho entirely banning NSFW content is a possibility.

My first thought was that this would just result in a site-wide nsfw ban as well. If that's the outcome, good. How's that's worked for other websites? I fully endorse forcing them to shoot themselves in the foot.

I mean, those are both Really Bad Things TM for reddit so we should be hoping they do that.

Interesting idea. Let's see how it will work.

if I were a betting man, I would say the moderation will go to all automated on reddit soon especially considering the recent advances in AI. Hell I can assure you that facebook moderation is 98% automatic because of how shitty and random it is, its clearly using some type of hacked together algorithm. Same thing will happen on reddit then their mod problem will be 'solved'.

Now if we can just serve ads to the AI, we can get rid of those pesky users.

Based on some of the comments in the now NSFW subs, it looks like there is a pretty serious edge case that reddit does not handle: setting the sub to NSFW retains subscribers. Does that not mean that people may end up being delivered NSFW posts without opting in?