[Rant] The people - or rather the attitude - of r/piracy

genoxidedev1@kbin.social to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 16 points –

This is just a short rant and is not meant to insult anyone already on here, or further newcomers that joined, join or will still join. Also reminder that this is based on my experience and not necessarily facts, YMMV.

Anyways, in the last few days I've noticed that for some reason, especially on the r/piracy sub (although other subs are of course no exception), that there has been a more positive sentiment towards spez (the CEO of Reddit) and a very negative one against the mods and the protest.

I can understand that a protest which you don't want to take part in may be a breach of your apathy - though what we protest will sooner or later affect everyone, not just those that want to continue using 3rd party apps. I'm guessing they just don't (want to) understand. I'm just gonna leave the following quote here do with that what thou wanteth:

"There's something extremely pathetic about complaining about a problem that only concerns you, but wanting to pull everyone along"

On another note they're also calling everyone who participates in the protest and or makes a comment about alternatives a "mod bootlicker". I want to thank OtakuA* and everyone who does what they do for spreading the word, even when bombarded with downvotes which sadly and disappointingly does happen.

What really got me over my shadow to write this rant (and first post actually) though, was the following reply I got, in return for agreeing with someone and calling the people bootlickers:

"You're shilling for a different company lmfao...pot calling the kettle black..."

I still haven't figured out what they meant? I don't want to call myself smart but maybe I'm not stupid enough to understand?

Anyways, I expected nothing but was still majorly disappointed with the people over at r/piracy where I thought they would be most in favor of the protest.

I hope this rant is coherent enough to understand and that some of you get what I'm saying. I'm not looking for solutions personally I just wanted to get this out. If there are grammatical errors I'm sorry English is not my first language and I also didn't want to read over this post too often otherwise I overthink and delete without posting.

Tl;dr: Admin bootlickers call protesters & supporters "mod bootlickers", me mad

I hope this post shows up I'm posting from kbin - I also didn't look if there were other posts about this already because I wanted to say this asap

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We're encountering several little phenomena here.

  1. Many of the people who were passionate or concerned about this issue are here and elsewhere - but they're no longer on reddit. The anti-protesters are those who didn't understand, didn't care, and are just annoyed that their opium hit is suddenly asking them to give a shit. They're consumers, and in the absence of those who care, they've gotten bolder and a larger proportion of representation on the site. In the ~2 times I have checked in on Reddit, I've noticed a drop in comment quality.
  2. This is a classic Conservative reaction. Not exactly the Donkey/Elephant kind, but that raw conservative instinct endemic to humanity. It's the fear that change is a zero-sum game, where is people move up, other's status degrade, or if it doesn't. that someone will create a new environment that they themselves are less familiar and adept at navigating. Some people are so insecure that they'll lash out at anyone as long as it makes them just sit still in their chairs, please. These people are fear-driven ghouls, it could have been anything and you'd get a similar reaction.

This is a classic Conservative reaction. Not exactly the Donkey/Elephant kind

I mean it kinda is also that kind. If you look at the post histories of the loudest and most aggressive people who oppose the protests, it's pretty clear they're right-leaning ultra-capitalist types. Which is not much of a surprise; since the protests are against Reddit's efforts to aggressively monetize the site, they're effectively a protest against the effects of capitalism.

It's also pretty clear that a lot of the loudest and most aggressive anti-protest types are arriving there from links being posted on right-wing forums - you can see this in the lingo and memes they use, which mostly come from that crowd.

One of the primary ideas behind capitalism is embracement of competition so in my eyes those who instantly disregard alternatives to Reddit can't be called ultra-capitalist at all. And I bet there are a lot of 'types' of people that stayed there so if possible I would refrain from generalization, though it does seem some of them are complacent, reluctant to accepting change and/or adjusting their habits, which does somewhat correlate with conservatism afaik.

The quality of the comments on this thread is miles better than any conversation I read on reddit. This is so inspiring. I really thought I was bound to that site, but as time goes by I am more and more convinced that this migration might actually be something positive. Yay for options!!!

I agree with the phenomena at play, but have to say that conservatism/liberalism (not the political kind) is not a black and white characteristic. It is much more nuanced than that. A person can be entirely conservative in one ideological area of their life, and entirely liberal in another. Eg. (this example may be using the political sense just for illustration) Someone may be entirely fiscally conservative with their money, but entirely socially liberal with their social mores (very open-minded sexually, etc). Or vise-versa, or any other combination thereof.

The way that we as humans tend to group people into black and white, dualistic groups is not only destructive to the human race, it's inaccurate. Humans are not dualistic, black and white beings. Everyone's characteristics and beliefs are a smattering of many different aspects, all presenting/leaning in conservative or liberal, one way or the other. But very few people fit into the category where everything they believe is conservative, or liberal. Most people are a complex combination. Trying to oversimplify it into two categories is a creation of political and media narratives that keeps people divided and powerless to greater interests, and hating each other. Humans are much more complex than that. We all have many liberal and conservative aspects, masculine and feminine aspects, etc.

Of course, every four years in November, they use the best tactics they can through our screens to make sure we fully pledge our loyalty to one of those two categories.

There's something extremely pathetic about complaining about a problem that only concerns you, but wanting to pull everyone along

The literal definition of a protest. A protest that isn't disruptive to others is just a parade.

I literally Lol'd at this, being a server at a restaurant in a Downtown area for years, parades were so much worse than protests. I get the point you were making, and I agree, I just found it funny when I read it.

So much irony especially coming from a piracy sub. You'd think pirates would support decentralized communities. It's also just another example of reddit's complete inability to understand how protests work; they're supposed to be an inconvenience, that's literally the point.

Oh well, I'm kinda glad a lot of them are staying there, there's a noticable lack of toxicity here vs. reddit. I just hope the decent ones will make their way over.

No, a large portion of pirates are just "gimme free shit" types. They don't care about preservation nor fighting various causes. They don't care about the people who make the free shit nor seed the free shit. They care about nothing but themselves. So I'm actually not surprised to see that sort of me me me sentiment there. The people who did care are probably gone, all that's left are the leeches.

I have noticed this long before this migration. There were a lot of users who would say things like, "stop trying to do mental gymnastics, just admit you want free stuff." Because they think that way they assume everyone else thinks that way. They couldn't possibly fathom that other people genuinely believe in the free exchange of media and information.

Where's the irony, they are literally "pirates". They just want free stuff. It's good to differentiate between the two.

  • your resources are my resources, give us all your loot! They don't have much loot to share.

  • Let's search for more treasure! (hobby)

Huh. This is kinda weird... but I think I'm done protesting Reddit. It's not that I approve of any changes, but rather... I'm happy here on Lemmy? Protesting would kind of imply that I want to go back to Reddit and I think I might be good here...

As more of us move to Lemmy, the less push back you'll see on Reddit cuz we're all over here. I guess that's expected.

I feel the same way. I'm actually surprised how easy it was too break my Reddit habit and transition over here. So far the communities I've joined seem to have a more pleasant crowd than on Reddit. We'll see how long that lasts 😂

I'm excited to see what happens, a significant amount of knowledge is moving to a much more democratic platform. If the people who can give useful answers to questions are here others will end up moving here to get access to that.

I know that I'm going to make an effort to help make this place worth using.

Reddit is full of contrarians. A lot of the smaller subreddits in particular likes to be contrarian to anything they saw as mainstream Reddit

Also, the people who are really pissed at Reddit probably have left so the remaining population has a larger proportion of people who don’t care or even support what Reddit does.

Finally, let’s be honest /r/piracy was dominated by casual pirates at best as shown by the posts and comments “what’s a seeder” “what’s Usenet” “OMG Rarbg down what do I do”. So they’re not hardcore pirates with a dedication to piracy/warez ethos just casuals looking for links and shit

They're not even contrarian they're just ignorant and they love it. You can present them facts all day long and they just never learn or at least try to understand. I didn't even bother replying to the people that replied to me on that comment thread I mentioned because it's just a waste of time.

Second point is true for the most part most people that would leave of course have already left either abstaining from social media (or at least Reddit) or coming over here.

I will never understand the people that support what Reddit does though I actually do not see the downside to protesting for the greater good aside of not being able to chow down on repost fodder for a while until Reddit gets their act together. They're actively hurting themselves, I'm very sure that the loss of 3rd party apps sooner or later will have an effect on even the people that dare use the official app (If Reddit has a monopoly of Reddit apps why should they waste their resources improving that app).

i mean, i'm pretty sure the majority of people who are still on reddit are the ones who don't care about the protests. So this doesn't surprise me.

How many posters left on the platform do you think are humans, and how many are bots?

Even the humans that remain are NPCs, so it's just bots all the way down.

Anyways, in the last few days I’ve noticed that for some reason, especially on the r/piracy sub (although other subs are of course no exception), that there has been a more positive sentiment towards spez (the CEO of Reddit) and a very negative one against the mods and the protest.

I could swear this is the bot campaign run by Reddit.

They can do whatever they want. I expect to see the quality of the subreddit go down very quickly as the people that made r/piracy worth visiting and ensured the quality have either left or being called mod bootlickers have all either left or will leave. So it's gonna be fun to watch.

That’s the mainstream users, they don’t really care about anything else other than updoots and cat pics. They like to get used like a rag and thrown away but they would still come back. Don’t worry about them.

I would suggest you stop licking the corporate boot. Fuck spez, fuck reddit I'm staying here and the piracy community should too.

I'm confused too, but my interpretation so far is that some people are choosing piracy because they want to get a fast and easy access to the things they're looking for, and that the protest is making things harder so they are just mad because it's not easy anymore

Anyways, in the last few days I’ve noticed that for some reason, especially on the r/piracy sub (although other subs are of course no exception), that there has been a more positive sentiment towards spez (the CEO of Reddit) and a very negative one against the mods and the protest.

Do we even know if these are actual real humans (aka: not reddit bots, admins, or shills)?

We know 100% that spez made hundreds of bots in 2012 to fake "busy-ness", and that was when reddit was started.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/

The article is from 2012. Reddit (and the fake profiles) was started in 2005.

So, the practice of using bots/multiple accounts by a corporate interest to change the sentiment/narrative in an online forum has a history that goes all the way back to 2005.

If they were doing that in 2005, I can't imagine what they are capable of now, or how widespread these types of practices are.

If you were on Reddit and survived their Covid narrative without deleting your account and overwriting all your comments with nonsense then I don't know what to tell you. They're bought and paid for. Fuck that platform.

Well, you're here so to hell with Reddit. There's so much garbage there you have to filter, so many shitposts. Totally different environment here so welcome and enjoy.

But yeah you'd think the piracy sub would be in more in support of the mods and devs, but I don't know, they're probably just being selfish about the protest. Anyway, doesn't matter. I think it's been a week or two since I've logged into Reddit and I'm never going back.

BTW I see you're on Kbin, how do you think that compares to Lemmy.

I find it hilarious that the link to reddit in the sidebar is tagged "Bootlicker Bay" -- genius :)

Your probably seeing more anti-protest sentiment there because pro-protesters are not on the site now to defend themselves, were all on lemmy/kbin or taking a break from social media.

Yea I wasn't surprised that people on reddit were ready to forgive and forget in pretty much every sub after a few days, the people that were fed up had already left.