10 characters outside HB tags
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
There's always this talk about the protest accomplishing anything via hurting reddit's pocket book
I believe the motivation is much more about forcibly-drawing attention to the issue, and attempting to wield "grassroots" power to try to effect change via defiance.
Indeed, Reddit is quite skilled at hurting its own pocketbook; it does not need much assistance in that endeavor. And it would take much longer than days or weeks to effect any serious revenue consequences, as people would need to stop participating in addictive and compulsive Reddit microtransactions (they will not), and advertisers would need to be convinced to pull out (which usually takes more than a brief firestorm, assuming it's not something that renders a property instantly-radioactive, like antisemitic statements).
I suspect that most involved are well-aware of that.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
but it's like you forget the bottom line. In this specific situation this is unnecessary. Given time reddit as a company is going to suffer from the consequences of its actions here. You can just sit back and wait for it to happen.
There is no proof of this. It is also a perplexing attitude which seems to suggest that complacency and capitulation is the path to victory, because of something like, "everything will just work out if you relax, and the bad actors will inevitably receive karmic punishment"... which I think most of history demonstrates to the contrary.
In fact, the opposite is likely to occur — people know this, and so they are attempting to apply the pressure necessary to force change while they feel that they still can, and in a situation where they suspect that complacency will otherwise prevail... as it has on, for example, Twitter.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
Why are you so determined to be antagonistic?
I cannot parse much meaning from this question. To the best of my perception, no one is "determined to be antagonistic".
A series of steps and negotiations were taken to attempt to resolve this situation over the course of many long months, if not years. Most of these actions were invisible to the greater public because they took place as private negotiations between app creators, moderators, and the Reddit administration.
As the deadline to the change approached, Reddit's previously ambiguous — or even outright-misleading — comments and assurances slowly began to sharpen more clearly into the opposite of what people wanted to hear. It seems reasonable to assume that this occurred because Reddit's owners and operators knew that being too honest about their plans, too soon, would prove disadvantageous to their long-term goals.
When it finally became clear — very shortly before deadline — that the negotiations and discussions were largely a farce, those poised to be negatively affected by it scrambled to organise a different response, now that "peaceful resolution" seemed to have been taken off the table.
This is very similar to what occurs when talks break down between a business and its unionised workers, and the pattern was similar: rather than a sudden eruption of arbitrary psychopathy, what you are witnessing is instead the result of prolonged behind-doors negotiations finally spilling into public attention once it became clear that further discussion would not produce results satisfactory nor acceptable to both affected parties.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
Do the subreddit moderators feel the need to throw their weight around that much?
This also seems like a mischaracterisation — to assume that moderators attempting to preserve their ability to function and maintain the environments that they passionately care about are merely 'showing off' or 'throwing their power around'.
It seems obvious to me that such an idea is an oversimplification, based on the simple fact that such blackouts rarely ever occur. If moderators were interested in demonstrating petty power, they would regularly perform such stunts — especially given the general community fascination with insulting and antagonising Reddit moderators.
Instead, when subreddits have been hijacked or suddenly shut down in the past, the community has usually successfully-rallied to overthrow and oust one particular bad actor, and then return back to a normal state in the hands of new moderators that once again attempt to serve the needs of the community.
Furthermore, the moderators gain no specific personal benefit from this protest, and stand to gain nearly no personal compensation even if Reddit is forced to capitulate on the changes; they are essentially fighting for nothing other than the hope of preserving their access to tools that allow them to do their work on the site.
You are essentially complaining that unpaid volunteers are demonstrably upset that their ability to do their unpaid volunteer work is about to become significantly more onerous, and twisting it into a mischaracterisation of them as some sort of petty feudal warlords that are flexing power out of a simple joy in cruelty (or something).
In fact, it is ironic that a suspicious majority of the subreddits that did not partake in the blackouts are connected to a small cadre of moderators who are known to staff sometimes hundreds of the most popular subreddits and act with a will that somewhat resembles a mafia, and likely have personal reasons for quietly enabling Reddit's corporate actions.
In which case, one could say that the moderators who are doing what you personally want are also "throwing their weight around" — but in a direction that you personally approve of.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
It's also pretty ironic that you're sitting here discussing how people's impatience with the reddit blackout is going to cause the internet to enter into an age of corporate-controlled dystopia,
This is mischaracterised. I implied that it was symptomatic of a general trend in human behavior that will likely end at such an endpoint, and is in fact rapidly-accelerating towards it with each passing year.
I still believe that is correct, although attributing it to any single specific incident or example would, indeed, be an oversimplification — like most historical outcomes.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
when the reality is most people are willing to let nature take its course with reddit and move on.
On what evidence do you base this claim?
It seems far more likely to me that most people are focused on the here-and-now only, and so long as the faucet of content scroll continues to entertain them, they will happily behave like a benumbed version of the "This Is Fine" Dog.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
You're the one that's like it's going to be the end of the world,
This is a mischaracterisation and exaggeration. At no point did I imply any eschatological consequences to Reddit becoming an even more corporatised and user-unfriendly dark-pattern data-gathering advertising-controlled hell-hole.
All I asserted was that it was another brick paving the road for a lower-quality user experience for essentially everyone on the Internet, as more and more companies begin to grow more and more aggressive in their control and monetisation tactics, even if it may not seem immediately obvious in the moment.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
so you're more likely to be addicted to it than the people you're calling out.
This is a mischaracterisation. My contact with Reddit each day is limited, and I find such systems to generally be a poor use of time that insidiously saps mental productivity away from more concretely-enriching tasks and activities.
Clearly, at the least, I am not reliant enough upon Reddit to feel compelled to make threads on the FFXIV General Forum begging people to begin brainstorming strikebreaking methods.
The "blackout" has been, at most, mildly inconvenient to me, but since I've simply shifted where I spend those 10-15 minutes per day, I feel no significant overall loss, and no significant overall concern about the potential duration of the protest.
Nonetheless, the situation is still an emblematic example of the threats and issues facing modern-day users, customers, and consumers as tensions between corporate goals and individual usability and freedoms continue to heat up, so I have taken an interest in its details.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
You just can't handle the thought of the old status quo changing.
This is both an ad hominem and a mischaracterisation.
Firstly, the preexisting "status quo" at Reddit was already relatively low-quality and in constant decline, so to suggest that I have an investment in it is misleading.
Secondly, my concern is not with whether or not a given "status quo" changes; it is with the specific changes occurring, and the specific consequences that will result from that.
You are flatly-incorrect in attempting to characterise my response as being born merely from "resistance to change", and you are also obscuring the concerns at play by trying to characterise the situation as merely "the status quo is changing" — a statement which, in and of itself, contains as much information and meaning as a handful of air.
For example, if the microstate of Malta somehow became an invincible nuclear superpower and conquered the world tomorrow, and it was thereafter decreed that all other citizens of Earth were now the property and slaves of Malta, this would by definition be a significant change to "the status quo".
However, to reduce your probable objections to that situation as "not being able to handle the status quo changing" would fail to properly-acknowledge the actual reasons that you might be concerned about it.
Originally Posted by
NekoMataMata
Most of us will adapt once it's all over, which is why you're the one acting like it's a life or death fight, when it really isn't.
I cannot speak for others, but I have never intended to characterise the dramatic decline in quality and usability of a single social media site as "a life or death fight".
However, I also believe in the seemingly-obvious nuance that a topic does not have to involve literal physiological survival in order to be worth discussing, arguing about, and — if deemed necessary and appropriate — fighting for.
Frankly, the fact that you use hyperbolic speech such as "adapting once it's all over", as if you are enduring an ecological collapse of some sort, itself seems curiously-exaggerated; the most likely outcome of the entire situation, in the short-term, is that the protest will be broken by a corporation with far more power, time, money, and influence than any volunteers, and everyone will rubberband back to upvoting pictures of Y'shtola smoking in a thong, and purge from their minds the traumatic dark times when Reddit didn't work for a few weeks.
I could, in turn, suggest that you yourself stop considering it "a life or death matter" that you can't browse a subreddit for a few weeks while some people far more invested in the situation than you (ie, the moderation teams of Reddit) are attempting to preserve not just what has become a hobby and a minor way-of-life for them, but also the quality of the experience for everyone else who uses the content that they keep clean and moderated.
In the short term, you can see only that you are being inconvenienced — not that it's an attempt to prevent worse consequences in the longer term.
That you state on one hand that "everyone's ready to move on", and on the other seem so agitated about being locked out of a subreddit, suggests that your assertions may be inaccurate.
Ultimately, I suppose it's simply a fundamental difference in philosophy here — some people think that if a fight doesn't immediately seem to favor you, then you should just roll over and let it happen. Other people think that standing your ground, even if the odds are against you, is worth it — for any number of reasons, which can vary from individual to individual.
The blackouts are based on the latter principle, and have nothing to do with "petty power" or "throwing tantrums" or whatever common and misleading characterisations are being effectively-used to turn public sentiment against protesters.
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