How can we reopen the FF14 subreddit?

[Ransu]

Yeah that's why nearly all change throughout human history has been accomplished by just asking nicely to the people in power.

Utterly mindless sort of take.

Humans by and large don't care about lofty ideals, they care about what personally benefits their tiny microbial pinhead-sized droplet of day-to-day existence.

If you say, "You should do this, or there will be deleterious long-term consequences", they might at best nod solemnly, if they don't ignore you or throw a tantrum... but deep down inside, they're still wondering, "Okay — but how does it affect me, personally, right now?"

The only way that you accomplish any serious change is with serious pushback; "peaceful protests" are usually just cute photo-ops that people in power absolutely love because it makes everyone feel like they did something without actually requiring anything whatsoever to happen in response.

Then those protests get mythologized and painted as "heroic" by the people who write history, because power structures in human societies would really, reeeeeeeeeeally prefer that everyone view "peaceful resistance" as the ideological ideal, since it means that they don't have to actually do anything, and that anyone upset will throw their tantrum without actually affecting the status quo.


Completely and totally fails to understand the actual details or nuance of the situation, and basically just eagerly-gargles the twisted PR spew that Steve Huffman is marketing to mentally-vulnerable people who don't bother thinking beyond what a single interview claims as fact... like the recorded Apollo App phone conversation that disproves many of the things that Huffman is claiming publicly.

And "freeloaders"? Really?

Reddit is a corporation whose near-entirety of "product" is volunteers creating and fetching content from somewhere else, and then posting it for free in order to be validated by imaginary approval... while other volunteers act as the understaffed guards in an overcrowded Ecuadorian penitentiary.

Reddit is the freeloader — they have nearly no actual product; it's basically nothing but putting out a plinth, and letting other people exhibit their discoveries and creations.

And it's not even a good plinth; it's a dark-pattern infested plinth that's been steadily degrading in quality for a decade as it attempts to squeeze more and more data and control out of its captured audience.

Now, they're ready to publicly offer up their crappy plinth to investors, and desperately trying to stamp out anything that might blemish how much those investors are willing to offer for it — hence the move to drive users out of superiorly-designed 3rd party apps and off the Reddit website, and funnel them all into Reddit's low-quality proprietary app, where they have absolute control over data, advertising, and monetization (of displaying other people's content).

————————————————————————

Every single time you go, "Oof, I cannot endure the pain of an interruption to my compulsively-conditioned daily app habits", you contribute that much more to the — to drop this month's newest overused, yet accurate, buzzword — "enshittification of the Internet".

And when the Internet ends up as yet another version of the corporate-controlled dystopia trope that every sci-fi future always depicts, the human inability to endure inconveniencing itself for 5 seconds is going to be the true root cause.

Corporations and businesses and leadership can invent all kinds of schemes to squeeze, exploit, and degrade the quality of nearly anything in the name of pleasing investors.

But ultimately, they only succeed at it because so many people are unable to say "No" to their comforts and habits long enough to actually scare anyone, and thus, smug controllers can handily rely on their mountains of psychological data telling them: "Don't worry, the masses will begin to go into withdrawal, and start turning on and attacking the protesters attempting to achieve change, long before they ever successfully take a stand on anything. Do whatever you want."

And if that doesn't work — have no fear, Congress will use arcane laws to force you back to work anyway, and then sell it as "tough but necessary" heroism... because once again, the common man has mercifully escaped the dire threat of inconvenience.

Thanks for the good laugh, I needed it.

[Donoman]

Fantastic idea, let us know when you're finished please

How much are you gonna pay me for this?

[Renathras]

The official Discord doesn't want to hear dissent and kicked a bunch of people who don't agree with the blackout and mute you if you disagree. The blackout vote is brigaded since it's open to everyone and pro-blackout Redditors vote continue on every blackout vote against the wishes of FF14 players who use the subreddit.

I'm at a loss here and I miss being able to post on the subreddit and it seems like the blackout will just continue forever. It's a huge blow to the community for the mods to continue the blackout indefinitely even when spez doesn't care so the blackout only hurts the community without giving us anything in return. Other social media platforms just aren't really the same as Reddit.

Anyone have any idea how we can reopen the subreddit? I've been thinking of finding some people together to request to mod a private sub as it's against the Reddit rules.

Sorry if this post violates forum guidelines but there's nowhere else to talk since the subreddit mods censored everything (they banned a lot of people on the discord)

People being jerks to you aside: I suppose we could always start a competing FFXIV subreddit. That would likely have the official one open up immediately. Something we've seen the last couple of weeks, if people hadn't already seen it, is the FFXIV Reddit and the Discord are run by petty tyrants drunk on power.

Right now, they're lording over people and abusing that power.

But if they saw a credible rival rising, they'd fear that they will lose their monopoly on FFXIV discussion forum power and probably instantly reopen the Reddit to prevent a competitor from cutting in and making them obsolete.

EDIT:

He is kinda right about this, though:

Doing something that inconveniences others will not make them be on your side.

Also, the reddit protest is beyond idiotic. Its a bunch of freeloaders who don't realize all these API tools utilize reddits resources which costs them money. The days of all these free services on the internet are coming to an end because just like twitter, reddit was never a profitable business.

When you're fighting the good fight, you can't start by alienating the people you need on your side to win it. Make your movement toxic enough, and it will be easy for "the powers that be" to put it down, as they'll have the support of the general public in doing so. It's why terrorism and such seldom works, since unless people already REALLY hate the people in power to the point they're willing to die to depose them anyway, they don't support things that actively harm themselves to do so. It's why there's a limit to how long strikes can go on, not just from the business/employer side, but also the employee side, as eventually the customers, who you need on your side to effect changes, will start to ignore the strike lines if they become too onerous to their lives.

It is true that you have to confront power sometimes, and those in power don't tend to just change because they're asked, but if you're actively alienating other people, then they're more likely to reflexively take the side of those in power. Especially if the topic isn't something of universal good and evil and is rather something arcane and technical. Most people don't know what API tools are, much less any of the nuance around the conversation. They just see a bunch of mods have heavy handed shut down discussion and are getting salty the longer it lasts.

[Eorzean_username]

Thanks for the good laugh, I needed it.

What you see:

"I laughed at you like a stereotypical schoolyard bully mocking peers who use too many words in their sentences. I have proven my superiority to you by implying derision of your ideas. If I imply that you are inferior to me, I do not have to actually address anything that you say."

What I see:

"I have verified that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about by immediately backing off from a discussion and fleeing with my tail tucked between my legs, since I am incapable of responding with any actual substance. To preserve my fragile ego, I will attempt to make the other person seem stupid for contradicting me."

[Limecat]

This is what happens when you try to get your everything from a single source.

wikis
teamcraft
data dump and timer tracking sites
in-game chat
god forbid, here
Even if you insist on a reddit-like format, a bunch of options like lemmy, kbin, mastadon, and squabbles are all hitting the gas and ramping up operations in light of this drama.

[AlexiaD]

What you see:

"I laughed at you like a stereotypical schoolyard bully mocking peers who use too many words in their sentences. I have proven my superiority to you by implying derision of your ideas. If I imply that you are inferior to me, I do not have to actually address anything that you say."

What I see:

"I have verified that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about by immediately backing off from a discussion and fleeing with my tail tucked between my legs, since I am incapable of responding with any actual substance. To preserve my fragile ego, I will attempt to make the other person seem stupid for contradicting me."

It's okay it's just Ransu, they never have anything of value to say so they'll just respond in a trollish way.

[ShueBox]

How much are you gonna pay me for this?

As much as the r/ffxiv mods are paid

[Donoman]

As much as the r/ffxiv mods are paid

The Reddit moderators are not the ones who came up with guides, tips, and discussions that were used to help the community. The players did. It's just that some of those discussions happen to be on Reddit, which isn't a website that the moderators own or created themselves, so I don't see your point. Even though I don't think a WoWhead-style website will ever come to this game because it's too old now, I would definitely donate to help get that started since it's what this game desperately needs.

[NekoMataMata]

snip

There's always this talk about the protest accomplishing anything via hurting reddit's pocket book 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.

Why are you so determined to be antagonistic? Do the subreddit moderators feel the need to throw their weight around that much?

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, when the reality is most people are willing to let nature take its course with reddit and move on. You're the one that's like it's going to be the end of the world, so you're more likely to be addicted to it than the people you're calling out. You just can't handle the thought of the old status quo changing. 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.

[Ivtrix]

Thing is the Reddit CEO has said they will just wait it out so this has no benefit to any of us.

A lot of things in life dont come easy