It's amazing how many different shovels he is able to come up with.

It's very satisfying to me that it has transitioned from irritation to genuinely finding the whole fiasco hilarious. I've mentally disengaged from reddit, feel no void from its absence, and I'm just enjoying watching them fumble their way through this. Ignoring everyone from the outset would have played better than whatever they've been up to.

I mean, I kinda feel like this is a way to effectively protest, because even if they can heavy handedly force you to shut up, you can at least force them to actually do that. The more visibly reddit tries to stamp out dissent, the more people will notice them doing that, and the more upset those people will be. Unlike the irl equivalent, there are few stakes for most people in being involved in this kind of digital protest. At the worst, you get banned there and move somewhere else, which you probably were going to eventually do anyway if youre angry enough to protest reddit like this.

Doing things that force reddit's hand, like making subs nsfw, harms them in some way no matter what: either they do nothing, and lose ad revenue and potentially anger people who just wanted their subs to be what they were, or they capitulate, losing them whatever they wanted to do in the first place and showing precedent for the future, or they try to force things back to normal, and fuel the anger against them even further due to people having feeling restricted. It might not kill the site (even digg and tumblr and such still exist, its very hard for a sufficiently big social site to actually die completely), but it can erode its userbase and grow that of competitors, which reduces the potential revenue the site can make.

There’s no way to effectively protest a corporation on its own platform. It controls the platform, it can and will change the rules or enforce them unequally just to shut you up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

You can still make it painful for them on the way out. They are using up a shitload of resources dealing with this, and it will be hurting their image and valuation. The more Reddit has to stomp on its users, the more damage they do to their brand in the long run.

You can't win, but you can go down fighting, and possibly take Reddit down with you.

At least we can hope that this will severely damage the ipo.

True but they can go anytime. In the meantime they’re making a fuss, keeping the issue alive in the news and making Reddit take action instead of making it easy for them.

E.g. “If you want me gone fire me because I’m not quitting so you can save face.”

Soon it'll all be ineffective scabs or overwhelmed admins. Have at.

Definitely time to try it out. See if the scabs really knew what they signed up for.

No they restricted them to new posts.

The AskHistorians team is the closest thing to irreplaceable, I'd be very surprised if even he's stupid enough to pick that particular hill to die on.

I don't think Reddit cares. People talk about well run subs as good things but reddit admins don't really see mods as curators they see them as janitors. They don't like it when mods curate subreddits they want up votes to be the only thing that matters.

I doubt askhistorians really has the numbers (the numbers the imaginary advertiser or investor demands) to do anything to fight back.

they need engagement! Not removed posts and comments! Clickbait and especially ragebait are number makers not these posts with 90 % removed comments.

Naw we jumped ship before it sank, this place will only grow and it's a better direction.
Even if they reversed course I wouldn't go back

"Damn you, human cattle! You get right back in your stanchions and stand there quietly while we milk you for your precious, precious content!"

Reddit wasn't really a place for kids even before all of this.

Yeah, they should really give the people that volunteer to moderate the 3rd party tools they need to control that sort of stuff, huh?

The subs are marked as NSFW and you have to verify that you are 18+ before entering, and most apps require logging in to see NSFW subs. Not that it would stop a child from clicking, but it is marked.

Not to naysay, but they will just request google take them off like they did the thousands of 1-star reviews they got a couple days ago.

They are altering the deal. Pray they don't alter it any further.

Actually, pray they do.

Editing their comments (which was a wave of fuck you spez pings) was a personal tantrum. As a human being, I could sort of get where it would seem mischievous and justified to go and throw it back at someone else. Awful judgment, huge breach of trust, but understandable from the POV of someone who just wants to be petty and immature for a moment. I can relate.

As part of a broad pattern though, he clearly has issues veiling his annoyance and contempt for his own users.