I honestly don’t know if this is allowed here but I thought this is malicious compliance at its finest.
If you don’t want to drive traffic there I’ll repost what the mods posted below:
POLL: Decide on the future of /r/Pics!
Hello, /r/Pics subscribers!
Boy, what a whacky time we’ve all had lately, huh? Reddit decided to kill off third-party applications, a protest got planned (and possibly exploited by bad actors), the site showed up in the news, various communities started opening back up, others decided to stay inaccessible, and then the CEO of Reddit implied that a bunch of moderators would be removed from their positions!
Crazy, right?
Anyway, we – the so-called “landed gentry” – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the “royal court,” and they’ve told us that we need to run the subreddit in the way that its members want. To that end, we figured that the only reasonable thing to do was directly ask how you’d like things to progress from here.
Which of the following should we do?
-
Return to normal operations
-
Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy To be clear, if people choose the second option, screen-grabs from videos will be allowed (provided that there aren’t any visible logos, inserted graphics, or other digital elements present). You could – if you wanted to – look through episodes of Last Week Tonight on YouTube, find moments featuring John Oliver at his sexiest, then post images of those moments here.
It’s entirely up to you! Whatever the /r/Pics community decides is best, we’ll respect!
Vote, friends! Vote now!
(You can vote by upvoting either of the comments in the thread below.)
Voting has now closed.
Our final tally is as follows:
Return to normal operations: -2,329 votes
Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy: 37,331 votes
It would seem that the community has spoken!
Henceforth, /r/Pics will only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy.
(Said images must adhere to all of the community’s other rules, including those mandated by Reddit.)
Happy posting!
That’s a classic reddit moment. There’s such a good community on that website, it’s tragic that reddit wants to use that against itself.
These kind of protest won’t reduce the traffic on the platform though. They might even gain traction and increase it. If it’s not linked to reduced ad revenue, I’m afraid it’s counter-productive.
I think it will reduce traffic at some point, when the lurkers are getting tired of John Oliver pics
who the fuck could ever get tired of that? idiots and losers that’s who.
Look at the alternatives. It’s either this kind of protest, or returning to normal operations or losing their sub.
Another alternative: redirect people here
Yeah they should have tried to get people out.
the odds are stacked against the mods and the users, but any little bit of resistance is useful.
Yeah they should’ve gone with something even more specific - like pictures of Joe Biden eating ham sandwiches. Something with limited content options so that the sub is essentially forced to become inactive.
I think their way was better. It lets the giant number of subscribers have fun and engage, while also screwing the Reddit execs. They’ll eventually get bored and it will be the same result.
Individuals traffic is not what is valuable to the current Reddit management. Good AI training data is what is valuable and this is not good AI training data.
The ultimate Troll love for posters would be to include ALT-text descriptions of the photos which are completely irrelevant. This will (of course) inconvenience the blind community, but if they are only photos of sexy John Oliver, it wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience.