this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
77 points (98.7% liked)

Malicious Compliance

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People conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request. For now, this includes text posts, images, videos and links. Please ensure that the “malicious compliance” aspect is apparent - if you’re making a text post, be sure to explain this part; if it’s an image/video/link, use the “Body” field to elaborate.

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r/steam (maliciously) complies with the call to open again (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by Aurix@lemmy.world to c/maliciouscompliance@lemmy.world
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The subreddit r/steam, about the digital game storefront, received as many other subreddits a notice to open the community again, or else the mods would be replaced by those who abide.

The mods followed suit posting the following automod message under every new post:

As ya'll likely know, we've been dark to support the blackout against reddit's antagonistic behavior towards its own userbase. The admins sent us a message today saying we must open or get removed, so here we are.

For those of you browsing this subreddit on non-official apps (Reddit is Fun, Apollo, Sync, Boost, etc), they will break on July 1st due to reddit's new policies. We're opening back up but will leave permanent stickies in the subreddit and threads to keep folks in the know.

Our Discord [contains link to https://discord.gg/steam] server is active, don't forget to check it out.

Good luck and god speed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

On visit, you quickly notice there is a community wide effort to focus on the literal topic of the given name and post about vapors, steam trains, and kitchen appliances. While posts about the gaming platform get downvoted.

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[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This blackout has really shown which subs have actual in-touch moderators, and which ones are just the admins' puppy dogs

A while ago, I had a comment auto-removed on WPT and got a message it was because my account was "not in good standing." When I messaged the WPT mods, they explained that they were test piloting a new tool the admins plan to use. For example, if you have a throwaway email address, no email address, or are connecting via VPN, you may be "not in good standing."

With things like that on the horizon, even if they roll back on what they're doing now, we're still not likely to have a very good time on that site.

I can't blame the mods who are trying to make change through protest (and who may not even be aware of the "not in good standing" BS), but I don't plan to stick around, and I don't foresee a very bright future for reddit at all.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What a great idea. Just use an algorithm to ban any unprofitable user. Can't lose!

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That explains why I got banned a while back and was told I violeted the TOS, but the crime they listed (Abusing the report button) was neither in the TOS nor something I actually did.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Speaking of segues, I didn't realize I'd been on lemmy for ten months already. Huh, look at that!

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

How/why would mods have access to an accounts mail details??

[–] Cynosure@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honesty I think the big political subs are incredibly bot infested. Political content is an amazing way to make people mad and get them to spend more time on a platform, increasing engagement and letting reddit deliver more ads. It's not like it would be the first time they used bots to drive engagement and make communities look bigger.

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole site is bot infested! Especially the large subs, but I've personally had scambots pop into my posts even on smaller subreddits.

People who say they won't leave reddit because "there's no good alternative" really have their head in the sand about how bad it really is. Nearly every alternative I've seen suggested is at least better than reddit (except for the really far-right ones like voat).

[–] enragedchowder@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty much any big sub is totally unusable. The only reason to be on Reddit is for the niche hobby subs

[–] SgtAStrawberry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

And unfortunately, those are the ones most difficult to find alternatives for.

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Worse than bots. Active foreign influencers.

[–] cokedragon@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When did this happen? During the blackout? You say "a while ago" and I'm just curious.

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

This happened 3 weeks ago, just before things really started to get ugly on reddit

[–] Hypersapien@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit is trying to go to war with the kind of people responsible for Boaty McBoatface and they think they're going to win.

[–] Fihn@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit execs don't care when people post like this. They aren't browsing the sub, all they see is user engagement is back up and that's a win. They can sell that to advertisers as a win. If you showed them the page they'd think it's weird but they probably wouldn't know it have ever been any different.

The only win to be had with the sub re-opening is to post nothing at all.

[–] nexguy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hardly anyone is going to spend hours browsing pictures of steam and engaging with it vs actual content so this certainly is not great for reddit.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah but that's not what they're doing. They're doing a contrarian circlejerk that'll get boring after a few days or until the next thing happens with the steam platform that they all want to talk about. There's already a highly upvoted post there about the UI update.

[–] Quinnel@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the mods are true to their word they should be deleting anything related to the steam gaming platform because now its a sub about steam engines

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Did the mods actually make any kind of decree like that, though? It sounds like they're just doing an easily ignored automod message on every post and letting the users do as they will. The post i mentioned has 7k upvotes right now and its a been up for at least one full day. https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/14bww9f/about_this_weeks_update/

[–] root@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From an ad revenue point of view, does this matter? Posts/ views/ clicks are all the same to them, no?

[–] SomethingBurger@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

People will eventually stop visiting if a subreddit no longer contains content that is interesting for them.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is the way.

[–] Mishmash2000@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

This is terrible! I went to /r/steam to learn about steamed hams but they were clearly grilled! I'm not even sure they were hams?!? 1 star, would not visit again!!

[–] Landrin201@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wish some of these subs would stand their ground and make the admin replace them. That would cause the admin seven bigger headaches down the line, because a lot of the mods they impose would likely not be as good, not be as committed, and would be less strict in moderation, leading to a big pain for advertisers who suddenly would see lots of content next to their ads that is very not good.

[–] limeaide@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I kinda like the idea of no moderation at all

Quiet quitting the mod position lol

[–] DarthRedLeader@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think these malicious compliance subreddit responses are as fun as the next person, but honest question: doesn't this work out in Reddit's favor? They don't care what's posted as long as content is being generated and traffic being driven to their site, right?

[–] Aurix@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is the nuance to it. The subscribers did not sign up for this initially. Therefore they will have to build a new community up which certainly won't have as many subscribers for a very long time and none of the post history.

At the same time posts actually asking about the Steam platform get downvoted heavily and thus dissuade further interaction.

Effectively the sub becomes useless, just the same as if it had stayed closed. It will drop in engagement in the long term.

The John Oliver memes attract more mainstream attention and clearly signal to investors the platform is not healthy, irrespective of the traffic it causes.

With more and more subreddits joining in on this, the All page gets flooded with shitposts annoying everyone. Those who stay certainly won't want to deal with this all the time and unsubscribe.

Of course group dynamics are unpredictable at times, but reddit is certainly more in turmoil than whatever traffic.

[–] DarthRedLeader@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thanks, I was missing that point of view but I see what you mean.

I guess the way I see it is that, right now, people are enthusiastically joining in, which is still driving a sense of community. I guess I'm not as convinced that, long term, people will be driven to make new communities. I feel like the more likely scenario is that people will grow bored and go back to their normal, everyday posting.

Edit: I do agree the invester point is definitely one I didn't consider and is definitely a huge factor to all of this. Of course, it goes without saying that it at least signals the turmoil at Reddit and brings more attention to it. Not all press is good press in this case.

Whatever happens, I fully intend to sit back and enjoy watching the drama unfold.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I feel like the more likely scenario is that people will grow bored and go back to their normal, everyday posting.

I think it's more likely people will get bored and just stop going to reddit. Right now the ones taking part in the protest are the creators and hard core users, while the casual users either aren't taking part or are just not using reddit right now.

Longer term this will destroy reddit on google searches ruining one of the major drivers of traffic.

In the short term it's a question of if the casual users get tired first and stop going to reddit, or the hard core users get bored of trolling spez. If the former happens first then reddits non-troll traffic dies off and when the hard core users get bored and leave and then there will be almost nobody left.

Ultimately in order for the protesters to win they don't need to permanently destroy reddit, just to effectively shut it down for the next 6 months or so as literally this entire thing, both the changes reddit instituted and the backlash, is about the IPO. Spez was looking to pump the value quickly so he could cash out and so he went with some incredibly aggressive and anti-user policies that he hoped would generate a massive revenue spike and look good to investors. Instead the users are giving spez a boot to the teeth and reminding him that he has nothing without them.

[–] Furbag@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really. The traffic they're getting from it is unsustainable and any would-be investor who is paying attention will notice this. This is really more a tactic to shatter the narrative that the mods do not represent the will of the general user and they are forcing the protests onto them.

[–] chris@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would they? I'd assume they're getting most of their info from spaz, who will just point to the dip and then "see, number go up."

[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IPO's are risky for the investor. If the company is overvalued before the IPO, a huge chunk of money invested disappears almost immediately as the stock drops. So the big investors will be doing their research before putting their money in.

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

The only way to invest in Reddit is to short their stock.

[–] _Hyperion@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why funny, this just gives Reddit noise and numbers regarding blackout and numbers

[–] Aurix@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

u/spez tries to paint it was just mods trying to be powertripping and not standing for the communities. This refutes the sentiment along with the reactions of /r/pics and the likely coming r/aww action.

[–] LittlePrimate@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

That though process won't even cross their mind. More like "See? The reopened communities are very active and actually generate MORE clicks now. We were right to force them open!". Only if the new direction would produce less clicks or advertisers are bothered by it ("I wanted to advertise my camera in r/pics but the new direction makes it unprofitable") they might look into where that "sabotage" is coming from and care about it.