All good points.

That’s a fair point. Actively disabling it at the last minute, after everything had been underway, is significant.

Yeah, I honestly don’t understand why this narrative even needs to be played out.

I don’t know what angle there is by making Musk a scapegoat beyond, maybe, Ukraine trying to strengthen its supporting relationship with the US population, but it already has most of the US support anyway.

Musk has his issues, there’s no doubt about that, but not wanting to be involved is an ethical stance to take on his part.

It’s beginning to feel all bad at this point, yeah, I agree.

They’ll save a lot of money, but (a) the cost isn’t worth it and (b) it’s just totally assenine logic that takes a dump on the idea of a government’s existence having any sense of meaning that goes beyond serving the interests of the wealthy.

Under the latest plans, tech companies would need to notify the British government before rolling out a security fix but might be refused permission if it blocks a vulnerability that’s being exploited by security services…

I suppose these days it’s cheaper to find some half baked vulnerability and pray it lasts a while instead of just adding back doors in the devices

Ahh, yes. The golden era of usenet flaming.

100% agree. It flags infractions, you have people verify what was being flagged, due course follows.

bro

No, it isn’t fine.

And no, I don’t think I’m “very smart”.

but if it starts to be used to censor information and rate humans, that’s the line.

That line has already been crossed. Since it’s already been crossed, it’s inevitable that this will be used in that way.

So they should have… done nothing and given in?

Given in to what? The same dynamic that the majority of social media companies have imposed on their users?

One thing to remember is TPA users (of which I was one) were 3% of the website. 3%. Not a very large figure.

In this capitalistic environment, the dynamic is built off of the most a-moral “fuck you, we can get away with it” approach to business that operates within legal bounds that ultimately allow for a corporation to come out on top. Maybe they break a law, have to pay fines, whatever; as long as they can still profit and make investors/shareholders happy, they’re probably going to get away with it.

Yes, it’s fucked up. 9/10 times, it doesn’t matter what the media says and it doesn’t matter what the users say.

It sucks, but like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. all of which have screwed their users over on multiple occasions, they’re still in business, chugging along, people are still using their services.

The alternative choice is Stockholm Syndrome.

By that logic, what’s the difference if, after all of this, still nothing changes and you still use their service?

We have Lemmy, kbin, Mastodon, etc. They’re a great alternative.

Yes, the communities aren’t as fleshed out, over time it will get better.

Reddit is thankfully more optional than a lot of other services.

You can stop using Reddit and go about your day to day obligations.

Services like Amazon and Google are a lot harder to give up.

I wonder what we could do to prevent things like this from happening in the future?

Maybe looking more into the political frameworks that exist, laws, and thinking realistically about what changes can be made in the near future, while also trying to understand the challenges that we would be faced against.

Maybe they’re not as smart as you’d like.

You think I want them to be smart? Lol.

Something controversial happens -> a lot of people get pissed off (understandably so) -> media milks the shit out of the event -> narratives - true, false, embellished, whatever get created -> mischaracterization for anyone who’s approach to handling the situation isn’t in line with majority rule, blah blah blah -> the bad guys (usually) walk away fine.

That’s a very common cycle.

I wasn’t happy with what happened, but it’s been 2 months at this point, and what I’ve gathered is that nothing is going to change.

And yet because I say that these protests are fruitless people get mad and go absolutely nuts on the downvote button.

Sorry, I was under the impression we could have an open discussion without making assumptions in bad faith about people who disagree with the rationale.

My bad 🤚

Literally me

Its interface is pretty meh I’ll give you that

Yes.

but that doesn’t change the fact that these actions are unprecedented and a huge betrayal of trust, and there’s nothing wrong with people (especially those that invested a lot of time and effort into building the site into what it is today) being upset at reddit for this.

I agree with you.

I had been using Reddit for a long time, so I understand.

I don’t think the blackout was productive: it was never going to change their minds, they just didn’t want to have give moderators the boot in the end.

The company’s model is fundamentally not under their own control, which is a knife that cuts both ways.

That’s like saying Facebook’s model is not fundamentally under its own control. The same with Twitter, or any other social media.

Calling it a hijacking when it was never under anyone else’s control is not just wrong, it’s actually entirely backwards. Reddit is the one hijacking the subreddits.

Reddit owns the servers which host the subreddits.

Preventing users from accessing your subreddit, as a moderater (who is also not an employee of the company), as a form of protest, is a means of trying to control the website’s overall behavior.

So, yes, it is a high jacking attempt. Not an effective one, but one nonetheless.

The mods and users knew exactly what would happen, either Reddit changes, or they double down.

They obviously didn’t know exactly what would happen, because if they did, they wouldn’t have bothered.

You’re listing two possible outcomes and pairing them as a single event, which doesn’t make sense.

Reddit was never going to change - that’s my point. They were definitely going to double down.

How is closing subreddits in protest not basically trying to take control of the situation?

They don’t care about any of that though. They knew this was going to happen before they made the announcement.

Do you really think they were that out of touch?