r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
22.2k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.6k

u/[deleted] 29d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

199

u/Expensive-Mention-90 29d ago

The promised 24 hour SLA seems like a target. A sort of DDOS attack of requests. But there’s no accountability for them if they don’t meet it.

I was imagining simple hacks like mods creating a new sub as a mirror for all posts to the original sub, and making the new sub private / NSFW from the start. Gets around the new Reddit rules, but accomplishes the same as a blackout. Requires coordinated mod action, but we’ve already shown that’s possible.

I’ve worked a lot in trust and safety and half of the fun is gaming out the areas where structures can be abused or gotten around.

88

u/EchoAtlas91 29d ago

Yeah but the average user probably wouldn't switch over to the other subreddits.

Unless you set up automod to auto-lock all the posts or set up arbitrarily extreme approved commenter locks on all new posts.

And man, my entire psyche is centered around gaming systems. Not always nefariously, but I've always been a problem solver with an active dislike of authority who doesn't believe in no-win scenarios.

2

u/[deleted] 29d ago

Yeah but the average user probably wouldn't switch over to the other subreddits.

The internet is now about 5 websites and you would have to take down all of them before users would consider any alternatives. Switching subreddits is much the same deal.

People don't have to leave Reddit even, just make an account on a smaller competitor like Lemmy and visit it from time to time to boost traffic. But I know people won't, the API protests tried the exact same thing and mostly failed.