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.
Reddit is trying to go to war with the kind of people responsible for Boaty McBoatface and they think they’re going to win.
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.
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.
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.
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
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/
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.
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.
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).
Pretty much any big sub is totally unusable. The only reason to be on Reddit is for the niche hobby subs
And unfortunately, those are the ones most difficult to find alternatives for.
What a great idea. Just use an algorithm to ban any unprofitable user. Can’t lose!
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.
How/why would mods have access to an accounts mail details??
