Malicious Compliance

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.

I want that sentence on a t-shirt!

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

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.

I agree, although it can't hurt to also accelerate that process by making it unbearable for scabs and normies to use the site. It also helps by setting a precedent for any future centralized social sites (like squabbles) who may try to profit off their users or go to war with the internet. Maybe it might even make them open to the idea of federation (probably not but at the very least it'll make them leery of doing stuff like Reddit, unless they're just blatantly stupid like Huffman is).

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.

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.

The "funny" (mocking) content will get stale.

It depends on what happens next. Short term there definitely isn't any harm. Longer term if the content stays as is it gets stale and dies. On the other hand if the people keep finding creative ways of posting content in this "new" format it seems like it breathes life into the site*___*

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

r/art is now only allowing artsy John Oliver pics...

Trouble is there is both trees and marijuanaenthusiasts subs so that would kinda cancel each other out