Ohhh that's clever! Surely there's been enough publicity for HBO writers to notice, and that's perfect fuel for getting Johnny to bring this to mainstream.
It's just the kind of stunt that he would respond to.
I've no doubt that his writers read Reddit.
I noted right away they did the poll via upvoting, not via Reddit poll. This means that 3rd party apps could participate. Wonder if it has something to do with it.
The framing of "Go back to normal" or "Only sexy pictures of John Oliver" was clever. Lots of people are going to pick the funny option over the boring one in basically any low stakes poll, so even people who don't care much about the protest probably still voted for it.
There's also a lot more motivation for the people who are pissed about Reddit's changes vs. the people who just want their infinite feed of content back to its former state.
I bet similar scenarios play out with spez's whole "moderator democracy" idea.
TooAfraidToAsk has a poll where people can vote on the days the sub should be open with expected results. Democracy triumphs!
These kinds of stunts are useful because they keep up the spirit of the protest but turn it into a game that keeps (some) people entertained. It isn't as good as a pure Reddit boycott but that isn't ever going to happen. By making the subs worthless it diminishes the value to the mainstream crowd (you see the complaints already starting) and causes them to not be on Reddit as much which drives ad dollars away.
This is exactly the kind of tactic that's needed now. If Reddit wants to end the blackout by force, then what else is there to do but make them regret it?
Every Community is for sexy John Oliver pictures or I don't want to be a part of said Community
•
There's a magazine on kbin.local, BotIt, with people who just started work on a bot to begin mirroring submissions on Reddit subs to kbin magazines. I suspect that before all that much time has passed, you may be able to get the full John Oliver experience without leaving the comfort of the Fediverse.
mmm that's cool, but that could create a new niche community like r/worldnews ( it's about hentai ), what would be perfect was if every subreddit did the same creating a lack of diversity and driving users away.
Edit: Looks like r/gifs joined as well lol
Damn that would be a cool meta community to create, but i think for now we good with the world news community here that is about world news.
I really hope someone gets this in front of John Oliver and he makes a segment on it. It would be hilarious to watch 😂
Following this trend, I would love to see r/superbowl turn into just photos of John Owliver.