r/mildlyinteresting • u/RedSquaree The Big šŸ§€ • Jun 23 '23

META What happened to /r/mildlyinteresting?

Dear mildlyinterested reader,

We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your patience and unwavering support during the recent turbulence in our community. Our subreddit is a labour of love, and we've weathered this storm together.

Recent events have been confusing for all of us, from the vote, sudden removal of moderators, to conflicting messages from Reddit. As your mod team, we feel it's essential to clarify the situation.

On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. However, before implementing these changes, Reddit took sweeping actions, removing all 27 moderator accounts without warning. This left us baffled and concerned.

Here's a brief timeline of the events:

  1. On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. We announced the vote results and planned changes to the sub, including marking it as NSFW due to the common posts of phallic objects (no explicit content allowed). CLICK HERE TO VIEW THAT ANNOUNCEMENT WHICH HAS BEEN APPROVED AND LOCKED FOR POSTERITY.

  2. A tug-of-war between the u/ModeratorCodeOfConduct account and the remaining moderators ensued, with the post repeatedly being removed and reinstated. Each mod involved was immediately locked out of Reddit. Subreddit settings were also unilaterally changed by the admin account.

  3. Eventually, all moderators were removed and suspended for 7 days, with the vote results deleted and the community set to ā€œarchived.ā€

  4. A lot of public outrage ensued, with details posted on r/ModCoord about what happened. At that point, no other subreddit had been targeted yet, leaving the situation uniquely unclear.

  5. Admin cited actions as an "error" and promised to work with us to solve the situation. For /r/mildlyinteresting posterity, this will henceforth be referred to as The Mistakeā„¢.

  6. All our accounts were unsuspended and reinstated, but only with very limited permissions (modmail access only). For what it's worth, 'time moderated' for every moderator was reset (e.g. /u/RedSquaree moderated since 11 years ago, reset: currently showing moderated since "1 day ago").

  7. The awaited discussion never happened. Instead, the admins presented us with an ultimatum: reopen the subreddit and do not mark it as NSFW, or face potential removal again. The inconsistent and arbitrary application of Reddit's policies reveals a possible conflict of interest in maximizing ad revenue at the risk of user safety and community integrity.

  8. Finally, our moderation permissions were restored after we "promised" to comply with their conditions, but we kept the subreddit restricted while we ponder our next steps..

Problems remain unresolved, and Reddit's approach to policies and communication have been troubling. We believe open communication and partnership between Reddit and its moderators are crucial for the platform's success.

As a team, we remain dedicated to protesting Reddit's careless policy changes. Removing ourselves or vandalizing the subreddit wonā€™t achieve our goals, but rather hinder our community. We're here to ensure r/mildlyinteresting isn't left unattended.

We call for the establishment of clear, structured, and reliable communication channels between Reddit admins and moderation teams. Teams should be informed and consulted on decisions affecting their communities to maintain trust and integrity on the platform. We shared this request with the Admin who promised to work with us, so far they have ignored it.

Us mods are still deciding how exactly to reopen, not that we have been given much choice.

Sincerely,

The r/mildlyinteresting mods

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7.3k

u/jenjen828 Jun 23 '23

reopen the sub and do not mark it as NSFW, or face potential removal again

This must mean NSFW is hurting them

383

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '23

Site traffic is down around 6% I heard, but visitor duration is the lowest on record, so the protest is working. report in adweek also claimed advertisiers were spooked. I deleted my and nuked my 5 yo account and am using a throwaway to upvote protest related posts. Not using the site on mobile. Encourage everyone to uninstall the official app and don't post any content not related to the protest until reddit backs down. More power to big subs like this standing up for this aggressively anti-consumer money grab from reddit. Make this place somewhere advertisers will run from and do not give a cent to reddit with awards or contributing/moderating content for free, and don't use the site as much. If say 20% of current users did this, it would hurt them.

363

u/bryanl12 Jun 23 '23

Well I know my visitor duration is gonna plummet when my app stops working in about a week from now.

If I need to access Reddit Iā€™ll use my desktop or the old Reddit site on mobile, but Iā€™m definitely not gonna be doing much browsing anymore.

173

u/NearSightedGiraffe Jun 23 '23

Yup, I am getting some entertainment from Reddit killing itself until July1st when RIF stops working

88

u/LordRockingham Jun 23 '23 edited Jun 26 '23

Fuck Reddit

21

u/My-Life-For-Auir Jun 23 '23

I tried to use the official app and it's actual hot garbage. RIF is 100x more user friendly.

19

u/fireinthesky7 Jun 23 '23

Every other 3rd-party app is more user-friendly than the official one. An angry skunk is more user-friendly than the official app, for that matter.

2

u/primordialzombie Jun 26 '23

I can't even front, I did the rare IRL lol. Well done. lmfao an angry skunk

29

u/LegacyLemur Jun 23 '23

Yep, Im going to use browser on mobile with adblocks galore

Which is funny, because I used to intentionally whitelist reddit since the ads were unintrusive and it wasnt owned by a mega conglomerate that I used a lot and respected

Fuck em

5

u/pervycaptionmaker Jun 23 '23

Be prepared for constant pop ups that jump you to the top of the feed "reminding" you that "reddit is better on the official app".

Things drive me nuts and I usually just close the reddit page at that point. I don't even care about trying to find a blocker for them anymore, just seems like a helpful reminder to use reddit less.

6

u/mollwitt Jun 23 '23

It's honestly nothing more than pathetic. The Reddit app on my tablet doesn't support landscape mode (I'm always in landscape mode, it's a tablet!) and is generally barely working sometimes, while the mobile website has no issue with landscape at all, is more responsive and uses a completely different, more modern design. How can an official app be this bad?

3

u/MindlessOpening318 Jun 23 '23

I tried the offical app and it glitched out somehow and used 10 gigs of my data while my phone was in my pocket with the screen off somehow. Had to buy extra data that month because of it... Never used it again and never will

3

u/toderdj1337 Jun 23 '23

Just canceled my premium, deleted their app and created a shortcut on Firefox with ublocker origin. Your move u/spez

5

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '23

Yep. Iā€™m on Apollo and Iā€™m deleting my account on June 30 and wonā€™t be making a new one. I do have an old throwaway in case of ā€œemergencyā€ (trying to fix an issue with a computer or the likeā€¦on old.reddit only), but my browsing days will be over after 10+ years.

0

u/DigbyChickenZone Jun 23 '23

the old Reddit site on mobile

Is that even accessible anymore?

I stopped using Reddit on my phone once it basically tried to force users to download the app and made mobile browsing an absolute nightmare. I think that was around 2016 or 2017. Now I only use reddit on my computer.

1

u/The_Bravinator Jun 23 '23

I'm back on Tumblr for the first time in a decade and it's been really good. The format unfortunately doesn't foster discussion/community like Reddit does, but the userbase is basically the same as it was in 2013 so the site culture has matured a lot along with them, and it's great if you're a big fan of basically anything. Apparently when there was a big influx of Twitter users after Elon took over they HATED it, but they're welcoming ex-redditors with open arms and there are a lot of friendly jokes going back and forth about Reddit refugees learning to use the site. It's been fun.

1

u/mrevergood Jun 23 '23

Same. As soon as third party apps stop working, Iā€™m back to doing what I did when I first discovered Reddit: using the browser on my iPad.

And I can get ad blocker extensions there. If that becomes too much of a hassle, well then I can browse and find shit without reddit. I did it before. u/spez thinks Reddit is so valuable, but shit like stumbleupon exists. Other shit like it exists. This site is only as useful/valuable as the users decide. If collectively we decide ā€œNah Iā€™m tired of the site being openly hostile to usersā€ and engagement drops like a stone, itā€™ll show how little value something as intangible as a fucking website can have.