The Steam subreddit has been forced back open.

The community is posting about steam, the water vapor, in retaliation. It's a beautiful thing.

This is what I want to see from every subreddit that is forcibly reopened. The admins can try and force mods to 'do their jobs', but they sure as shit can't force what can be/gets posted!
- Virgin making the sub about John Oliver vs the chad taking the name of the reddit too seriously
  
  I just posted to the steam sub about how much I love steam turbines
- I think they could if they wanted to, I know that some subs actually hide your posts with automod until they get released by the mod team so it stands to reason you could do that on one of the core subs. It wouldn't be fun for the mods and would definitely cause a lot of frustration and issues with people all trying to be the first to post something but then they have to wait 8 hours for a mod to wake up and approve it.
I love malicious compliance.
It's funny, but I don't quite get the point of this. If you are boycotting Reddit then you shouldn't be going there to post about things. If you ARE going there, you are no longer boycotting. Reddit doesn't care what you post about. You are still participating in the site. It's just driving traffic back to Reddit, which harms the cause.
- The point is the lurkers subscribed there are going to get bored of steam pictures and unsubscribe, if it happens to enough subs then a lot of the passive userbase will end up either spending less time or leave entirely. Since the vast majority of users are lurkers, it'll outweigh the number of people creating these rebellion posts and Reddit should see a net loss in traffic. At least, that's what I've gathered. Please don't shoot the messenger if I'm wrong or it's a stupid idea
will reddit care that much? posting pictures of steam is still pageviews and engagement, which is really all they care about
This reminds me of the early days when you would goto steam.com only to realize that was not the correct website. I just checked and it seems like steam.com has been taken down but if I remember correctly it was some engineering company. I wonder if they are holding out for more cash from Gaben.
- I remember that. It used to also say "this domain is not for sale" on the front page.
I dunno, I think just remaining closed would have worked better. This will attract additional attention to Reddit. Also, the subreddit wasn't 'forced' back open, the mods just caved under a bit of pressure from the admins (which we don't even know is true. why on earth are they asking the steam subreddit to open back up when there are so many largers subs still private?). Smells like slacktivism to me, and mods who don't want to lose their power. Meh.
- They sent mail to every moderator of a closed subreddit I think. I wasn't specifically targetted. I doubt reddit would really care if /r/piracy opened back up, but they got the threat mail
@Highsight @FiendishFork Fight the power!

I'm not sure how they are actually anticipating this not to go negatively. If they are pushing active moderators and replacing them, that seems like a PR nightmare waiting to happen on top of all of this.

The people who care have left. The people who don't care stayed and they obviously won't give a shit. The only way they're going to give a fuss is when the content torpedoes, which it looks like it's already started.
- Quality content creators are mostly gone from Reddit. Quality content submitters are mostly gone from Reddit. Quality content commenters are mostly gone from Reddit.
  So what's left?
  Mods who think they have value and for some reason care about their /r , and working for free.
  Ads thinly disguised as posts. Bots spamming and upvoting those fake posts.
  And nobody important reading.
  
  The quality difference on lemmy/kbin is staggering. This is the perfect time to be part of it.
  It's inevitable it will start to slide once critical mass of users have been reached though. I'm curious if federated and smaller instances will keep it agile and fresh and big corp influence free.
- I care and I’m quite enjoying dipping in and adding to the (remarkably John Oliver themed) chaos.
- People who are fed up need to not leave. They need to go become a mild nuisance. Give nonsense answers to people (those who need casual assistance anyway). Pollute the data without contributing anything useful. And use an ad blocker the whole time.
So done with reddit I finally took the time to figure out how federated platforms work. Just started on kbin, and I've been seeing a lot more of what I actually want to see.
- Kbin's been good to me as a replacement so far. I have my nitpicks but I also understand it's very early days.
- Hell yeah, welcome! It is very nice and comfy here so far :)
- Yeah me too, still getting my head around the differences.
Yeah my big question is what happens when the replacement mods start taking bribes or posting spam? Without moderator tools, mods get a much more raw deal.

I thought spez wasn't worried about reddit's bottomline with these protests?
What a weird way of showing that you're not concerned.

Standard corpo-rat tactics.
They mean nothing but we're going to keep putting out PR spin and do everything we can to squash the revolt.

Honestly I think all of these subs should just spam the whole spez moderated jailbait thing and have nothing but that in the front page. Even if these subs reopen, they would ruin spez's image even more.

Does this scum even cares about himself anymore?
- maybe not but his intent is profit and making reddit open for public trade, and I don't think investors are going to like having something like that flooding all of reddit which might cause them to rethink their choices. I mean with the global reddit population declining and having something that fucked up about the owner of reddit flooding the website, I wouldn't want to buy reddit stock lol.
  
  edit to add on: I'm pretty sure the main objective of these protests is to make reddit lose so much money that it pulls back on the api decision. With most subs blacked out and the ones that have been reopened doing a lotta trolling, why not spread that shit to add some more damage?
If they really wanted to do damage, mods could just delete their subs, assuming that can be done.
- And Reddit will just restore them. Reddit was caught restoring comments from users who mass deleted everything they ever posted

I am ready and armed with Thomas the Tank Engine memes.

Thomas had never seen such bullshit before
- As someone who recently started watching OG Thomas for the first time with my kid I found much humor in this.

Next step would be moving beyond pictures of steam / John Oliver and simply jamming subreddits with worthless AI content which forced-back-but-striking mods would no longer remove; the more AI crap is there, the less useful the site is for training AI models, and the whole API scam goes out the window.

The thing that bothers me is the number of people on the r/steam announcement commenting that the mods are doing this to hold on to power and have sold out to the admins. Speaking as someone who has previously run a community (though a much, much smaller one) there is a lot of hard work and effort that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that these kinds of internet spaces stay clean and healthy. It's easy to say "Look at the power-tripping mods", and yes those do exist, but to pretend that every mod is like that sells short the people who sacrifice of themselves for the betterment of the community. A lot of metaphorical and occasionally literal blood, sweat, and tears go into managing an online social space, which I can attest to. Does that excuse poor mod behavior? Never! However, we shouldn't cut off our own nose to spite our face. I just hope that we can stop fighting ourselves and direct our collective vitriol at the real perpetrators; spez and his cronies.

The point is more that the writing is on the wall for that website, and should just quit moderating them and go to one of the alternatives or come here. Saying oh well and giving in to this strong arming from the admins is just making it worse for them down the line.

It's time to jump ship. The longer these people keep denying that, the more power they give to the admins.
- While I appreciate that point of view, and it absolutely feels that way, I can relate to the reluctance the r/Steam mods to torching everything. They have carefully cultivated the sub like a garden, and even though the local HOA (the admins) are threatening action, the mods aren't happy with the idea of immediately ripping out their prize-winning tulips and replacing them with cardboard cutouts just to be spiteful. I'm sure they want to try less extreme measures to salvage as much content as they can before making a riskier decision. Again, I get that things seem hopeless from the user side of things, but I know if I was in their shoes I'd be searching every avenue for a solution, even ones I wouldn't normally consider.

but there are users advocating changing the sub to be about actual steam.

Look at posts in the last 10 hours, they all are lol. Yay!

I hope the mods make it an actual rule

but there are users advocating changing the sub to be about actual steam

istg if they do that, itll be one big ass troll to the reddit mod team 💀

I never thought I could continue to enjoy reddit after what they did to Christian Selig and the other 3PA developers, but all this malicious compliance is delicious!

I’m only going on there to support stuff like this, at least until Apollo is turned off. Then I’ll mostly be here.
- Me too. I already nuked my (11-year-old) account and just pop in to watch the drama and see what subs are going where (when they divulge that).
all this malicious compliance is delicious!

Indeed.

If Reddit Inc's tactic is to pry open private subs and inject patsy mods, then there is only one thing left to do: deface them to destroy their utility.

steam should be about water vapor,
piracy should be about swashbuckling

/pics is already nothing but "sexy pics of John Oliver"
/gifs is similar
- r/Art is on the John Oliver train as well, just in an artistic form.
  
  Explainlikeimfive should mostly be "you'll learn about it when you're older".
  Space should be pictures of empty rooms or walls.
  AdviceAnimals should be random bits of advice one animal would give to another, like "see how that hole in the wall looks weird? That's a window. Don't fly into that."
  AbsoluteUnits? Just pictures of items that have units marked on them, like a 20kg bag of mulch or 5L of water.

I just broke my protest since the blackout began to see if PCGaming was still closed and it is. Nothing but respect for that team. Hope they see it through until reddit decides to go nuclear. I'll gladly create a new account to shit all over the new version.

https://reddark.untone.uk/ will tell you if a sub is public, private, or restricted if they promised to go private as part of the protest.

This will definitely leave r/lostredditors really confused

That's one way to make your way to !lostlemmys...

🤑🤑🤑

If they do that, it would be hilarious.

Fuck

... Reddit

What does it mean to force a sub open? Did Reddit remove the mods ability to make the sub private?

They are sending mods messages that they need to open up their subs or they will replace them with mods who will open them.
They’re removing the mods that keep it closed and install whomever they choose to run the newly reopened subreddit. That or sufficiently threaten the mods in place into making it open. Bad optics either way
There is a PSA Announcement at /r/Steam that reads:

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 server is active, don't forget to check it out.

Good luck and god speed.
Either open it up or they'd do the same they did on /r/piracy, ask if any of the mods is up to reopen the sub and remove the ones who aren't. Like this https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35555
The big admins just flip a flag somewhere. Probably remove the existing mods or threaten to do so if they close it again. I would then assume that either way the mods aren't going to be giving reddit free labor any more. Not sure what reddit's plan is to moderate at that point. Maybe get a scab mod to run things or something.

@FiendishFork This is gonna backfire majorly for them to force it back open again.

Hopefully they can just post boring AF content like /pics have done, just enough to technically be moderated and open

WOW, 25+ score!?!?! Das a lot of score-arinos!!!!! Congratulations fedizen! :)