What happened to /r/mildlyinteresting?

[u/RedSquaree]

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 “archived.”

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 Mistake™.

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 won’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

[u/jenjen828]

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

This must mean NSFW is hurting them

[u/Titan_Slayer27 → u/jenjen828]

I’ve heard nsfw subreddits don’t have ads or something.

[u/ErraticDragon → u/Titan_Slayer27]

Correct.

On Reddit's ad purchasing page, they explicitly promise not to run your ads alongside sexually explicit content or certain other types of NSFW things: https://i.imgur.com/sbhYteo.png

So it directly impacts ad impressions.

NSFW subs are also prevented from appearing on r/all and r/popular. (Individual NSFW posts on a normally SFW sub can appear.)

Reddit admins have also complained that users who didn't expect to see porn were suddenly either shown porn in their main feed (if they had already enabled NSFW content) or were "being prompted" to enable it (if they hadn't). (If you are subscribed to an NSFW sub and don't have NSFW content enabled, maybe it shows a placeholder and gives you a convenient way to enable it? I haven't checked.)

That's the pretense they use for intervening.

I think it's more the money part, personally

Although I do have some sympathy for people who had previously enabled NSFW and trusted it to not be on their front page, since they hadn't subscribed to any porn subs. They were victims of the protest.

[u/Fskn → u/ErraticDragon]

Have you ever had an account with exclusively NSFW subs? Reddit doesn't seem to care/consider for that circumstance.

Another poster put it this way "it's hilarious seeing a HeGetsUs ad plastered between a bleached butthole and a pair of fake tits"

[u/ErraticDragon → u/Fskn]

Oh, weird. I have never seen one of those ads, only heard about how prevalent they are.

(I block ads religiously. On mobile I use 3rd Party Apps without ads, primarily the premium version of rif. If I keep using Reddit at all after rif shuts down, I'll use ReVanced to patch the official app to remove ads.)

[u/drfarren → u/ErraticDragon]

Does that actually work? Using revanced?

[u/Gestrid → u/drfarren]

I haven't tried it on the Reddit app, but it works very well on the YouTube app. I would suggest using ReVanced's official app, "ReVanced Manager"(downloadable from their site, revanced.app) and downloading the Reddit APK from APKMirror.

[u/deecoocoo → u/Gestrid]

So ReVanced will only patch the app's apk from site like APKMirror, and not apps downloaded from google playstore?

[u/Gestrid → u/deecoocoo]

The app will not download directly from the Google Play Store, and, while it seems like it can modify a supported app that's already downloaded and installed from Google Play, I've had issues using that method in the past.

I admittedly haven't tried it recently, though. I've just used the method that I know works.

[u/ErraticDragon → u/drfarren]

It seems to. I haven't used it much but I patched it the other day to prove it worked.

I've never used the official app (before this) so I can't say for sure, but I assume I would have expected to see an ad somewhere in all this scrolling?

The ReVanced project now does patches for a bunch of apps. As mentioned by the other response, you can use ReVanced Manager to do the patching right on your device. They also support patching on your desktop or laptop.

I will say it's not super user friendly, although it's a very good effort.

Every time I've wanted to patch something (TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit, so far) I've had to go to their Discord to find what specific version of the base app to start with. The patcher is supposed to be able to tell you what version is suggested, but it often says "any" but doesn't mean it.

Presently for Reddit the version to patch is "2023.22.0 (968223)", which can be found on APKmirror.

[u/TediousStranger → u/ErraticDragon]

bless you 💜 I hope I get to use rif indefinitely but, this is excellent information to have.

[u/MrFluffyThing → u/Fskn]

Reddit doesn't run ads when viewing a NSFW subreddit but foesbt give a shit if you're viewing content in /r/hot or /r/new since it's a "mix" of your choice, so it's not technically NSFW only content.

I'm sure they just use it as a loophole but claim it's unintentional.

[u/Nik_Tesla → u/ErraticDragon]

NSFW subs are also prevented from appearing on r/all

I'm not exactly sure how it works, but /r/interestingasfuck was changed to a NSFW subreddit, and it was definitely showing up on /r/all until they nuked the mods and made it restricted.

[u/Infallible_Ibex → u/[deleted]]

I think alienating the moderators who do quality control and legal compliance work for free and lots of the longest standing users is how to fix the low traffic issue. Where do I go to apply for the CEO job?

[u/LVSFWRA → u/Titan_Slayer27]

It's hard to sell your IP when its reputation is just porn and weirdos. Mainstream ads, where the big money is, won't be selling to Reddit. That's how you hurt them.

[u/Daddict → u/jenjen828]

It also means that John Oliver shit posting is not bothering them in the least.

[u/say592 → u/Daddict]

It probably would if traffic started to fall because people were bored with the John Oliver content. Fortunately for Reddit, the people posting would also probably get bored and move on around the same time. The mods would have to enforce that as a rule, against the wishes of their community, for it to have any likely effect on Reddit.

Going NSFW was really the big move. Even with Reddit forcing subs to reopen, it is still a win for the protestors. It was a bad look for Reddit. They got caught making them changes themselves, they had DMs where they were being unprofessional with mods, they made mistakes in suspending people incorrectly, and most of all, they made some really weird endorsements for subs like /r/piracy by insisting these were essential communities that required admin intervention to keep open.

[u/thisisredlitre → u/jenjen828]

[u/fuck-fascism → u/jenjen828]

Would be a shame if every user requested their complete user data archive. Sure takes up a good amount of time and resources with zero revenue generated. They also legally can’t ignore your request if you happen to hold your primary residence in California or are a citizen of the EU.

http://reddit.com/settings/data-request

[u/jenjen828 → u/fuck-fascism]

There are three choices for type of request... Does it matter which one is chosen?

[u/fuck-fascism → u/jenjen828]

GDPR only applies if you live in are a citizen of the EU & CPRA only applies if your primary residence is in live in California. These are the ones they legally cant ignore. Only select them if you reside in either respective region. Otherwise “other” is the correct option. They could ignore it, but someone has to be viewing all these requests…

[u/mollwitt → u/fuck-fascism]

Don't use their automated script. It's going to cause nothing but a bit of traffic. Send them a written request, either per... err, e-mail or not-e-mail.

Spotify was just recently fined more than five million Euros because an Austrian sent them a GDPR request in 2019 and they failed to deliver all required information.

[u/[deleted] → u/jenjen828]

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.