TheiaTheMoonMaker
I wonder if it’s because they know the first few subs to be forced open will make headlines, but the second batch most likely won’t. So by starting with fringe subs it paints the picture that’s it’s not the bigger or more important subs that are participating in the blackout.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the /r/antiwork mod’s disastrous appearance on Fox News become a talking point again paired with this, so that when people hear “Reddit forces mods to…” that’s the sort of person the public pictures.
Just a heads up so you can try to plan ahead: on Reddit one of the tactics used by those with hateful agendas was to shut down progressive threads by purposely creating drama in that thread to overwhelm the moderators so that they had to lock the thread thus stopping all discussion. Sometimes they did this by being awful and dragging in well meaning users into fights, other times I they’d drop a few “I’m just asking questions” comments focussing on hot-button ideas that they knew would rile up arguments. It was very deliberate tactic and one that I don’t think moderators ever figured out how to deal with effectively, because short of babysitting the thread with their full attention from start to finish there was no way to prevent entire threads from devolving into attacks and arguments.
The crazy thing was how effectively one or two people with hateful agendas could derail an entire comment section of well meaning people and, by getting the thread locked, shut down the discussion and spread of progressive ideas.
I bring this up because Beehaw is perhaps uniquely vulnerable to this sort of ‘attack’, and you should expect to see it in the future. By joining other federated instances and using these tactics to stir up drama in Beehaw threads they can, by forcing your hand to defederalize, restrict the access of those other communities to the progressive ideals and ideas posted on Beehaw. The end result is isolating progressive ideas inside our walled garden, while users of the rest of the Lemmy instances start to only see more right-wing extremist views, normalizing them to otherwise everyday people.
I don’t have a solution to this. But it’s something to be aware of in discussions with the moderators of other instances, that a handful of people with this exact agenda can make their community look bad in order to restrict their users’ access to progressive ideas.
The incident is in fact being investigated by the RCMP. On top of that it was other parents who intervened to stop the man, the school is banning them from school property, a city council member says they’ll investigate how to promote safer spaces for those who are minorities, the mayor gave a statement condemning it, and the premier of the province condemned it and encouraged everyone to stand up against transphobia. The message has consistently been that transphobia is not okay, and not “but she wasn’t even trans!”, which I think is good.
Realistically the response after it happened was probably about as good as could ever be hoped for. I really hope the little girl is able to remember the support and not the attempted insult.
I also feel bad for the grandchild of the bigots, who was also participating in the event and is presumably a classmate of the other kids. The grandparents apparently live two provinces away, so good job Grandma and Grandpa coming for a visit and causing shit for the kid and parents who have to live in that community.
AskHistorians is taking the approach of “blackout for two days, then read-only moving forward indefinitely.” I think that’s a good approach as it still removes the functionality of the subreddit while reminding people of what they’re missing out on due to the admins’ actions.
I know there are bigger subs, but AskHistorians is an absolute jewel in Reddit’s crown. For all the dumpster fire subs that raise controversy and drag Reddit’s image down, AskHistorians is the one sub that could always be pointed to as a sub with an inarguably positive impact. It’s also a sub in a unique position because its moderators are probably the hardest for Reddit to replace, because many of them are the historians that answer the questions, or have personal relationships with those that do. In addition most of the historians aren’t really Redditors, participating only on AskHistorians. Removing the current mod team and replacing them would absolutely 100% kill the sub forever.
Not that I have any faith in Reddit to do the right thing. I just think it’s interesting to realize just how different of a position AskHistorians in than the rest of the subreddits, being at the same time more impactful than their subscriber numbers show, while being fragile enough to be permanently broken if handled poorly. They are also one of the only mod teams I’ve see who have issued a list of actionable goals that Reddit can address.
Also it’s interesting to see that their participation in the blackout is almost entirely on Spez’s head. That’s some damn fine CEOing there, Lou.
Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your husband, and hitting him?
That’s kind of amazing. :) I hope it works out for you the same as it did for me.
I’ve never had an experience like that before where one game prepped me to be better at and have a better time with another, and I always just thought it was really neat that it worked that way.
I’ve played the GOG version of Witcher 3, Alpha Centauri, and Wasteland 2 on my Steamdeck. All worked great, though Alpha Centauri needs some easy tweaks you can find here when the Reddit blackout is over.
If you’re interested in 4X games at all Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is only $1.49. It absolutely holds up and to this day probably still has the best story of any 4X game.
It also works great on Steamdeck with a couple of easy tweaks. Unfortunately the instructions for those tweaks are currently in Reddit blackout shutdown limbo so I can’t copy them here, but when the blackout ends you can Find The Instructions Here.