A number of popular subreddits have ????? ??? ???? ?????cheekily relaunched amid the widespread protest against Reddit from its users. Three massive subreddits — r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww — now feature only images of comedian John Oliver.
This new development is a direct shot at Reddit's CEO, who has said he thought most users would want things to return to normal than continue the protest against the company's new policy that effectively prices out third-party apps.
In case you've missed it, lots of major subreddits had gone private and effectively shut down to protest Reddit. The moderators of those three big subreddits held a vote and it was conclusive — they'd rather post pics of John Oliver than go back to normal.
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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has stumbled over himself trying to downplay the severity of the protest.
"We don't have problems with protests. I think it's important," he told the Verge in an interview last week. "That's part of the democracy. It's part of the democratic part of Reddit. But the users are not in support of it now. It’s like a protest in a city that goes on too long, and the rest of the citizens of the city would like to go about their lives."
He also compared moderators — who volunteer a ton of time and effort, especially for major subreddits — to "landed gentry" in an interview with NBC News. That pissed a lot of people off. The moderators over at r/pics, for instance, wrote that they, the gentry, "definitelywant to comply with the wishes of the 'royal court,'" thus leading to a vote on going back to normal or only sexy pictures of Oliver. Sexy pics of the late-night host won by a count of 37,331 to just 2,329. The counts were similarly one-sided in the votes at r/gifs and r/aww.
The subreddits are now entirely filled with pics of Oliver, which is wonderfully hilarious.
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It is a pretty hilarious and cheeky way to stick it to Reddit and Huffman and, frankly, the kind of stunt Oliver might do on his show Last Week Tonight. Oliver himself has approved of the protest. In fact, he's been posting pics to use on Twitter.
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So some big parts of Reddit are back...but only in a very specific, weird way.