[Note: the link is for the archive, to not give Reddit unnecessary traffic. Here’s a link to the original.]
Apparently r/pics is protesting through malicious compliance; the subreddit is open again, but all content being shown is uninteresting pictures of… who’s John Galt Oliver?
And the moderators decided to actually consult their community, on what they should do. You could vote on two options:
- Upvote this comment if you want /r/Pics to feature only images of John Oliver looking sexy. As of time of archiving this option was at +51k points.
- Upvote this comment if you want to return to normal operation. As of time of archiving this option was -8k points.
Interesting detail on how the r/pics moderators worded it:
Anyway, we – the so-called “landed gentry” – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the “royal court,”
I personally didn’t realise that there is such an implication on what Pigboy said - that if he’s calling the mods “landed gentry”, he sees himself as a king.
EDIT: as @J4g2F pointed out, other communities are doing the same sort of malicious compliance. I’ll share the links here:
- r/gifs (archive link, (original link). As of time of archiving it has +21k points for John Oliver gifs only, and -5k points for returning to normal
- r/art (original link) - as of now (7:20, São Paulo time), votes are still not visible. Same as above, John Oliver vs. normal operations.
- r/showerthoughts (archive link, original link). Voting on the days that the subreddit should be open or closed.
It’s worth noting that, of the 30000000 million r/pics members/subscribers, less than 50,000 participated. The venn diagram of new lemmy users and the SJO voters is pretty close to a single circle I’d bet.