Reddit users bombard site with John Oliver pictures in latest protest over new policy

CNN
—

After staging a widespread blockade to protest Reddit’s plans for a controversial new pricing policy, some users are now trying a different tactic: flooding the social network with images of John Oliver.

Several of Reddit’s largest self-moderated communities, including r/pics and r/aww, have transformed spaces once devoted to images of everyday life or cute and cuddly animals into perhaps the web’s largest archive of images of everyday comedians.

For the past few days, visitors to these groups have been greeted with page after page of Oliver photos – some real, some edited satirically, all designed to catch the Last Week Tonight host’s attention.

There were numerous images of Oliver posing in tailored suits and screenshots of humorous moments from his show. There’s Oliver as a koala. There are images of his face overlaid with the Mediterranean fruit commonly used to garnish martinis (“John Olive”). And an AI-generated image of Oliver as the Game of Thrones character (“John Oliver Snow”).

While the sudden spread of Oliver mania on Reddit sounds like the kind of blatant silliness that sometimes overwhelms large groups of hyper-online people, it also serves a deeper purpose. It’s a calculated tactic to keep up a days-long protest against Reddit’s management while the company increasingly cracks down on many of its own users and volunteer moderators.

Some Reddit forums have taken other steps, including being flagged as NSFW (not safe for work), choosing not to be active on certain days of the week, or changing their declared area of ​​interest. The iPhone subreddit, for example, is now exclusively dedicated to images of Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Reddit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reddit users are protesting a decision, taking effect next month, that introduces fees for apps to access Reddit data, much like Twitter put up a paywall for third-party access to its own platform. For its part, Reddit wants to boost its earnings in the run-up to an alleged IPO.

Reddit critics have said they object to the suddenness of the change, as well as the high proposed fees, which are expected to put several app makers out of business as early as next week. The maker of a popular Reddit app, Apollo, said Reddit’s paywall would cost it $20 million a year in fees for current use; The app will be discontinued on June 30 as the developer cannot afford the costs and cannot charge its own users enough to cover the costs.

Last Monday, more than 6,000 Reddit communities protested the move, including some of the platform’s most popular forums, which are said to have more than 25 million members. Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said the protest has had a limited financial impact on the company, although some advertisers have reportedly paused their spending on the platform and others reported that Reddit’s paywall proposal will see a drop in revenue Reddit was preceded by growth.

Huffman has firmly defended the upcoming move as necessary to make Reddit a profitable business. He has also slammed the volunteer Reddit moderators who are dedicated to the protest, describing them as outspoken and unrepresentative of the forums they run. And he praised Elon Musk for his handling of Twitter, citing the company’s billionaire owner as an inspiration for Huffman’s own business decisions.

In doing so, Huffman apparently made misleading claims about the Apollo developer and hinted that Reddit might try to remove unruly moderators from their posts.

More than 2,500 communities on Reddit remain impotent almost two weeks after the protests began. Most of the major forums involved in the protests have now reopened to the public under pressure from Reddit management, but groups like r/pics and r/aww are using unconventional protest methods, becoming hotbeds for things like Oliver content.

The decision to reopen but throw a nose at Huffman and the company in other creative ways reflects the cat-and-mouse game currently being played by numerous communities on the platform. Their goal is to continue to raise awareness of Reddit’s policy change without violating Reddit’s Terms of Service and giving the platform an excuse to crack down on the protests.

However, in selecting Oliver as the main obsession, Reddit users are also appealing to a man who has a history of delving into technology topics on shows and creating real-world effects with his show’s coverage. Over the past week, many Reddit users have expressed hope that Oliver could air a post about how he’s suddenly becoming the face of the revolt in the future, and perhaps feature its content on his show.

Oliver hasn’t committed to using any material, but he himself has stayed true to the form gave users its blessings to keep posting his picture on Reddit and provide them with even more fodder to distribute on the site.

“Dear Reddit,” he tweeted last week, “excellent work.”