I keep thinking back to the Arab Spring. Everyone thought Twitter could bring down dictators. Now users can’t even effectively pressure management. It should be easy for users to take over a platform and dictate terms, but the instant dopamine of infinite scroll can’t be resisted.
This is true of every system we live in and yet it very rarely happen because most people just want to get on with their lives and not think about it, or don’t have the means to pressure (jobs where you’re just a cog making barely enough to survive and can’t afford to lose any of the income for instance)
> Now users can’t even effectively pressure management.
Is that what's happening though? My impression is that it's a vocal minority and powermods that made the decision about blackout. Similar to a lot of political topics in real life. I was never asked about this. There's a Twitch channel now brigading every sub that raises the question if they should continue or not. Look at the vocal people in /r/soccer and most have never posted in the sub before.
Many subs did public polls to gauge their community’s opinion about what action they should take regarding the blackout.
Alongside this, considering how hard it is to get people to agree on what they need to take action against, I’d hardly think that over 8000 subreddits would go dark just because they have “powermods” that take the subreddit dark without regard for the community’s opinion (whether that be an poll before announcing, or backlash after announcing). People would’ve (and have in some subs), complained about the blackout if it really was a majority opinion that they shouldn’t participate.
How downvoted are the blackout announcement posts? What are the comments on them (albeit perhaps the mods delete negative comments)? Are there any highly upvoted threads against it?
I’d agree it’s a minority that want the blackout if we also accept the premise that the majority of people just don’t care. And in that case, if no one (or very few, since it’s the internet) is complaining, the mods should indeed do what they feel is right and wanted by many to help their circumstance.
The romanticism around "majority revolt" is flawed, almost every change, every revolt, every major action was not started, supported, or even desired by the "majority".
Majority rule is actually a very flawed and dangerous premise
