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Reddit communities with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Does anybody know yet if you are allowed to criticize startrek on those communities? I had a major problem with /r/startrek in that you couldn’t say anything less than glowingly positive or you were banned. Like, not even about the whole woke bullshit, you couldn’t even say the writing was below par - banned.
I just wanna talk about startrek, both the good and the glaringly bad lol.
You could always criticize them, you just couldn't be lazy about your criticism.
I've many times talked about the inconsistency in character development, the trend to "give backstory and then kill a character," and the absolutely nauseating camera movement (especially in the early seasons) of Discovery, for example. Never even got a warning, nor my posts removed.
There was a major thread like a year back talking about how in Disco, the actors don't actually move about a scene when they do things. The movement is from room to room, and then they are stuck in place as they talk and it really throws you out of it.
Edit: In fact, there's literally a post critiquing season 4 of Discovery right now on their front page with healthy discussion in the comments.
All of these were allowed before and still.
Disagree. I was banned from there when they signed on with the brigade to get /r/nonewnormal banned. My offending post? “Et tu, /r/startrek?” (Off topic - so much for Reddits rules against “brigading.”)
That was it. And it was in that thread (so it was on topic.) And I watched others get banned in the same thread for literally quoting from the TNG episode “The Drumhead.” So I found alternate startrek subs and saw the influx of other users who were banned from the main sub for mild criticism (with receipts). Then watched those subs get banned as well for not towing the Paramount line.
I firmly believe that the main ST sub was monitored, if not infiltrated by, Paramount (or a PR/marketing firm hired by them) to halt any negative discussion of the new shows. I watched similar things happen all across Reddit, especially in the larger subs. After being on Reddit for nearly 15 years (since just prior to the Digg migration), that place has changed.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
Considering you used "woke" as a pejorative earlier and now you're ranting about conspiracies involving Paramount (why would Paramount sanction a move to the fediverse where they can't show ads?) and supporting a sub that was about supporting anti-mask/anti-vaxx nonsense during the beginning of a global pandemic that's killed ~7 million people since 2020, I really am not even interested in furthering this discussion with you. LLAP 🖖
Aww, and we were having such a pleasant conversation. That’s ok, I’m going to respond to you anyways, for the benefit of anybody else who comes across this.
Ahem.
I believe what I said was “woke bullshit.” And I used it as an adjective to describe, specifically, one aspect of a show that you were not allowed to criticize on /r/startrek. Like it or not, you cannot deny that Disco is woke AF. I would personally argue that ST has always been progressive, and in the modern era going woke was the obvious and logical next step for the franchise. Furthermore, it has been criticized for this, rightly or wrongly. But that’s the literal point of a discussion board, to have a discussion. And people are allowed to like different things - that’s ok. They’re even allowed to * gasp * like things that are different than you like, or like things that you don’t like - that’s also ok. What is not ok, IMO, is censoring the conversation because you don’t like it (to a point, please don’t use this as a straw man or slippery slope, let’s keep this on topic). And that’s what was happening on /r/startrek with all the bans.
“Oh no, he’s ranting! Watch out, he’ll start raving next!” 🙄 Because it makes zero sense that Paramount would keep an eye on the largest message board on the internet dedicated to discussing their flagship product. No sense whatsoever. Crazy talk. And it further makes even less sense that they would want to advertise on the platform hosting that message board, to try and drive traffic towards their subscription service, being buoyed by their flagship product. Complete lunacy. And then to even suggest (gasp!) that they would use those advertising dollars to apply pressure to the platform to quell any sort of negative discussion about their flagship product, well that just crosses a line. I mean, that would never happen, and to suggest otherwise is clearly insane.
Never said they did. I said that my belief is that they were involved to an extent over on /r/startrek. I don’t think they would follow over here, for the reasons you’ve stated. But knowing that the same mods that ran /r/startrek are also running startrek.website is enough to give me pause about what sort of criticism of the brand will be allowed.
Edit: If Reddit dies a miserable death, and startrek.website becomes the de facto startrek message board on the internet, it would be extremely naive to think that Paramount (or their PR/marketing firm) wouldn’t follow the Fediverse. They wouldn’t be able to apply pressure directly like they can/could on Reddit with their advertising dollars, but if I worked for that department I’d get very creative to see how I could exercise control over the content of the community. Just off the top of my head, first thing I’d do is to offer a job to one of (if not all of) the moderators - “We’ll pay you $ to make your community look like this. Welcome aboard!” Hell, maybe that’s simply all they did on Reddit in the first place - no need to pressure the platform when you can simply buy the mods. (I’m not saying that’s what happened, I’m simply thinking out loud. 🤷♂️)
It was a sub dedicated to vaccine hesitancy, vaccine-induced injuries, and vaccine mania (“take the vax or lose your job!”). And Covid vaccine injuries are very fucking real. I’m old enough to remember the last time a vaccine was rushed to market, and allllll the problems that caused - there is very good reason to be hesitant this time around. Personally, I believe “you do you” - but the hive-mind hysteria would have none of that. (“Brought to you by Pfizer!” ?)
So that’s ok. I think we’ve both gotten what we needed out of this conversation. You have yourself a wonderful day, I wish you nothing but health and happiness.
Edit: almost forget this gem!
To quote Nero: “Don’t tell me that didn’t happen! I watched it happen! It did happen!” Lololol
Whilst we've defederated with some of the parties in this chat thread and won't see this comment, please remember our rule of "Be(e) kind to each other". It's okay to have differing opinions and to get heated, but don't overdo it like what's happened here.
I feel your pain. I "and my ax"ed a comment thread on /r/pics and got a ban.
When I went back to it, the entire thread was just deleted comments. Shadow-banned?
When someone finally responded to a plea for an explanation and we tried to discuss the error and a path toward a fix
They just said "I don't know why but you're still banned" or so and that was it.
Power-tripping mod shadow-banned everyone in a thread? Some mod whose spelling I corrected, somewhere, projected guilt as wrath? We'll never know.