The unilateral re-opening of /r/Luxembourg

40 comments

1. Cowars and bootlickers everywhere

2. Closing the sub permanently is definitely NOT a wise decision.

3. What’s the point of having a protest if people put avoiding the inconvenience caused ahead of everything else?

   This all started over the API changes and the terrible way they were communiated, hence the initial 2 day blackout. And then the CEO of reddit did an fabulous AMA /s, followed by some excellent PR /s ,which is why things became an extended blackout and some subs are decamping off reddit.

   Personally I’m enjoying r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww doing the John Oliver thing (and they also explain nicely their rationale).

4. I did not follow the debate. But I only use reddit app anyways so I’d rather keep the sub open.

5. The protest of closing subreddits mainly punishes its users and not reddit itself.

6. You’re an idiot

7. I don’t care about you personally that much either way, and will therefore not vote on you.

   I would vote on a poll as to what the sub should do in the future.

   Independently of all of that – I feel less welcome on Reddit now than I did before du to the course it seems to be taking. I will probably reduce my time or totally leave Reddit before too long, and I would welcome having another place to hang out with you people. So if people from r/Luxembourg want to go to Lemmy or so, I’m game.

8. Who the fuck is u/meungvax and why is this poll about him? Shouldn’t we be voting on whether to keep the sub dark or open it up again?

9. So was this an admin-enabled coup as has been threatened in other subs? Or were the mods here able to come to an internal agreement to reopen against the wishes of some parties?

   The latter is wholly acceptable, while the former is not. I agree with keeping the sub open but I do not agree with doing *anything whatsoever* to legitimize the practice of the admins removing pro-blackout mods/teams and replacing them by fiat with complacent mods/teams. The moral hazard is the main problem in this case.

   edit: can I get an answer to my question instead of silent downvotes? Would be nice.

10. The options are not well defined. One could say : you are doing the right thing but you need to go ! 🙂

    As someone said it before, don’t make it about yourself

    I won’t vote for that reason.

11. My thought about this: looks like protesting is fine as long as it’s easy, but once it gets annoying (“can’t get my Reddit fix and it’s been 3 days!”) we just throw our hands in the air like “that’s it folks”.

    Edit: also, aren’t there more mods? Did you guys not have a vote? Unilateral decisions leave a bad taste. I mean we gotta trust your guys to run the vast and immense universe that is r/Lux

12. Thank you for bringing the subreddit back. I get the protest, but again it is only hurting the ppl and not reddit itself.

13. This pool is flawed, why make it asking about you? There should be a pool about if, how long and how the subreddit should go dark. Also don’t do unilateral decisions, you mods should have talked with each other beforehand

14. Tough one, as I understand the protest. However, as another one of us said – the only ones who lose in this are the users. Reddit actually became one of my main sources of information related to Lux because of how controlled the normal media outlets are. Was getting all sorts of news and public opinions from here, while many were not even faintly mentioned in the radio or news

15. This post absolutely stinks in terms of how you are trying to frame it.

    This subreddit is not a public service in itself, because it is wholly depended on the platform it is hosted on. As such anything that is happening on the wider platform is part of the problem of the readers here, and we are not a separate bubble that is independent of the platform.

    Your prior [condescending rhetoric](https://www.reddit.com/r/Luxembourg/comments/146b5y2/is_rluxembourg_going_to_participate_in_the_reddit/) about the blackout prior to it happening was disgraceful for a moderator, and you were rebutted *extremely* strongly by everybody. Your post right here is even more shameful in picturing this subreddit as some irreplaceable resource for local people who otherwise have nowhere else to go and would feel lost (which is by the way very weird to me since you live on the other side of the planet), and is very similar to “think of the children” false argumentations that tend to surround online platform content management and moderation.

    Framing this around just the fact that this is about third-party apps is also again completely tone-deaf. I don’t know how long you’ve been around aside from your public account age, but /u/Stereo undoubtedly has been around since the creation of the site and similarly I’ve also seen through what these wider site changes do a community, and how Digg had fucked things up 13-14 years ago. This isn’t solely about third-party apps anymore, and you framing it solely around that again showcases you don’t realize what the debate is even properly about beyond the top-level talking points.

    Now, I do not disagree that the sub shouldn’t have been technically re-opened, if only because for the reason is that Reddits admins have put veiled threats that whole subreddit moderation teams would be replaced if they had remained private. In this post you do not cover anything in regards to continued protest alternatives than just blacking out, and just make it about yourself and your unilateral decision. First of all I don’t understand how you are even able to undertake this action against the apparent differing opinions of the rest of the moderation team, that’s moderation and subreddit hijacking if anything.

    I hope that readers don’t fall for this kind of “love and community” false argumentation. My take is you have no business in continuing moderating here in the way this matter was handled.

    Oh, and one thing I’d like to [comment on this reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/Luxembourg/comments/14d9o64/the_unilateral_reopening_of_rluxembourg/joop3t2/):

    > I think the whole situation was mishandled.

    > First of all we weren’t really informed about the fact that the sub would go dark.

    I had messaged the moderation team on June 5th about the blackout and what they’d would do. I got no reply.

    Based on [/u/meungvax reply here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Luxembourg/comments/146b5y2/is_rluxembourg_going_to_participate_in_the_reddit/jnr0imy/ ), to me, it seems that he simply unilaterally put his foot down that there would not be any blackout – against the wishes of the community, and against the wishes of the other moderators, and externally, what it simply looks like to me is that it was gigantic mis-reading of the situation with the user backlash, and the sub closed down in a knee-jerk reaction instead of a proper messaged way.

    Leave him moderate his other questionable subreddits the way he pleases.

16. Shitty take and terrible mod work.

    This modteam needs to get its shit together.

    Absolute disgrace.

    *Un plébiscite n’est pas la légitimité…*

17. Missed this place !

18. This is real weird. The unilateral decision by the mod team to join the blackout was, to me, weird. This decision by one presumably junior mod to end it is weird. Their ability to do so unilaterally is weird. Framing it as being about that mod’s future here is weird.

    TLDR; everything is weird.

19. Best decision. The reddit hive mind is mind boggling at times. This community has proven its purpose time and time again, regardless of third party apps.

20. Can’t we make it to Lemmy or kbin a fediverse type of environment. That will be fun I guess.

21. Ëch géing et nawell besser fannen wann een erfuerenen Notzer den och aus Lëtz kennt den Sub géing leeden, an net en Account mat 800+ karma den am Myanmar aktiv ass.

22. Thank you very much I missed the channel these days it is very helpful.

23. What the fuck is all the fuss about third party apps anyway?
    I for one do not have a scooby or give a shit about them!

24. Here I was thinking “Ahh, you need to approve me? Well approve this, bitch. *closes reddit* “

25. As you said we had some election time and closing this sub isn’t the best part to do. It’s not like r/Luxembourg has an impact on Reddit decision when the top subs failled and reopened anyway.

    In addition our roundabout dopamin is running low.

    Fully support the reopening.

26. I wholeheartedly agree with the reopening.

    Closing a country-wide subreddit was a misguided decision that has not been thought through.

    What purpose does making this subreddit private serve?

    – It is not in the public interest

    – Luxembourg is not a niche subreddit as say r/TVTooHigh

    – It would become stagnant. A private subreddit will suffer due to limited ideas/content if it is not available to the general public

    – It is not what Luxembourg is all about and not the image we should be projecting to the world of an inclusive “open” country with free exchange of ideas, instead of self-serving interests of select few.

    -Plus I would miss out which cycling paths are good and when Ikea is open 🙂

27. U/Stereo needs to understand that this is public social space not North Korea. You don’t like something, you debate and you leave the platform if you don’t agree with the new policies, but don’t just close it down for the thousands of people which appreciate it everyday. And should also not forget that we can create an alternative subreddit (I have many ideas of good names) at any time, again, this is not North Korea and certainly not u/Stereo’s realm.

28. This is so weird. Instead of doing a poll at the beginning of all this, you decided (unilaterally?) against participating. When it seemed that the majority of people wanted to join in, someone closed the sub without notice and without even doing a poll.

    Since you’re now unilaterally reopening the sub it seems obvious that the mod team isn’t an actual team anymore.

    What’s your end goal here? Why do you turn this into a vote of no confidence? The results of this are meaningless this way.

    It seems like you’re trying to use the members of the sub against the other mods. I always assumed all these fights for power and little political games only existed in the big subreddits.

    In any case it seems like a change in the mod team is necessary.

29. r/luxembourg is like 0.001% of reddit so leave it open for the 6 member’s convenience

30. We should have a different poll which is not specifically about the OP, but a simple ‘should r/Luxembourg be open or closed?’

31. I only caught wind of the Reddit shenanigans a few days ago and wondered why quite a few /r/’s were missing but I agree, I think the benefits of this group outweigh the reasons for boycott and I think Reddit have got the message.

    SHOW ME THE ROUNDABOUT

32. Mod is missing the point.

    By not taking into account the needs and rights of third-party developers, mod is reinforcing the power of a platform which will have lasting impact on the users you mentioned. The only influence we could have, by closing the r/luxembourg, you destroy it. Your choice will have wide-ranging consequences for all us.

33. It is the right decision to open it back up. Most of the more *casual* reddit users are just annoyed about the closure of so many subreddits (me included).

34. So according to the protestors, if we let the API changes slide, Reddit will die.

    But if their alternative is shutting down their subs INDEFINITELY… isn’t Reddit already dead anyway? If that’s the only solution on the table from the oldschool mods then what’s stopping me from taking my chances and supporting Reddit instead? Their crappy unpopular changes at least MIGHT keep the platform alive for the users whereas an indefinite, unannounced blackout from the mods already kills it. Don’t see what is in it for me as a user in this case?

    Not trying to be provocative here just genuinely asking.

35. I think we should just find a luxembourgish kbin server and leave reddit altogether. I’m in the middle of trying to build a self hosted kbin server for personal use but don’t think I can use the resources for more users.

    Maybe someone from a site like opencloud.lu could help out?

36. Do I understand the conundrum right: either the protest ends and reddit dies, or the protest goes into second gear and reddit dies?
    I am really confused over here, still pretty new to the site in general and all of a sudden there is argmageddon going on. This must be how Zoomers feel as they come of age lol

37. It sucks what Reddit is going through at the moment, but this community and the people here are important to me, I know it’s a hard time but this community is something I feel part of and gives a sense of friendship in what can be a pretty lonely place to live.

38. We should make a website ngl, just an idea!

39. GLORY TO U/MEUNGVAX

40. Nobody cares. If it dies, it dies. Just bring back Luxusbuerg and Irc and everything is fine.