Genius! I wish every other sub did this.

This is great. Tomorrow I'll see what I can do with stable diffusion.

The people has spoken. I love democracy

This is the way, we did it... - u/spez

/r/pics is now too sexy to browse.

I love democracy

Sexy pics of John Oliver is better than 90% of the stuff posted there anyways. Glad to see them sticking it to Reddit, though.

Malicious compliance from both the mods and the users! I dust off my account to upvote it.

Ahh brilliant.

Awesome!

Absolutely crushing the direction they chose.

r/InternetIsBeautiful

I don't think this is a good idea. The point of the blackout is to hit Reddit where it hurts, by driving traffic down. This prank (partially) reverses the work of the blackout, by getting people back to the pics subreddit to post and see (John Oliver) pics. It turns the blackout into a joke. And I think is a step towards the community just moving on from the blackout without it actually having the long term effects that were intended.

I'm all for malicious compliance, but I think this is the wrong flavor of it.

I hope all the subs have a variation on this.

Both are bad choices. When reddit says open /r/pics or else, you just delete /r/pics.

Reddit has NEVER been profitable. It's the classic:

1. Takes a bunch of venture capital funding
2. Builds a huge user base
3. Get bought
4. Parent company tries to figure out a way to make money off of you.
5. When they can't, they try to spin you off and IPO you.
6. You have your "oh shit" moment and realize you actually have to be profitable now.

This is the crap that caused the dot-com bubble in the late 90s.

Their current business model is unsustainable.

They're doing the API war out of sheer survival.

The sad part is, we all went along for the ride, using the service and filling it with useful information, never wondering if it was still going to be there a decade or two later.

Reddit wants to IPO. Having gone through the IPO process twice now with a company, I can tell you, the only thing that matters is money in the bank. The more money you have in the bank, the more you can charge for your IPO. When I worked at CompUSA back in the 90s, we didn't pay any of our creditors for something like 6 months before the IPO to swell the bank accounts. I remember the week before the IPO, we had almost nothing in the store, because we owed everyone money. 30 days after IPO, trucks came rolling in again with product.

Just did my part and posted a sexy John Oliver image

also the case on r/piracy