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Pokemon GO's subreddit, like many of its counterparts across the site, has been embroiled in protests against upcoming changes to the social media platform's API. Ahead of the company's initial public offering of its stock, Reddit stated that it would begin charging third-party developers to use the platform's programming interface. This resulted in a protest from both users and moderators.
The initial pushback came in the form of locking many popular subreddits (including Pokemon GO) and prohibiting access to outside users to protest the API changes. Some developers have stated that this would bankrupt them and keep them from making popular third-party Reddit-browsing apps.
When the Pokemon GO subreddit re-opened to the public, photos flooded the front page of the board with images of Pikachu and HBO comedian John Oliver.
Why is John Oliver/Pikachu popping up everywhere on Pokemon GO's subreddit?
As a continued form of protest, the moderators of r/PokemonGO decided to join various other subreddits in flooding the social media site with images of John Oliver, a British-American comedian known for his HBO show "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver", where he covers politics and current events.
Oliver's antics tend to spill over into wackiness, and he even featured Pokemon in a segment many years ago. During this bit, Oliver "killed" a Jigglypuff as he covered a topic surrounding events in Japan. This occurred back in 2019 when Pokemon GO's popularity was remaining quite close to its 2016-2017 peak among fans and the media.
Based on the official post by r/PokemonGO's moderators, the only images that would be permitted on the subreddit would be those of John Oliver, Pikachu, or the Team Instinct leader Spark, who is often found in memes among the community for being the least serious of the three team leaders. This was determined by a fan poll among community members.
Oliver himself, who had caught wind of the action due to a similar protest occurring on r/Pics, joined in by providing Redditors with pictures of himself that eventually circulated to other subreddits like Pokemon GO's. It appears that although Last Week Tonight is on hiatus due to the Writer's Guild of America strike, Oliver is still happy to assist.
Unfortunately, the reception to this move by many Reddit moderators has been very poorly received by the users, which has extended to the Pokemon GO subreddit as well. This comes on the heels of Reddit's CEO Steve "Spez" Huffman referring to subreddit moderators as the "landed gentry" who should be able to be voted out by users.
The decision to flood r/PokemonGO with John Oliver, Pikachu, and Spark images has left many players on the subreddit vehemently unhappy, which may fuel the calls by Huffman to institute a method of removing protesting mods, whom he has said go against the will of everyday users.
Many Pokemon GO Redditors fired off their thoughts in the comments, remarking that the John Oliver posting was cringey and ineffective at causing any real change on the platform. This added ammunition for many members of the subreddit who agreed with Huffman that moderators were taking decision-making power away from users.
Other players pointed to the many times that Pokemon GO Redditors attempted to stage protests and boycotts against Niantic for a litany of reasons, many of which had a relatively negligible impact. To hear these fans tell it, this Reddit protest is just another toothless venture that won't force change in any significant way.
Although many Reddit users weren't happy with the changes to the Pokemon GO subreddit, some did attempt to stand up for the moderators and the protest movement as a whole.
Even though many fans likely don't care if third-party developers are charged for API use, others believe that Reddit was being greedy and the mods' work was undervalued by typical users.
Sadly, Reddit's user base and moderators at large have very little bargaining power to reverse the platform's API changes, and this is complicated by a sizable contingent of fans that are also indifferent to the API stance in general. Since mods are volunteers, they can't exactly seek redress from the corporate leadership of the platform.
Barring a massive user and moderator exodus, which is highly unlikely, the protests may not amount to much in the end. Some Pokemon GO fans still have hope, but they're undoubtedly working against an overwhelming current.
