13 ms·

The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

583 points by lewisflude 3y ago

faangsticle 3y ago
I wonder what reddit means with "retaliation attempts". This all sounds very threatening. Are they going to pull a wizards of the cost and start sending Pinkerton agents after mods who dont play ball?
larvaetron 3y ago
If the Reddit admins don't want mods to have the ability to set a subreddit to private, then why did they even give them the option in the first place? Couldn't they just disable the "private" flag for all subs and be done with it?
- noirbot 3y ago
  I'm really surprised this isn't what they're doing. It has the same effect without causing a lot of strife and backstabbing that is surely just going to poison the well further.
0x6461188A 3y ago
Did they change the code of conduct to retroactively put the protesting mods in violation? Reddit management does not realize this but these actions make them look worse and reduces the attractiveness of Reddit as a platform for the 99% readers who are not mods.
EA-3167 3y ago
That's a hell of a way to treat the volunteers who make the existence of that site possible.
- marsven_422 3y ago
  [dead]
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  Because they know most will put up with it, just like users. At least, in my view. I've moved from Reddit (user, not a mod), but i think we're fringe. Reddit is going to be humming along like normal soon enough as long as they don't severely upset the average user.
  - colpabar 3y ago
    Just like twitter.
    - unshavedyak 3y ago
      TBH, thinking back i'm kinda shocked Digg managed to die over this stuff. Was it just a different audience back in those days? Has Reddit reached a different more apathetic audience? Or is Reddit just not upsetting people as much as Digg did? Clearly the internet has continued to grow more mainstream which brings a larger, alternate audience. I'm just speaking to the idea of why Digg failed and why Reddit won't (in this pass at least). "Too big to fail" perhaps?
      - jdminhbg 3y ago
        Digg was much smaller than 2023 Reddit, and it had a competitor (Reddit) that was already leeching some of its userbase.
      - satvikpendem 3y ago
        By the time Digg did their redesign, Reddit was already getting something like 250 million page views a month. Reddit was a clear alternative to move towards. Today, there is no clear and large alternative to Reddit, as Reddit was to Digg.
- LanceH 3y ago
  Same can be said about how they mods are treating the rest of the sub.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    How so?
    - weeblewobble 3y ago
      People want to participate in their communities and have access to historical posts and comments. Mods are not letting them do that.
      - EA-3167 3y ago
        In almost all of the subs I've seen doing this, there were days of polling and discussion ahead of time, with the users themselves demanding the blackout.
    - LanceH 3y ago
      A lot of people claiming that the moderators are producing the content when they are more like editors in the scheme of things. Non-moderation redditors are the one producing the bulk of the content. So I'm saying that the moderators consolidating their whole sub's voices into the voice of the moderator is analogous to how reddit is telling everyone how the site as a whole must be used.
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    Couldn't agree more. This is a flagrant abuse of power by mods. I hope this is a wake-up call to major companies never to let your employees unionize because the employees don't care about you or your company - they'll kill it just to spite you and then move on to the next company.
    - EA-3167 3y ago
      Unionize? They aren't even employees, they're unpaid volunteers that Reddit can't afford to replace with actual employees.
- rvense 3y ago
  On the one hand, I think this a stupid decision for Reddit, that it's disrespectful and very bad for the internet. On the other hand, if it's what they're going to do, then that's how it is. You can't really expect them to just leave a namespace like, say, /r/politics in the hands of someone who openly says they aren't going to use it. So of course they're going to remove mods who stick to a blackout, what else could they do? At the end of the day it's their site and everyone's free to leave if they don't like how it's run. This was always the problem with making a home on Reddit, some of us have been saying so all along. (PS: Please understand that Discord is going to have a moment like this. Maybe in two years, maybe in five, but it'll happen. It is inevitable.)
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    At least with Discord there's an obvious and robust alternative that's always been around... IRC.
    - ugjka 3y ago
      Err, Matrix too?
  - nkuttler 3y ago
    > in the hands of someone who openly says they aren't going to use it Closing it IS using it, in a very public and visible way. They just don't like HOW it is used by the people who built it.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      For them, making it private and not allowing users to use it are equivalent. I can't blame them either.
    - slaymaker1907 3y ago
      If you want to change the license for FOSS software like the Linux kernel, you need to get approval from _every_ contributor. To me, this means for a sub to shutdown as they have they would need permission from _every_ subscriber.
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  reddit moderators have an unbelievably inflated sense of their worth, which is why they thought this blackout was going to accomplish anything in the first place. I assure you, there is a line around the block of people clamoring to become mods. There's a reason its nigh impossible to become a mod of a big sub, the people that are doing it really like doing it and dont want more people joining to dilute their share of the power.
  - Plasmoid2000ad 3y ago
    But many subreddits took a vote before taking action, so it's not like the moderators did this out of the blue. The subreddit model seems to me to work as a combination of moderators setting and enforcing some rules, users submitting content (hopefully good) and users upvoting and commenting on content. If the mods are wrong on all of this, then the users who voted to blackout either weren't contributing much or will back down and things will go back to business as usual. But it's also possible that replacing the mods will just lead to many of the users who voted to blackout taking further action. A subreddit without content or with protesting users posting spam isn't fixed by adding more mods.
  - PepperdineG 3y ago
    >reddit moderators have an unbelievably inflated sense of their worth If moderators were inconsequential Reddit wouldn't be trying to hire and fire them. >I assure you, there is a line around the block of people clamoring to become mods. The willingness of others to do the same work doesn't make what someone does inconsequential. Would you say an NBA player is inconsequential because you could find a million people who would like to play in the NBA? Obviously being a Redditor moderator and being an NBA player are two different things but by how you are valuing based on willingness to replace, an NBA player would be more inconsequential than a Reddit moderator.
    - anthonypasq 3y ago
      this comment is so incoherent i dont even know where to start.
  - 3y ago
lewisflude 3y ago
Key paragraphs > If there are mods here who are willing to work towards reopening this community, we are willing to work with you to process a Top Mod Removal request or reorder the mod team to achieve this goal if mods higher up the list are hindering reopening. We would handle this request and any retaliation attempts here in this modmail chain immediately. > Our goal is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is made available for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community, please let us know.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  Kinda crazy how a lower mod can request a higher mod's removal. Pretty unhealthy precedent for a community where mods are already power hungry lunatics and your most obsessed power hungry mod who spends all day needlessly moderating the subreddit can appeal to reddit with "look how much more active I am than him; he barely does anything! So, gimme the subreddit pls."
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Normally it's only possible when the top mod has been inactive for a long time.
  - ahahahahah 3y ago
    > mods are already power hungry lunatics and your most obsessed power hungry mod I mean, here you are just describing the mods that are holding these subreddits hostage. It seems appropriate for reddit to return these to the community in the case where the obsessed power hungry mod's behavior goes against what the community wants.
    - bbor 3y ago
      Have there been any subreddits that voted to open instead of stay closed? All the ones I’ve heard about were in favor of maintaining the protest
pixelpoet 3y ago
I really hope a decent Reddit replacement shows up soon; my impression is that HN is mostly webdevs, so surely some of y'all are on it?
- GreenWatermelon 3y ago
  I've started browsing https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ recently. For now, since the community is small, it feels like hackernews2, but I hope it gets bigger.
  - scrollaway 3y ago
    Tildes in general will be pretty in line with the HN community. If anyone wants an invite, find my email and say hi :)
- missedthecue 3y ago
  deploying a reddit clone online takes 10 minutes getting 500 million monthly users like Reddit is the hard part
  - fluidcruft 3y ago
    500 million monthly users isn't a community. I certainly don't have any subreddits that are this large nor do I give a shit about how many users are on a particular website. My reddit communities are niche and skill-based. We'll go wherever we go. Oh no! The giant horde of September stays behind on Reddit! Quelle horreur.
    - johannes1234321 3y ago
      The thing is: By being on reddit the barrier to enter a small niche community is low. Having to register with a new account, when maybe the favorite username is taken already is a barrier, even if it takes just few minutes.
      - 3y ago
CodeWriter23 3y ago
Well that’s a highly optimized take on The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Havoc 3y ago
They’re gonna be left with bottom of the barrel mods. It’s a thankless task to begin with - a marginal proposition at best. Add some threats as a thank you for the unpaid work and it becomes downright abusive Who the hell is going to want to mod in that context?
- swalsh 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - colpabar 3y ago
    can't wait to see u/BrooklynDadDefiant as the new powermod of the top 500 subs
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Mods that were pushed out by other mods in the past People with vendettas and power vacuum opportunists People that want a different narrative on a subreddit There are tons of people that have other causes and interests than API tooling or company drama You know, this is all quite ignorable
  - slipheen 3y ago
    That's not exactly a list of people who are likely to do a good job. I think that's part of Reddit's problem - They can replace the mods with random people if they want, but the likelihood that those people will put in the work and do a good job is not high.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      > That's not exactly a list of people who are likely to do a good job. based on what? is the control group the current mods because that's already a laughable set of people. there is no criteria before and there will be no criteria after.
  - stcroixx 3y ago
ck2 3y ago
I still don't get what alternative everyone is going to. There isn't one. At least not similar or consensus. Weird to burn bridges without a plan.
- silverbax88 3y ago
  Lemmy's user base doubled since Monday and heading towards 200,000 plus right now. I definitely think there's a migration, even if it isn't all of Reddit.
  - e12e 3y ago
    I don't think there is a single platform for all subset of reddit users - but for the more social sqwok might be of interest: https://sqwok.im/ https://sqwok.im/
  - mrtranscendence 3y ago
    I guess I'll try Lemmy again, but I'm not hopeful. When I used it last week any sub-community I was interested in either didn't exist or was completely dead.
- criddell 3y ago
  I pretty much stopped going to Reddit and it never really occurred to me that I would look for an alternative. I’ve reduced the amount of social media in my life (and I do count HN as social media) and I think I’m better off.
- appletrotter 3y ago
  Better off without.
- Havoc 3y ago
  >Weird to burn bridges without a plan. It's just casual entertainment, not life/career. That said you are right on the alternatives being in short supply. Which is a problem in itself and another reason to bail.
yieldcrv 3y ago
the algorithm simply elevated other open communities to the front page users that disabled the algorithm and only use niche subreddits never see the protest at all I definitely think Reddit company’s view of the outcome is accurate, and that them choosing to not unilaterally open subreddits is favorable for them because it doesn’t matter too much, aside from useful information in old posts being locked away (for now)
samwillis 3y ago
This has been massively discussed this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36350938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36350938 Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private - 1573 points, 12 hours ago, 915 comments
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Inevitable that this was going to happen. I have no issue with it. Most mods have an issue because they want to mod from their phones. There are mods like me who use desktop exclusively and don't care about third party apps in the slightest. More importantly, most users seem to want the subs reopened, and it isn't fair or just to punish the users because the mods can't mod the way they want to anymore. The mods that actually polled their communities and acted on those results are the only ones I have respect for out of those protesting.
- Ukv 3y ago
  > More importantly, most users seem to want the subs reopened Hard to prove one way or the other at the moment since the subs that vote to go private are now inaccessible, but almost all polls I've seen have been in favor of the blackout. r/all consistently has highly-upvoted protest messages from the restricted subreddits. > it isn't fair or just to punish the users because the mods can't mod the way they want to anymore That a protest against X results in inconvenience for the customers/users of X is pretty mild. If that crosses the line into unacceptable, you'd be against the vast majority of protest/boycott/strike action.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >Most mods have an issue because they want to mod from their phones. There are mods like me who use desktop exclusively and don't care about third party apps in the slightest. Same here. Not a mod, but have always used Reddit from the desktop (with the new UI turned off), so zero interest in third-party apps. It's one thing to do messaging or email while out and about, but why would I want to intentionally use a text-intensive system like Reddit through a small screen without a keyboard to type on? I wonder if the API change will end the practice of mods sharing automated block lists (Context for others: If you post in a wrongthink subreddit, many other subreddits will preemptively ban you regardless of your actual activity in them, if any). If so, and if there are fewer handfuls of powermods that control dozens of subreddits, I'm all for the change.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    I know spez said he is going to let mods be voted out, that's already a huge improvement. One sub I'm in with about 300k people has the mods punish anyone who expresses an opinion they disagree with, and it's a majority opinion. They also let rampant bigotry go unchecked. I don't think they would last long.
acheron 3y ago
I'm thrilled to watch reddit burn itself down, but of course the mods of big subs were one of the main reasons it was so terrible. If reddit could clone dang a few dozen times, then sure, kick the old mods out and maybe the site could get a handle on itself and be mildly worthwhile. But in reality, whatever jabronis they end up putting in place are not going to be any better than what they had before, and probably even worse. And so the site is still going to be awful, but now with a worse UI.
- networkchad 3y ago
  [dead]
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  > the mods of big subs were one of the main reasons it was so terrible I've heard this, and was just reading a thread on Reddit where many users told of their mistreatment and unjustified banning. But anecdotally I've never actually noticed mod misbehavior, and I've been a Reddit user for like 17 years. Could be the subs I read ... most of which aren't extremely huge, I guess. Still, I feel like I should have been banned from somewhere at some point if capricious, power-hungry mods really were as rampant as they're made out to be.
tehjoker 3y ago
don't be scabby the rat lol
mattmaroon 3y ago
I don’t blame them. Reddit owns the subreddits, not redditors. I have no idea why someone would put the time required into moderating a large sub for no money just for Reddit’s benefit in the first place. A Reddit model where the mods share in profits (kind of how YouTube creators do) would be interesting. But if you’re going to sign up for that, you can’t expect Reddit to just let you tank their site. It was never yours. I’d do the same thing if I were Reddit, though I guess I’d also not be in this situation if I were them either because I’d just price the API reasonably.
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  There are distinct questions here: whether Reddit has the right to forcibly reopen subreddits, whether it’s justified in doing so, and whether it’s a good idea at all. The first isn’t in dispute, but the other two are open for debate. It could all go super well and everyone forgets about this shakeup, or it could engender further animosity and chase people (particularly trend-setting power users) to some other platform. It could also ruin some communities if the wrong new mods are chosen. I’m not sure how likely this is but it is plausible.
  - notyourwork 3y ago
    > whether Reddit has the right to forcibly reopen subreddits Reddit owns Reddit, no? They have the right to do whatever they want with their website.
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      Reread the comment you are replying to.
    - BoxFour 3y ago
      > *The first isn’t in dispute*
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    Yeah. I get the whole fear of the same thing happening to Reddit that happened to Digg. But digg had Reddit nipping at its heels and it was still small, Reddit is huge there’s nowhere to chase them to. The other alternative is for Reddit to just stand by and let the blackouts chase people away indefinitely. It is hard to imagine that is better. It will upset the people who have already decided to leave Reddit anyway, but for most of the people who just want to see funny GIFs, it will be better.
Pxtl 3y ago
Threatening your unpaid volunteers who are responsible for keeping your site clear of the worst most vile freaks on the internet (something your site has repeatedly made international headlines for) is not long-term thinking.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  > worst most vile freaks on the internet (something your site has repeatedly made international headlines for) You have to remember that Steve (spez), the CEO, is precisely one of those, and was the head moderator of r/jailbait before that finally shut down.
revscat 3y ago
I don't see a way that Huffman can follow through on his threat. According to Reddark [1] at the time of this writing there are still 4752 subs that are dark. I understand that powermods exist, but were Huffman to follow through on his threat he would have to come up with many hundreds of willing moderators, on a rather short timeframe. Frankly, I don't see this happening, at least not without significant pain. Not to mention the ill will that is continuing to build, which will only compound the difficulty of getting new volunteers on board. [1] https://reddark.untone.uk https://reddark.untone.uk
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  I tend to agree. Their thinking has to be that most mods (at least for the most important subreddits) either aren't willing to risk their positions or aren't that invested in the protest.
- slaymaker1907 3y ago
  It’s actually not that hard since they have processes in place for this sort of thing. They have u/ModCodeOfConduct make a post in the affected community (I assume they reopen the sub and restrict it except for that post). https://www.reddit.com/r/oldbabies/comments/143cszv/new_moderators_needed_comment_on_this_post_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/oldbabies/comments/143cszv/new_mode...
no1groyp 3y ago
[dead]
paulpauper 3y ago
some of the sub-level censorship on reddit has gotten so bad in recent years, I see this as possibly a welcome change
xer0sum 3y ago
[dead]
cush 3y ago
Instead of harassing mods, Reddit should be paying them. Mods should get kickbacks from coins spent in their sub.
just_a_quack 3y ago
Everyone saw this coming. Still, it's disappointing to see. I will be taking my valuable 0.12$ elsewhere thank you very much.
ctoth 3y ago
Calling it now. Reddit will supply the firehose of data to OpenAI in return for AI moderators. Boom. Human problems solved.
- moi2388 3y ago
  Yep.
- RistrettoMike 3y ago
  I’d love to see how OpenAI’s overbuilt autocorrect would serve as a moderator in practice. Delightful chaos.
  - ctoth 3y ago
    I'm very very not great at prompt engineering and was able to get this working by thinking about it for 30 seconds, so I'm sure you could do way better than this[0]. [0]: https://chat.openai.com/share/69a9d595-ad26-450e-9810-da39e9060a05 https://chat.openai.com/share/69a9d595-ad26-450e-9810-da39e9...
- x86x87 3y ago
  I mean it makes sense to moderate a reddit that's mostly bots with other bots /s
kazbars 3y ago
I think /u/spez needs to take a look at /r/maliciouscompliance. I cant see how actions like this wont lead to malicious modding to destroy the communities they helped foster.
- nkuttler 3y ago
  That sounds like toxic work, any sane person would rather move somewhere else and do something productive, like building a new community, or find an entirely new hobby.
stcg 3y ago
I think this was quite a clear and non-threatening note. How is this threatening?
arecurrence 3y ago
In my experience, whenever volunteer mod positions open, there is a near infinite supply of people that want those roles. For whatever reasons, people want it and those that have it typically seek to hold onto it. It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity?
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Some section of population is attracted to power. And just about any type of power. Even if that was 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 it would still be substantial number in large enough communities. And if it were lets say 1 in 10k those same people would still search for all the places they could have power in.
- rincebrain 3y ago
  Much like why some people contribute to open source projects, sometimes people find a thing useful but think it could be better, and spend some of their time to make it so, either by helping to organize things so the subreddit isn't frequently the same 6 posts, or organizing community recurring events, or a million other things to foster a community. There's also plenty of people who like the authority, or a thousand other reasons, but that's one example.
- wnevets 3y ago
  > It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? Being a gatekeeper for a popular subreddit is a form of meaningful influence. Meaningful influence can lead to money and other benefits. Reddit mods in the past have been exposed for using their influence to push certain content and block other kind.
- noirbot 3y ago
  Maybe for some major subs, but I've had multiple small-to-medium sized subs die because a mod retired/deleted their account and no one stepped up quickly to replace them. Reddit kills unmodded subs really fast. Sure, the major frontpage subs will be fine, but there's plenty of more niche communities that are already dying/getting banned for being unmodded because no one wants to mod them. I literally opened a link to a sub today that was banned for being unmodded 2 hours ago, presumably because the last remaining mod deleted their account. So many of the discussions here seem to be people mostly thinking of reddit as the big frontpage subs, which also seems to be what Reddit Corporate seems to think. What we're all likely about to see is how much value there is in the longer tail of smaller subs that are being run as a passion project by a few people in a niche community. It's easy to point to the small subs that are some power-trip for one mod or set of mods, but there's also plenty of small little subs that are niche and interesting and simply would never have enough interest or activity to support more than 2-3 mods.
anigbrowl 3y ago
Ah, digital feudalism. It's so efficient.
ttctciyf 3y ago
It is quite impressive to see the detailed intimate knowledge of the personality and inner landscape of reddit moderators shown by commenters in this thread. Clearly the moderators have many psychological characteristics in common and are motivated by the exact same personality flaws and doubtless it is because of this that the commenters here are able to achieve such startling generality in their succinct evaluations!
gliixo 3y ago
We really should all collectively just stop using reddit already. It went to shit years ago
Topgamer7 3y ago
> benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Fucking comical.
Freebytes 3y ago
This is getting ridiculous. I was not necessarily in agreement with the protest, but after seeing the reaction from Reddit, I am going to unsubscribe from all subreddits that are not part of the protest in support. This is like a master class in how not to deal with this type of situation.
freeAgent 3y ago
Mods should engage in malicious compliance. Historically, Reddit has done absolutely nothing to help communities suffering from malicious moderation, including banning users and censoring posts without good reason. Mods can just open up their subs, but start moderating in such a way that they drive away users. Reddit would look very hypocritical removing mods who do this now when they have been fine with that sort of behavior historically.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  In the last week Reddit has shown it has no qualms with being incredibly hypocritical. Addressing issues it's ignored for sometimes it's entire lifetime only now that they are threatened. It's quite disgusting especially since I've been on the other end of begging for help/changes/etc that they ignored.
Convolutional 3y ago
Reddit management is in the process of learning from what had seemed the boon of unpaid labor, that the struggle of management and ownership against the unpaid moderator workers is over control of the means of production and the relations of production.
jmull 3y ago
I'm almost starting to think they really will break Reddit. When all this started I had no doubt that the protests would come, make their point, end, and then Reddit would continue on its way. But this has been so poorly handled. I think a key to reddit's "success" (such as it is) is that they figured out how to scale moderation -- by getting volunteers to do the tough work for free. I'm sure reddit can toss all the uncooperative mods and get as many new ones as they could ever want. But they are changing the fundamental dynamic between mod, subreddit and reddit the company. I wonder if this won't actually break the system. Before, mods could run subreddits as they saw fit, users could choose the subreddits they participated in, and a user can always create a new subreddit if they don't think any existing ones suit their needs. Now mods will have to accept that supporting reddit's business goals is the "zeroth law" for any subreddit. I just wonder if enough quality moderators will be willing to put in the time and effort required to keep a larger community from devolving into a cess pool, or to build up new subreddits -- for free. When you're working for yourself doing what you want, when you want, you don't mind not getting paid for it. When a boss is telling you want to do and when to do it, you expect to get paid. Reddit is making itself the boss of the mods. The thing is, this is an entirely unforced error. Overwhelmingly, the natural interests of subreddits are aligned with Reddits business goals, or at least aren't in opposition to them. The horribly handled roll out of the API pricing has essentially backed mods into a corner, basically forcing them to protest and then extend the protest. IDK, maybe this was all 4D chess, and reddit wanted to get rid of third party apps and have an excuse to purge moderators with a sense of ownership over the subreddits they moderate. But it sure seems to me like they just don't know what they are doing. I know reddit needs to figure out how to become sustainable (profitable), and changing the dynamic between reddit and third-party apps is likely a necessary part of that. But I can't believe disengaging moderators can possibly help.
- cactus2093 3y ago
  > Before, mods could run subreddits as they saw fit, users could choose the subreddits they participated in, and a user can always create a new subreddit if they don't think any existing ones suit their needs. As a frequent Reddit user I don't agree with that. The network effects of subreddits plus the fact that they usually own the default name for a topic grant a lot of subs effective monopolies. As a user if I don't like something about a certain subreddit including how it's moderated, the more realistic option is just to not participate in that subject matter on Reddit. I can still use Reddit for other topics but I feel like there's very rarely an alternative subreddit on the same topic which is anywhere near as active as the main one. So, no offense to Reddit mods, but I really don't think these are all highly skilled, irreplaceable individuals. There's no competition that incentivizes the best people to rise to the top, these are just average folks that volunteered at the right time and now they're mods. There is apparently even a lot of cronyism among the mod community and I have heard that it can be hard to break into for first time mods. If Reddit forces some of them out, there will be many people willing to step in who can do just as good of a job. It might even be a net positive thing to get new people involved.
poorbutdebtfree 3y ago
The big problem here is what will young people do without the paid posters from /r/white/blackpeopletwitter and /r/politics forming their worldview for them?
pnathan 3y ago
I mod a top-1000-by-subs subreddit with about 800-900K subs. It has tight rules and aggressive automods. And people like that subreddit. Not gonna lie, if reddit strips our moderation, once the automod rules get figured out by the spammers, the value that particular subreddit will collapse into trash and spam. so, sure, aim that footgun and start pulling the trigger... go on then.
- vxNsr 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - urbandw311er 3y ago
    Gosh that’s a bit mean
  - ct0 3y ago
    Id agree that some mods are mostly narcissists with elitist visions on a power trip. Ive been banned from large subs that I have been contributing to for years. When my political believes did not conform with the mods political beliefs, I was perma-banned without warning for a post made in a different sub. These mods are not democratically voted for, and it shows. r/newjersey is more like r/liberals or r/ilovephilmurphy and that's unfortunate. How can a sub that represents an imaginary boarder only allow for political discussion that aligns with current elected leaders? Reddit is starting to show its true colors through this black out.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
readyplayernull 3y ago
Should 2023 be officially named the year of the Great Social Media Purge?
djmips 3y ago
Reddit should have been like the wiki.
1024core 3y ago
The almighty Dollar brought about more change in Reddit than many years of users complaining. This feels so disingenuous: > Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Where the fuck were you guys when, for example, people were complaining about the mods over at /r/india?
joshstrange 3y ago
It's worth noting Reddit has never cared about absent mods except maybe in very high-profile subs. Relatively active subs with absent mods (or an absent mod) preventing new mods from being added or spam have traditionally fallen on deaf ears. I've watched at least 1 subreddit die due to such neglect. As with a lot of things Reddit has done in the last week this falls under then "Oh, you only care about this now??? Screw you Reddit".
e40 3y ago
The API changes don't impact Mod tools but many (most?) Mods use Apollo or other apps because they have far better moderation tools. Steve's statement about this really pissed me off, due to this ommision.
younggeorge 3y ago
I think this will be a net positive even if they are replaced with worse moderators. Users are more than capable of self-regulating their communities and upvoting quality content. Moderators are too concerned with weeding out people and bad content as soon as possible and as much as possible. But it's OK to have a bunch of low quality comments and posts, and just let the users decide what gets seen by most of the people. I'm much more concerned with moderators thinking they can decide to protest on behalf of millions of people, than I am with millions of people seeing content that breaks a subreddits rules.
- munificent 3y ago
  I don't know if you have much experience managing an online community, but I believe you will discover eventually that everything you claim about self-regulation is false. A small fraction of bad actors can do enough damage to make a community not-self-sustaining. There's a reason every bar has bouncers.
AdamJacobMuller 3y ago
Just the threat of this on bigger subs, combined with the two subreddits that reddit did actually shuffle around mods in, seems to have totally broken the blackout. The benevolent dictators who moderate were threatened with losing their power and seem to have completely caved (. The mods realized that they are replaceable and that they don't have infinite rights to the moderator spots on these subreddits. Did they not consider that they do not own anything here and are all just operating on reddit's platform and reddit could just remove them and install new mods? It seems highly plausible to me that reddit has now effectively won this one, though, I strenuously think they could have achieved their goals with far far less negative press but it wouldn't really be reddit if they didn't do something in the maximally inefficient way. I do think this could lead to a situation where reddit moderation is more democratized, with moderators being elected (in a more formal way than how some subs do it now) and I think that would be an overall net positive for the communities and for reddit as a whole. Moderators at this point operate as mostly benevolent dictators and benevolent dictatorships have their plusses but I think that the limitations are starting to show now.
Jabbles 3y ago
Facebook has ~a billion or so~ users and is worth ~$500B. Reddit has ~hundreds of millions of~ users and is not worth anything like that. Why? Facebook's content is provided by all its users for free? So if Reddit can figure out a way to monetize it like Facebook, it's worth literally hundreds of billions of dollars. Which is why the leadership of Reddit will do anything if there's a chance that they can dramatically increase the value of the company. From their perspective, it absolutely is worth the risk. From our perspective it isn't worth it, ofc, because the upside for us doesn't involve lifechanging amounts of money.
- rafark 3y ago
  There’s no way reddit has anywhere near a billion users. It has millions. Facebook is ubiquitous, pretty much anyone from any age, gender and a country has heard of Facebook. Reddit is a big site, but it’s still a niche site when compared to the big social media giants. It probably has less users than twitter, which has a fraction of Facebook’s.
  - mrtranscendence 3y ago
    I tried to Google how many users Reddit has. The numbers are all over the place. Various links on the front page say: 1.66 billion monthly users 430 million monthly users 50 million monthly users 330 million monthly users Who the hell knows.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pbae 3y ago
You should read these threads if you want to get an idea of how the normie users think about the whole lockout: https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here_so_we_dont_get_fined/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here... https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/14al426/rapple_blackout_what_happened/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/14al426/rapple_black...
- gigglesupstairs 3y ago
  I didn’t know r/nfl represents the whole of reddit. Mind = blown.
- pbae 3y ago
  Here's another good one: https://www.reddit.com/r/NBATalk/comments/14aftuz/reddit_admins_is_rnba_father/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NBATalk/comments/14aftuz/reddit_adm... r/nba shut down for the Finals.
  - pbae 3y ago
    The reopening thread is hilarious as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/14bxljj/the_return_of_rnba_and_an_update_on_the_reddit/?sort=top https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/14bxljj/the_return_of_...
- Seattle3503 3y ago
  That mostly seems like an expression of low empathy by users of a large sub, which largely tracks.
robbywashere_ 3y ago
This sounds like it could be the death of the platform, or at least the beginning of. I can see it devolving into bot generated content and intrusive ads. Once being a site noteworthy of high signal to noise ratio for content (ie google'ing with 'reddit' for quality search results) will now enshitify as it attempts to squeeze out every drop of revenue. Had the owner of twitter not fired all of his employees, they very well may have been able to seize the opportunity and develop an alternative which could have integrated with their current users and product.
blibble 3y ago
setting the users against the mods didn't work, so now they're trying to split the mods from each other from the businesses perspective this is probably the first sensible decision they've made so far
bruiseralmighty 3y ago
Wasn't the 'protest' of overpriced or non-existent public APIs for popular websites really the additional server cost due to endless web scraping? The whole concept of a general strike of subreddits seems like an antiquated way try and strong arm Reddit into complying. If all these subreddit had instead migrated their users to a hastily built alternate frontend that web scrapped reddit.com, the entire mother site could have been taken down quite effectively. There's plenty of methods for routing around ip-address blacklisting or region blocking. Just as there's no law against web scrapping there's no law protecting the labor rights of the moderators who work for free. Overall it just strikes me as a weaker axis of attack.
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  Aren't those methods potentially expensive? And if you did make a hastily-built frontend backed by scraping, couldn't Reddit continually break it without much effort?
neop1x 3y ago
Now what remains is to stop moderating posts and write scripts and automations to fill Reddit with AI-generated spam. Then Spez will have a bag full of sh*t to do IPO with.

583 points by lewisflude 3y ago

I wonder what reddit means with "retaliation attempts". This all sounds very threatening. Are they going to pull a wizards of the cost and start sending Pinkerton agents after mods who dont play ball?

larvaetron 3y ago

If the Reddit admins don't want mods to have the ability to set a subreddit to private, then why did they even give them the option in the first place? Couldn't they just disable the "private" flag for all subs and be done with it?

noirbot 3y ago
I'm really surprised this isn't what they're doing. It has the same effect without causing a lot of strife and backstabbing that is surely just going to poison the well further.

0x6461188A 3y ago

Did they change the code of conduct to retroactively put the protesting mods in violation? Reddit management does not realize this but these actions make them look worse and reduces the attractiveness of Reddit as a platform for the 99% readers who are not mods.

EA-3167 3y ago

That's a hell of a way to treat the volunteers who make the existence of that site possible.

marsven_422 3y ago
[dead]
unshavedyak 3y ago
Because they know most will put up with it, just like users. At least, in my view. I've moved from Reddit (user, not a mod), but i think we're fringe. Reddit is going to be humming along like normal soon enough as long as they don't severely upset the average user.
- colpabar 3y ago
  Just like twitter.
  - unshavedyak 3y ago
    TBH, thinking back i'm kinda shocked Digg managed to die over this stuff. Was it just a different audience back in those days? Has Reddit reached a different more apathetic audience? Or is Reddit just not upsetting people as much as Digg did? Clearly the internet has continued to grow more mainstream which brings a larger, alternate audience. I'm just speaking to the idea of why Digg failed and why Reddit won't (in this pass at least). "Too big to fail" perhaps?
    - jdminhbg 3y ago
      Digg was much smaller than 2023 Reddit, and it had a competitor (Reddit) that was already leeching some of its userbase.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      By the time Digg did their redesign, Reddit was already getting something like 250 million page views a month. Reddit was a clear alternative to move towards. Today, there is no clear and large alternative to Reddit, as Reddit was to Digg.
LanceH 3y ago
Same can be said about how they mods are treating the rest of the sub.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  How so?
  - weeblewobble 3y ago
    People want to participate in their communities and have access to historical posts and comments. Mods are not letting them do that.
    - EA-3167 3y ago
      In almost all of the subs I've seen doing this, there were days of polling and discussion ahead of time, with the users themselves demanding the blackout.
  - LanceH 3y ago
    A lot of people claiming that the moderators are producing the content when they are more like editors in the scheme of things. Non-moderation redditors are the one producing the bulk of the content. So I'm saying that the moderators consolidating their whole sub's voices into the voice of the moderator is analogous to how reddit is telling everyone how the site as a whole must be used.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  Couldn't agree more. This is a flagrant abuse of power by mods. I hope this is a wake-up call to major companies never to let your employees unionize because the employees don't care about you or your company - they'll kill it just to spite you and then move on to the next company.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    Unionize? They aren't even employees, they're unpaid volunteers that Reddit can't afford to replace with actual employees.
rvense 3y ago
On the one hand, I think this a stupid decision for Reddit, that it's disrespectful and very bad for the internet. On the other hand, if it's what they're going to do, then that's how it is. You can't really expect them to just leave a namespace like, say, /r/politics in the hands of someone who openly says they aren't going to use it. So of course they're going to remove mods who stick to a blackout, what else could they do? At the end of the day it's their site and everyone's free to leave if they don't like how it's run. This was always the problem with making a home on Reddit, some of us have been saying so all along. (PS: Please understand that Discord is going to have a moment like this. Maybe in two years, maybe in five, but it'll happen. It is inevitable.)
- EA-3167 3y ago
  At least with Discord there's an obvious and robust alternative that's always been around... IRC.
  - ugjka 3y ago
    Err, Matrix too?
- nkuttler 3y ago
  > in the hands of someone who openly says they aren't going to use it Closing it IS using it, in a very public and visible way. They just don't like HOW it is used by the people who built it.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    For them, making it private and not allowing users to use it are equivalent. I can't blame them either.
  - slaymaker1907 3y ago
    If you want to change the license for FOSS software like the Linux kernel, you need to get approval from _every_ contributor. To me, this means for a sub to shutdown as they have they would need permission from _every_ subscriber.
anthonypasq 3y ago
reddit moderators have an unbelievably inflated sense of their worth, which is why they thought this blackout was going to accomplish anything in the first place. I assure you, there is a line around the block of people clamoring to become mods. There's a reason its nigh impossible to become a mod of a big sub, the people that are doing it really like doing it and dont want more people joining to dilute their share of the power.
- Plasmoid2000ad 3y ago
  But many subreddits took a vote before taking action, so it's not like the moderators did this out of the blue. The subreddit model seems to me to work as a combination of moderators setting and enforcing some rules, users submitting content (hopefully good) and users upvoting and commenting on content. If the mods are wrong on all of this, then the users who voted to blackout either weren't contributing much or will back down and things will go back to business as usual. But it's also possible that replacing the mods will just lead to many of the users who voted to blackout taking further action. A subreddit without content or with protesting users posting spam isn't fixed by adding more mods.
- PepperdineG 3y ago
  >reddit moderators have an unbelievably inflated sense of their worth If moderators were inconsequential Reddit wouldn't be trying to hire and fire them. >I assure you, there is a line around the block of people clamoring to become mods. The willingness of others to do the same work doesn't make what someone does inconsequential. Would you say an NBA player is inconsequential because you could find a million people who would like to play in the NBA? Obviously being a Redditor moderator and being an NBA player are two different things but by how you are valuing based on willingness to replace, an NBA player would be more inconsequential than a Reddit moderator.
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    this comment is so incoherent i dont even know where to start.
- 3y ago

lewisflude 3y ago

Key paragraphs > If there are mods here who are willing to work towards reopening this community, we are willing to work with you to process a Top Mod Removal request or reorder the mod team to achieve this goal if mods higher up the list are hindering reopening. We would handle this request and any retaliation attempts here in this modmail chain immediately. > Our goal is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is made available for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community, please let us know.

hombre_fatal 3y ago
Kinda crazy how a lower mod can request a higher mod's removal. Pretty unhealthy precedent for a community where mods are already power hungry lunatics and your most obsessed power hungry mod who spends all day needlessly moderating the subreddit can appeal to reddit with "look how much more active I am than him; he barely does anything! So, gimme the subreddit pls."
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Normally it's only possible when the top mod has been inactive for a long time.
- ahahahahah 3y ago
  > mods are already power hungry lunatics and your most obsessed power hungry mod I mean, here you are just describing the mods that are holding these subreddits hostage. It seems appropriate for reddit to return these to the community in the case where the obsessed power hungry mod's behavior goes against what the community wants.
  - bbor 3y ago
    Have there been any subreddits that voted to open instead of stay closed? All the ones I’ve heard about were in favor of maintaining the protest

pixelpoet 3y ago

I really hope a decent Reddit replacement shows up soon; my impression is that HN is mostly webdevs, so surely some of y'all are on it?

GreenWatermelon 3y ago
I've started browsing https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ recently. For now, since the community is small, it feels like hackernews2, but I hope it gets bigger.
- scrollaway 3y ago
  Tildes in general will be pretty in line with the HN community. If anyone wants an invite, find my email and say hi :)
missedthecue 3y ago
deploying a reddit clone online takes 10 minutes getting 500 million monthly users like Reddit is the hard part
- fluidcruft 3y ago
  500 million monthly users isn't a community. I certainly don't have any subreddits that are this large nor do I give a shit about how many users are on a particular website. My reddit communities are niche and skill-based. We'll go wherever we go. Oh no! The giant horde of September stays behind on Reddit! Quelle horreur.
  - johannes1234321 3y ago
    The thing is: By being on reddit the barrier to enter a small niche community is low. Having to register with a new account, when maybe the favorite username is taken already is a barrier, even if it takes just few minutes.
    - 3y ago

CodeWriter23 3y ago

Well that’s a highly optimized take on The Prisoner’s Dilemma

Havoc 3y ago

They’re gonna be left with bottom of the barrel mods. It’s a thankless task to begin with - a marginal proposition at best. Add some threats as a thank you for the unpaid work and it becomes downright abusive Who the hell is going to want to mod in that context?

swalsh 3y ago
[flagged]
- colpabar 3y ago
  can't wait to see u/BrooklynDadDefiant as the new powermod of the top 500 subs
yieldcrv 3y ago
Mods that were pushed out by other mods in the past People with vendettas and power vacuum opportunists People that want a different narrative on a subreddit There are tons of people that have other causes and interests than API tooling or company drama You know, this is all quite ignorable
- slipheen 3y ago
  That's not exactly a list of people who are likely to do a good job. I think that's part of Reddit's problem - They can replace the mods with random people if they want, but the likelihood that those people will put in the work and do a good job is not high.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    > That's not exactly a list of people who are likely to do a good job. based on what? is the control group the current mods because that's already a laughable set of people. there is no criteria before and there will be no criteria after.
- stcroixx 3y ago

ck2 3y ago

I still don't get what alternative everyone is going to. There isn't one. At least not similar or consensus. Weird to burn bridges without a plan.

silverbax88 3y ago
Lemmy's user base doubled since Monday and heading towards 200,000 plus right now. I definitely think there's a migration, even if it isn't all of Reddit.
- e12e 3y ago
  I don't think there is a single platform for all subset of reddit users - but for the more social sqwok might be of interest: https://sqwok.im/ https://sqwok.im/
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  I guess I'll try Lemmy again, but I'm not hopeful. When I used it last week any sub-community I was interested in either didn't exist or was completely dead.
criddell 3y ago
I pretty much stopped going to Reddit and it never really occurred to me that I would look for an alternative. I’ve reduced the amount of social media in my life (and I do count HN as social media) and I think I’m better off.
appletrotter 3y ago
Better off without.
Havoc 3y ago
>Weird to burn bridges without a plan. It's just casual entertainment, not life/career. That said you are right on the alternatives being in short supply. Which is a problem in itself and another reason to bail.

yieldcrv 3y ago

the algorithm simply elevated other open communities to the front page users that disabled the algorithm and only use niche subreddits never see the protest at all I definitely think Reddit company’s view of the outcome is accurate, and that them choosing to not unilaterally open subreddits is favorable for them because it doesn’t matter too much, aside from useful information in old posts being locked away (for now)

samwillis 3y ago

This has been massively discussed this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36350938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36350938 Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private - 1573 points, 12 hours ago, 915 comments

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

Inevitable that this was going to happen. I have no issue with it. Most mods have an issue because they want to mod from their phones. There are mods like me who use desktop exclusively and don't care about third party apps in the slightest. More importantly, most users seem to want the subs reopened, and it isn't fair or just to punish the users because the mods can't mod the way they want to anymore. The mods that actually polled their communities and acted on those results are the only ones I have respect for out of those protesting.

Ukv 3y ago
> More importantly, most users seem to want the subs reopened Hard to prove one way or the other at the moment since the subs that vote to go private are now inaccessible, but almost all polls I've seen have been in favor of the blackout. r/all consistently has highly-upvoted protest messages from the restricted subreddits. > it isn't fair or just to punish the users because the mods can't mod the way they want to anymore That a protest against X results in inconvenience for the customers/users of X is pretty mild. If that crosses the line into unacceptable, you'd be against the vast majority of protest/boycott/strike action.
TMWNN 3y ago
>Most mods have an issue because they want to mod from their phones. There are mods like me who use desktop exclusively and don't care about third party apps in the slightest. Same here. Not a mod, but have always used Reddit from the desktop (with the new UI turned off), so zero interest in third-party apps. It's one thing to do messaging or email while out and about, but why would I want to intentionally use a text-intensive system like Reddit through a small screen without a keyboard to type on? I wonder if the API change will end the practice of mods sharing automated block lists (Context for others: If you post in a wrongthink subreddit, many other subreddits will preemptively ban you regardless of your actual activity in them, if any). If so, and if there are fewer handfuls of powermods that control dozens of subreddits, I'm all for the change.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  I know spez said he is going to let mods be voted out, that's already a huge improvement. One sub I'm in with about 300k people has the mods punish anyone who expresses an opinion they disagree with, and it's a majority opinion. They also let rampant bigotry go unchecked. I don't think they would last long.

acheron 3y ago

I'm thrilled to watch reddit burn itself down, but of course the mods of big subs were one of the main reasons it was so terrible. If reddit could clone dang a few dozen times, then sure, kick the old mods out and maybe the site could get a handle on itself and be mildly worthwhile. But in reality, whatever jabronis they end up putting in place are not going to be any better than what they had before, and probably even worse. And so the site is still going to be awful, but now with a worse UI.

networkchad 3y ago
[dead]
mrtranscendence 3y ago
> the mods of big subs were one of the main reasons it was so terrible I've heard this, and was just reading a thread on Reddit where many users told of their mistreatment and unjustified banning. But anecdotally I've never actually noticed mod misbehavior, and I've been a Reddit user for like 17 years. Could be the subs I read ... most of which aren't extremely huge, I guess. Still, I feel like I should have been banned from somewhere at some point if capricious, power-hungry mods really were as rampant as they're made out to be.

tehjoker 3y ago

don't be scabby the rat lol

mattmaroon 3y ago

I don’t blame them. Reddit owns the subreddits, not redditors. I have no idea why someone would put the time required into moderating a large sub for no money just for Reddit’s benefit in the first place. A Reddit model where the mods share in profits (kind of how YouTube creators do) would be interesting. But if you’re going to sign up for that, you can’t expect Reddit to just let you tank their site. It was never yours. I’d do the same thing if I were Reddit, though I guess I’d also not be in this situation if I were them either because I’d just price the API reasonably.

mrtranscendence 3y ago
There are distinct questions here: whether Reddit has the right to forcibly reopen subreddits, whether it’s justified in doing so, and whether it’s a good idea at all. The first isn’t in dispute, but the other two are open for debate. It could all go super well and everyone forgets about this shakeup, or it could engender further animosity and chase people (particularly trend-setting power users) to some other platform. It could also ruin some communities if the wrong new mods are chosen. I’m not sure how likely this is but it is plausible.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  > whether Reddit has the right to forcibly reopen subreddits Reddit owns Reddit, no? They have the right to do whatever they want with their website.
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    Reread the comment you are replying to.
  - BoxFour 3y ago
    > *The first isn’t in dispute*
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Yeah. I get the whole fear of the same thing happening to Reddit that happened to Digg. But digg had Reddit nipping at its heels and it was still small, Reddit is huge there’s nowhere to chase them to. The other alternative is for Reddit to just stand by and let the blackouts chase people away indefinitely. It is hard to imagine that is better. It will upset the people who have already decided to leave Reddit anyway, but for most of the people who just want to see funny GIFs, it will be better.

Pxtl 3y ago

Threatening your unpaid volunteers who are responsible for keeping your site clear of the worst most vile freaks on the internet (something your site has repeatedly made international headlines for) is not long-term thinking.

FireBeyond 3y ago
> worst most vile freaks on the internet (something your site has repeatedly made international headlines for) You have to remember that Steve (spez), the CEO, is precisely one of those, and was the head moderator of r/jailbait before that finally shut down.

revscat 3y ago

I don't see a way that Huffman can follow through on his threat. According to Reddark [1] at the time of this writing there are still 4752 subs that are dark. I understand that powermods exist, but were Huffman to follow through on his threat he would have to come up with many hundreds of willing moderators, on a rather short timeframe. Frankly, I don't see this happening, at least not without significant pain. Not to mention the ill will that is continuing to build, which will only compound the difficulty of getting new volunteers on board. [1] https://reddark.untone.uk https://reddark.untone.uk

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
I tend to agree. Their thinking has to be that most mods (at least for the most important subreddits) either aren't willing to risk their positions or aren't that invested in the protest.
slaymaker1907 3y ago
It’s actually not that hard since they have processes in place for this sort of thing. They have u/ModCodeOfConduct make a post in the affected community (I assume they reopen the sub and restrict it except for that post). https://www.reddit.com/r/oldbabies/comments/143cszv/new_moderators_needed_comment_on_this_post_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/oldbabies/comments/143cszv/new_mode...

no1groyp 3y ago

[dead]

paulpauper 3y ago

some of the sub-level censorship on reddit has gotten so bad in recent years, I see this as possibly a welcome change

xer0sum 3y ago

[dead]

cush 3y ago

Instead of harassing mods, Reddit should be paying them. Mods should get kickbacks from coins spent in their sub.

just_a_quack 3y ago

Everyone saw this coming. Still, it's disappointing to see. I will be taking my valuable 0.12$ elsewhere thank you very much.

ctoth 3y ago

Calling it now. Reddit will supply the firehose of data to OpenAI in return for AI moderators. Boom. Human problems solved.

moi2388 3y ago
Yep.
RistrettoMike 3y ago
I’d love to see how OpenAI’s overbuilt autocorrect would serve as a moderator in practice. Delightful chaos.
- ctoth 3y ago
  I'm very very not great at prompt engineering and was able to get this working by thinking about it for 30 seconds, so I'm sure you could do way better than this[0]. [0]: https://chat.openai.com/share/69a9d595-ad26-450e-9810-da39e9060a05 https://chat.openai.com/share/69a9d595-ad26-450e-9810-da39e9...
x86x87 3y ago
I mean it makes sense to moderate a reddit that's mostly bots with other bots /s

kazbars 3y ago

I think /u/spez needs to take a look at /r/maliciouscompliance. I cant see how actions like this wont lead to malicious modding to destroy the communities they helped foster.

nkuttler 3y ago
That sounds like toxic work, any sane person would rather move somewhere else and do something productive, like building a new community, or find an entirely new hobby.

stcg 3y ago

I think this was quite a clear and non-threatening note. How is this threatening?

arecurrence 3y ago

In my experience, whenever volunteer mod positions open, there is a near infinite supply of people that want those roles. For whatever reasons, people want it and those that have it typically seek to hold onto it. It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity?

Ekaros 3y ago
Some section of population is attracted to power. And just about any type of power. Even if that was 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 it would still be substantial number in large enough communities. And if it were lets say 1 in 10k those same people would still search for all the places they could have power in.
rincebrain 3y ago
Much like why some people contribute to open source projects, sometimes people find a thing useful but think it could be better, and spend some of their time to make it so, either by helping to organize things so the subreddit isn't frequently the same 6 posts, or organizing community recurring events, or a million other things to foster a community. There's also plenty of people who like the authority, or a thousand other reasons, but that's one example.
wnevets 3y ago
> It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity? Being a gatekeeper for a popular subreddit is a form of meaningful influence. Meaningful influence can lead to money and other benefits. Reddit mods in the past have been exposed for using their influence to push certain content and block other kind.
noirbot 3y ago
Maybe for some major subs, but I've had multiple small-to-medium sized subs die because a mod retired/deleted their account and no one stepped up quickly to replace them. Reddit kills unmodded subs really fast. Sure, the major frontpage subs will be fine, but there's plenty of more niche communities that are already dying/getting banned for being unmodded because no one wants to mod them. I literally opened a link to a sub today that was banned for being unmodded 2 hours ago, presumably because the last remaining mod deleted their account. So many of the discussions here seem to be people mostly thinking of reddit as the big frontpage subs, which also seems to be what Reddit Corporate seems to think. What we're all likely about to see is how much value there is in the longer tail of smaller subs that are being run as a passion project by a few people in a niche community. It's easy to point to the small subs that are some power-trip for one mod or set of mods, but there's also plenty of small little subs that are niche and interesting and simply would never have enough interest or activity to support more than 2-3 mods.

anigbrowl 3y ago

Ah, digital feudalism. It's so efficient.

ttctciyf 3y ago

It is quite impressive to see the detailed intimate knowledge of the personality and inner landscape of reddit moderators shown by commenters in this thread. Clearly the moderators have many psychological characteristics in common and are motivated by the exact same personality flaws and doubtless it is because of this that the commenters here are able to achieve such startling generality in their succinct evaluations!

gliixo 3y ago

We really should all collectively just stop using reddit already. It went to shit years ago

Topgamer7 3y ago

> benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Fucking comical.

Freebytes 3y ago

This is getting ridiculous. I was not necessarily in agreement with the protest, but after seeing the reaction from Reddit, I am going to unsubscribe from all subreddits that are not part of the protest in support. This is like a master class in how not to deal with this type of situation.

freeAgent 3y ago

Mods should engage in malicious compliance. Historically, Reddit has done absolutely nothing to help communities suffering from malicious moderation, including banning users and censoring posts without good reason. Mods can just open up their subs, but start moderating in such a way that they drive away users. Reddit would look very hypocritical removing mods who do this now when they have been fine with that sort of behavior historically.

joshstrange 3y ago
In the last week Reddit has shown it has no qualms with being incredibly hypocritical. Addressing issues it's ignored for sometimes it's entire lifetime only now that they are threatened. It's quite disgusting especially since I've been on the other end of begging for help/changes/etc that they ignored.

Convolutional 3y ago

Reddit management is in the process of learning from what had seemed the boon of unpaid labor, that the struggle of management and ownership against the unpaid moderator workers is over control of the means of production and the relations of production.

jmull 3y ago

I'm almost starting to think they really will break Reddit. When all this started I had no doubt that the protests would come, make their point, end, and then Reddit would continue on its way. But this has been so poorly handled. I think a key to reddit's "success" (such as it is) is that they figured out how to scale moderation -- by getting volunteers to do the tough work for free. I'm sure reddit can toss all the uncooperative mods and get as many new ones as they could ever want. But they are changing the fundamental dynamic between mod, subreddit and reddit the company. I wonder if this won't actually break the system. Before, mods could run subreddits as they saw fit, users could choose the subreddits they participated in, and a user can always create a new subreddit if they don't think any existing ones suit their needs. Now mods will have to accept that supporting reddit's business goals is the "zeroth law" for any subreddit. I just wonder if enough quality moderators will be willing to put in the time and effort required to keep a larger community from devolving into a cess pool, or to build up new subreddits -- for free. When you're working for yourself doing what you want, when you want, you don't mind not getting paid for it. When a boss is telling you want to do and when to do it, you expect to get paid. Reddit is making itself the boss of the mods. The thing is, this is an entirely unforced error. Overwhelmingly, the natural interests of subreddits are aligned with Reddits business goals, or at least aren't in opposition to them. The horribly handled roll out of the API pricing has essentially backed mods into a corner, basically forcing them to protest and then extend the protest. IDK, maybe this was all 4D chess, and reddit wanted to get rid of third party apps and have an excuse to purge moderators with a sense of ownership over the subreddits they moderate. But it sure seems to me like they just don't know what they are doing. I know reddit needs to figure out how to become sustainable (profitable), and changing the dynamic between reddit and third-party apps is likely a necessary part of that. But I can't believe disengaging moderators can possibly help.

cactus2093 3y ago
> Before, mods could run subreddits as they saw fit, users could choose the subreddits they participated in, and a user can always create a new subreddit if they don't think any existing ones suit their needs. As a frequent Reddit user I don't agree with that. The network effects of subreddits plus the fact that they usually own the default name for a topic grant a lot of subs effective monopolies. As a user if I don't like something about a certain subreddit including how it's moderated, the more realistic option is just to not participate in that subject matter on Reddit. I can still use Reddit for other topics but I feel like there's very rarely an alternative subreddit on the same topic which is anywhere near as active as the main one. So, no offense to Reddit mods, but I really don't think these are all highly skilled, irreplaceable individuals. There's no competition that incentivizes the best people to rise to the top, these are just average folks that volunteered at the right time and now they're mods. There is apparently even a lot of cronyism among the mod community and I have heard that it can be hard to break into for first time mods. If Reddit forces some of them out, there will be many people willing to step in who can do just as good of a job. It might even be a net positive thing to get new people involved.

poorbutdebtfree 3y ago

The big problem here is what will young people do without the paid posters from /r/white/blackpeopletwitter and /r/politics forming their worldview for them?

pnathan 3y ago

I mod a top-1000-by-subs subreddit with about 800-900K subs. It has tight rules and aggressive automods. And people like that subreddit. Not gonna lie, if reddit strips our moderation, once the automod rules get figured out by the spammers, the value that particular subreddit will collapse into trash and spam. so, sure, aim that footgun and start pulling the trigger... go on then.

vxNsr 3y ago
[flagged]
- urbandw311er 3y ago
  Gosh that’s a bit mean
- ct0 3y ago
  Id agree that some mods are mostly narcissists with elitist visions on a power trip. Ive been banned from large subs that I have been contributing to for years. When my political believes did not conform with the mods political beliefs, I was perma-banned without warning for a post made in a different sub. These mods are not democratically voted for, and it shows. r/newjersey is more like r/liberals or r/ilovephilmurphy and that's unfortunate. How can a sub that represents an imaginary boarder only allow for political discussion that aligns with current elected leaders? Reddit is starting to show its true colors through this black out.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

readyplayernull 3y ago

Should 2023 be officially named the year of the Great Social Media Purge?

djmips 3y ago

Reddit should have been like the wiki.

1024core 3y ago

The almighty Dollar brought about more change in Reddit than many years of users complaining. This feels so disingenuous: > Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Where the fuck were you guys when, for example, people were complaining about the mods over at /r/india?

joshstrange 3y ago

It's worth noting Reddit has never cared about absent mods except maybe in very high-profile subs. Relatively active subs with absent mods (or an absent mod) preventing new mods from being added or spam have traditionally fallen on deaf ears. I've watched at least 1 subreddit die due to such neglect. As with a lot of things Reddit has done in the last week this falls under then "Oh, you only care about this now??? Screw you Reddit".

e40 3y ago

The API changes don't impact Mod tools but many (most?) Mods use Apollo or other apps because they have far better moderation tools. Steve's statement about this really pissed me off, due to this ommision.

younggeorge 3y ago

I think this will be a net positive even if they are replaced with worse moderators. Users are more than capable of self-regulating their communities and upvoting quality content. Moderators are too concerned with weeding out people and bad content as soon as possible and as much as possible. But it's OK to have a bunch of low quality comments and posts, and just let the users decide what gets seen by most of the people. I'm much more concerned with moderators thinking they can decide to protest on behalf of millions of people, than I am with millions of people seeing content that breaks a subreddits rules.

munificent 3y ago
I don't know if you have much experience managing an online community, but I believe you will discover eventually that everything you claim about self-regulation is false. A small fraction of bad actors can do enough damage to make a community not-self-sustaining. There's a reason every bar has bouncers.

AdamJacobMuller 3y ago

Just the threat of this on bigger subs, combined with the two subreddits that reddit did actually shuffle around mods in, seems to have totally broken the blackout. The benevolent dictators who moderate were threatened with losing their power and seem to have completely caved (. The mods realized that they are replaceable and that they don't have infinite rights to the moderator spots on these subreddits. Did they not consider that they do not own anything here and are all just operating on reddit's platform and reddit could just remove them and install new mods? It seems highly plausible to me that reddit has now effectively won this one, though, I strenuously think they could have achieved their goals with far far less negative press but it wouldn't really be reddit if they didn't do something in the maximally inefficient way. I do think this could lead to a situation where reddit moderation is more democratized, with moderators being elected (in a more formal way than how some subs do it now) and I think that would be an overall net positive for the communities and for reddit as a whole. Moderators at this point operate as mostly benevolent dictators and benevolent dictatorships have their plusses but I think that the limitations are starting to show now.

Jabbles 3y ago

Facebook has ~a billion or so~ users and is worth ~$500B. Reddit has ~hundreds of millions of~ users and is not worth anything like that. Why? Facebook's content is provided by all its users for free? So if Reddit can figure out a way to monetize it like Facebook, it's worth literally hundreds of billions of dollars. Which is why the leadership of Reddit will do anything if there's a chance that they can dramatically increase the value of the company. From their perspective, it absolutely is worth the risk. From our perspective it isn't worth it, ofc, because the upside for us doesn't involve lifechanging amounts of money.

rafark 3y ago
There’s no way reddit has anywhere near a billion users. It has millions. Facebook is ubiquitous, pretty much anyone from any age, gender and a country has heard of Facebook. Reddit is a big site, but it’s still a niche site when compared to the big social media giants. It probably has less users than twitter, which has a fraction of Facebook’s.
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  I tried to Google how many users Reddit has. The numbers are all over the place. Various links on the front page say: 1.66 billion monthly users 430 million monthly users 50 million monthly users 330 million monthly users Who the hell knows.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pbae 3y ago

You should read these threads if you want to get an idea of how the normie users think about the whole lockout: https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here_so_we_dont_get_fined/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here... https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/14al426/rapple_blackout_what_happened/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/14al426/rapple_black...

gigglesupstairs 3y ago
I didn’t know r/nfl represents the whole of reddit. Mind = blown.
pbae 3y ago
Here's another good one: https://www.reddit.com/r/NBATalk/comments/14aftuz/reddit_admins_is_rnba_father/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NBATalk/comments/14aftuz/reddit_adm... r/nba shut down for the Finals.
- pbae 3y ago
  The reopening thread is hilarious as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/14bxljj/the_return_of_rnba_and_an_update_on_the_reddit/?sort=top https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/14bxljj/the_return_of_...
Seattle3503 3y ago
That mostly seems like an expression of low empathy by users of a large sub, which largely tracks.

robbywashere_ 3y ago

This sounds like it could be the death of the platform, or at least the beginning of. I can see it devolving into bot generated content and intrusive ads. Once being a site noteworthy of high signal to noise ratio for content (ie google'ing with 'reddit' for quality search results) will now enshitify as it attempts to squeeze out every drop of revenue. Had the owner of twitter not fired all of his employees, they very well may have been able to seize the opportunity and develop an alternative which could have integrated with their current users and product.

blibble 3y ago

setting the users against the mods didn't work, so now they're trying to split the mods from each other from the businesses perspective this is probably the first sensible decision they've made so far

bruiseralmighty 3y ago

Wasn't the 'protest' of overpriced or non-existent public APIs for popular websites really the additional server cost due to endless web scraping? The whole concept of a general strike of subreddits seems like an antiquated way try and strong arm Reddit into complying. If all these subreddit had instead migrated their users to a hastily built alternate frontend that web scrapped reddit.com, the entire mother site could have been taken down quite effectively. There's plenty of methods for routing around ip-address blacklisting or region blocking. Just as there's no law against web scrapping there's no law protecting the labor rights of the moderators who work for free. Overall it just strikes me as a weaker axis of attack.

mrtranscendence 3y ago
Aren't those methods potentially expensive? And if you did make a hastily-built frontend backed by scraping, couldn't Reddit continually break it without much effort?

neop1x 3y ago

Now what remains is to stop moderating posts and write scripts and automations to fill Reddit with AI-generated spam. Then Spez will have a bag full of sh*t to do IPO with.