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Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

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Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#261

Post by PurpleRamen »

radarsat1 wrote: post #240
fernandotakai wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what puzzles me the most is that reddit's reasoning for charging money for their API is that "it's bad that other people are profiting from our work and it's too expensive to maintain without someone paying it". hey, guess what? reddit "profits" a LOT from unpaid work from their moderators. if you wanna charge for API access, you should also pay your moderators since you are profiting from their work.

> it's too expensive to maintain I would love to hear someone elaborate on this part. The API returns the same information as you get from the HTML interface right, but structured? If the API and the website had the same traffic, then wouldn't the HTML part (which is more complex I guess), but more expensive? If the API disappeared, wouldn't the HTML rendering require the same infrastructure? I'm not clear on how mai…

The Website has ads, bringing in significant money.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#262

Post by tapoxi »

dataengineer56 wrote: post #92
zarzavat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that’s how Reddit is designed, and that’s how forums worked before Reddit. If you don’t like the way a subreddit is run then you can make another one, and if you are sufficiently better then people will switch. Reddit isn’t stack exchange. It’s more like running an open source project. The problem is that there’s this hostile corporation that sometimes tries to kill their own product every few years overseein…

> If you don’t like the way a subreddit is run then you can make another one, and if you are sufficiently better then people will switch That's much easier said than done - say you don't like the moderation or content of /r/gaming, how are you going to spread the word about your new subreddit? It won't have as good a name as /r/gaming, it's not a default sub so it's more difficult to find, and you might find that men…

>How can Reddit have the concept of default subreddits yet allow them to be run by random, unvetted people? For me being default includes some kind of guarantee of quality and approval by Reddit, yet most of these default subreddits are going dark!

Reddit hasn't had default subreddits for a few years. These days you're onboarded onto r/popular and then algorithmically recommended a few you can subscribe to.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#263

Post by dimmke »

jacquesm wrote: post #258
dimmke wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already reports of some large subreddits shutting down permanently, such as programming humor. The idea that this action can’t possibly hurt Reddit I keep seeing is amazing to me. It absolutely will hurt Reddit. Even if it’s not an existential blow. Reddit took a long time to get to where it is. Simply saying it can absorb all this like it’s nothing is myopic. And FWIW, I’m glad most people aren’t as cynica…

What stops the reddit admins from re-enabling 'programming humor' and to solicit one or more new moderators?

Nothing, but it would result in even more backlash.

I could see them doing this for the most popular subreddits like r/videos, but if you start doing this for even medium sized subreddits it’s going to have even more severe consequences.

People aren’t stupid, and they aren’t as docile as you think.

These theoretical questions to me are the equivalent of “Why didn’t the US just kill every person they encountered in Vietnam that was a male of fighting age instead of fighting against an insurgency?

Well, they could have. They had the ability to. And it probably would have resulted in a different outcome. But it would had some pretty severe consequences.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#264

Post by PurpleRamen »

fernandotakai wrote: post #19
deminature wrote: post #3

Pissing off the people doing thankless free labor to keep your subreddits moderated and site functional seems like a poor choice. This is going to be quite an event when it kicks off Monday.

what puzzles me the most is that reddit's reasoning for charging money for their API is that "it's bad that other people are profiting from our work and it's too expensive to maintain without someone paying it". hey, guess what? reddit "profits" a LOT from unpaid work from their moderators. if you wanna charge for API access, you should also pay your moderators since you are profiting from their work.

That's not the same. The mods work out by their own choice, and usually have no bills to pay for this work. Reddit on the other is a company, and has bills to pay. And Reddit is not tiny. Not sure how big their costs are, and what they earn, but from my understanding, it's not a money-printer wasting bills on golden keyboards and parties, not are really profitable yet. So they are probably on a thin line, still struggling to survive long term without external money.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#265

Post by jacquesm »

dimmke wrote: post #263
jacquesm wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stops the reddit admins from re-enabling 'programming humor' and to solicit one or more new moderators?

Nothing, but it would result in even more backlash. I could see them doing this for the most popular subreddits like r/videos, but if you start doing this for even medium sized subreddits it’s going to have even more severe consequences. People aren’t stupid, and they aren’t as docile as you think. These theoretical questions to me are the equivalent of “Why didn’t the US just kill every person they encountered in Vi…

> Nothing, but it would result in even more backlash.

I doubt that. But it's fine to disagree about such things, the mods are actually showing reddit that they are a risk factor themselves and you can bet that counter insurgency planning is underway. The 'vocal minority' is a minority. I don't think reddit would be above killing of a few hundred (or even a few thousand) accounts that they consider to be trouble makers (whether or not that is true is something else).

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#266

Post by jacquesm »

alpaca128 wrote: post #252
jacquesm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only 48 hours if reddit lets it.

Reddit can't force the moderators to return early. Letting it run with no moderation for 48 hours is far more damaging than a temporary interruption.

Reddit can solicit new mods and ban the old ones. It's probably the quickest way out for reddit and users will likely hardly notice except for those subreddits where the mods are very closely associated with the community itself. But that's definitely not the bulk of them and not the larger ones, though there are some exceptions.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#267

Post by Vespasian »

dm319 wrote: post #239

It's a shame because of all the social media platforms, reddit is one of the best. There isn't so much grandstanding (I couldn't tell you a single username on reddit), and the ability to rapidly create special-interest subreddits means that discussion revolves around the topic, on the whole. I left facebook because it became a place where people I knew spent their time curating a false virtual identity of themselves…

For me it's because most good subreddits are focused on a single issue and not using the home feed let's you avoid all the "hot political issues of the day" where everything has been said millions of times. I don't need another 1000 comments of the same old 5 tired talking points

I also like not being insulted and topic specific subs allow strict moderation and the banning of unpleasant people.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#268

Post by thumbuddy »

meowkit wrote: post #214
thumbuddy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This second paragraph is extremely unhinged. I would suggest reevaluating beliefs here.

The only thing untrue about it is, you can't buy SpaceX stock. I would suggest reading publicly available information about Elon musk, Twitter, and SpaceX.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#269

Post by fennecfoxy »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #160
jacquesm wrote: post #61

48 hours will not even ding reddit. Do it for a month and it will count, assuming reddit doesn't simply re-enable the subreddits. But obviously the mods here are walking a fine line between pissing off their users and getting reddit to bend over. With camarades.com we had a week long outage because of a fire in EV1's DC which then caused the fire marshal to shut everything down for a week (I don't blame them, but tha…

> 48 hours will not even ding reddit. I don't think the direct losses of the 48 outage will be what matters here. Rumors are that Reddit wants to IPO later this year. This blackout will put the spotlight on two issues: - Reddit is extremely dependent on the goodwill of the community, especially the moderators who provide an essential service for free. - Reddit is out of touch with its own community, and keeps pissing…

Lmao, maybe certain groups of people can boycott stuff, but human beings in general sure can't.

I'm pretty sure the average/more casual Reddit user either: doesn't use 3rd party apps, or doesn't care and will just use the official one.

It's Twitter all over again "omg everyone will leave it now that Elon's in charge". Yeah, that hasn't happened. At. All.

Now, knowing how us fleshy meatbags work, you're probably thinking I'm in favour of Reddit/Twitter/Elon or whatever. That is not the case.

All I'm doing is reiterating that humans gonna human and that no meaningful change will come from a few hardcore users when the average user couldn't give a shit.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#270

Post by joelthelion »

wraptile wrote: post #178
jacquesm wrote: post #61

48 hours will not even ding reddit. Do it for a month and it will count, assuming reddit doesn't simply re-enable the subreddits. But obviously the mods here are walking a fine line between pissing off their users and getting reddit to bend over. With camarades.com we had a week long outage because of a fire in EV1's DC which then caused the fire marshal to shut everything down for a week (I don't blame them, but tha…

> 48 hours will not even ding reddit. I feel like 48 hour long outage for a social media website is huge. That's 2 days for people to look around at alternatives. Remember when google plus launches FB argued that they had zero hours to lose and they were kinda right.

> That's 2 days for people to look around at alternatives

I don't think that's enough to lose a ten+ year habit of checking Reddit. A week or more, maybe. 2 days, I don't think.

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