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Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

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Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#291

Post by paxys »

pinguinFromY wrote: post #60
dataengineer56 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I own the DocuSign subreddit. You don't own it, you were just either the first person to create the subreddit or someone who has since becomes the longest-serving moderator on it. I'll never understand how camping on a subreddit gives anyone the right to say that they "own" it or gives them more power over everyone else indefinitely. It's a big flaw in Reddit, I think all subreddits should be put up for some kind o…

By this logic, Americans don't own their land, they were there just in time to conquer it. Or I don't own my home, I was just the first person to buy it.

I have a legal deed to my house. If someone else decides to claim it the government (aka men with guns) will show up to restore it to me.

Your "ownership" of a subreddit amounts to a single row in a database on one of Reddit's servers, which they can change for any or no reason.

Moderators (and users in general) need a reality check about their relationship with the sites they frequent. You are not a part owner. You are not an employee. You are one of ~500M monthly users who they use to generate advertising revenue, and your loss will not be noticed.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#292

Post by prox »

dotnet00 wrote: post #207
prox wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, does this include artificial inflation of costs? I have seen figures that Reddit used to run with 20 people, and inflated to 2000 in 10 years. Old reddit is also superlight in bandwidth. New reddit is not.

Yeah, they're probably somewhat bloated like Twitter was, just like Twitter they don't deliver nearly as many new features to justify the large employee count, they don't do much of their own moderation either. A large portion of those might be for checking reports etc, since reddit at least does seem to do a slightly better job trying to keep humans in the loop there.

Yeah some things I read in the Apollo thread was about their global advertising department that grew quite big.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#293

Post by karmakurtisaani »

lolinder wrote: post #282
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's too early to complain about censorship. Moda are still probably adjusting to what is acceptable, and there are several instances where policies differ. Same as turning down whole of Reddit because one subreddit has strict moderation. Regarding the business model, there isn't any. At best it will be run by donations if the costs mount top high. I'm curious to see where it will go, but at least there are n…

> there are several instances where policies differ For now, but if this is how the maintainers of the main instance feel, how long before they start defederating from instances without their strict policies? Isn't that already happening on Mastodon? The fediverse ends up really confusing because it gets so balkanized. "One domain, one community" is easy to understand. "We're all seeing the same stuff no matter where…

If there are issues, you just migrate. It sounds bad, but if you expect one web site to forever serve you, you are subjecting yourself to their enshittification in the long run. Better to know these things have limited life times and plan accordingly. Early adopters are usually the most interesting crowd anyway.

I don't mind if something is slighlty difficult to use, as it serves as a filter to participants and limits growth (subreddits with over 100,000 participants tend to be kind of guerrella marketing, meme-infested shitholes).

The obvious drawback of course is that you lose the non-tech savy interesting people and experts. I don't know how to mitigate that, but still very interested in seeing where this all goes.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#294

Post by FragrantRiver »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #121
capybara_2020 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they might be prepared for that already in some ways. Reddit used to be a place where you go for relatively unbiased opinions. Some mods and subreddits were better than the rest, some worse. But atleast there was an illusion of being unbiased. Mods to for brand/product subreddits atleast officially were not linked to the company. But that is no more the case, just realized a few weeks back that /r/midjo…

Nah that's not uncommon, plenty of brands will have a social media presence, including Reddit; it's just that (from my perspective), the really commercial ones never gained much traction and didn't rise to the top anywhere. Reddit marketing is done best if it looks grassroots.

Isn't /r/leagueoflegends/ one of the biggest subreddits?

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#295

Post by randac »

Panzer04 wrote: post #123
Tainnor wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reasons why HN doesn't work as a reddit replacement: - It has no subforums - Almost everyone here is in IT, other topics only get discussed when they are interesting to IT people. On reddit, you can talk to historians, mathematicians, language enthusiasts, fans of your favourite series, etc. - HN usability on mobile is... yeah - HN is text only, that's already difficult for programming, but would make talking about e…

What’s the problem with HN mobile?

Thread with many replies, the deepest replies end up very squashed right in portrait, it's annoying to read. As is the flag/dead style but that's another matter. Obviously nothing I can't work around.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#296

Post by xeromal »

riffraff wrote: post #276
dimmke wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> People aren’t stupid, and they aren’t as docile as you think. People have a very short attention span and a very low level of commitment if they're not directly impacted. Remember the outrage about Musk on Twitter? It's all but died down. Or the various attempts to create some alt-right social networks. People don't have an obvious other place to go, and the majority of the community of /r/whatever will just go to…

This right here. I've been on reddit since 2010 or so and the dejure "most important thing in the world to talk about" is ever changing. Hong Kong, COVID-19, Ukraine, Harambe, Victory (the AMA person?), the great subreddit purge to name a few. Everyone claims they're going to delete reddit but will simply forget about it in a few weeks. haha

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#297

Post by dimmke »

riffraff wrote: post #276
dimmke wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> People aren’t stupid, and they aren’t as docile as you think. People have a very short attention span and a very low level of commitment if they're not directly impacted. Remember the outrage about Musk on Twitter? It's all but died down. Or the various attempts to create some alt-right social networks. People don't have an obvious other place to go, and the majority of the community of /r/whatever will just go to…

Ultimately, we can only speculate on what's going to happen. Neither of us can say conclusively, we can't see the future.

All I can say is that subreddits are built on the idea of autonomy - it's not just that they have their own mods. It's that this is a semi autonomous community. If you look at a lot of the subreddits that decided to go dark, their moderation held polls/voting about it and asked for community input.

Reddit admins are there as a safeguard - in the case of a subreddit doing something illegal or so unsavory it poses a larger threat to the site.

In the past over the last 10 years, this model has mostly worked. Even the subreddit r/the_donald, during the lead up to it being banned the moderators there described having discussions with the administration about what they would have to do to avoid being banned. Just because Reddit has always had the ability to be more forceful doesn't mean they've exercised it.

The action people keep suggesting here - a hand wave and all of a sudden these subreddits are "nationalized" (for lack of a better term) like a South American dictator taking over an oil company would completely shatter the trust that has been built, and it would have a lot of effects on the site. Just like when the South American country starts nationalizing companies. Capital flees.

They might not even be visible right away, and it probably wouldn't result in Reddit itself closing down but I am confident it would ultimately harm Reddit substantially (as opposed to many of the comments in this thread claiming it would have no adverse effect.)

Using Twitter as an example when the acquisition isn't even a year old isn't valid, in my opinion. Talk to me in 2 years.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#298

Post by Aaargh20318 »

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?

Being a moderator is a lot of work. You'd have to find a sucker to provide free labor for you. You can maybe find a few, but can you find enough to replace all moderators once you pissed them off enough ?

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#299

Post by jacquesm »

sellyme wrote: post #278
jacquesm wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power is its own reward.

Evidently not, since that's already a motivation that isn't sufficient to get enough people actually doing the work - and if anything, Reddit taking the step of unilaterally usurping community leaders for not being profitable enough would only reduce the perceived power of a moderator position.

For every mod of a subreddit large enough to matter the wannabe mods will be lining up.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#300

Post by qznc »

qznc wrote: post #62
quaintdev wrote: post #54

Too bad we don't have a viable replacement for reddit atm or this would have been end of Reddit

https://join-lemmy.org/ Lemmy is still too obscure to be on the radar i guess.

Little addition: The Lemmy-verse does notice increased activity. https://beehaw.org/post/468998

If you want to join, probably better use one of the smaller instances.

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