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Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

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Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#321

Post by jacquesm »

dimmke wrote: post #311
jacquesm wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All I can say is that subreddits are built on the idea of autonomy On the illusion of autonomy. > 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. Then why join this debate in the first place?

>On the illusion of autonomy. This is the part that your side doesn't get - having power to do something and not using it doesn't mean you're giving off an "illusion". Everybody who runs a subreddit is fully aware that Reddit admins have the power to shut them down if necessary, but the precedent that has been set is that there would be a lot of communication or they'd have to be doing something flagrantly illegal fo…

You're making all kinds of assumptions about the people discussing this. Some of us have actual experience running large communities and this informs some of the statements you see people making here.

Whether or not you believe that the moderators are what makes reddit or that the users do so is only a subtle shift but it makes all the difference. If moderators flex their power they will stop being moderators because clearly the no longer seem to have the ordinary users interests at heart. This is why this is such a dumb play. You either have a 'batna' or you don't. Reddit holds the cards, and this is pretty much begging for them to show that they do so. Worse has happened and it never made a difference, as long as ordinary users aren't impacted to a degree that makes a difference to them things will stay as they are.

And a 'look at what you made me do' defense won't hold water, the users will blame the moderators because they can't get their fix, not reddit.

Reddit will die like every other community: through attrition, not because the moderators throw a fit over something that they may well see as important but which does not offend others.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#322

Post by bombcar »

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…

I've not been on reddit in years and I can still remember "Gallowboob" and the conspiracies/clashes therein.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#323

Post by digging »

feyes wrote: post #176
jacquesm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has some pretty powerful tools at its disposal to re-enable those subreddits and then they can ask who wants to moderate them instead, I think there will be plenty of takers, if the community is in sync with the mods then the mods' play will succeed otherwise the mods are just putting themselves out of business. This whole thing is a nice illustration how when you use someone else's website for your community…

People should just go back to forums. It was better when I didn't know about the absolute nutcases and always felt like forum information was superior to the stuff I find on Reddit.

While I miss forum days as well, reddit has permanently shifted the space. For someone with a lot of interests, are you going to sign up for a forum for each one and keep tabs on those? It's difficult to even think about how I want my online "community" to look without reddit, even though I'm glad to be leaving.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#324

Post by worrycue »

jacquesm wrote: post #308
alpaca128 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assembling new moderators for 3000+ subreddits on such short notice sounds a bit difficult.

I don't think it's all that difficult. Message the top 100 contributors of every subreddit that goes dark to ask if they want to be mods, and if they say yes put them on a two month trial. I remember when Ronald Reagan fired all air traffic controllers in the US, that definitely had me wondering about the wisdom of the move and yet it went off without a hitch. Not a single plane crashed on account of that. https://en…

Top contributors might not be interested in moderating though. It’s a different kind of activity - like being a tennis player vs being an umpire; Don’t think Roger Federer was ever interested in being an umpire.

P.S. Also moderating anything on the internet has been derisively called being an internet janitor.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#325

Post by bombcar »

vsnf wrote: post #105
gorbachev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pre-IPO process often involves all kinds of fun short-term profit maximizing activities.

Is it securities fraud if your pre-ipo profit maximization moves cause your user base to relocate, and you didn't disclose that your filings?

Every IPO files paperwork that basically says "The SEC requires us to say we're completely full of shit, everything we do is a lie, and you will lose all your money."

And then it's perfectly legal.

And they continue to do that, go read any prospectus, it's all about how everything will die and the company is dead.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#326

Post by worrycue »

bombcar wrote: post #319
hipposec wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the other thing that made forums a better place was the absence of a upvote/downvote system. It reduced the motivation of just chasing attention with little jokes and threads could stay on the front page so long as there was active conversation going on.

Forums were also dedicated to "mostly related" things (like a subreddit) and it was a bit of effort to create a new account on a different forum, and you were obviously new at that point. So "brigading" and such weren't really much of an issue (and the issue has always been people barging into a community, knowing nothing about it, pontificating on some post/issue, and promptly leaving). Forums still exist, but you n…

I wonder if online discussions will shift to Discord channels. Sure it’s another centralised “forum” but it does seem like a credible alternative - a lot of discussion already seem to happens there.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#327

Post by jacquesm »

dimmke wrote: post #307
xeromal wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've been on Reddit since 2009, and never cared about any of that stuff or claimed I was going to leave Reddit over it. I absolutely am leaving Reddit over this. I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic, I am not going to not do something that could help my business for ideological reasons), but I will no longer be using it on a dail…

> I absolutely am leaving Reddit over this.

ok

> I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic

ok, so you're not leaving. Everybody else will be just as pragmatic and the rest won't care. Realize that you just pretty much proved the point of everybody here that believes that this likely will have very little impact. If you were principled you would leave.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#328

Post by stavros »

skinnymuch wrote: post #313
stavros wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deleted the Reddit app a few months ago because the comments are a hivemind and it was annoying me, but TikTok seems to scratch the reddit itch without the annoyances.

HN is as much of a hivemind as reddit.

It really isn't. I have a lot of contrarian opinions, and HN doesn't dismiss them as quickly, and there are more people that will engage in reasoned debate with them.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#329

Post by antifa »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #99
quaintdev wrote: post #54

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

I've been tentatively looking at Lemmy, obviously nowhere near the activity of Reddit but it's not a ghost town either and the Fediverse aspect is a big plus in my book.

In addition to a lot of other small details about lemmy, I don't like the way lemmy federates, I think if somebody made "subreddits for mastodon" instead that would have been more interesting.

Re: Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark

#330

Post by dimmke »

jacquesm wrote: post #321
dimmke wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On the illusion of autonomy. This is the part that your side doesn't get - having power to do something and not using it doesn't mean you're giving off an "illusion". Everybody who runs a subreddit is fully aware that Reddit admins have the power to shut them down if necessary, but the precedent that has been set is that there would be a lot of communication or they'd have to be doing something flagrantly illegal fo…

You're making all kinds of assumptions about the people discussing this. Some of us have actual experience running large communities and this informs some of the statements you see people making here. Whether or not you believe that the moderators are what makes reddit or that the users do so is only a subtle shift but it makes all the difference. If moderators flex their power they will stop being moderators because…

>Whether or not you believe that the moderators are what makes reddit or that the users do so is only a subtle shift but it makes all the difference.

Moderators ARE users of Reddit. Drawing a line between "moderator" and "user" isn't the line that matters. The line that matters is "lurker/regular user" and "power user"

Moderators are power users. They're part of the small percentage of users that contribute a way outsized amount to Reddit by curating portions of it.

If the rule of thumb of online communities that 90% only lurk, and only 10% contribute, they're part of the 10%. That 10% is what makes Reddit work, period. Moderators use third party apps to aid in moderation, but a lot of power users just use third party apps because they are a lot less shitty. This ban ultimately targets all power users - the entire 10%.

>This is why this is such a dumb play.

I think the "play" you are referring to here is the idea of temporarily or permanently shuttering a subreddit.

But it's actually the opposite - if Reddit exercises their power resurrect subreddits (I think they could get away with the biggest ones like r/videos, but anything medium size and smaller no way) they lose, BIG TIME. And so many of these subreddits are participating they'd have to do it for hundreds of subreddits just to juke KPIs for their fail to launch IPO.

The idea that the users will just blame the mods is silly, as I said most of these blackouts were discussed at the subreddit level and the overall community sentiment is positive. And some of these people have been moderating these communities for years. You can't just replace them with randoms and expect the experience not to deteriorate.

Here is an example on a subreddit with 50k subscribers:

Initial thread discussing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/13zou5n...

Mod thread announcing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/142hhy3...

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