Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mods are not fungible. It’s tempting to feel that they are, but they have an enormous influence on their communities.
Name a single mod. I can't.
dang
wendifur
Lowtax
drew
cmdrtaco
jatman
Reddit Strike Has Started
581–590 of 1001 posts
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter too! When I worked there they jokingly referred to the head of product as the defense against the dark arts teacher, in that every year or so they'd disappear mysteriously and there'd be a new one. Most of Twitter's successes came from watching what users were actually doing and supporting that (e.g., at mentions, retweets, quote tweets). Many of their failures have been trying to graft on something irrelevan…
How is Twitter rapidly decaying? I am a daily, but very light user so I may not be observing the trends as well as you.
The company lost half of its value in six months, according to Elon Musk himself [1].
Anecdotally, due to Musk's support of extreme-right views (for example re-inviting Trump [2], supporting DeSantis [3], or protecting bullying [4]), many people have left in protest and so these views are over-represented on the site.
The word "decay" seems appropriate.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/elon-musk-twit... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/business/twitter-musk-trump-r... [3] https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-... [4] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musks-new-twitte...
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think I agree with you. Every sub I'm on that has asked people if they should go dark (either temporarily or permanently) have seen overwhelming support for the protest. This includes subreddits such as woodworking, our local city sub, and arduino. These subs are NOT made out of power users and they all supported it.
The site linked in this very post sorta disagrees with you, though. The subs not taking part in the strike vastly outnumber those who are. Outside of a few (relatively speaking) small circles, the Reddit strike boils down to "Reddit is striking?" The revolt goes unnoticed. Lurkers are happily scrolling the front page right now.
To be clear, the strike isn't supposed to start until June 12th, which hasn't happened in North America yet. This headline seems to be jumping the gun a little as only a few subreddits went dark immediately.
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#584Reddit has been purging subs and users with reckless abandon for some time now as they cleaned up the place in the name of "community safety" (aka advertisers). I guess the monetized government kids that stayed believ(ed) they were the good ones, the worthy ones. If y'all think it will end at the API changes, you'll be sorely be disappointed.
>I guess the monetized government kids that stayed believ(ed) they were the good ones, the worthy ones. Yep, this is the great irony. When capitalist logic was being used to justify Reddit going after hate speech, powerusers loved it. When it's being used to justify closing API access, they hate it and the rhetoric shifts entirely. We'll see the same thing when Reddit starts tightening the screws further on NSFW cont…
> When capitalist logic was being used to justify Reddit going after hate speech, powerusers loved it.
So, being anti-hate-speech is a bad thing, to you?
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#585Strike you say? That's like, as Louis Rossmann on his yt channel wisely said, "I am so angry, so infuriated that you're abusing me, that ..... I WILL... leave for 3 days and then come back for the rest of my life". Like it's literally like saying "hey I need you in my life". Do you know what message that sends? What would you think if your customers would say "hey Im not gonna come for 3 days but I'm coming for the r…
But sometimes sites do die. Digg is a big example of this. It started with the top users like MrBabyMan posting against the site and then it quickly snowballed taking the whole site with it.
Doesn't always happens but it can happen and we can still hope.
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#586There's a good number of people saying this strike is meaningless and reddit's API change will only affect a tiny % of users. I want to explain why I believe they are wrong. Engagement is a power curve. Most content is created by a small subset of users. I think it is a fair to say that if you use and especially pay for third party tools, whether that be a client or something like RES, you are more than likely a powe…
And now I want to explain why you're wrong. The vast majority of people who are visiting subreddits are doing so because they're actively seeking out the material being presented to them. These people are subscribers to the subreddits. Subreddits that "go dark" are not blocked for everyone. Their access is restricted ONLY for those who have not yet subscribed to the subreddit. So this giant display of enlightened ass…
> The vast majority of people who are visiting subreddits are doing so because they're actively seeking out the material being presented to them. These people are subscribers to the subreddits. Subreddits that "go dark" are not blocked for everyone. Their access is restricted ONLY for those who have not yet subscribed to the subreddit.
I don't believe this is true but I'm willing to test it out. I'll subscribe to a bunch of subreddits that intend to go dark and see what happens.
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh? Thanks so much for telling me what goes on in my head, bub. The average bit of user-generated content is of very low quality. Which is why pretty much any successful platform, this one included, uses user-generated signals to filter the good stuff to the top. And any social context is prone to vicious circles where dark triad find somewhere successful and ruin it. Preventing that requires active weeding. All of t…
>Thanks so much for telling me what goes on in my head, bub. I mean, if you're going to Reddit to marvel at the sidebar rules or CSS stylings, then I guess you're going there for the mods qua mods. But I would assume that this represents a relatively rare user psychographic. Beyond this, my point is that it's unfair to give the mods credit for indirectly cultivating communities but refuse to extend this same consider…
Mods don't just edit the css, they moderate. You can clearly see the difference a good mod team does. After the reddit blackout is over, check out the difference between /gaming and /AskHistorians. AskHistorian threads are often 90% deleted comments because people try commenting without posting any sources.
For smaller communities mods keep away trolls and spambots. They enforce custom rules that sub will have.
> Yes, and Reddit was successful long before the moderation tools that are being impacted by the API changes were created
Are you forgetting about Reddit Enhancement Suite? There is no mod that just uses the built-in reddit moderation. There hasn't been since the days when Reddit was a website only known to tech related college students.
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell me you've never moderated a sizeable online community without telling me you've never moderated a sizeable online community.
I haven't. So what? Is there anything I'm wrong about in a way that you could provide meaningful evidence on? Surely you aren't arguing that only moderators are qualified to weigh in on the social value of moderators - this sort of logic wouldn't pass the laugh test if we were talking about police, or soliders, or middle managers, or low-level government bureaucrats. This whole "thin blue line"-style thinking that mo…
[deleted]
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Engagement is a power curve. Most content is created by a small subset of users. This is it, and it's the same with Twitter. At some number of connection in the social graph, or some amount of content produced, a user becomes more valuable than the ad money they could bring in. i.e. the opportunity cost flips, and it's worth giving up the ad revenue or API usage in order to keep them. To use an extreme, if a Kardas…
> because those users are almost by definition power users Why is this the case and being repeated everywhere by everyone? Reddit originally didn't have a mobile app and only third party clients existed. Everyone who wanted a mobile experience was using a third party app. Many of those original users never switched to the official app. How are they power users by definition?
That's a fair point, but I still think there's a strong correlation. To address that point specifically, users who started using Reddit early enough that the official one didn't exist, and have stuck around and are still active now, are more likely to be power users just based on account age. Additionally, many years ago those seeking out mobile apps may have been power users as well. Mobile apps are the default now, but unofficial apps have only recently been more mainstream.
Re: Reddit Strike Has Started
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the classic network effect. People use it because other people use it.
…until people stop using it because other people stopped using it. They are playing with fire.
Reddit of all platforms should know this, having risen to prominence on the heels of Digg v4