Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've already eliminated all the other socials and that has been very good for me You do understand that you are posting this to hacker news right?
Hacker News is a news aggregator.
Yet here we are in the comments.
Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
61–70 of 158 posts
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would assume that a small percentage of mods are doing the vast majority of actual moderating. So the interesting statistic would be the percentage of mod actions performed via third-party tools. This is a bit similar to Stack Overflow claiming only 11% of mods are participating in the strike there. What they didn't say is that it includes almost all of the active Stack Overflow mods and some community-run anti-spa…
I tracked down the original statistic. CEO u/spez wrote: > About 3% of mod actions come from third-party apps, and we’ve reached out to communities who moderate almost exclusively using these apps to ensure we address their needs.
At this point I wouldn’t trust anything he says also, we’ve heard them say that time and time again with no real/good changes so I have no clue why we’d expect it now.
It’s similar to how the API is limited compared to what the official app can do and lacks many basic features (streaming or callbacks) that are needed to avoid polling it. They’ve said before that if they started charging there would be improvements to the API. Where are they? Are developers supposed to take them on faith/trust? I’m pretty sure Reddit has burned what little of that they have left.
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes reddit valuable are 1. The communities 2. The data that the communities havegenerated in the past It seems like reddit is trying to monetize #2 to the point of alienating #1. It's bizarre how large the disconnect is between Reddit the corporation and Reddit the collection of communities
Isn't #2 freely available for anyone to scrape? And even if they shut down access now, presumably everyone training LLMs already has a mostly complete dump of reddit comments/links.
Yes, but actually scrapping it is a hard work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36254485.
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#64This sounds ridiculous even to me, but it’s a strange feeling to see the death of Reddit. It’s the only quasi-social network I’ve used for a decade, and there are many communities that I feel at home in. It’s almost like grief, or feeling untethered somehow.
Honestly I'm taking this as an excuse to quit Reddit completely. It eats around 60 to 90 minutes of my days, which realistically means I spend 10% of the time I'm awake on Reddit. I've already eliminated all the other socials and that has been very good for me, my mental health, my productivity, now it's time to move from Reddit too. Besides, the user experience on the website has been nothing but degrading for years…
Same here. Time to go back to reading books and talking to people.
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#65Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but if Reddit doesn't backtrack what's the endgame here? I've seen multiple subs indicate they intend to fully shutdown if the API changes continue, but for the popular ones what's to stop Reddit from just appointing new mods and starting the sub back up?
Reddit is heavily reliant on unpaid labour by moderators. Where is reddit going to find new qualified replacement mods on such a short notice?
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> both can be trivially cloned. Alternatives exist Trivially? No. As can be seen by lack of alternatives of comparable quality.
I think it would be pretty easy to make a clone, but everyone who tries seems to end up getting nerdsniped making something federated instead.
Only federation defends from what is now happening with Reddit. See Freenode and Libera Chat.
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#67Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but if Reddit doesn't backtrack what's the endgame here? I've seen multiple subs indicate they intend to fully shutdown if the API changes continue, but for the popular ones what's to stop Reddit from just appointing new mods and starting the sub back up?
> appointing new mods and starting the sub back up That's what I'd do. Most subreddit mods are easily replaceable. And in many subreddits, the people who are mods aren't necessarily the best suited for the job. They often got there through luck, bootlicking, etc. It isn't a meritocracy.
spoken like someone who has clearly never done mod work
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#68Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but if Reddit doesn't backtrack what's the endgame here? I've seen multiple subs indicate they intend to fully shutdown if the API changes continue, but for the popular ones what's to stop Reddit from just appointing new mods and starting the sub back up?
> appointing new mods and starting the sub back up That's what I'd do. Most subreddit mods are easily replaceable. And in many subreddits, the people who are mods aren't necessarily the best suited for the job. They often got there through luck, bootlicking, etc. It isn't a meritocracy.
While it's true that some subreddit mods might not be the most qualified for the job, and may be in it for the ego boost or as a perception of entitlement, it's also important to remember that being a mod is not exactly a glamorous position - for many it has been a thankless janitorial role that involved dealing with spam and abuse on a continuous basis, with a very limited toolset available from Reddit to do this. The third party apps were the ones to introduce features that made the mod tasks much easier to handle efficiently. The official Reddit app got these capabilities much later.
If Reddit wants to force open protesting subreddits and find a way to recruit new mods to more than 7000 subreddits, then I assume this is within their right, it's their site after all.
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#69Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but if Reddit doesn't backtrack what's the endgame here? I've seen multiple subs indicate they intend to fully shutdown if the API changes continue, but for the popular ones what's to stop Reddit from just appointing new mods and starting the sub back up?
Hey, reddit mod of a top subreddit here. I can give some insight into what mods are thinking. This current 'movement' is extremely organic and decentralized. A couple power mods started rallying the troops, and the movement went viral among mods over the course of about 2 weeks. There is very little direct coordination between subreddit mods, and it is mostly people deciding on the fly to make big decisions. TLDR, no…
I was surprised and pleased that our users were wholeheartedly supportive of the shutdown. Still not sure if we're back in two days or will leave it closed longer.
(small sub, 18.5k, but needs active moderation not to go to shit - our topic is in the news a lot lately. thankfully the reddit tools are up to the task at our scale, but bigger would be bad)
the disconcerting thing is that Twitter and Discord are simultaneously going to shit, because enshittification is what happens when suddenly borrowing carries an interest rate and VCs get squeezed.
Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest
#70Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but if Reddit doesn't backtrack what's the endgame here? I've seen multiple subs indicate they intend to fully shutdown if the API changes continue, but for the popular ones what's to stop Reddit from just appointing new mods and starting the sub back up?
Some communities may move wholesale to one of the Reddit clones. For instance, a clone of r/traa is rapidly taking off on one of them. For communities with strong cohesion like traa, people will move as a group, and obviously any attempt by Reddit to install new mods would meet with disaster.