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Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

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Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#81
post #4

This 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.

"untethered" is right for me.

I'm backing the effort by not even landing on reddit. And it's odd. I have found reddit to be helpful over the (now many) years.

I'm coming to the conclusion that capitalism destroys social media for me by causing the business to make it unpalatable to me. Oh well. I'm sure I'll survive without it.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#82
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I'm a mod of a several-million-subscriber subreddit (one that's likely highly popular among HN subscribers). When we asked our community if they wanted to join the protest, the answer was a very resounding "yes, but 2 days aren't going to cut it"... So we're still debating when/IF we're going to return after going dark. To add, all the mods are tired and don't have enough time to…

same here. r/sneerclub (18.5k) wouldn't have joined without overwhelming community support. Only question is whether to come back in two days. Also I think everyone on the sub knows very well it's a complete waste of time lol

Thank you dgerard, you are doing (acausal robot) god's work.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#83
post #4

This 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.

I gave up on Reddit during the corona years when pleading with people to not create a QR-code underclass got me banned, permanently, from my national subreddit.

This isn't some major subreddit run by the same mod cabal either.

Reddit moderation is a poisoned chalice. It attracts the worst kind of people and pushes out the best.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#84
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, I wouldn't be so quick to judge. I'm a mod of a several-million-subscriber subreddit (one that's likely highly popular among HN subscribers). When we asked our community if they wanted to join the protest, the answer was a very resounding "yes, but 2 days aren't going to cut it"... So we're still debating when/IF we're going to return after going dark. To add, all the mods are tired and don't have enough time to…

If you don't stay on Reddit where will you go? I'm eager to join communities that are moving to something less user hostile than Reddit. Bonus for anything OSS or federated.

That's not really decided yet. Without going into too much detail, a lot of our moderators are not as engaged as they once were: Eternal September has washed out many of our core contributers long ago, and the subreddit's focus has shifted over the years. Mostly to topics that (IMO) most mods don't care too much about (self-promotion, "beginner friendly content" instead of expert discussion, fluff...). So in my view, most of the subreddit is in strong decline and is just not "the place it used to be". With several million subscribers, I feel like it's very hard to foster a real sense of community. And once you hit a certain popularity, the amount of newcomers will always be larger than the "core", and good content erodes from there. I guess that's true of a lot of reddit, though. We could've tried harder to prevent this (or guide our community), but at the time we felt that "hands off" was a better moderation approach, and now it's likely impossible to change that course.

Anyways, IMO most of the really interesting discussion on the topic happens on twitter already. My best guess is that instead of finding a new home for the subreddit, we'll eventually just either give control to some other body (or reddit takes it from us) or we'll just set the subreddit to public again and let it go its way without being very involved (Most of the current mods weren't really involved anymore anyways). I'd love to find a new place devoted to this topic (twitter definitely sucks for long form discussion), but I haven't found such a place, and don't have the time/energy to set one up myself.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#85
post #9

Maybe 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?

I feel like some of the "smaller" communities can't really have their mods replaced without some work. Programming subreddits need mods with the right programming background to make executive decisions like banning the next NFT-like scheme, for example, which a generic person going through posts and deciding if it's against the TOS couldn't do.

/r/Programming's head mod is spez, second in command is another Reddit employee.

Needless to say, they've done fuck all and the sub is very often a dump.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#87
post #9

Maybe 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.

[deleted]

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#90

If Reddit would die, it would be interesting to see where on the web the community would go to next

How about we go back to being a web? What I really wish people learned from all these issues with Twitter and Reddit is that the best way to avoid abuse of power is to not let power concentrate so much in any single centralized entity. We don't need everyone with technical skills to make something completely decentralized. How about we take the (I don't know) 3-4% of the population who does have enough sills to buy a…

Imagine if each subreddit was a separate forum with a separate account.

People are lazy and want everything in the same place.

Also it's not 1998 any more. Running a forum is a full time job. Need to handle DMCA takedowns, deal with illegal content, think about ways to monetise the site and so on. It's much harder than simply moderating a subreddit.

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