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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

#121

Post by Eisenstein »

treis wrote: post #105
bosse wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

Most of the major subs are modded by people who get paid by advertisers and other promoters to astroturf support for whatever. It's not hard to replace them.

The major subs are not the reason reddit is so popular.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#122

Post by jeltz »

treis wrote: post #105
bosse wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

Most of the major subs are modded by people who get paid by advertisers and other promoters to astroturf support for whatever. It's not hard to replace them.

You base that on exactly what? If anything this wide spread shutdown indicates that that is not the case.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#123

Post by rglullis »

zirgs wrote: post #90
rglullis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

You can have a separate forum, but you don't need a separate account. You just need need these different sites to talk with each other. This is how email, Usenet and now ActivityPub works.

> People are lazy and want everything in the same place.

It doesn't have to be the same place for everyone. For me (and my friends and family), the "place for everything" would be the server I set up for them. For you, it could be a different server. For journalists from a media outlet, it could be an institutional server.

Also, stop projecting. Instead of hiding yourself in the excuse of "people are lazy", just say that you are lazy and don't care about giving your freedoms away to faceless corporations.

> 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.

This is the key principle behind the idea of "Small Web". Your servers will be serving your immediate circle only. By definition, you would be only dealing with content created by people who you actually know.

- By not having to deal with thousands of users, the setup and maintenance is minimal.

- There will be no problem that you can not solve by just picking up the phone or knocking on their door and talking with the person directly.

- There is no need to "monetize" the site, because the operating costs are negligible and you are doing it only for yourself/your close circle.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#124

Post by jeltz »

davidgerard wrote: post #69
stale2002 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 simultan…

I think this is because many people, including me, was already very tired of Reddit's shitty changes. If Reddit had had a good track record and this was their first misguided change I doubt most users would have supported this.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#125

Post by jeltz »

rjbwork wrote: post #29
alisonatwork wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I would consider mods unilaterally shutting down their forums and hiding information that was contributed by millions of other people a triumph for the wider community. Speaking as somebody who only ever visits Reddit when a thread appears in a search result and occasionally replies if the mods didn't implement a policy of automatically deleting posts from outsiders, now the information I need is not there,…

There are only a handful of subs that voted against or are generally against it and it's all ironic, toxic, and shit post subs like nbacirclejerk, 4chan, etc.

The Ukraine war ones are also some against. I have mixed feelings about that.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#126

Post by cmsonger »

davidgerard wrote: post #101
cmsonger wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"enshittification", per Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys an instance of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall

Ha! Great link.

I legitimately think it's possible that a properly managed "for the profit of the investors" social media company will always follow this path.

It's why I think the right future for social media is non-profit. None of this is amazing technology anymore. This would also have the benefit that it would take the question of "how do we avoid doing harm while still making profit off the table." Could write a statement of values and intent that legitimately puts well being of users and society ahead of everything else. (Which no for-profit with externally raised capital is able to do today.)

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#127

Post by lawgimenez »

AegirLeet wrote: post #96

It's really kind of crazy to see. I just checked some of my favorite subs and out of 22 subs I checked, 20 are currently private. I've seen some people claim that it's just the "powermods" pushing for these blackouts, but that's not my experience at all. Several medium-size subs I frequent (none of them moderated by powermods) made polls and the result was always the same: an overwhelming majority (like 90%+) of user…

As I have expected r/ExperiencedDevs did not go dark. Devs just can't figure out things together.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#128

Post by hattmall »

llamaLord wrote: post #79
philwelch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News is a Reddit clone that PG wrote because subreddits didn’t exist yet and he wanted to write an application in Arc.

Hacker News is what I refer to as The last bastion of the "Old Internet". Like back when the internet was a thing that people actually had to put effort into participating in so the average quality of content and engagement was consistently high more often than it was low. Back when you actually had forums dedicated to single areas of interest, run by people who were interested in that thing "just coz". I feel like H…

I spend most of my time on historicbridges.org it's very old internet!

Projectilepoints.net too!

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#129

Post by zirgs »

rglullis wrote: post #123
zirgs wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Imagine if each subreddit was a separate forum with a separate account. You can have a separate forum, but you don't need a separate account. You just need need these different sites to talk with each other. This is how email, Usenet and now ActivityPub works. > People are lazy and want everything in the same place. It doesn't have to be the same place for everyone. For me (and my friends and family), the "place fo…

For a small group like a family or a couple of friends it's simply easier to use apps like Discord, WhatsApp or Signal.

But if you need something bigger then you can't avoid the problems that I mentioned.

My country's gamedev community had a phpbb forum that was created 2 decades ago. But now it's dead and everyone is using discord instead.

Re: Livestream of Reddit subreddits going private in protest

#130

Post by realitythreek »

lawgimenez wrote: post #127
AegirLeet wrote: post #96

It's really kind of crazy to see. I just checked some of my favorite subs and out of 22 subs I checked, 20 are currently private. I've seen some people claim that it's just the "powermods" pushing for these blackouts, but that's not my experience at all. Several medium-size subs I frequent (none of them moderated by powermods) made polls and the result was always the same: an overwhelming majority (like 90%+) of user…

As I have expected r/ExperiencedDevs did not go dark. Devs just can't figure out things together.

r/ExperiencedDevs is such a weird place to me. It’s like the secondary school for r/CSCareerQuestions. It has builtin gatekeeping due to their goal of being for “experienced devs”. I’m also not surprised they aren’t participating.
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