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The Reddit blackout will continue

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Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polls were held in many subreddits; if a subreddit is the community - which it is - then the will of the participants is the will of the community and those who communicate it.

I think that such polls tend to vastly over-represent the small subsets of those communities who care enough about the issue to vote. Voting is very rare in subreddits so I imagine that probably most users of those subreddits did not even realize that the votes were happening. And knowing how authoritarian Reddit mods usually are, I doubt very much that for the most part they would not have done whatever they wanted…

The only subreddit where I saw a vote, it was something like 95% of people voted for a blackout. Almost nobody is siding with reddit on this.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be forcefully re-opened at any time. Based on the internal memo, they don't appear to be taking this seriously enough to warrant that kind of action.

Isn't there also a worry of harming their brand / reputation irreparably?

This is Reddit we're talking about, right?

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#64
post #22

It’s impressive how their CEO keeps shooting himself in the foot on this one, he could compromise a bit by at least expanding the deadline on the pricing changes, but instead he decides to provoke and double down. The leaked internal memo, which is obvious that would leak (after all it is a 2,000 person company) is a clear provocation: > We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as…

[flagged]

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#65

Honest question since I don't really know how reddit works: Why can't reddit just forcefully re-open the subs that have been taken private? Mods are using powers given to them by the platform and I don't get why they are not being stripped of (some of) those powers.

Are you saying replace the volunteer moderators with Reddit staffers? Or empower a large group of new, untested, volunteer moderators?

Neither sounds like it would help achieve their profit goals.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#66
post #47
post #22

It’s impressive how their CEO keeps shooting himself in the foot on this one, he could compromise a bit by at least expanding the deadline on the pricing changes, but instead he decides to provoke and double down. The leaked internal memo, which is obvious that would leak (after all it is a 2,000 person company) is a clear provocation: > We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as…

If the CEO backs down then he’s weak. He needs to publish a hard hitting memo that chastises third party app developers for not creating more sustainable businesses. If Reddit cannot meet it’s revenue goals it will shut down, period.

Bollocks. Tumblr is still around and probably has been losing money for longer than people here have been alive.

No one is throwing away the kind of audience reddit has.

Now the CEO might lose his job, but let's not get that twisted up with Reddit's survival.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#68

Organizing the continued blackout on Reddit is a bad look. I know it's not their aim, but it seems like "users should be prevented from using reddit, but us mods are exempt." That said, short of preemptively having coordinated something, I don't know where else they'd organize. Particularly as I'm unaware of any real "leaders" to this movement.

Yea, definitely more of a mod revolt than a user revolt I feel like a lot of users have had it up to here with mod abuse too, maybe smaller subreddits with less automation would be preferable to mega reddits with bots that auto-ban you for being new to the community

> definitely more of a mod revolt than a user revolt

As a user I completely disagree.

As a user, I want to use a UI that works for me. I don't want to use a mobile website that prevents me from reading comments and forces me to use an app.

As a user, I want a service that releases quality of life fixes, not a service that says the fixes are coming for years but instead decides to release half-baked features every 6 months chasing some other feature in some other flash-in-the-pan social media service.

As a user, I want adware, low quality comments, and rule breaking comments removed from my subreddits. If the mods are upset at reddit because the mods can't effectively maintain those subreddits, then I'm upset at reddit too.

As a user, I want open APIs so I can log into different services to see better stats on my own account.

As a user, I want to see notifications that let me know when someone replied to me, not random junk notifications that I get automatically opted into.

As a user, I want to be able to edit my comments while I'm writing them and not have them unrecoverably and randomly delete mid-edit.

This wasn't just some mod revolt, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I spent 9 years being part of a community fixing other's code and linking to my own code as examples that others can draw from. I deleted my 9-year old account 2 days ago: https://i.imgur.com/m54CBan.png

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be forcefully re-opened at any time. Based on the internal memo, they don't appear to be taking this seriously enough to warrant that kind of action.

Isn't there also a worry of harming their brand / reputation irreparably?

Harm to the brand is hard to quantify. We can only assume they've done the calculus and decided freezing out 3rd party apps is worth the benefit. Knowing exactly what that benefit is, is conjecture. Best guess is that this is regarding the IPO which is expected in 2nd half of this year.

As a side note: the brand is clearly on their mind, as they've made exceptions for disability features. Banning Redreader would have caused quite a bit more uproar.

Re: The Reddit blackout will continue

#70

It's kinda dumb to go private as a protest, because visiting the home page as a lurker, there's no indication that anything is happening - just a different mix of subreddits hitting the default feed It's a little quieter, I kinda like it.

Yeah, while I understand and appreciate this effort, Reddit is actually seems better without some of the giant default subs. It's more like it was 10 years ago. The site has hardly been a ghost town over the past couple of days. Smaller more obscure subs are hitting the front page, which is interesting, and to me it illustrates that if the large ones were to shut down entirely, there'd be no shortage of content and o…

Actually many smaller subreddits don't want to hit the front page.

Reddit has different dynamics depending on where people are coming from. Small subreddits hitting the frontpage tends to be disruptive more than helpful by bringing in users that don't care about the local culture.

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