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Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

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Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#191

Post by throwaway25190 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #115
ddtaylor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mods have always been told that subreddits are their spaces to operate and that as long as they're not breaking any of the site-wide rules, they are free to do whatever they wish. This is a violation of that trust.

How can anyone sincerely believe that being a user, even a mod, on another platform by a corporate entity lets them have their own space? I mean, of course the company owns everything one does or publishes on said platform. There is no trust because the premise is faulty in the first place. The fact that people actually believed that is not really the problem of the platform, there is always inherent platform risk.

So maybe it's naive to think reddit wouldn't just seize control regardless of the "rules" (although I've seen plenty of posts from mods that mention this possibility). But that's not relevant to the question which is whether or not the moderators are moderating - as reddit is still using the rules as a pretense. I say to the mods, make it an easy answer, re-open the subs and remove every post that isn't a copy-paste of a stickied statement, something like that. Make them admit the rules were a convenient excuse for something they'd do anyway.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#192

Post by pokerface_86 »

secondcoming wrote: post #19
donutshop wrote: post #3

What's the end game here for reddit? There's no way this would end well.

I honestly don't think this will affect reddit that much. I find the whole thing quite annoying, to be honest, and I imagine I'm not alone. Unhappy mods are free to leave, there's no need to pull the rug from under everyone else who doesn't care. I don't need yet another thing to log in to. I'll only stop using reddit if they get rid of old.reddit.com.

[dead]

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#194

Post by rukuu001 »

moskie wrote: post #124
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s almost enough to make one reconsider the use of social media entirely. My hope is that one day the kids will just stop using it and it dies it’s natural death.

I've wondered for a long time if social media is just a fad.

I've wondered about this, and what need it serves in people that they're not getting otherwise? Usenet was pretty popular from the beginning and maybe the first 'social media', and succeeded without marketing.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#195

Post by danudey »

mandmandam wrote: post #101
moskie wrote: post #76

We (the internet community) made such a terrible mistake with social media. We formed connections and communities and friendships on sites like Facebook and Twitter and Reddit, but those companies need to make money, so those connections are only allowed to exist as long as they are part of a profitable system. How awful it is to reduce human connection to that. To think that I am only allowed to maintain certain soc…

Yes! And they're so incredibly cheap to run, in the scheme of things. They're TEXT and LINKS ffs. Even Snapchat, which deals in video, costs about $2.50 per user per year to run. Honestly, we're some set of dopes to let people like Zuck and Huffman build yachts and apocalypse bunkers, with bloody advertising money, all for the genius idea of sharing text and links on the internet.

Text and links, but then also recommendation algorithms, spam filtering, image hosting, lightning-fast caching systems so that your main feed doesn't take hours to load fetching row by row from MySQL, geographically distributed data centres for redundancy and locality.

Then there's the ad engine, which requires user data harvesting, and all of that analytics and analysis and machine learning, and that all gets expensive, so you have to do more of it and do it better so that you can make more ad dollars so you can afford to do more of it and do it better so that.... and so on and so on.

You could just charge users, of course, but if you charge users then you hamstring your organic growth, so you have to find a way to only charge some users but charge them significantly more. Even if Twitter only costs $1/usr/mo to run, how many of those users will pay? You need to charge 1% of users $100/mo, or 0.1% of users $1000/mo, which means you need to offer them something tangible for their money, but none of these sites can really think of anything tangible to offer their users that's worth paying for so they're stuck with ad revenue and...

Yeah, it's a gigantic mess.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#196

Post by zdragnar »

minhazm wrote: post #117

Reddit has handled this pretty terribly but I also think people are being unreasonable. This is no different than me creating a third party YouTube client, charging for it and displaying no ads. Why would YouTube allow me to do that? And why should Reddit allow third party apps to do that? Reddit screwed up in the first place allowing third party apps that they have zero control over to build a full frontend replacem…

The issue, as I've come to understand it, is not that they're requiring paid access to the APIs needed, but the rate that they are charging. It's quite a bit higher than comparable social media sites, and was high enough that one of the more popular 3rd party clients (Apollo) decided they would close up shop rather than operate at a loss.

IF they'd charged a more reasonable rate, that would have kept the entire thing out of the news and there wouldn't have been a blackout.

On the other hand, I'd be curious to know how much the other rates people bring up (facebook, etc) are subsidized by those company's ad revenue. I suspect that reddit's advertising doesn't make them nearly as much money as Facebook, but I could be wrong.

It's possible that they need to charge a higher rate, overshot what they thought people would stomach, and took the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" approach when people threatened the boycott.

If I had to guess, most non-niche users will find their way back. In particular, consumers of low-effort meme posts, pretty pictures, funny videos and especially adult content don't really care where they get it from, and will likely be perfectly happy with continuing on with new mods.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#197

Post by williamcotton »

jbrennan wrote: post #160
moskie wrote: post #76

We (the internet community) made such a terrible mistake with social media. We formed connections and communities and friendships on sites like Facebook and Twitter and Reddit, but those companies need to make money, so those connections are only allowed to exist as long as they are part of a profitable system. How awful it is to reduce human connection to that. To think that I am only allowed to maintain certain soc…

This is a great point, and I’m curious to hear what would be better alternatives. Like obviously there’s something great about having online connections with other people, but how could we do it better without surrendering to some big platform?

We could make a public platform. In the US this all but guarantees a protection from censorship. Third parties could offer moderation services. The brave could suck on the firehose!

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#198

Post by bleepblop »

gtm1260 wrote: post #176
paulddraper wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem dishonest to me. Reddit cares more about having an open subreddit then the mods do. This was the obvious conclusion

I would also bet that the majority of Reddit users care more about having an open subreddit than the mods do as well.

At this point let it burn. A giant wildfire stimulates growth. Sure at the moment it's destructive, but over time new life emerges.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#199

Post by capableweb »

One thing I don't quite understand is how the CEO first claims that only 3% of the user base is using 3rd party apps, and then later claims that "And the opportunity cost of not having those users (3rd part app users) on our platform, on our advertising platform, is really significant" (from https://www.npr.org/2023/06/15/1182457366/reddit-ceo-steve-h... )

Is that 3% of the user base really having such a big impact so it's worth all this drama and continue to alienate the users of the platform?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#200

Post by proaralyst »

minhazm wrote: post #117

Reddit has handled this pretty terribly but I also think people are being unreasonable. This is no different than me creating a third party YouTube client, charging for it and displaying no ads. Why would YouTube allow me to do that? And why should Reddit allow third party apps to do that? Reddit screwed up in the first place allowing third party apps that they have zero control over to build a full frontend replacem…

As I understand it, mods are mostly annoyed because they've been using the API to compensate for features lacking in their official mod tools. Making the API cost money means the unofficial mod tools cost money, and hiding NSFW content in the API means they can't moderate (or remove) that content though those tools.

I think the blackouts have got wider support because users are also annoyed about losing the 3rd party app experience they know & love (and I speak as one of those users).

It feels like Reddit could have provided a few compromises here: improving mod tools before the API changes, opting moderators out of API charges and NSFW restrictions and providing a reasonably-priced per-account subscription allowing API access (so us old farts could keep the experience we know and love, at a reasonable price for Reddit) would all be welcome.

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