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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

#281

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

Avamander wrote: post #244
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Reddit has behaved very badly, but the kneejerk people demanding a cheaper than opportunity cost API have distanced themselves from sanity. It's one thing to say that one thinks reddit is making a miscalculation against its own financial interests, but it's an extreme form of selfishness to demand that someone else sacrifice earnings to provide perpetual unfettered platform access to things that were put on…

> but it's an extreme form of selfishness to demand that someone else sacrifice earnings to provide perpetual unfettered platform access to things that were put on the platform of posters' own accord without coercion. In that same sentence you highlight why it's not selfish. Reddit wants content and moderation, they're not paying shit for it. It's only a fair trade for people to keep their tools and clients in exchan…

> Reddit wants content and moderation

Reddit benefits from content moderation, but reddit didn't make any mods be mods. Mods did that to themselves entirely on their own.

> they're not paying shit for it.

This is a nonsequitur. Reddit doesn't need to pay anything for the mods to experience compensation. The compensation that the mods get is having the subreddits be moderated in the way they want. It's possible (and unknowable) that, if mod were a position compensated in other ways, there would be fewer complaints about power tripping, but that's neither here nor there. Mods are already compensated by having exactly what they became mods for in the first place, moderated subreddits.

> It's only a fair trade for people to

It's the opposite of fair to expect payment for doing something that nobody asked you to do. If I come and mow your lawn because looking at a mowed lawn makes me happier, you don't owe me shit. I have already received my reward.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#282

Post by AwaAwa »

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…

Try not paying your taxes and see what happens.

We have always been reduced to producers of monetary value for an intermediary. We pretend we are in control of that intermediary, and maybe once we were. Much like the beginning of every social media site.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#283

Post by btilly »

camhart wrote: post #260
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…

Except, the lockout is self imposed. Reddit's "crime" is closing down their API... users just need to use the actual reddit app and they can keep their connection/communities going. It does sucks for the people who've built their livelihood offering 3rd party reddit clients though. Sure it was always a risk. Big tech destroys entire businesses on a regular basis. Doesn't make it a bad choice on their part--the (ameri…

Except, the actual Reddit app sucks. And it particularly sucks for busy moderators.

So successful subreddits will be getting inexperienced moderators imposed, who don't know how the communities work, and who don't have the right tools to use.

Care to take bets on how well this will turn out?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#284

Post by bee_rider »

bmhin wrote: post #48
brucethemoose2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord, where everything will be siloed off and then enshittified again :(

That is my prediction as well. It's unfortunate as we'll enter the unindexed web where all that helpful content you can find by appending "reddit" onto any search will no longer be getting produced. All of it hidden in discords, out of sight. Who knows, maybe there will be an easy way to get stuff published out to the proper web. Things like community FAQs or guides that would be broadly of use. I think the loss of t…

I already use Discord and I cannot for the life of me understand how people use it as a Reddit replacement. It is totally impossible to explore.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#285

Post by LexiMax »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #140
concinds wrote: post #74

The dishonesty continues. > if they are no longer interested in moderating that community They're still interested. They're just protesting your policies. > [if] at least one mod [...] wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team. This one takes the cake. They're dangling a carrot: hey, any low-ranked mod interested in taking over…

Most subreddits doing polls have people voting to remain open, so it really isn't in the interests of the communities to keep the subs closed. The ones who don't like the changes are leaving anyway.

> Most subreddits doing polls have people voting to remain open

I still see pro-blackout threads regularly shooting to the top of /r/all - which wouldn't get that far if they were down-voted by an angry populace.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#286

Post by Avamander »

George83728 wrote: post #259
Avamander wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The protest is to make it possible to keep things working. It's bizarre to see the amount of complaining about mods making or breaking a sub and then at the same time the amount of people calling their actions impactless or leading to derelict communities. Which is it? Do users and Reddit need them or do they not? The only option after fucking over volunteers is that Reddit can start paying people to moderate an…

> The protest is to make it possible to keep things working. It's bizarre to see the amount of complaining about mods making or breaking a sub and then at the same time the amount of people calling their actions impactless or leading to derelict communities. Which is it? Do users and Reddit need them or do they not? First off, different people have different opinions. Pointing out the apparent hypocrisy of loose grou…

> Many of them will be bad a the job, they can be weeded out over time just like usual.

How long would users tolerate that though?

> there's a huge crowd of scabs willing to take the job

Probably. Though I see few incentives that won't turn perverse ones, especially now that Reddit clearly doesn't want to support mods. So this will last as long as there are communities that haven't been ran into the ground. Those who seek it the most usually deserve it the least.

Sounds like a bunch on pointless turmoil for little guarantee that things would improve.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#287

Post by itake »

harryf wrote: post #139
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…

What gives me hope is if you ever take a break from social media you realize how worthless it all is. It really doesn’t hurt to disengage. For similar reasons it’s possible for new networks to show up which disrupt the old, such as TikTok. The point is as individuals we are way less dependent on social media than we imagine.

I've been on the struggle bus quitting reddit for 5+ years. Even with this new level of energy to quit, I'm still on it for ~20 min per day.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#288

Post by stefan_ »

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…

"these companies need to make money" is a very weird way of saying "Reddit could have been perfectly profitable years ago but we went and got a shit ton of venture capital instead by selling investors on the idea that we were gonna be as big as Alphabet". Surprise, their level of execution is roughly "press conference at the Four Seasons" as this little episode so well demonstrates.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#289

Post by PepperdineG »

ardit33 wrote: post #16

Sorry... but this was handled very poorly by reddit and its CEO. Should have just disabled the 'go private' option. A subreddit, is not 'owned' or property of a moderator. Eg, https://www.reddit.com/r/Brooklyn/ , should not be own by one person that decides what to do. The questions and answers are made by common people that want to see their content that they posted into the subreddit. They are not property of some…

It's not that simple, like to get the content you want so that it's just Q&A in a congenial fashion that takes moderation, like there's extensive rules here and elsewhere rather than it just being some unmoderated free-for-all. Moderators keep things on topic and civil, like certainly you want Reddit moderators to remove comments that are insulting others, threadjacking, etc?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#290

Post by unclekev »

fzeroracer wrote: post #277
unclekev wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 out of 10 days most Reddit mods are considered the scum of the earth, it's a literal meme at this point how bad a lot of them are. They are the heroes this week because it fits their narrative. Censorship, power-tripping, running subs with a iron fist, etc Nobody knows or cares who they are. As much as they'd like to think they are, the mods are not the community. The community is the people. The people are not the…

I don't know if you know this, but mods are not a monolithic group. Each sub is going to have a different set of mods, some worse than others. That said, if you thing mods are not the community you are more than welcome to try and run a community without mods. In fact you should do so right now. Go create a subreddit without mods and link it here.

> if you thing mods are not the community

Mods are the stewards of the community. Not the community itself.

They help foster a good community, but once again - they are not the community and can usually easily be replaced by someone else in the community who is passionate about the topic.

> Each sub is going to have a different set of mods, some worse than others.

The problem is that the main group of people driving this 'protest' are the Reddit power mods.

Smaller communities with great mods have been strong-armed into this protest and have no idea why they are actually participating, because as per usual, Reddit power mods need to control the narrative and want people to believe that "Reddit is nothing without them".

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