What's the end game here for reddit? There's no way this would end well.
The endgame is an IPO and payout, then who fucking cares about reddit.
Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
351–360 of 614 posts
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wager more care about corporations pushing around a volunteer workforce, though. I'm genuinely surprised by the fatalistic / why bother attitudes expressed here on HN, as if those attitude aren't the dominant factor enabling those outcomes.
A lot of folks here will commiserate with reddit's position - Microsoft and Google and ChatGPT are making billions from programs that were built using data gleamed from reddit's API's, and they didnt have to provide reddit with a single penny in return. Reddit has to do something to prevent the gold rush of data mining that is bound to occur from other companies building their own copycat LLM's.
>Microsoft and Google and ChatGPT are making billions from programs that were built using data gleamed from reddit's API's
Source?
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#353Reddit clearly doesn't understand the product. When users join a sub it's because they like the content and tacitly approve of the moderation. All but new users are aware that subs are governed by mods. Installing a corporate-approved mod panel because a community isn't acting in Reddit Inc's financial best interest is to light the whole product on fire. What's the point of starting a new sub if it'll be repurposed a…
I take your point, but to a large extent the value of the subreddit is in the name since it makes it easy for people to organically find the right space for the content they want. Domain names are the same. For example, for content local to New York City, going to /r/nyc was my first guess.
/r/UncleBens can claim to have developed their own thing, but not the obvious ones like /r/Apple, etc.
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#354Earlier 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.
Most of these closed subreddits polled their userbase and only participated in the blackout if users heavily favored doing so.
If by "majority of users" you mean users that do not contribute any content and only view the site, sure, you may be right. But a content aggregator that is devoid of content doesn't exactly make a great website.
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#355> If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but 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. Moderators exist to moderate a community, not to shut it down wholesale. Reddit's respon…
> Reddit's response is the only reasonable one they could have made.
You're saying Reddit was backed into a corner and had no other option but to knowingly defame the author of Apollo with false public accusations? And that this was a reasonable action?
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#356Notice how everything has to go through a moderator. Is that a legal thing? Does it insulate Reddit from liability somehow?
Moderators keep the site going, and they work for free. It's a cheap way of handling a task thing.
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean I get that for absent-minded browsing but even just...having a hobby and talking about it with people feels pretty much like Normal Person Behavior(TM) and Reddit's subreddits worked well for that in the same way that forums in the past did. Not the end of the world but as a kid who only could find other people to talk about certain hobbies with online up until college sounds like a lot of pepole will be more…
Or maybe they’ll spend more time doing their hobbies than typing about them.
The caveat to that is that the more time I spent typing about my hobbies, the more I collaborated with differing ideas within my discipline, and the more I ultimately learned about the hobby. Doing the hobby is one thing, but the social aspect is certainly more valuable than you seem to be giving it credit.
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#358Would this not change the relationship of moderators to unpaid workforce? Would this not conflict directly with either US or EU labor laws?
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
The funny thing is that Usenet is already a highly censorship-resistant platform, and tools like NoCeM would let you subscribe to third party moderation streams!
Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
#360What's the end game here for reddit? There's no way this would end well.
What do you mean? How can this end poorly? Most people browsing Reddit are addicted with no viable substitutes. Breaking their addiction through continued blackouts would end badly. Replacing some mods no user cares about will hardly have an impact. Lets be realistic.
Digg and Tumblr are some clear precedents where users walked away and a seemingly robust network effect collapsed. Moving on to "the next thing" on the Internet is a lot easier than some people seem to think.