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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

#431

Post by teraflop »

basch wrote: post #388
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…

[I stand corrected, redacting the rest of the comment] In a small defense of Reddit: If subs are private, they are still accessible to subscribers. If the moderators don’t moderate the really bad stuff, Reddit has historically replaced them. I would think the same applies here. It’s hard to argue that people who are not subscribed to a sub are community members. People had plenty of warning to join subs before they w…

> If subs are private, they are still accessible to subscribers.

No, this is not accurate.

A private subreddit is only accessible to "approved users", i.e. those on a list managed by the moderators. Subscribing is completely different; it's a private, user-settable flag whose only significant effect is to make the subreddit's content eligible to show up on your home page.

If you can't view a subreddit's content because it's private and you're not approved, then subscribing makes no difference. In fact, subreddit mods can't even see who's subscribed, nor can they prevent anyone from subscribing, even by banning them.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#432

Post by germinalphrase »

joshvm wrote: post #401
jhanschoo wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reddit specifically, I have to disagree. It's a sad state the Internet has become, where you used to get coherent results from decentralized blogs when you google a sufficiently niche hobbyist topic. These days you just get content marketing spam. Append reddit to your search and you get subject-matter experts. The valuable conversation and folk knowledge is all siloed on social media.

Reddit successfully centralised forums and made it convenient because you didn't need 20+ logins. The other half is link sharing/doom scrolling (the addictive stuff), which replaced Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. In the not-so-distant past if you wanted expert help and non-astroturfed suggestions (or even just memes), that's where you went. Those places still exist for a lot of fields and the experts still hang out (and oft…

I do frequent a handful of forums, and it appears many of them are powered by Xenforo.

Maybe we need to hard sell Xenforo on a shared login model…

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#433

Post by 0xEF »

joshvm wrote: post #401
jhanschoo wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reddit specifically, I have to disagree. It's a sad state the Internet has become, where you used to get coherent results from decentralized blogs when you google a sufficiently niche hobbyist topic. These days you just get content marketing spam. Append reddit to your search and you get subject-matter experts. The valuable conversation and folk knowledge is all siloed on social media.

Reddit successfully centralised forums and made it convenient because you didn't need 20+ logins. The other half is link sharing/doom scrolling (the addictive stuff), which replaced Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. In the not-so-distant past if you wanted expert help and non-astroturfed suggestions (or even just memes), that's where you went. Those places still exist for a lot of fields and the experts still hang out (and oft…

This may sound strange (and was equally strange to admit to myself) but I'm looking forward to "mamaging identities acrosz multiple boards" again. My brain seems to be wired to associate each of my hobbies with very different aspects of my personality, and visiting a little "walled" community for whatevet activity suits that current version of myself is a nice way to compartmentalize and stay focused on what I set out to accomplish in that moment. I loved Reddit for a time, but goodness, what a disjointed experience it was for me and my easily distractable attention span.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#434

Post by adriand »

haswell wrote: post #279
RheingoldRiver wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you find the right communities, you really make close friendships with people - even if you don't know their real names, how old they are, where they work, or where they live. None of that matters, because you share and connect over a common interest. And you could never find so many people IRL with similar interests as you. If this isn't how you're using reddit, discord, etc, and it's easy to disconne…

I don’t think the argument is that one can’t find connection on Reddit. But I think the recent happenings are a good reason to ask how good it is to invest so much in communities that can disappear overnight. I’ve enjoyed my time on Reddit over the (many) years and I’ve made real friends who I now know in real life. But many of the communities I once valued have crumbled or no longer provide the same positive experie…

> Shifting focus to local in-person interactions and creating solid and sustainable relationships that don’t depend on the whims of the latest social media platform seems increasingly important.

I agree with this completely. I have formed many online relationships particularly in the music community starting during the COVID lockdowns and it has really struck me how ephemeral they are compared to IRL friendships. It’s so much harder to connect in a deep way. It’s also so much easier to walk away. You can just kind of slow down your online engagement and the relationship dries up.

I’ve also noticed how I tend to develop a certain impression of someone just based on their online artifacts (avatar, style of writing, emoji, etc) that often turns out to be gravely inaccurate when I finally encounter them in a “realer” format such as a video call. Sometimes I end up realizing that I’d likely not hang out with that person IRL. It’s disconcerting.

Lastly, I find I often feel uncertain about the connection I have in ways that I never feel with people IRL. For instance, wondering if my tone is off, wondering if the person isn’t perhaps as interested in whatever endeavour we are working on anymore, etc.

I am fortunate in that I have not been much of a feed-based social media user for many years, but my belief that community-based social media (eg Discord) might be better has been tested by these observations. As per your comment, I think RL is where it’s at.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#435

Post by tamirzb »

flutas wrote: post #256
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, so it really isn't in the interests of the communities to keep the subs closed. I've seen this oft repeated, but never backed up. The only poll I've seen results from[0] was overwhelmingly to stay shutdown indefinitely. On top of that, you're probably going to be getting into sampling bias with larger subs, since most users that care are purposefully av…

I'm a frequent visitor of /r/soccer. The only poll they did[0] had a staggering 88% in favor of the blackout, with 80% in favor of keeping the sub private as long as it takes for reddit to change their mind. I would be surprised if other polls had such different results, as I'm not sure what would make the /r/soccer community so drastically different from the rest of reddit.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1429lkh/meta_thread...

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#436

Post by protocolture »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #129
verhaust wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess has been that Huffman is just following Musk. My further guess is that he has actually either seeked or been given unsolicited advice from Musk about standing firm. Despite all the whining and complaints about Musk's handling of Twitter, the masses still use it. I see Twitter links on most sites I go to. Huffman thinks reddit is too big for a loud minority to shout down and he is probably correct. Reddit wil…

I find comparing the two to be a deep insult to Musk.

Good?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#437

Post by moskie »

redbell wrote: post #420
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…

> 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 We all hope Hacker News remains the exception, otherwise, it might mark the end of “the internet as we love it”

I don't think it's a good idea to assume / hope that HN remains that way. Money is still an aspect of the existence of HN. It exists because pg has enough money to run it, and its existence aligns with his current desires. This community could just as easily dissappear in a way equivalent to what we're seeing with Twitter and Reddit, if pg wanted. And it could not be easily replaced, because its existence is dependent on pg's money...

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#438

Post by optimalsolver »

lordfrito wrote: post #330
EA-3167 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anonymous social media as the mainstream is a fad, the end-point is going to be more like Snow Crash, minus the artistic flair. I think text-based, possibly anonymous social media will persist, but it won't be what billions of people are doing. Most of the problems with social media come down to the ability of people to separate themselves from the consequences of their speech and actions. I don't think that…

100% this. The problems of social media are largely already solved in the real world, where there are real consequences to bad behavior. Reputation is a thing in the real world. We're still in the medieval ages of the internet. People are regularly waylaid and conned by digital highwaymen. We need the digital equivalent of a reputation in the digital world. Will end up being similar to a SSN -- an identity that follo…

You mean like a China-style social credit system?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#439

Post by calf »

satvikpendem wrote: post #71

> 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…

How is "stop moderating" defined? Is an r/widgets sub that decides the only future discussions topics allowed are "why spez is harming the r/widgets community" still a moderated sub?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#440

Post by yanderekko »

protocolture wrote: post #410
satvikpendem wrote: post #71

> 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…

Private subs are a feature mods have access to under the existing system. Private subs existed before this protest. Setting a sub to private is moderation. And likely mods are still moderating just a much smaller amount of content from users already in the community. Its not reasonable to kick out mods because they are protesting, and reddits response is a massive stretch.

>Setting a sub to private is moderation

Destroying a community is not. There's plenty of obvious precedents where mods that attempted to destroy their own subreddits or merely hold them hostage have been replaced. These were considered obvious decisions, but now that people are angry at the admins we have some weird Mod Rights movement bubbling up.

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