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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

#511

Post by DropInIn »

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…

When you go on strike there's two options when you leave the shop:

A - you close and lock the doors

B - you leave the doors wide open

Which of those is more ethical and responsible?

So, in that light, what do we think of the choice for mods who went on strike to lock down the subs until they return?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#512

Post by boringuser2 »

pbae wrote: post #509
boringuser2 wrote: post #193

Moderation on reddit was always pretty heavy-handed, arbitrary and unnecessary. Reddit should have removed most of them a long time ago (at least from the popular boards), but doing so now just looks distasteful.

Nah, it was overdue, and this provides an impetus to execute a purge which would have been hard to do before. Never let a crisis go to waste.

It's a bad look, though, to be punitive in the face of protests.

If they had simply terminated the mods prior to this, well, they both wouldn't have actually had a problem to begin with, and could have easily chalked the whole thing up to a push to be more "open".

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#513

Post by bbor »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #213
bbor wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Is capitalism at fault? No, surely it’s the kids!”

Communist Cuba doesn't have a social network, but they do have a "sneakernet" [0]: > El Paquete Semanal ("The Weekly Package") or El Paquete is a one terabyte collection of digital material distributed since around 2008 on the underground market in Cuba as a substitute for broadband Internet. Since 2015, it has been the primary source of entertainment for millions of Cubans [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquet…

Lol thanks for the reminder TechBro8615. I don't really want to argue about communism being inherently authoritarian on here :) I was just responding to the parent comment, who was (to some extent) dismissing the ancestor:

> 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 social connections as long as they continue to produce monetary value for an intermediary. An awful, awful mistake.

I think we can agree that there are ways we could organize social media that are neither governed by the intense profit expectations of VCs, nor the work of Communist satan magic. For example, government funded!

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#514

Post by 0xParlay »

rand_r wrote: post #353
0xParlay wrote: post #299

Reddit 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.

Seems like survivorship bias considering you wouldn't be familiar with well-named poorly moderated subs that never took off.

But also you searched /r/nyc instead of TheNewYorker.com because what you're after is community curated content instead of the views and opinions of Condé Nast and their vast network of quality publications that are already available for subscription.

Following /r/nyc and /r/newyorkcity during the mayoral elections was what made reddit useful. You could see how moderation could create an echo chamber and distort a users perception of reality. Having reddit install "community leaders" is a hilariously bad idea.

So long and thanks for the fish! Looking forward to see what replaces Reddit.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#515

Post by bbor »

midoridensha wrote: post #472
btilly wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>Care to take bets on how well this will turn out? I'm betting many communities are going to turn very shitty, but ultimately it won't hurt Reddit's bottom line one iota. In fact, Reddit will probably be more profitable than before. Just look at TikTok: you don't need communities with intelligent discussion to have a highly profitable company. Instead, it's better to chase vapid morons who want to watch shitty 1-minu…

It is my opinion that viewing oneself as a special light in a world of vapid morons leads to a sad, angry life. Just thought I'd weigh in, one vapid moron to another :)

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#516

Post by PlunderBunny »

adriand wrote: post #434
haswell wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

Online, we make the people we interact with into the people we want them to be, not who they actually are.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#517

Post by minhazm »

zdragnar wrote: post #196
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…

> It's quite a bit higher than comparable social media sites

What site besides Twitter even has paid API access for something like this? I haven't seen anything to indicate Facebook charges for API access. Even then, you can't build a full facebook replacement with their public API's. I agree that the execution in terms of timeline was awful by reddit. But the pricing makes sense when you realize their goal is to kill off third party apps. Reddit charges $5 a month for Reddit Premium, so allowing a third party to charge less than that and deliver the same feature set is silly.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#518

Post by Panzer04 »

paholg wrote: post #229
Panzer04 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern I have with these federated instances is I don't see how they resolve the long term problems of stability. Content on instances can disappear at a moment's notice if it goes down. My favorite part about reddit is the amount of information it has that is well-indexed by google. These Lemmy and kbin alternatives might fulfill the moment-to-moment chatter, but it worries me that there's no guarantee of conti…

Information is distributed across instances. If instance A hosts community C and a user on instance B subscribes to that community, its posts will be duplicated on instance B.

Really? That's very interesting, and good to hear. I'll have to look more into it, because that's really my main concern long term. Not that I have any real control, but I'm reticent to support platforms that could still go dark out of nowhere if I can avoid it.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#519

Post by throwaway1777 »

than3 wrote: post #212
throwaway1777 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I follow why they should move.

They are likely planning on eliminating external apps from using their API. Upon doing that, it no longer becomes feasible to delete your content. They get to keep it forever since they make it so hard to go post by post and delete it. You also won't have any new features that you actually want, because they haven't listened from the get go and have never been responsive because you are the product not the client.

There aren’t really any features that I want, and I any content I might want deleted comes from throwaway accounts.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#520

Post by EchoReflection »

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…

That is such an elegant, concise, and accurate description of the situation. Bravo
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