Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 614 posts

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#531

Post by dcsommer »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #235
harryf wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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'm glad you found a consistent source of enjoyable and enriching interactions online.

That said, do not dismiss the need for long-term, in-person friendship. IRL forces you to confront the uncomfortable/mismatched parts of others. In other words, the whole person. It enables you to comfort and support in a way that is impossible online. This is all both uncomfortable and necessary to form the most meaningful and worthwhile relationships, not to mention vital social skills.

The Internet is an incredible tool to connect like-minded people, but it will not bring happiness in the same way the flesh and blood presence of consistently physically present people can.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#532

Post by midoridensha »

itsthecourier wrote: post #397
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'm super angry of all the mods who are taking the subs prisoner. If you don't like to pay reddit back, then let us use it. I'm a premium user and I pay reddit because I like the content, freemium users pay back watching ads, I was a freemium user of other platforms for decades. Why is letting them charge so bad?

How much are you paying the mods for the work they do?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#533

Post by interestica »

There’s not much stopping Reddit from taking over the user accounts and just reopening the subs with the same ‘mods’ — but run by different users. The scariest part is that they could use those accounts and ‘speak’ for them — “we’re sorry, we changed our minds. we are back. huffman was right”. They’ve already demonstrated that they have the power (and will) to modify existing users’ comments.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#534

Post by cooljacob204 »

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.

How does moderation work? If a mod deletes a post on A does it get deleted in B?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#535

Post by joshvm »

germinalphrase wrote: post #432
joshvm wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are some platforms like Discourse which allow you to use OAuth. That's a reasonable setup I think, if you don't care about linking your real identity (or you just make a dummy account).

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#536

Post by anigbrowl »

lazystar wrote: post #493
anigbrowl wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit wants to make money off user-generated content. To my mind this is like a paper manufacturer claiming it has a copyright interest in any printed matter than ends up attached to its product.

that analogy only works if reddit were charging you for each comment you post on their site. A more accurate analogy would be times square selling advertisement billboards because lots of folks congregate in times square.

They're trying to get money from people using their API, which is like demanding a cut from people selling maps of Times Square (which are better than the official ones).

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#537

Post by joshvm »

winternett wrote: post #497
joshvm wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Therein lies the problem... We spent so many years crowdsourcing these curated knowledge bases on a variety of subjects for free to the point that it's empowered the controlling companies to firewall them now and then make our input a commodity that they can turn around and sell to us. Walled garden sites and apps are the enemy. The only way social media works for certain people is if they are off the main exploited…

The funny thing is that a lot of the stuff people on Reddit are clamouring for was easily supported by forums, and has been done forever. Admins were free to run their own ads or premium posts, they got sponsorship from companies, organised swaps and real-life meetups. I remember getting perks like free shipping from some places in return for being an active user. The communities were also more intimate. You'd interact with the same people frequently and the water-cooler areas were also interesting to talk about related interests, whereas outside the novelty/karma farming accounts I don't really recognise anyone I interact with on Reddit (though probably in smaller subs that's more common).

I wonder if it would work if there was a good aggregation tool that could talk to old platforms like phpBB or vBulletin (which I think is still a big chunk of the communities that are running). I can't imagine it would be that difficult and probably existed.

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#538

Post by 99_00 »

moskie wrote: post #319
99_00 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't said what the mistake is. Is it a mistake to use socially media because the connections aren't peremmant?

The mistake was to commit to a system where social connections are only maintained / allowed to exist if they are profitable for an intermediary.

As opposed to not having those social connections?

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#539

Post by midoridensha »

EA-3167 wrote: post #87
CincinnatiMan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are likely hundreds if not thousands of users who would be willing to become mods of each of the subreddits that are still in private mode. I know I would mod some of the subs I find useful.

How do you tell a willing user with the intention to keep a sub running as is, and a willing user who just wants to burn it all down, turn it into their own fiefdom, or worse? What's the ratio of the former to the latter, and does Reddit have the manpower to tell to the difference on a time frame that keeps the subs alive? What's the impact of a bunch of people who know how the sausage is made being essentially coup'…

>How do you tell a willing user with the intention to keep a sub running as is, and a willing user who just wants to burn it all down, turn it into their own fiefdom, or worse?

This one is me: I'd love to be a mod in a large community, so I can ban the best contributors randomly and then get them permabanned for questioning me, all so I can destroy the whole thing from within. If Reddit doesn't like the way I moderate, then maybe they should hire employees to be moderators, and set up management staff to oversee them. Of course, that's going to cost a lot of money...

Re: Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

#540

Post by rg111 »

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 quit that kind of internet years ago.

I was on Reddit to talk about Math, programming, books, etc. There are several subreddits from which I was helped. And I helped a lot of other people, too.

Quora had a refined userbase. I liked it there. Got ~30mn views on my answers.

In these places, I didn't have to dumb myself down and could be myself.

There are properly moderated FB groups in which I have made connections, and have a community.

On Discord, I am in so many valuable communities- where I can discuss things I like- be a part of something.

And I depend on YouTube for learning things about programming, deep learning, etc.

So, internet is worthless if you watch cat memes. But for me and millions others, it is a lifeline.

And it saddens me very much to see how deeply I depend on these.

Post reply on HN