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Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

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Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#31

Post by janalsncm »

Reddit could have avoided all of this years ago by building out the tools that moderators claim to need. Instead, they relied on third parties to create them. Doing this would have nullified mods’ strongest justification for protesting. While removing 3rd party apps is certainly annoying for users, mods are what keep the site functioning.

The fact that Reddit chose to take this course of action tells me that they don’t actually know that much about their own website. That might also explain why they never built out the tooling to begin with.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#32

Post by jfasi »

tomr75 wrote: post #14
jfasi wrote: post #10

Honestly, good. Protest is fine and good, but what exactly are we protesting for here? The rights of a minority of users to freeride on a platform that gave them ten years of free API access? The right of third party app developers to make practically 100% margin on apps whose backend Reddit pays for? The initial announcement and AMA were ham-fisted, to be sure, but at this point these protests are getting ridiculous…

they are protesting the high/unreasonable API price out of nowhere

And that's their right. Many subs announced they would protest for 48 hours to prove a point, at which point they returned. But a moderator who continues to keep their sub private indefinitely is not protesting a decision, they are defacing their subreddits and harming their members. Removing such a moderator is the appropriate thing to do.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#33

Post by jquery »

So they're getting rid of all their best unpaid workers?

Reddit is very, very confused about what makes it a long-term success. I wonder how many free person-hours have been dedicated to curating the website. And then they just treat them like garbage.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#35

Post by chongli »

jfasi wrote: post #21
ehnto wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is just where a community posted up. Reddit is free-riding off the efforts of the community, it is a lopsided arrangement. Reddit is not a challenging software platform to replicate, there are already platforms ready to be migrated to. They are biting the hand that feeds them, and if the community decides to leave Reddit has no value proposition anymore. They think they are the community, but they are just whe…

If the community decides to leave, it won't be because of API pricing, it'll be because the content and spaces they used to enjoy were taken offline because of a minority of moderators.

Moderators and content creators. The majority of Reddit users are lurkers. They never contribute anything, they don’t even comment.

The people who post all the links, all the pictures, all the text posts, all the most valuable comments (as opposed to the drive-by meme comments), these are the people most pissed off at Reddit. When Reddit loses them they will have nothing left.

All those lurker eyeballs they want to monetize will leave because they have nothing to look at.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#36

Post by TheMode »

jfasi wrote: post #10

Honestly, good. Protest is fine and good, but what exactly are we protesting for here? The rights of a minority of users to freeride on a platform that gave them ten years of free API access? The right of third party app developers to make practically 100% margin on apps whose backend Reddit pays for? The initial announcement and AMA were ham-fisted, to be sure, but at this point these protests are getting ridiculous…

And if they didn't do anything you'd have said that these mods are too proud to move away from power for a few days and absolutely cannot listen to their community.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#37

Post by jfasi »

janalsncm wrote: post #31

Reddit could have avoided all of this years ago by building out the tools that moderators claim to need. Instead, they relied on third parties to create them. Doing this would have nullified mods’ strongest justification for protesting. While removing 3rd party apps is certainly annoying for users, mods are what keep the site functioning. The fact that Reddit chose to take this course of action tells me that they don…

> Doing this would have nullified mods’ strongest justification for protesting

Reddit has announced they're providing carveouts for apps that provide critical moderation tools, that justification is already gone.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#38

Post by flangola7 »

seydor wrote: post #5

What took them so long. Moderators are clearly coordinating with each other to close down reddit's website, that s malicious intent, not just a "protest". They should have rules that does not allow that behaviour. Reddit is so poorly ran

Protests are most effective when highly coordinated. Reddit is free to change their attitude and have the website back at any time, it's their choice to continue down this path.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#40

Post by kristopolous »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #16

If you don't pay for it, it's not your community. Again and again people think they get something for free, which they don't. If it's free you're a volunteer for the company, if you pay you're a customer.

The people here thinking they got something for free is Reddit management.

If the roles these moderators played start looking like it was a form of work that's employee misclassification and backpay time.

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