I remember decades ago moderators suing a website (AOL or something?) for unpaid labor. Perhaps this time it's reddit's turn.
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
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
The richest part here is where spez refers to moderators as a "landed gentry": https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blacko... “And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.” What does that make spez relative to the constituents in his community?
Spez is CEO because the board and investors deem him to be the best person for the job. Of course, he founded Reddit, so he has a strong case on merit for why he is the #1 person on the planet to run the company. The process for selecting moderators is way less meritocratic or democratic than this. They merely got there first, finders keepers. The analogy for landed gentry is accurate.
I can think of roughly 100,000 people that would be better suited to run reddit than spez.
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#173One somewhat-related bit on the topic of moderators: does it bother anyone else that the stewards of some of these communities are effectively 100% anonymous? Are we actually okay with these spaces that shape significant discussion/sentiment being guided by people who lack accountability? I want to be clear that I'm not saying we should be doxxing mods or anything, but if there is a significant changeover of moderato…
> One somewhat-related bit on the topic of moderators: does it bother anyone else that the stewards of some of these communities are effectively 100% anonymous? It doesn't bother me one bit. If the community is that big a company should fork over cash and pay employees to moderate it instead, or keep an eye on the volunteer moderators for any suspicious actions. Instead of exposing identification I rather have modera…
> Instead of exposing identification I rather have moderators be subject to yearly votes.
The would just create a brigading problem.
Political subs could encourage their members to join lists of hundreds of subreddits and all vote for picked candidates. Coordination could happen on some other site as well.
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#174If 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.
What kind of communities are you a part of that you pay for? All the best ones that I can think of have never involved money moving around at all--participation makes a community, not money.
I was mostly taking about the moderators, because of the use of "their" in the title:
"Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private"
I have been paying for wiki hosting in the past to create a community (I prefer open source so I've created a much used open source Wiki engine that I and others used for hosting their communities[1]), I've payed for Discourse community hosting, I pay for newsletter hosting [2]. The providers in these cases could not remove me from "my" communities, they could not take "my" (our) content.
[1] One was called Javangelist, long gone but funnily you can find links to it on C2 https://wiki.c2.com/?IcebergSecret [2] I create a CTO community around https://www.amazingcto.com/cto-newsletter/
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#175Reddit 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…
The richest part here is where spez refers to moderators as a "landed gentry": https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blacko... “And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.” What does that make spez relative to the constituents in his community?
> What does that make spez relative to the constituents in his community?
It makes him just like many authoritarian dictators in history. Taking something of value away from the people who actually built it, and claiming it's for the people while it's really all about giving him power.
Completely unsurprising in this case though. These people built their communities on someone else's platform, and now they want to be paid. This is bound to happen.
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#176No issue with this. Subreddits exists for the users, not the moderators - all of which can be replaced.
only so long as you can find competent moderators willing to do the job for free while using shitty tools.
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. It's seemed like that for years. They've had strong reasons to develop the site for years. The two main things they've done are build an app for phones and spend a relatively long time creating a "new" UI that ch…
The visual design of the interface selects different segments humanity for the user base. That's why HN looks like this. A more 'friendly' UI attracts people who don't have much of note to say, will consume what they're given, and respond to ads more.
Not the target market for a site who requires free writers with something to say
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#178Reddit might be able to force mods to keep their subs open, but there's no way to stop volunteers from volunteering somewhere else . Anyone who has ever dreamt of making a reddit competitor, but didn't because reddit is an unstoppable behemoth, should take notice of what's going on. There's a huge opportunity here.
The users of a subreddits drive all the value, not the handful of moderators.
If a competitor magically got the support of all the moderators, that wouldn't get them very far.
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#179That is a pretty toxic way. You should be safe voice opinion even if they are stupid. Not all things said are made with ill intentions.
Not saying mods were stupid. Just if you have a forum people even mods will have different opinions. That is healthy.
Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
#180I'm getting whiplash. First Axios said they are not going to remove moderators, then someone on Reddit said they will, then someone here said they won't, which is it? I really don't think the vast majority of people care. HN readers do, but that's a narrow subset
HN readers are 1-2-5 years ahead what happens in the market. you can tell a lot of things that are coming down the pipe if you pay attention on HN. Once the "nerds" give up on reddit it will be an uphill battle to keep the site viable.
I highly doubt it, most revenue comes from non nerds who don't use adblockers or third party apps that don't show ads. I would not be surprised if Reddit revenues increase with these move. It's the same story as Facebook and Instagram, the real money is from the eyeballs of the masses, not of the niches they started out with.