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

Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 1001 posts

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

#351

Post by mrtksn »

sofixa wrote: post #275
cjs_ac wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. That's a weird sort of elitism. Friendly UIs attract everyone, isn't that what a friendly UI means?

If friendly UI attracts everyone but the other attracts specific type of people, then you will have different concentration of user types. It's a bit like casual games Vs games which are hard to master - completely different types of users.

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

#352

Post by onimishra »

It’s fun to consider this from his perspective. He has essentially pushed all-in on this and now he has no way of backing out. If this is all about getting ready for IPO, then he can’t back out, because that would show potential future investors that he is not in control of policy changes, and that means that when shareholders want to crank up the money making machine, they can’t. At the same time, he needs to show that the site can continue and take a minimal hit to revenue when such protests happen. He will never back down, as this is essentially a battle test to show the strength of the platform for investors after the IPO. It’s an all or nothing play. If revenue takes a hit after all this and doesn’t recover, then Reddit is now worth half. If it does recover, Reddit is much more stable than first anticipated and is now worth double. Right now, he is pretty confident that the outcome will be the latter.

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

#353

Post by vkou »

mlyle wrote: post #60
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…

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?

If the mods are the landed gentry, the regular users must be serfs, which would make spez some kind of untouchable god-emperor..?

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

#354

Post by Panzer04 »

goykasi wrote: post #293
Loveaway wrote: post #128

This is so sad honestly. Like wtf is going on, no apology, no good will, doubling down on the complete moral suicide of Reddit. To push an app no-one ever liked, you know that, but whatever. No-one likes “new” Reddit either, you know that, but whatever. Who’s even gonna use the site after this? Social media zombie sheeple is all that's going to be left. Congrats on your dumb little site, from the front-page of the In…

Im not a fan of how reddit is handling the situation, but: > To push an app no-one ever liked, you know that, but whatever. No-one likes “new” Reddit either, you know that, but whatever. Who’s even gonna use the site after this? Is just not true at all unless you have actual stats to back that up. A ton of people disagree with that take. The site has grown a massive amount since the new design was released in 2018. S…

"Core" user base != tyranny of the majority. Alienating a huge amount of clearly passionate reddit users in favour of Joe schmoe browsing on the train home sounds like a dangerous decision - reddit sti needs all those people who provide the content people browse for, etc.

In any case, at this point the bigger issue for a lot of people is just the total disrespect reddit has publicly announced, repeatedly, towards its users. That some people don't care about this disrespect doesn't make it nonpresent.

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

#355

Post by PartiallyTyped »

mjfl wrote: post #331
photonerd wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter absolutely is. If it’s not bots, article spam, or ads, it’s the crazy MAGA-crowd jerking themselves off over their fake-outrage of the moment. It’s an absolute ghost town in terms of engaging, original, content. Their user numbers are obviously buoyed by absolute junk accounts and it’s been obviously so since Musk fired most of the company. FB is a boomer & genX meme-pocalypse that’s absolutely slathered with…

you have blinders on. Tucker Carlsens videos have tens of millions of views on Twitter. Heads of states and scientists from around the world still communicate via twitter. Even tumblr-weirdo types still post there. You couldn't be more wrong.

> you have blinders on. Tucker Carlsens videos have tens of millions of views on Twitter.

Twitter misrepresents views and impressions. The "views" you see under the video are impressions. Presumably reached 24ish M views, 110ish M impressions on first episode.

Episode 3 has, presumably, 90M impressions and < .6M likes, < 0.170M retweets etc. The metrics (likes and retweets) are not particularly good for a supposedly high engagement video, are they?

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

#356

Post by zirgs »

treyd wrote: post #210
spazx wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New reddit is the worst. Who even designed it? Every time I accidentally find myself on new reddit UI, I feel like I'm looking through foggy glasses. Over the course of about 20 seconds, I blindly click around, feeling lost and confused, then frustrated, and then I just add "old" to the URL.

> Who even designed it? Someone looking to maximize user engagement metrics and ad impressions.

But why should I visit tiktokified reddit if I can visit actual tiktok instead?

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

#357

Post by klabb3 »

rswail wrote: post #155
wnevets wrote: post #100

I just would like to thank the CEOs of Twitter and Reddit for helping to kill my doom scrolling addiction.

I will miss using Apollo, which is one of the best apps on my phone. It works well, complies with all of Apple's HIG rules, and is supported by an enthusiastic and communicative developer. Reddit management are incompetent fools that are looking for the VC cashout of an IPO before the site goes to shit. Cory Doctorow's concept of "enshittification" continues to become more and more prescient of the last few years of…

I’m disappointed for the same reasons as everyone else. But there’s definitely a silver lining here. Relying on a corporation for community was never a good idea, and that Reddit’s relative insulation was nothing but an aberration. Recent events is no more than a delayed affirmation of enshittification theory. And the good news is the sooner we collectively realize that the root cause is the business model, the sooner we can fix the problem.

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

#359

Post by Panzer04 »

brabel wrote: post #289
Ygg2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing geese that lay Golden Eggs is old and enduring Silicon valley tradition.

Maybe, but in this case there was no golden eggs, Reddit had users but no way of making any money out of it other than by selling the data (which is exactly what they seem to be doing now).

Reddit is a forum. It should not be hard to make money selling ads on the most popular forum on the internet.

Hosting costs should be jack shit, developing costs should be pretty low, etc. Reddit must be funking up in a pretty fundamental way to not be making money.

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

#360

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

bushbaba wrote: post #300
spazx wrote: post #109

Smelled this one coming miles away. Next, they'll hand over fan-built communities to the entities that own the IPs they're dedicated to. Eg. r/starwars to Disney, r/startrek to Viacom/Paramount, etc. Then, old.reddit.com will stop working spontaneously, just like how they toyed with killing mobile browser access to force users to download the app, which they probably will eventually. That's going to be the final push…

What would you rather they do, go bankrupt? Reddit is not profitable. They need a path to profitability to continue operating in a high rate environment.

> What would you rather they do, go bankrupt?

If they're unable to build a profitable product off of the existing foundations then, yes, I absolutely want them to fail. This is how capitalism works.

> Reddit is not profitable. They need a path to profitability to continue operating in a high rate environment.

They've had over a decade to innovate their way to success just like every other tech company of that era.

From a business standpoint, they are an abject failure and don't deserve to exist if they can't hire people smart enough to monetize without alienating the entire user base.

Post reply on HN