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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

#481

Post by idop »

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…

You may be right, but keep in mind that the comparison with Apollo isn't a fair one. There are many third party Reddit clients. Red Reader (which I use), Reddit Is Fun, Stealth, Infinity, Dawn, and many more. You'd have to combine all of those. You may still not reach Reddit's official app's numbers, but it is probably not a negligible percentage of Reddit's userbase.

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

#482

Post by imiric »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #384
imiric wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense if they wanted to emulate FB, which is questionable in itself, but how they're proceeding with these changes is completely killing the very thing that made them successful in the first place. It's as if the leadership was replaced with people who don't understand Reddit at all. It's a very dumb move, considering they had all the resources and power to do this right, and still increase their reve…

> It's as if the leadership was replaced with people who don't understand Reddit at all. You're assuming they care, or ever cared. Maybe I'm getting too cynical, but I feel it's pretty clear Reddit leadership doesn't give a damn about Reddit the discussion/community site. For them, it's just a late-stage company that's been pumped and needs to be dumped. Where we see Reddit as its own unique artifact, they see it as…

That makes sense now, as a scheme to increase valuation before the IPO[1]. But I wouldn't say that that has been their strategy all along. They're still not profitable after all these years, and the relationship with the community has been amicable, for the most part. The API has been free since the beginning, after all, which has allowed the site to prosper.

Though it does feel like they're ready to sacrifice the community for short-term revenue, and that their mid-term plan might just be to cash out once the ship starts sinking.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-aims-ipo-second-ha...

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

#483

Post by ttepasse »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #99

Something I want to ask before: I've noticed that some people have made a connection between the decision to effectively shut down Reddit's API and the increasing popularity of LLM/ChatGPT, and it does seem plausible. What's interesting is that Twitter also closed down their API access merely months ago. Are these two occurrences related, or was Twitter's action also a response to ChatGPT/LLM? (Also to be totally fai…

They could simply discriminate against LLMs via their APIs terms of service. That wouldn’t get bad actors, those would simply scrape. But that would be the case with the very expensive API.

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

#484

Post by markmark »

sofixa wrote: post #257
rjvir wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This isn't an accurate extrapolation. In fact it's extrapolating in the opposite direction. The moderators are taking a moral stand against an API policy. But the the actual users of the subreddits never consented to this moral stand. By removing these m…

Most subs did a poll to see what the users think, and for all those I've seen there has been overwhelming support for a blackout.

I think many people didn't see or care about those original polls. All the subs I'm in that re-polled their users after the initial 2 day shutdown are now open as a result. The two that have stayed shut have not re-polled (and one didn't poll in the first place, the mods just unilaterally shut it).

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

#485

Post by atraac »

goykasi wrote: post #379
atraac wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are trying to keep the main, core userbase happy. But there's a very simple way to do that... sit down with people, figure out a solution that doesn't involve a single dev spending 20m USD a year just to maintain an app that people like. There's multitudes of ways this whole thing could've been solved, they clearly don't wont to solve it. Paid API is NOT going to make reddit profitable, especially at this pric…

100% agreement with you here. You have one of the first logical arguments for any push back. > figure out a solution that doesn't involve a single dev spending 20m USD a year just to maintain an app that people like Absolutely, I was hoping that would happen when I saw the first Apollo thread(s) a few weeks ago. But Christian took this very personally, and he decided to take his toys and go home. reddit is not at all…

> But Christian took this very personally, and he decided to take his toys and go home.

I mean wouldn't you? He's built an app that brings him a decent income, he can work on it full time, he based his career on that application. What reaction would you expect out of f.e. youtubers when youtube made it suddenly unable for them to sustain themselves? I mean basing your life/income/business on another business is never a good idea, but this is how a big chunk of the world works. I think he has all the rights to be angry about it.

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

#486

Post by codebolt »

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…

This is giving me flashbacks to when Digg.com committed a similar suicide, which was a major part of Reddit's growth back in the day.

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

#487

Post by George83728 »

marcell wrote: post #113

Making a subreddit private is a built in, native reddit feature. If the mods are still actively moderating, just doing so in a private community, how is it breaking any rules? Sounds like they are just making use of a reddit feature.

Rules written by reddit are interpreted and enforced in whichever way is most convenient to reddit. You can't rules-lawyer your way to a positive resolution in such a scenario, they have all the power.

"Stop quoting laws, we carry swords!" - Pompey

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

#488

Post by Dylan16807 »

brabel wrote: post #372
Panzer04 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Easy to say from the outside, isn't it? You think they just never thought of that...

It's easy to correctly say that they're not using 2000 employees to keep the site running.

I'm sure they've thought of keeping costs low, and I'm sure they could lower costs by a lot and know it. They choose not to.

They're not forced into their current path.

But it makes sense when you look at that VC money. Just being profitable would be a failure. Chase billions of revenue or die trying.

Or to put it a different way, if reddit spent $100M a year on employees and offices and $100M a year on servers, they would have amazing profit margins already.

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

#489

Post by rem7 »

Ekaros wrote: post #307
nosebear wrote: post #216

Personally, I couldn't care less about Reddit itself, but what's really annoying is that half of my Google searches end up in temporarily closed subreddits. Reddit has become some sort of a Stack Overflow lately - I hope all that knowledge will be moved somewhere else.

This really only makes me angry with these power hungry moderators throwing toddler like temper tantrums... Not with Reddit, with them it is the bad web site... I say just kick them out and get someone else. And if those are not good, repeat until it is acceptable.

This isn’t the moderators going rogue or being power hungry. The members of the community asked the moderators to extend the blackout. 48 hours is nothing. Easy for Reddit to ride it out.

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

#490

Post by markmark »

101011 wrote: post #121
unclekev wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power mods are a real problem on Reddit. It's the same group of people who strong-armed a lot of smaller subreddits into participating in this 'protest'. The end result of this protest looks like it's going to be that Reddit is going to remove a lot of the mods that the community has despised for years. It would seem this mod pity party is backfiring in the most spectacular way possible.

I don't think that's true. r/nba, a top 10 active subreddit at the time of going private, put it to a public vote where the overwhelming majority of the community voted to suspend indefinitely. This was during the NBA finals, mind you. Hard to put that sort of result on a small group of mods.

8000 votes out of 7.5 million members. I'm on r/nba every day and didn't see the poll.

People will say statistically 8000 votes is sufficient for an accurate sample, but only if the voting isn't brigaded.

All comments on other basketball subs at the moment are overwhelmingly in favour of re-opening the sub.

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