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Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

old.reddit.com

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

#501
post #53

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…

I can't prove this, but I believe that being an open platform with lots of cool apps built around it used to be what drove its power users towards using Reddit in the first place.

That was one thing. I think the biggest thing was that in Reddit you got to chose the type of content you wanted to see. You more or less curated your own feed. The moment Reddit started shoving "You might like this" into the website, I knew it was soon to be over. Reddit no longer wants you to choose what to see, it wants to decide for you, like all other social media websites. And the reasoning is unassailable, all those other websites have made their owners obscenely rich, so why not /u/spez too?

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

#502
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Im not sure what I would do. But I do know that if I reacted similarly, by posting all of the private meetings and communications to the public web, where I knew a hornet's nest would be stirred up (his subreddit obviously), I can't expect much of a relationship with reddit to survive after the fact.

I can understand how he feels, but he had to know that this would happen.

> I think he has all the rights to be angry about it.

Yup, I totally agree, and I sympathize with him. Hes in a bad spot, but unfortunately, theres not much he can do anymore unless reddit changes their mind.

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

#503
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC is a Reddit investor, and dang hasn't chimed in connecting the threads, and the other thread was removed from the homepage. It's suggestive but it doesn't prove anything. The guidelines say that HN moderates its own properties less, but that may not always be true, especially pre IPO.

If I was dang I would ban you for talking smack.

Aren't you the coolest kid in the playground, or the guy on the sideline cheering on the coolest guy. Actually just staring in hoping someone would notice you. Yeah I think is it he last one.

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

#504

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…

There was the old adage for Excel that:

- 100% of people view spreadsheets

- 10% of people use something like SUM() or similar

- 1% of people write VB macros

You can create a product which works well for the _average_ viewer, but if it sucks for the 1% of 10% (maybe mods or contributors in this analogy), you're going to create a bad user experience for everyone.

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

#505
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are done, 100%, this is the turning point and it's all downhill from here. They depend fundamentally on volunteer labor and every decision they've made since announcing the API change has alienated that labor. The morale of every mod I know is in the tank. The solution for this was incredibly simple. Reddit you want to charge for the API? Go right ahead, we all want you to make money. But when the volunteer labo…

Some people here laughed at me when I said their financial projections are garbage, obviously have false assumptions given they’re actually implementing the plan. It’s a sad thing to watch.

[deleted]

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

#506
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threshold for free API usage for modding tools is being increased from 60 to 100 queries per minute https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309 There are a very small minority that exceed that even now apparently. Seems not unreasonable to me.

The threshold is being increased from 60 to 100 for bots which didn't delegate auth, but not for any tools that used specific user-ids. It's misleading. To quote from reddit's docs: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16160319875... > Important note: Historically, our rate limit response headers indicated counts by client id/user id combination. These headers will update to reflect this new policy based…

Thanks for the detailed reply.

Other than being able to maintain your own list of users, are there downsides to using Oauth?

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

#507
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…

As far as I've heard, r/startrek already started their own instance at https://startrek.website and indicated they will close their sub for good. This may be the first major sub to be handed over. Paramount may then even sue startrek.website for IP infringement, etc. I'm re-stocking my strategic popcorn reserves.

That they did that and that their community followed is super cool ! It shows that the decentralized web isn’t dead and is a viable solution.

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

#508
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…

Facebook and Twitter are not bot ridden ghost towns... but anyways, I'll make the opposite prediction: Reddit is going to turn out just fine and this episode will quickly become a memory from the past.

On the rare occasion I open Facebook I’m immediately trolled by paid News Corp tabloid garbage. Like every time. So definitely can confirm.

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

#509

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.

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.

Modern universities are the most extreme example of such communities.

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

#510
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are done, 100%, this is the turning point and it's all downhill from here. They depend fundamentally on volunteer labor and every decision they've made since announcing the API change has alienated that labor. The morale of every mod I know is in the tank. The solution for this was incredibly simple. Reddit you want to charge for the API? Go right ahead, we all want you to make money. But when the volunteer labo…

Some people here laughed at me when I said their financial projections are garbage, obviously have false assumptions given they’re actually implementing the plan. It’s a sad thing to watch.

What makes you so sure that you were right? The world is way more irrational than you think and their financial projections may still be accurate.
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