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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

#651

Post by Applejinx »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #398
andrewinardeer wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your doomsday scenario. There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. No doubt some have already contacted Reddit management saying that if they de-mod x subreddit they will jump in and guarantee the subreddit's operation. I don't understand the argument abo…

> There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. (...) There are people who thrive on having power over others even though in this case, subreddit moderation, it is perceived power. Yes. Those are the very people who should be never ever allowed to become mods, or to be anyw…

There's more: to the extent that Reddit corporate jumps at the chance to accept all these people, it will be replacing the 'currently stable' moderation environment with a substantial class of ringers, where we don't know their intentions other than they are prepared to back Reddit's power move here.

This is potentially a Twitter-like implosion, if they go there. Far from having major subreddits taken over by companies (which likely have no idea this is happening and have no motivation to suddenly supply social media volunteers), it's gonna be major subreddits taken over by kittens in blenders and 4chan-like behavior.

There's common factors among folks like this, and one is that they can be coordinated. I think it much more likely that Reddit gets taken over by conspiracy theorists and terrorists, than, for instance, hippies. Some will be very pleased at the result, but then some are really pleased at what's happened to Twitter (as long as you ignore the valuation, that is)

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

#652

Post by irthomasthomas »

zzbzq wrote: post #644
irthomasthomas wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now we get to the real reason for their bizarre behaviour. They want to push ordinary mods off the platform to be replaced by their own drones. You can tell which subs are modded by shills by who broke the strike. Like r/worldnews that was modded by Ghislaine Maxwell right up until the day she was incarcerated. https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill/

They could just do that anyway, (and I'm pretty sure selling influence is actually one of the things these protesting careerist mods do, just with more steps) the "real reason" is the API is generating less revenue than what it replaces, no big conspiracy

If that where true, they would have replied to those Devs who accepted the new API pricing. Instead, they ignored them for at least 2 out of the 4 weeks notice they gave.

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

#654

Post by angrydev »

luckystarr wrote: post #464
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…

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.

Interesting that the stickied post on https://startrek.website mentions they have a Patreon setup to help with hosting costs.

> We’ve started a Patreon here: Patreon.com/treksite. There’s only one plan and it’s just $4. If our growth continues like it has, we’re going to need to upgrade our hosting very soon.

$4 is not outside of the realm of what it might have cost a regular user to continue paying for one of these 3rd party Reddit Apps on the new pricing [1]. There are clear benefits to paying your own way: owning your data, stronger community identity; when boiling down to money alone I found it an interesting comparison, since that's what this whole situation started about. However it is certainly no longer just about the money at this point after public comments made by Reddit Corp.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/31/23743993/reddit-apollo-cl...

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

#655

Post by Applejinx »

malka wrote: post #468
andrewinardeer wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your doomsday scenario. There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. No doubt some have already contacted Reddit management saying that if they de-mod x subreddit they will jump in and guarantee the subreddit's operation. I don't understand the argument abo…

> There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. You mean "4 chan users salivating at the idea of trolling reddit" ?

You mean 'controlling' reddit. Folks like this have had tastes of power before. If you think about it, knowing that Reddit is a feeder to ChatGPT, it could be a strategic move to try and make it so that all the AIs of the future default to 4chan mindset.

Bold if true! Heck of a motivation.

And Reddit as it stands is clearly not optimal for delivering this, but with enough dedicated mods power-modding the heck out of everything, maybe it COULD be the ideal source data for the ultimate 4chan artificial intelligence…

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

#656

Post by gausswho »

sebstefan wrote: post #553
nindalf wrote: post #542

What makes me really sad was there was a way around this. Even if we accept the CEO’s lie that running the API is costly , Reddits monthly revenue per user is $0.12 at best. They were demanding $2.50 per user per month from third party apps. A simpler solution - “users who want to use third party apps need to pay Reddit $6/month directly by subscribing to Reddit premium”. That would have raised way more revenue! And…

I'm not sure how that would work for third party projects that are just front ends hosted on a github page, like reddit as outlook ( https://one-loop.github.io/redlookit/ ). The requests are made by the users themselves there, we can't give them an api key. We can do a "login with reddit" button approach, show them an iFrame so they can enter their user/password safely and grant us the rights to use their premium to…

Wouldn't this be mitigated by having a generous cap on the requests a Premium user could conceivably consume for typical usage? Per your leaked session scenario, Reddit could build some protections if the cap is exceeded. If credentials are compromised a user could request they be cycled and prudent decisions made at Reddit to provide them.

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

#657

Post by WHYLEE1991 »

trallnag wrote: post #593
malka wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. You mean "4 chan users salivating at the idea of trolling reddit" ?

Is 4chan living rent free in your head?

or it's just a fun stand in for "mentally unwell racist person"

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

#658

Post by isaacremuant »

rjvir wrote: post #146
mlyle wrote: post #60

Earlier 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.

> 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.

This is all, of course, a distraction to divide and conquer.

Many mods polled their communities before going dark and there was a lot of support in general.

Hell, very often when mods are too much against the communities interests they migrate to another sub or sabotage it and then mods cave in.

Pretending that "mods are the evil guys that don't speak for the little guy" has to be the stupidest narrative so far and spez shows his extreme dishonesty there.

I thought he would beat the outage by "soldiering on"and letting things play out naturally, since there's no clear and friendly reddit alternative, but he's definitely coming out very aggressively in a manner that could actuslly hurt reddit and him further in the medium and long term.

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

#659

Post by Applejinx »

catiopatio wrote: post #284
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…

Twitter seems perfectly healthy. I came back after years away. It sounds like you’d just grown used to the previous manufactured consensus.

I direct you to Twitter's valuation. So, I take it you're a communist and don't approve of capitalism or a marketplace of ideas showing its preferences by financial support or lack thereof?

In fairness, both the MAGAs and the tankies are pretty happy, but then there's precious little difference (or none).

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

#660

Post by flangola7 »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #52
flangola7 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect, it is a legitimate protest. Many have pointed out that Reddit could just wait out 48 hours, so indefinite blackout is a more logical move.

Incorrect, it is holding information hostage, due to vainglorious moderators. The internet routes around damage.

The damage here is what Huffman & board are pulling. They can have their website and free moderation back after they grow up and change their attitude.
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