Live data from Hacker News

Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

old.reddit.com

661–670 of 1001 posts

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

#661
post #49

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.

An indefinite blackout is not a protest, it's extortion. It's saying "if I can't enjoy this subreddit the way I want to, no one can."

>It's saying "if I can't enjoy this subreddit the way I want to, no one can."

Who has said that users shouldn't be allowed to use the new app? I haven't seen even a single instance of that. The problem is that Reddit - the centralized entity with power - is forcing that to be the only option.

Reddit could be reasonable and continue to permit both. Until they decide to be reasonable the protests will continue. If Reddit gets butthurt and wants to call organized collective action "extortion" they can, but their childish whining isn't impressing anyone who has two brain cells to rub together.

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

#663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Free and healthy forums don't value as well as curated and highly controlled ones.

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

#664

In the end Reddit will be a better place, with less activists deleting all your posts because they don't like them To be honest i think Reddit would be better without mods and an automatic system to remove heavy spam

This makes no sense. Reddit already makes heavy use of automatic systems to limit spam, if they could do without human moderators they would, but they cannot.

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

#665
A comment I posted recently about protesting mods transitioning to a quiet quitting approach became far more relevant:

Preserve plausible deniability so reddit admins don't have reason to oust you.

Quiet quit your moderation essentially.

Pressed by an admin?

Say "I've found a more hands off moderation style to be more effective"

They key is to let things go to crap but to also take away the easiest solution of replacing protester moderators.

It should be chaos.

Threatened by an admin? Go public, post you no longer support the protest as a sticky, link them to it, 24 hours go private again while they bother the next protestor mod.

Nothing would scare advertisers away more than having tons of "rogue" mods across the top 500 subreddits who could "turn protester" at any time (and do).

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

#666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The user still gets shafted for that month because I used all of its data for myself

User could choose "per app" how much data it can use too

They already have something implemented in their API to have permissions granted in your account for third party apps. "Now for reddit" has permissions for reading my dms, upvoting, posting, ... basically anything you can do.

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

#668

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 don't really work in enterprise sales, but I always thought the idea was to lure em in with low prices. Going from free to $2.50 a user??

I also don't totally get why "by user" is how they wanted to charge. Wouldn't charging by request make more sense?

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

#669
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…

Good. Let it burn. It couldn't happen to a more deserving team of sociopaths.

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

#670

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…

Lucid comment. Yes, always approach moderator, admin, other similar role candidates first. Some of the ones asking are going to be great. The trouble lies with the rest, who should never have the role.

Long ago, that was how I became a sysadmin. I still remember some of the talks. Great stuff on how to take good care of users, systems, other things.

On Reddit, people asking to moderate has generally been a bust in my experience.

Post reply on HN