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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

#671

Post by MaxikCZ »

mrweasel wrote: post #324
uejfiweun wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they remove old reddit, I'm done. The "new" reddit UI is literally one of my least favorite things in the world. Filled with clutter and ads, requires too many clicks to see what you want to see, low information density... I could go on.

Someone has to be using the redesign, most I'd guess, but I don't understand how. It's one thing that I don't like the look and feel, that's pretty subjective to a point, but the problem is that it doesn't actually work. Something as basic as reading comments is still broken, after all these years. You can not navigate the comment section. Seems like a pretty big oversight, unless you betting the farm on doom-scrolli…

Most people dont even know about old.reddit. new users never hear of it, most of old users got served the redesign and just went with it. I bet only minority knows and actively uses old.reddit. its insane

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

#672

Post by AHOHA »

akagusu wrote: post #602

If people cared about society the same way they care about reddit the world would be a much better place.

Right!? Tells you a lot about our current pathetic narrow minded society, “Reddit mods!!” my arse, I need to see the same movement for bigger issues like housing, homelessness, low wages and others.

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

#673

Post by dimmke »

BeefWellington wrote: post #102
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 kicker here is, if this is all for an IPO, as an investor, would these moves give you more confidence in the leadership or less? I can kinda see arguments for both directions, but I can think of more that would cause me to have less confidence. The biggest IMO is that what's happening here is a gamble by leadership that people are so drawn to Reddit that they'll give up their far superior mobile apps or desktop e…

That’s definitely the part I don’t understand. They have actively been stomping out the unique things they have that could make them a competitor, and are in the process of becoming a modern funnyjunk.com

As an investor, what is the value here? They’re trying to play in a space occupied by giants like TikTok and Facebook and failing. It’s just hard to imagine investing in such a company.

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

#674

Post by joseda-hg »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #371
safety1st wrote: post #212

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…

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…

While I agree that the situation described is excessive, good mods are non fungible, a mod will have to take unpopular decisions, and act according to experience to determine a best path to follow, what the mod team does determines the kind of discussion to be had in the platform and who's allowed to have it

It's the reason subs will look for "experienced mods", there's a learning curve and a taste you'll have to develop, specially with smaller communities

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

#675

Post by bandrami »

pdevr wrote: post #435
posguy wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering he was a major force driving the rewrite of Reddit from Lisp (the version that HN is based on currently) to Python, adding features like Markdown support (a language he helped create in 2002), Aaron defined major parts of the site that have persisted across multiple rewrites of Reddit's codebase.

The amazing part is (as far as I remember) that both were implemented[1] as single files[2][3]. [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20060213215829/http://webpy.org/... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20060106081029/http://webpy.org/...

This was pretty common back then even for extremely complicated (for the time) sites (graybeard here). FCGI rewarded having a single huge application that would gradually leak memory over the course of the day until you told the intern to bounce the service when certain red lights started going off too frequently.

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

#676

Post by dimmke »

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…

You aren’t even mentioning the NSFW poison pill they added. Even if the pricing had been workable, this was never designed to do anything but kill external API access.

I definitely would have paid $6 a month to keep using Apollo.

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

#677

Post by kps »

photonerd wrote: post #251
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.

I interviewed at Reddit around that time. They showed me what (I didn’t know at the time) was to be the new design & asked me to critique it (UI role). I.. did not hold back. I was polite, and encouraging, but the myriad of flaws was obvious. They seemed rather put out & defensive. It was around about them I realized that it was not going to be a good fit.

Some time earlier this year (I think; certainly before the API drama; wish I'd bookmarked it), I saw a comment here from a Reddit manager complaining that they couldn't find good developers. I think the reason is pretty clear.

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

#678

Post by safety1st »

tyre wrote: post #596
safety1st wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make some good points but if there's one fatal flaw these big tech CEOs and their boards seem to have it's hubris. Reddit doesn't have a moat and it also doesn't have data that's amazingly interesting. This may very well be part of a power play by Huffman but he's forgotten the only two things that really matter at the end of the day, which are quality and volume/scale. Screwing his mods hurts him on both of thos…

> Reddit doesn't have a moat Reddit has a tremendous moat. Like any social network, its users are the moat. Its usability has gotten worse in the past few years but there simply aren't great alternatives. (Federated services like Lemmy are not serious reddit alternatives.)

Users are a pretty weak moat. We know this because if they were a good one, Reddit wouldn't exist. We'd all still be on Myspace or Digg or wherever. Apple, Microsoft, Google, those guys have moats. Leaving their ecosystems is HARD. Leaving Myspace, Digg, Facebook or Reddit just because there are less users somewhere else isn't really that big of a loss. Once people have a good alternative they do it pretty quickly. The history of rapid turnover in social media giants compared to other tech sectors is the proof.

If you wanted to be edgy I think you could even argue users are an anti-moat for social media because they age, become uncool, and then the next generation doesn't want to hang out in your uncool boomer space and goes somewhere else. This is FB's current predicament.

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

#679

Post by PM_me_your_math »

photonerd wrote: post #244
olalonde wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

There have always been both liberals and conservatives on twitter, and they have always had fun socking it out. The only difference today is that there's no more orchestrated censorship of conservatives going on, since Musk bounced most of the crybullies out of the company, and put an end to the FBI payments for banning things the government doesn't like. The same cannot be said for Facebook.

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

#680

Post by HelloMcFly »

Maxion wrote: post #590
cryptoegorophy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any good alternative? I like hacker news for now that it still got some comments worth reading and interesting articles

Surprisingly no one has mentioned Tildes.net yet. It's something in between reddit and hackernews. Requires an invite to register, though they are quite easy to find.

How? I've been anonymously lurking on Tildes for months, haven't seen an opportunity. I'm even a Patreon subscriber!
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