Live data from Hacker News

Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

old.reddit.com

691–700 of 1001 posts

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

#691
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…

r/StarTrek is already surreptitiously controlled by Viacom. Any negativity is immediately shut down. If you want to be critical of Star Trek, you have to rub shoulders with people who got banned from r/startrek because their criticism was that there was too many black people in the new shows. It’s disgusting.

This hasn't been true in my experience. People were very critical of Picard season 2 and the whole of Discovery. I posted criticisms myself and never got banned.

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

#692
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" ?

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…

I would be only mildly surprised if some group of channers would plan that. Despite their toxicity, they are the most focused and determined group I have ever seen. So bad it is always for destructive purposes. They could have been great people.

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

#693

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…

All this suffering so some jackass can get his third comma. Reddit would be better for everyone as an open source nonprofit.

Reminds me of Russ Hanneman's obsession with the three commas and the 'Tres Comas' tequila from HBO'S Silicon Valley.

I'm hindsight, it's crazy how accurate that show was in portraying a lot of the VC and Silicon Valley folks in general.

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

#694
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.

I believe you. But hear me when I say: you would be wrong for doing so. It's one of HN's strengths that it doesn't just not punish contrarian views, but actively encourages them. It's an attitude that resonates strongly with me, and a value that is rare and precious. And, I was careful to say "suggestive", which is an appropriately weak statement.

What's more, is we see evidence of how views like yours, to crush dissent by force, leads to weakness. Every strongman that surrounds himself with yes-men are weakened by the practice. They become detached from reality, coddled by delusion, and ultimately less effective in the world.

That's not to say that all criticism is good - it's not. Plenty of bad faith criticism exists, too: rooted in lies, or envy, or sadism, designed to harm, to demoralize, to weaken. In some cases because someone is paying you, and often because you don't really know what you're doing. Sometimes because you're having a bad day.

How does one distinguish one type of input from another? I think 90% of the time it's easy - when someone speaks in absolutes, when they demonstrate no self-restraint, when they go down the path of "everything bad said about you is true, everything good is false", they have become a zealous enemy, and yes, in that case I think I would seek to ban them. We would all pursue defamation cases against anyone who would attack us in this way (but don't because it's just too bloody expensive).

With my comment, was I doing this? No, clearly not. I may be factually wrong, but I don't think so and I wrote the comment in good faith; it accurately reflects the appearance of a situation. And I know from experience how easily people can grant themselves exceptions to their own rules when it is convenient, and I see it as a gesture of respect to point out the appearance of it. They can take it, and I have faith that they won't punish me for saying so. It feels like...safety. And you would take it away, not just from me, but from others who share these values!

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

#695

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…

> 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.

Either those people will be bad mods who will shepherd their communities into further decline, or many of them will eventually come around to the position that Reddit's changes are bad for mods.

There's nothing magic about the current batch of mods other than that they got there first. The same things that affected their perspective will affect the perspective of their replacements.

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

#696
This is the result of shamelessness seeping into business. That contrarian business thinking that does away with any pretense of putting anything other than money first.

Also, this idea of charging for API access is lazy and unimaginative.

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

#697
Good! I'm tired of drama from 3% of the Reddit population (or less) impacting the other 97% negatively. I just don't think either side has the moral high ground. The mods like the convenience of 3rd party apps. I get it. It's not a real moral issue.

Reddit has both said moderator-specific as well as disability related APIs will still be free.

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

#698
post #697

Good! I'm tired of drama from 3% of the Reddit population (or less) impacting the other 97% negatively. I just don't think either side has the moral high ground. The mods like the convenience of 3rd party apps. I get it. It's not a real moral issue. Reddit has both said moderator-specific as well as disability related APIs will still be free.

[dead]

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

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Core" user base != tyranny of the majority. Alienating a huge amount of clearly passionate reddit users in favour of Joe schmoe browsing on the train home sounds like a dangerous decision - reddit sti needs all those people who provide the content people browse for, etc. In any case, at this point the bigger issue for a lot of people is just the total disrespect reddit has publicly announced, repeatedly, towards its…

I think it's also worth noting that the actual contributing members on message boards is a tiny minority[1][2][3]. Activity appears to follow a Pareto distribution. The members that not only contribute, but regularly contribute quality content is a minority within that minority. The vast majority is scrolling and blowing air out their nose, maybe voting, maybe very occasionally leaving a comment. From a monetization…

Perhaps this is also one of the reasons Reddit doesn't take action against spammers and repost bots that take popular posts and comments from ago and report them verbatim later and get thousands and thousands of upvotes.

Nice way to fake content creation long enough to shove your IPO out the door and exit before the house of cards starts falling apart.

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

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course. And that tiny minority of course shares your preferences about UI design.

That minority makes the different demands on UI, since they use the site in a different way from the passive users. Case in point, if you're rarely ever contributing it doesn't really even matter if the entire website crashes when you paste into the rich text editor so you lose everything you've written. Which I guess is why this bug is still not properly fixed on all browsers after being broken as hell for 4 years,…

I think this is one of the big reasons TikTok has a completely separate app for creators (CapCut)

It allows them to continue to add creation features and a creators experience, without bogging down the main app consumers are using to mindlessly scroll while pooping.

Post reply on HN