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Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

old.reddit.com

711–720 of 1001 posts

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

#711
post #9

If this wasn't connected to the blackout, this would be great news. There are a few mods, who when reddit was young, decided to squat every existing country's subreddit, along with common words. Those subs now work well with active mods below them. But the squatter still has full power, and can override any other mod. Now it will hopefully be easier to kick those mods.

Yep. Given that this is HN, try looking at /r/California. It's basically a person fief for a single user (granted, he's not nearly as obnoxious as many Reddit mods.) Yet simply because this user owns the obvious name, there is no real alternate sub for California-level news.

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

#712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's going to sound dumb, but honestly? I filled an rss reader up with some of the best sources I could think of, and am actually really enjoying just quietly taking the world in again, instead of trying to come up with my latest snarky Reddit-friendly quip.

Mind sharing?

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

#713

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…

Full disclosure, I use the main Reddit app. I don't think that I've ever installed a different app. That being said, I think it's actually pretty crazy that Apollo is #10 (in News). It's not clear that being 8 spots higher is that much of an accomplishment considering the site itself is constantly pestering you to install it, and the Reddit app can be used completely for free vs. the Apollo app requiring you to pay (which may by itself explain the .1 difference in reviews). Actually, I just went to the AppStore to read the bad reviews, and sorted by "Most Critical", and from a very short cursory glance it seems that most of the new bad reviews are from people who are angry that they bought a lifetime subscription and the app is now shutting down. It's kind of impressive that it is still at 4.7, honestly. But more importantly, I think this also means that the 4.8 vs. 4.7 comparison isn't necessarily representative of the sentiment a month ago.

I am in basic agreement with everyone that the core app sucks. It just means that I use Reddit less in general instead of going out of my way to fix their problem for them by finding an app that works. That is another failure case that isn't really considered: there's a bunch of opportunity cost just in people who have a bad experience and then switch to YouTube or whatever.

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

#714
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…

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…

Classic corporate leader mentality, thinking they have absolute control over everything, just because their employees must do as they're told.

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

#715

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…

I agree with you on all points, except to nuance your last: (1) This may not be true of other parts of the world, and in particular, it may not be true of countries outside the 'anglosphere'. (Anyone care to report on international FB health?) (2) Even within the Anglosphere, there are still very specific pockets of FB which are viable. In my experience, they are usually attached to queer community and/or leftist org…

SSB was horribly unusable last time I gave it a try.

Nostr is great of course and everyone should just build on that.

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

#717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> put it to a public vote Those votes were brigaded by people pushing the blackout, they are not representative of the overall community. The average user of Reddit completely ignored/scrolled past those polls because "whats this doing in the NBA sub" I find it hard to have any faith in those polls considering one of the subs that I mod that has ~3500 members got just over 4800 votes on the poll. The other sub I mod…

Is this more rigged election without evidence talk? I browse Reddit maybe 20 minutes a week, on the weeks that I think to use it. I'm subscribed to maybe a dozen subs. I voted in favor of the strike in the one sub that was kind of late to asking about the protest and I noticed in time. I understand the value of the site even if I don't use it that often. It seems to be on the road to death and was hoping that it coul…

>Is this more rigged election without evidence talk?

I mean, the user above just provided his personal testimony on the subject.

In any case, why should we have a presumption that a poll with say 10k votes on a sub with 10m users is a representative sample of user opinion? Not only would I say that we shouldn't, but I'd say that we shouldn't for reasons that the pro-blackout people often point to - that even if the changes don't impact most users it does disproportionately impact powerusers and mods.

But when someone says "maybe powerusers and mods are disproportionately influencing these polls" then we're suddenly asking for strong evidence??

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

#718

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…

> keep the main, core userbase happy

I think you're mistaking the apathetic hordes who don't contribute much with the power users, power posters, and moderators. I consider the latter to be the "core userbase". Not the big numbers that look good to an mba. If a team built a reddit replacement, they would want that 0.1%, not the rest.

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

#720
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. What are your thoughts on a mechanism to oust existing mods? Is there any path you'd be willing to see? Or a lesser of two evils? E.g. mods being able to kick each other out with some plurality vs community members holding that power at some high voting threshold

I'd be fine with some kind of election mechanism built into subreddits settings that could be turned on to allow community member to vote on mods. With that said consider a subreddit for a podcast or youtube channel where the host/channel might legitimately want to have total control over moderation and I don't think it'd be appropriate to remove them. Also consider that the vast majority of subreddits are moderated…

The host of a podcast having total control of a community seems like the perfect example of illegitimate control. I'd assume they'd remove any critical discussion to the point it would devolve into their own personal website where all it's good for is promoting the product. Users with anything critical to say would be banned, posts removed. That's about as anti user as it gets.
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