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Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

businessinsider.com

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Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#41

Post by llm_nerd »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #8

Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent. 'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!' It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one.

Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just leave Reddit. Delete your accounts, delete your comments, resign as mods. Let the rest of reddit just move on.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#43

Post by bhaak »

Every day that passes I’m getting more convinced that the best move to improve the likelihood of a successful IPO (which IMHO this whole API clusterfuck is all about) is to fire spez and install a sane CEO.

How can it be that he is still in charge and hasn’t been fired years ago?

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#44

Post by agentgumshoe »

sarasasa28 wrote: post #36
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #8

Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent. 'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!' It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you) Reddit is/was my first source of real human information for a lot of stuff (since google is unusable now). And this blackout was really a pain in the ass

And just like a good old protest, it got it's point across with legal disruption.

At least you're aware of the issues now, no?

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#45

Post by Y-bar »

sarasasa28 wrote: post #36
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #8

Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent. 'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!' It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you) Reddit is/was my first source of real human information for a lot of stuff (since google is unusable now). And this blackout was really a pain in the ass

I do care about the third party apps because they assist moderators in doing their job (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit). And more personally, they provide accessibility support lacking both in the Reddit website and app. I am not a mod, and will literally no longer be able to use Reddit as well as I have had over the last years. The third-party developers have provided Reddit with tremendous value which is now lost.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#46

Post by dathinab »

jjkaczor wrote: post #11
bpodgursky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the users have any vote over anything?

It's their content. Reddit wouldn't exist without user contributed, moderated and 'engaged' content.

especially not without moderation

without the ton of unpayed moderators they wouldn't be able to comply with hate speech laws (or comply by having moderation systems which are "out of context of the conversation" enough to drive a lot of users away)

without it all the good content would be drowned by spam and other bad stuff

in turn without moderators the most users would leave sooner or later

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#48

Post by andrewstuart2 »

have_faith wrote: post #32
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for one, they're the sole value prop for the site. They generate, rank, and curate the content in concert with mods and admins.

Why don't the users go and do that somewhere else? genuine question, I don't use Reddit.

I think that's the emerging plan, yes.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#49

Post by andrewmunsell »

prepend wrote: post #25
smrtinsert wrote: post #10

There goes reddit. No one wants an unmoderated slop.

I wouldn’t mind it. I moderate some smallish subs (5-10k users) and don’t really make many mod actions. Maybe 5 in the past 15 years. The subs are still pretty good as measured by increasing subscriber counts and my own enjoyment. I think the huge subs probably get a bunch of spam, but then I ignore them even with moderation.

It's more than a spam problem, though: you only have to look as far as Twitter to see that lax moderation that allows toxic or illegal content to exist-- even on a small part of the site-- can begin to drive away advertisers across the whole site, which could turn into a death spiral for Reddit.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#50

Post by jarym »

> "What I'm suggesting as a pathway out is actually more democracy,"

If he wanted more democracy he would have listened more and sooner. He simply didn't like what he was hearing.

But let's not confuse things - Reddit is a business that wants to IPO, democracy isn't what this is about by any measure. This mess keeps getting worse (for Reddit but also all the communities on it) and he clearly lacks the means to navigate his way out of it.

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