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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

#61

Post by antman »

pizzalife wrote: post #37
khalilravanna wrote: post #24

Quote from him in the NBC interview: “…a business owner can be fired by its shareholders…” You know, I think he may be on to something there. Maybe someone should look into that for oh, say, the CEO of Reddit.

He doesn't seem to have a great way with words. If you are the owner (implying >50% ownership), you can't be fired by the shareholders. If you hold less than 50%, you are not the business owner.

If you have more than 50% and your actions are deemed to be against the company the minority stakeholders can ask legally to take control. Even if no actions are taken but your statements appear incoherent

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

#63

Post by OrvalWintermute »

I'm torn.

There is a well-known cabal of reddit mods that control many of the most popular subreddits [1] and many of them act like the subs they mod are their personal fiefdoms. Some of them have been alleged to exploit their subs for financial gain, or personal karma gain [2] at the expense of regular users

Some of these mods have operated in cahoots with Reddit Administration to squelch stories they didn't like [3], to push a political narrative, or to stop grass roots issues. While I recognize people should live harassment free, they need to operate with a great amount of editorial discretion to keep conversations on topic and apropos.

[1] https://www.cracked.com/article_29675_the-secret-war-against...

[2] https://www.protocol.com/reddit-powermods-war

[3] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/927/965/6c2...

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

#64

Post by guardiangod »

The difference between Musk/Twitter and spez/Reddit is that the value of Reddit lies in its army of unpaid moderators, and Twitter's value lies in its brand recognition.

When Musk took over and pissed off everyone, the only protest the users can do is to leave the platform. Some did but not enough to hurt Twitter. That's because the management (ie modding) is done by Twitter staff already. With a strong brand, Twitter survived.

For reddit, the core value is the unpaid moderators. If those moderators leave, you now have a bunch of communities with no management. History shows any communities entering an anarchy (or worse sycophants assigned by Reddit) will not last long, or at least, will stop their organic growth and decline.

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

#67

Post by cm2012 »

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

100%. I've definitely been one of the people complaining on Reddit.

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

#68

Post by kitsunesoba »

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.

During this whole debacle, there's been quite a few posts across various parts of the internet that register to me as astroturfing, including a handful on HN. It's not about the opinions presented, nothing wrong with dissent, but the way these posts express those opinions just feels wrong somehow — I've seen 20 years worth of impassioned people posting on the internet, and these posts come off as poor imitations of that.

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

#69

Post by devit »

Well, that's accurate and indeed a major problem.

Subreddit moderators, like unfortunately usually moderators everywhere, can act arbitrarily and there is no way for users to remove or punish moderators.

So this means that /r/$FOO is not actually a subreddit about $FOO, moderated so that exactly any non-spam discussion about $FOO is allowed, but rather a dictatorship ran by whoever happened to grab the name first.

So for instance if a company creates a subreddit about their product before it's announced (which they are guaranteed to succeed at) or perhaps buys or acquires it afterwards, they are allowed to censor it arbitrarily to remove negative opinions or anything they don't like. Amateur moderators can instead moderate according to their personal agenda.

The advantage that something like Reddit can have other normal forums is the existence of an higher authority that users that are banned or censored can petition to to have them ban the moderator instead, and it was pretty absurd that there used to be no way to do that.

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

#70

Post by rootusrootus »

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.

Not everyone that disagrees with you is doing so in bad faith. Not everything is brigading, etc. Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community. It is a very one-sided argument, as if the moderators are the reason the community exists. No. Moderators are unnecessary without users. It's a symbiosis.
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