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

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

#111

Post by guardiangod »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #91
guardiangod wrote: post #64

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, Twitte…

>If those moderators leave, Then they will find new ones. As long as Reddit has usecases, as long as the powertrip is worth the lack of ownership and poor tooling, there will be mods willing to moderate subs and feeling powerful and getting drunk off of it. 'Historically', this has happened in every social medium with moderation so far. There's no anarchy here. Most Redditors don't care for the mods in particular. If…

>Most Redditors don't care for the mods in particular.

Because the current batch of moderation work well enough.

Now imagine the current batch leave, and the new ones take over are worse (and they will be worse since Reddit has shown that Reddit has direct control over the Moderators' position safety, if the actions are not aligned with Reddit's CEO. Some reasonable people will not like that.)

Eventually the remaining good ones will be replace again, and after a few generation, only the bad moderators are left.

For example, just look at every dictatorship government in the world. No dictator starts out hiring only bad officials. Everyone's benevolent with good intention. Eventually, the good officials gradually get push out and sycophants fill the rank.

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

#112

Post by toomuchtodo »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #89
mrpopo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lurkers should also realize that their experience is shaped by mods decisions. For the better or for the worst, that's a good question, I guess we will soon find out. But given what FB groups look like, I have my own opinion.

Also, lurkers would have nothing to lurk around if it weren't for heavier posters, many of whom use third party apps to paper over the various papercuts of posting with the official site/client.

What do you think it would cost to buy a non insignificant amount Reddit accounts from power users to own their comments and remove them from Reddit? And if Reddit restores them, file DMCA takedowns? Should be cheap, right? With the value of Reddit users being so low?

If that is where the value is being generated, that is Reddit's value lynch pin.

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

#113

Post by fullshark »

0xDEF wrote: post #72
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.

Americans (and terminally online Europeans) have a hard time understanding that people outside their social bubbles can disagree with them without being sockpuppet accounts or bots.

I think it's just redditors and twitter users, basically people who spend their time online in a filter bubble designed to keep them addicted to confirmation bias.

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

#114

Post by bee_rider »

asow92 wrote: post #22
diogenescynic wrote: post #4

Good riddance. The moderators are the worst part of Reddit. Just pay someone to do their job.

Agreed. Just my opinion: most mods I've encountered seem like smarmy, smug, and sanctimonious petty tyrants who need to touch grass.

Paradoxically the only places I’ve seen this “touch grass” sentiment used are full of people who… need to touch grass.

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

#116

Post by nullindividual »

monero-xmr wrote: post #104
rootusrootus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I don’t give a shit about the blackouts and have been commenting on Reddit how dumb it is. I have been seeing the polls in the subreddits I frequent and it’s like 65/35 to keep them open. Pretty solid majority.

It’s certainly _not_ dumb to those who are participating in the blackout. Phrasing their position in that light will cause your argument to fall on deaf ears.

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

#117

Post by marktangotango »

BeefWellington wrote: post #74
llm_nerd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> delete your comments Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.[1] I agree with the sentiment though; if people en masse migrated away from Reddit the way they did with Digg, that would be the only really impactful long-term gesture. Edit: Regarding the sockpuppet thing, I mean, we've literally seen that happen a number of times. When you see an account created in 2…

I've been exploring the fediverse options like kbin and lemmy and I just don't see it. Maybe someone can explain. If one lemmy instance has a really popular community, say "Memes" how can that scale? There could be millions of posts and terabytes of data. Then if multiple lemmy instances have their own "Memes" communities, that's balkanized and a user would have to subscribe to each instances "Memes" community?

Or are communities federated also? Like all instances "Memes" communities get pulled together? Examining [1] that appears to not be the case.

[1] https://lemmy.world/c/android

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

#119

Post by xoa »

devit wrote: post #69

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…

>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

OK, so now rather then an endless number of small competitive kingdoms, where if you don't like the actions of mods on a subreddit you can just make another subreddit (including in your company example, if the company does /r/$NEWPRODUCT and removes all negative opinions people can easily to /r/$NEWPRODUCT-community and run it as they wish instead) and then it's super easy for everyone to vote with their feet, you are arguing in favor of a single total dictatorship from which there is no escape except leaving the site. How is that an improvement? Why is it "pretty absurd" that all power wasn't completely centralized?

>Amateur moderators can instead moderate according to their personal agenda.

How does going to a "higher authority" (that is going public and fully driven by next quarter's numbers) change anything here? Why do you think that Reddit the public corporation is going to be somehow immune to any sort of amateur or arbitrary moderation actions you don't like?

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

#120

Post by fallinghawks »

Several subs im subscribed to have asked their users what they want to do: continued closure, closure once a week in protest, or open. They respect what their users want in as democratic a way possible.

Mods are what make reddit work well. If a user doesn't like them, it's not like they're held against their will; there are other subs to check out and they can start their own if they want.

Spez is trying to handwave and pretend the mods are hated monocled monopoly guys when it's actually him, and he's just continued to make the problem worse.

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