Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by rootusrootus » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

Zetobal wrote: post #133

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The thing with mods is even if you don't recognize their value shape how a community works. If dang wasn't working on HN it would be a different place would it be better or worse? We don't know. If it's ok for reddit to reshape their communities it's fine to replace them but random mods are not a drop in replacement.

This is a good point, and explains why HN is comparatively quite good while a large number of subreddits (especially the biggest ones) are a complete shitshow. The problem that I see is that many subreddit mods erroneously think they are Dan-level.

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

#232

Post by slowmovintarget » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

Ignoring the elephant and engaging with the premise:

"More democracy" seems like a good thing, as long as it is balanced. There should be some recourse for a mod that actually enforces the rules of the sub (like removing political messages from subs that have rules against those sorts of things).

I don't know how you'd do that on Reddit. All mods in a sub can vote to veto? That seems like they'd still have too much power. Appeal process? To whom?

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

#233

Post by foolfoolz » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #209

A study from last year shows that paying Reddit mods $20/hour would only cost $3.4 million/year, or ~3% of revenue. https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/19318

a study from the last 17 years of reddit’s existence has shown you can pay them nothing and get all the value

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

#234

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #142

bogantech wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the community doesn't like the mods, they can... create a new subreddit with new mods. If mods are going to permanently set subs private then they should be seized and given to someone who will use it

Why not just create a new subreddit? Eg. /r/gaming became a meme ridden shitshow and someone made /r/games which bans memes and it's great. No need to seize anything. Let people go where they want.

The “just start your own [xyz]” rarely succeeds and isn’t a viable alternative.

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

#235

Post by sebstefan » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

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…

You have been muted and can no longer communicate with the moderators of /r/ycombinator

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

#236

Post by twelfthnight » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

pokstad wrote: post #124

The fact that a discussion topic has centralized moderation is weird to me. Why should a group of biased imperfect individuals control a topic like r/news? Seems like a ripe area to develop automated moderation using the distinct preferences of each user.

Who would develop the automated moderation? Reddit? They would do so in a way that optimizes their profits, not your interests.

There's no perfect solution. If you suggest "let users vote/democracy", then you'll start getting propaganda convincing people to vote for their agenda. If you leave the mods in charge then you get these mini dictatorships. If you let Reddit control then you get a profit seeking algorithm that stuffs any criticism of people who pay Reddit.

One of these solutions is probably better than the others, but there are some major tradeoffs.

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

#237

Post by Kiro » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:27 PM UTC

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.

I don't know. Have people forgotten that reddit mods were almost universally hated before this? It didn't matter if you were a good mod. People would consider you the enemy regardless, so I don't find it strange at all that users take this opportunity to hate on mods.

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

#238

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

P_I_Staker wrote: post #109

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.

They will probably have no problem replacing them either. You might have to take a quality dip, at least in theory; In reality it's hard to imagine the mods getting worse. They have a really terrible attitude. It's not just about community relations either, they really, really suck at enforcing rules, so it's not like we're gonna lose quality there. The only reason reddit continues to play nice is to prevent a mass e…

> and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods

How about all the Apollo and RiF users? I'm sympathetic and supportive of the mods but I'm angry because at the end of the month the app I've been using for more than a decade will be no longer functional due to choices Reddit is making.

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

#239

Post by a13o » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #132

lazystar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored over the course of their tantrum. I've commented more in the past few days than i have in the past few months, because it's obvious the mods have completely lost perspective of the average user experience.

Lurkers are pure consumers, free-riders. They produce nothing. They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized. People like to say that users who post content care about lurkers because they want to be seen/heard. No. People who post content care about commenters (and up/downvoters at the bare minimum) who interact with them in meaningful ways, not lurkers. Lurkers are the cosmic neutrinos of soc…

Lurkers can participate with upvotes and downvotes. You don't even have to join a subreddit to participate in this way.

Lurkers (who did click join, but never posted) are included in the subreddit user-counts advertised on the protest subreddit. If they count as users there, they count as users here.

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

#240

Post by golergka » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

llm_nerd wrote: post #41

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…

> 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.

You are absolutely correct that it is a common sentiment. However, this doesn't prove that this sentiment is always wrong.