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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

#321

Post by moi2388 »

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.

No, he can still be removed as CEO, and you actually mean >50% of voting shares, and you also have the board of directors etc. It’s more complicated than just having >50%, especially in things like fraud etc

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

#322

Post by runamok »

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…

That's the same defeatest advice people always give when you don't like the direction of your country/state/municipality/etc. you should leave/move/etc. I say absolutely not and if you have invested time and energy into something (I've had my reddit account a bit longer than my HN one) then you can and should fight for it. I don't have a vision disability and so am not very impacted by the killing of 3rd party acts but this is an act of solidarity to support those who are (However minor most of our sacrifice is). The least I can do is not complain that my daily quota of cat pictures is unfairly impacted.

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

#324

Post by sandyarmstrong »

tsimionescu wrote: post #299
sandyarmstrong wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have an account on one instance and subscribe to a community on another. There's no need for every instance to have a "memes" community, though there will undoubtedly be more than one. Then you can subscribe to the one(s) you like best. Not unlike how Reddit tends to have multiple subreddits for popular things with different mods, norms, and feels.

It is unlike that, because it scales completely differently. Basically what the GP is saying is that it's not possible (economically) in the Fediverse to create a community as large as, say, /r/funny. Basically the federation is happening at the wrong level for that, since the whole community needs to be on a single server.

Well, I was attempting to reply to questions in the second half of the post.

That being said, I don't think communities of that size should really be the goal in the fediverse.

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

#325

Post by MagicMoonlight »

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.

This is how reddit was started. If they had tools for mass posting with auto-generated accounts then why would they stop?

Remember - the top subs were being modded by epstein’s gang. If that kind of absurdity is happening then imagine when a political party offers them 10m to rig an election.

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

#326

Post by seydor »

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…

> its army of unpaid moderators

This meme has been a bit overdone. I think this protest shows another angle: Reddit has been providing moderators a place to feel special and superior for free, and they are now addicted to it. Look, reddit is opening the door and tells them to leave but the vast majority DONT and won't leave. This is revealing who is dependent on whom.

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

#327

Post by rootusrootus »

deeviant wrote: post #293
George83728 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read through this thread to find many coherent reasons. They won't necessarily be reasons you personally find persuasive, but that isn't what coherent means. People have different value systems and priorities and therefore they can legitimately conclude different things about the same information. People with whom you cannot find yourself agreeing probably don't share many values and perspectives with you, bu…

I have read through this thread and I have not found a single coherent reason, hence my question. All of the arguments I see here on the other side are assumptions backed by nothing, i.e. "the majority users of subs didn't agree with the mods decision," which is patently false. Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support. Even if…

> Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support.

What sticky thread? I get a note saying the subreddit is private, and a link to a news article. They certainly aren't asking for my opinion.

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

#328

Post by Balgair »

A point against the 'narrative': Mods are very hard to deal with as a business owner.

Look, we all know that going to war with your volunteers is a bad idea.

But the Mods, as individual people, are not easy to deal with. To me, modding any sub on reddit sounds like an insane thing to do. Why would you subject yourself to such a task? Especially for free?

Anyone remember this interview?: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6294058584001

Those are the real human people that reddit's ownership has to deal with. Only a thousand-fold and self-interacting. Herding cats seems like a very simple job now.

Look, reddit is fundamentally changed. We all know it's going down. But Mods aren't the easiest people either. Reddit got fat off of the labor of, to me, people that are just built different.

That check is now coming due.

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

#329

Post by Timon3 »

bogantech wrote: post #318
Timon3 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those new mods are suddenly not going to need better modding tools? They'll just be happy with whatever Reddit has? It's just the current mods who get off on their power, the new ones won't? Stop for a second and consider: why do these problems exist, and why should they stop?

You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too

> You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue

Okay, and how will that help you to not get "capricious mods"?

> and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too

And when those ones make problems you get rid of them again? And then again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again?

Are you starting to see the problem?

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

#330

Post by joshstrange »

bluescrn wrote: post #319
joshstrange wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the surface that seems like a bad idea but get enough users coming in from another sub and "just asking the question" or not arguing in good faith and you'll understand really quick why it's easier to ban them all than play games where they try to stay just barely on this side of the rules while still harassing your community. You also get a lot of the "I'm a gay black guy [0]"-type people which makes modding even…

If you've got to aggressively censor people en-masse for 'just asking questions', maybe you should question the ideas that you're defending, and whether they're really defensible. At least let downvotes do their thing. Deleting posts and banning users should be reserved for spam, persistent troublemakers, or actually-abusive comments.

Try moderating any medium-sized sub (or even some small ones) and get back to me. This is not as black and white as you want to make it out to be. Will some people get caught up in the filters? Absolutely but once you've seen 90% of people causing you headaches having the a single (or couple) subs in common it's not a difficult choice to "lose" that 10% to maintain your sanity.

I've had people walk right up to the line of the subs rules (breaking the spirit if not the letter) time and time again and it's exhausting to deal with. I've had about as close as you can come to death threats (without directly saying it) for temp-banning someone after repeatedly telling them to stop doing something. I've heard the cries of "censorship" for removing what is clearly spam. And all that was on a tiny sub. If I had identified a common source/overlapping interest with those people and it was easy to ban/block them I would have done it. Moderating is thankless work that I fell into (and thankfully got out of) and felt obligated to continue/see through to the end. I had no interest in "power", there was no "payday" or similar, it was just me trying to give back to my community and I got a ton of shit for it.

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