Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#951

Post by baby » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 11:09 PM UTC

iaw wrote: post #838

idkyall wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm not the biggest Mark Zuckerberg fan or anything, but I don't think the thus-far questionable business decision to pivot to the metaverse is quite the same level as having an very public mental breakdown and making anti-semitic remarks

I apologize, I should have been clearer. I don't mean Kanye's public antics and statements. I meant his questionable design/musical/performance choices. Mark has lost over $30B on Metaverse supported by a stagnating ad business. Apple just launched an AR product that seems quite a bit better than the Meta options. John Carmack publicly complained about the reasons he left work at Meta which demonstrate a lack of visi…

> Mark has lost over $30B on Metaverse supported by a stagnating ad business

We must live in different worlds. They invested $30B in research, have a clear advantage now that Apple is trying to enter the market, and is still printing money like there's no tomorrow via their ad business.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#952

Post by Drew_ » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 12:08 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #704

JohnBooty wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy for landed gentry is accurate. Land is finite and subreddits are not. You can fork off and make your own subreddit whenever you like If subreddit mods are landed gentry, then so are open source maintainers.

Subreddits may be nearly infinite, but good, descriptive subreddit names are not. r/videos is going to get more natural traffic than r/ReallyCoolNewVideos, which is going to get more natural traffic than r/asdlkajflaksjf.

r/videos gets more natural traffic because it's a default sub. Regardless, making a subreddit isn't some competition. You don't need to be bigger than the subreddit you're forking from.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#953

Post by HappMacDonald » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 12:28 AM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #907

Panzer04 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Core" user base != tyranny of the majority. Alienating a huge amount of clearly passionate reddit users in favour of Joe schmoe browsing on the train home sounds like a dangerous decision - reddit sti needs all those people who provide the content people browse for, etc. In any case, at this point the bigger issue for a lot of people is just the total disrespect reddit has publicly announced, repeatedly, towards its…

Ah yes, all redditors are equal, but some are more equal than others. Content contributors just matter more. And if joe schmoe browsing the subreddit wants to vote in favor of the blackout, you're naturally gonna count that as a vote of support, even though they're not a content contributor, right?

Why, how would you count it? Because either they matter, in which case they support the blackout more than they do not as the votes have overwhelmingly demonstrated, or if you think they don't then who is left to pin the "most people like things the way they are" claim onto?

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#954

Post by znxster » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 12:56 AM UTC

Huffman should have just come out and said "we cannot support third-party apps using our API any more, we are losing money on them, so they need to go". The constant BS is where the issue lies.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#955

Post by iaw » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 1:12 AM UTC

MattRix wrote: post #930

iaw wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize, I should have been clearer. I don't mean Kanye's public antics and statements. I meant his questionable design/musical/performance choices. Mark has lost over $30B on Metaverse supported by a stagnating ad business. Apple just launched an AR product that seems quite a bit better than the Meta options. John Carmack publicly complained about the reasons he left work at Meta which demonstrate a lack of visi…

There’s a lot to pick apart here. How much money do you think Apple spent on their VR product vs Meta? Sure Apple’s is better, but it also costs SEVEN times more. Do you really think Apple’s will sell more units any time soon? Meta has already sold tens of millions of quests. Also Carmack is a great programmer, but there’s no reason to think he knows a thing about the market and business strategy. Sure there’s the wh…

I'll reply point by point:

> How much money do you think Apple spent on their VR product vs Meta? Sure Apple’s is better, but it also costs SEVEN times more. Do you really think Apple’s will sell more units any time soon? Meta has already sold tens of millions of quests.

Oculus Quest has sold almost 20M units over 4 years of existence across all products in the line. The original iPhone was priced at a point at that point considered absurd. Note that oculus started off with the rift at $600 but requiring a multi-thousand dollar computer. I'm not an Apple fanboy/apologist but this is a straw man argument.

> Also Carmack is a great programmer, but there’s no reason to think he knows a thing about the market and business strategy.

This is disingenuous. John Carmack founded id which produced modern 3d and FPS as we know it today. He's not just a great programmer but he was a successful businessman before Facebook existed. One, he understands the market and business strategy at least as well as Mark given he spends more time on the matter as his primary focus. Two, his complaints were not about market and business strategy but about inefficiencies in development processes that no one in the company besides C-levels are empowered to resolve.

> Sure there’s the whole metaverse thing, but even without that, people are getting value out of the Quest right now, playing Beat Saber etc.

Let's be clear here: even if each quest was $500 and had zero CoGS that would be $10B revenue spread over 4 years when Mark spent >$30B in less than that. I'll eat a humble pie if he makes this make sense but it was not a sound decision given the way he structured the approach.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#956

Post by iaw » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 1:16 AM UTC

bgun wrote: post #896

iaw wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to remind you that of the three people listed only Mark took actions that exacerbated a genocide (Rohingya in Myanmar).

This is an unfair take. Whatever you think of Meta as a corporation or Zuckerberg as a person, neither caused the Rohingya crisis, much less the conflict; and while it's fair to argue that FB/Meta could have done more to stem hate speech on the platform, your phrasing intentionally villainizes a single individual for an entire ongoing, complex sociopolitical situation.

I have intimate knowledge of FB during that period. Any voice of concern about abuses of the service were repressed as a "we'll deal with that when it's a problem."

Concerns about lack of global moderation and enforcement were well known before the massacre. Mark and leadership made a choice akin to what the major oil producers did regarding global warming: kick the can until it's a problem.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#957

Post by iaw » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

dangwhy wrote: post #849

iaw wrote: post #786

I think Huffman is falling into a trap that Kanye and Mark Zuckerberg have fallen into: trying to prove he's special. Kanye rose to fame as a young genius rapper/producer/designer and was acclaimed repeatedly. Zuckerberg rose to fame as a brilliant business twenty-something (according to the world around). They spent half their life being praised and told they're important, brilliant, special, prescient, etc. So they…

> Zuckerberg tanked the stock price with VR/Metaverse and then juked it by firing a chunk of the company. meta stock today is at $280.

Did you stop reading before the "and" in that sentence?

If you can lower your cost basis while keeping revenues unchanged it will juke the stock price. Mark has been laying people off trying to get the stock back up from his major mistake.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#958

Post by iaw » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 1:21 AM UTC

phire wrote: post #904

iaw wrote: post #786

I think Huffman is falling into a trap that Kanye and Mark Zuckerberg have fallen into: trying to prove he's special. Kanye rose to fame as a young genius rapper/producer/designer and was acclaimed repeatedly. Zuckerberg rose to fame as a brilliant business twenty-something (according to the world around). They spent half their life being praised and told they're important, brilliant, special, prescient, etc. So they…

> Huffman et al. were at the right place and right time with a LAMP(?) stack when Digg imploded. That's incorrect revisionist history. Reddit was a large part of the cause for Digg to implode. users had been flooding from Digg to reddit for years before Digg finally imploded. There was an entire series of "digg vs reddit" comics. Both sites launched within a year of each-other. Digg always had the prettier website, w…

I'd argue we have different perspectives on the matter and wont undermine yours. My thoughts are that Digg sealed its fate with Digg 2.0 (or whatever major redesign they had) that made the site unusable and degraded content quality.

I think the lesson Huffman is missing is that quality content from your 2% contributors makes the site worth visiting.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#959

Post by jquery » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 1:31 AM UTC

yanderekko wrote: post #741

olalonde wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that Reddit is even more ideologically biased, especially on the largest subs. Personally, I quite enjoy both sites although they do have different types of content.

A lot of people on the left basically can't imagine a social media platform being good unless it heavily restricts right-wing speech/expression.

Gonna need an example here. Otherwise this looks like low effort right wing fauxrage.

Re: Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private

#960

Post by jquery » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 1:32 AM UTC

brabel wrote: post #267

photonerd wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter absolutely is. If it’s not bots, article spam, or ads, it’s the crazy MAGA-crowd jerking themselves off over their fake-outrage of the moment. It’s an absolute ghost town in terms of engaging, original, content. Their user numbers are obviously buoyed by absolute junk accounts and it’s been obviously so since Musk fired most of the company. FB is a boomer & genX meme-pocalypse that’s absolutely slathered with…

My impression on Twitter is completely different. It's been actually quite nice lately.

Yes, with "blocktheblue" installed it's easier than ever to block trolls on sight. Unfortunately some of the trolls are catching and choosing not to get "verified" by lord Elon.