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Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

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Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#111
post #18

... until they just take over the moderation of their largest communities and this whole thing ends. I mean what's so magical about the moderation of something like r/videos other than the mods being free labor for Reddit?

I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrut…

Section 230. Reddit is in the fence

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#112
I am unable to understand this bruhaha about reddit as I am an occasional user of this website and mostly in lurking mode. Was there a promise made to those 3rd party app authors and users that their access would be perpetual, not to be taken away from them, no matter what ? I don't think any for-profit company makes such promises. If you play in someone's walled garden, you should be ready to see them change the rules as they see fit. I am not sure why reddit decided to nix the 3rd party apps but my gut feeling is, this is a financially motivated move. And if it is so, can you blame them? I wish someone could explain me why everyone is in an huge uproar today.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrut…

Just use Chat-GPT. The future of moderation. What could go wrong?

Skynet.gif

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#114
post #18

... until they just take over the moderation of their largest communities and this whole thing ends. I mean what's so magical about the moderation of something like r/videos other than the mods being free labor for Reddit?

I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrut…

Paying .kids for the large subreddits won't cost that much.

However doing that makes the company directly liable for all things. Right now they can at least try the legal argument "we just provide infrastructure and oh we didn't know what was uploaded there" as soon as they moderate themselves that blind eye strategy can't work at all. (Right now they can at least try it)

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#115
post #74
post #50

Good. This works out for everybody except the brain dead C-level executives that tried to bully indie app developers. - regular people get a break from their echo chambers - VOLUNTEER mods get a break - journalists get their news article The only loser here is the corporation side. Significant loss of value from decreased user activity. Subsequent loss of revenue. Inability to extract as much value from the users dat…

I added reddit.com to my ublock filters - it was kind of an automatic click a few times a day and it's been a nice way to break the habit so strongly. I've got friends doing the same, and our microcommunity has formed around another platform already, after collectively losing reddit. It was so clearly a half-assed, badly thought out policy. No mention of mod tools. No mention of accessibility tools. No mention of res…

I just logged out of my account everywhere, and turned off "remember me".

It's shocking how I'm catching myself just reflexively, almost subconsciously alt-tabbing to Firefox and typing "reddit.com".

Thanks, /u/spez, for helping me break the habit!

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrut…

AI will replace the mods.

I don’t know why you are downvoted. Reddit did annonce to some moderators that AI moderation was coming this year and I heard that some already have access for testing. I also heard that it works pretty well to automate many actions, though it still requires some humans.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#117
This is what the protest should have been from the start. The biggest mistake that any of the participating subs made was setting an end date. u/spez and the rest of the reddit admin need to be sweating, wondering when their site will return to normal.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the ability of AI to literally solve this problem for almost nothing. The large subs can absolutely be automated moderation, if they're not already. Enough flags on a post? Just take it down, there will be 15 million new posts in an hour.

Well that means bots can take anything down unless you become really good at detecting bots. Not like it's hard for bots to get points you can do so with reposting and GPT for comments.

I'm sure they have metrics at this point on how often real humans take a particular action. If an account is reporting posts higher than some amount X, then shadow ban that account.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrut…

AI will replace the mods.

Ah yes, because LLMs are so reliable at understanding nuance and social context.

Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

#120

This is what will force Reddits hand to either backtrack or remove those mods and place their own. Which the ladder would no doubt be worse.

How is a company that is not profitable according to the CEO going to hire 20,000 people to replace the volunteer moderators?
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