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Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

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Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#121

Post by tiffanyg »

pohl wrote: post #73
sofixa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a critical moment for the future of the company (mass boycott after controversial changes, presumably on the path to IPO; they really don't need any more bad publicity) should be an all hands on deck situation. Again, they've had advanced notice, and knew the full list of subreddits. They should have prepared better.

> should be an all hands on deck situation [The Mythical Man Month has entered the chat]: Nine mothers, all hands on deck, should be able to gestate a baby in 1 month.

At the risk of adding further low quality content, right here and now, this proposed "Mythical Mom Month" book is an intriguing pitch.

Do you have a more detailed pitch sheet? :)

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#122

Post by EA-3167 »

Tao3300 wrote: post #120
EA-3167 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone doubts that Reddit could pretty easily unlock those subs, but without mods there to run them it would be a legal nightmare. How long before illegal material was flooding the site beyond the capacity of the admins alone to manage? I'd also worry that if Reddit moved in that direction, the mods would feel like they didn't have control over their own subs and bail. I don't believe that Reddit can af…

> How long before illegal material was flooding the site beyond the capacity of the admins alone to manage? I guess that depends on how many people are willing to risk prison just because they're mad at Reddit. Or on what automatic moderation capabilities Reddit has. Not a moderator, so I honestly don't know how much work it does or doesn't take. They probably count on volunteer mods to filter spam and whatnot, but f…

I think I was unclear, that's my bad. I'm not talking about the average person "protesting" that way, I'm saying that Reddit is already flooded with illegal and ad-unfriendly stuff, the mods are the ones who spend their days picking up that trash. If you open the subs, but the mods are still on strike (and forcibly opening their subs is unlikely to change that) then who's doing the janitorial work?

I'm not a mod, but I have several friends who are, and you wouldn't believe the sheer amount of gross nonsense they have to sift through. Even ignoring the relatively banal death threats, there are always questionable elements trying to sell drugs (both Rx and other), running scams, offering malware, and worse.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#123

Post by chongli »

seydor wrote: post #91

I think reddit will never be the same after this, not because of the API thing (I dont agree with the blackouts), but because it shows how much they neglected their website. Over the years they have made it impossible to compete with the established subreddits. They have allowed a single uniform mob to take over the site, establish themselves as permanent tyrants and grow their ban lists to enormous scale. Even today…

This isn’t a unilateral move by a small group of moderators. Regular users support the blackout in droves. We don’t like Reddit corporate deciding to shut down 3rd party developers.

Reddit is extremely entitled. They as a company create nothing. The users create everything and do all the work of moderation. Spitting in the eye of your all-volunteer staff on which you depend completely for your livelihood is corporate suicide.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#125

Post by Atotalnoob »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #63
phpisthebest wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the API thing was that, it is moved beyond that now, and admin action on that level will make the API issue an after thought... If they do that, forget IPO, there will be no more reddit at all. right now they already missed the IPO point years ago, today for a company to have a successful IPO they need more than good MAU numbers, and this API change was never going to get to the profitability numbers they need for a…

They seem to honestly believe that increasing monetization is an equally existential question for the platform. IPO or no IPO, they can't run off of VC funding forever, and they say they aren't currently profitable.

Because spez 10x their headcount

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#126

Post by synicalx »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #2

I have not read a reddit devblog or anything like that. My guess is they are doing some kind of caching of posts via elasticsearch/redis or something similar. It must depend on the privacy settings of a sub. So when 1000 subs go private, they potentially had to update hundreds of millions of comments. Anyone else have a theory?

That was my thinking as well, and assuming they're still cloud-heavy (it's been years since I've checked) this could potentially be an expensive event for them. That opens up a very interesting for of protest/attack that reddit really won't like; "privating" then "un-privating" a subreddit several times a day.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#127

Post by throwaway4837 »

falcolas wrote: post #45
throwaway4837 wrote: post #43

My unpopular theory is that the Reddit blackout increased Reddit usage, having the opposite of the intended effect.

It would certainly change usage patterns. And there are enough popular subreddits who didn't go in on the outage, so there's content to be had. The adage "there's no such thing as bad press" could definitely apply, given how broadly covered this is (I mean, hell, I saw it show up on NPR).

That's my point. It's so highly covered that it might actually bring more people to Reddit today than the number of people who fled. Imagine all of the people who don't use Reddit who saw this press, and visited Reddit because of it. That number may possibly outweigh the number of users who decided not to use Reddit because of the "strike" today.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#128

Post by d10486fa91eb46 »

seydor wrote: post #91

I think reddit will never be the same after this, not because of the API thing (I dont agree with the blackouts), but because it shows how much they neglected their website. Over the years they have made it impossible to compete with the established subreddits. They have allowed a single uniform mob to take over the site, establish themselves as permanent tyrants and grow their ban lists to enormous scale. Even today…

The problem for me with the different subreddits and mods is the inconsistency between them. I am shadowbanned from some instantly before a single comment, I can't comment on a subreddit without providing a registered email, in so doing compromising my privacy, (looking at you /r/linux), appeals to mods go unanswered, and the universe help you if a mod disagrees with something you have said. It is a completely frustrating experience to try to opine on topics you find interesting without being herded through the tunnel like cattle to conform.

However, I do agree with the blackouts as it is a coordinated action to a larger problem, not some power obsessed individual subreddit with arbitrary rules also applied arbitrarily.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#129

Post by throwaway4837 »

speedgoose wrote: post #95
throwaway4837 wrote: post #43

My unpopular theory is that the Reddit blackout increased Reddit usage, having the opposite of the intended effect.

That's also my first bet. The strike was well covered in many medias. Looking at the google trends, it was a big spike today compared to the classic daily workload: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&q=%2...

The US trends are very telling... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=...

It coincides exactly with when Down Detector shows the Reddit report spike... https://downdetector.com/status/reddit/

I'm gonna go ahead and say my theory is probably right.

Re: Reddit crashed because of the growing subreddit blackout

#130

Post by graeme »

EA-3167 wrote: post #116
graeme wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I checked into the history: 1. A reddit request was made in 2018 when you were banned. This was manually approved by the admins: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/8m8cdm/reque... 2. The new mod heavily restricted posts, seemingly for three years. They declined to reply to messages for nine months, until a new Reddit request happened on Jan 3 2021. A comment in that thread said "there hasn't been a new p…

I'm pretty sure that Reddit doesn't have enough paid employees to undertake that sort of vetting at the scale required, even if they wanted to. I think they're probably just hoping and praying that this all blows over, that most mods are more addicted to their communities than anything else. It's a very cynical move, but you've laid out in exquisite detail why it's their ONLY move, other than walking back their polic…

Yeah they really put themselves in a bind.

A reddit admin just posted this:

> We also want to reiterate that we respect your decisions to do what’s best for your community, and will do what we can to ensure you're safe while doing so. However, we do expect that these decisions have been made through consensus, and not via unilateral action. We ask that you strive to ensure that your moderator team is aligned on community decision-making – regardless of what decisions are being made. If you believe that your community or another community is being subject to decisions made by a sole moderator without buy-in from the broader mod team, you can let us know via the Moderator Code of Conduct form above.

They’re hoping to have some lower level mods who disagree with going private turn to the admins. I doubt it would work but might reopen a few subreddits.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/147ysr6/moderat...

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