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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

#131

Post by gunchie »

linuxftw wrote: post #57
erellsworth wrote: post #43

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…

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.

Reddit are already using AI for first-line moderation on their site-wide reports. It only reaches a human if there's an appeal.

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

#132

Post by notaustinpowers »

Alupis wrote: post #64
dyingkneepad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having people do the (absolutely necessary) moderation for free.

If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat. At some point, Reddit will just force all subs to be open again, and any mods that try to delete the sub or do no moderation will just get banned or whatever. It's pretty hard to fight against the corp using the corp's own platform.

They absolutely will, but I wouldn't expect those mods to actually be good mods. I've been in multiple subreddits where a new mod would be assigned because the current ones stopped being active and they'd wreck the subreddit. All posts require approval, sub topic changed, any criticism of the changes met with a permanent ban, etc.

For a company wanting to go public, having users banned from some of the most popular subs, the same subs that rely on said users to publish content, Reddit may as well have shot itself in the foot.

When the corp has relied on the good graces of users and mods to effectively run the site, both by providing the content AND moderating the content, any change to that status quo is going to be met with open hostility from the top 1% contributors.

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

#133

Post by wvenable »

thewataccount wrote: post #103
wvenable wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption is that those communities would just go back to normal if they were seized by Reddit. I'm not sure that's a good assumption.

r/aww is literally just cute animals. Most of the others are just memes/reposts of their respective topic. There's plenty of mods from subreddits that didn't go dark and have 20m+, reddit can just put them in charge. I highly doubt the specific mods matter that much on these "fluff" subreddits. Subreddits like r/apple I could see it mattering a lot more, but most of the top ones aren't exactly complex topics.

> r/aww is literally just cute animals.

There is a social contract and moderator effort to make that happen. When that contract is broken and moderators are stretched thin, how long is that subreddit still going to be just cute animals?

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

#134

Post by SonicScrub »

tomstockmail wrote: post #88
SonicScrub wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other than the mods being free labor for Reddit Is this not the answer to your question? Reddit can't afford to pay people to do this job. They rely on impassioned people to volunteer.

And they're not doing it, so they will be replaced. There's always someone willing to step up.

Is that the case? Wouldn't the mods by definition be the most passionate people about reddit, and therefore the sort of people who would most likely be upset about the recent changes? And therefore anyone who would potentially do the job of mod likely to also be upset by the changes?

If was working for Reddit I wouldn't take the assumption that these people can be easily replaced for granted.

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

#135

Post by [deleted] »

xyst wrote: 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…

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by LeifCarrotson »

SonicScrub wrote: post #45
ThomW wrote: 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?

> other than the mods being free labor for Reddit Is this not the answer to your question? Reddit can't afford to pay people to do this job. They rely on impassioned people to volunteer.

Impassioned people with domain experience, in many cases.

/r/videos, sure, that's got its own culture, history, known reposts, moderation style needs, etc. It will take some work to for a group of communications majors to figure out how to moderate it.

But /r/PLC, where I hung out frequently? You need reasonably intelligent electrical engineers to discern spammy press releases from interesting news! We don't work cheap, except when we work for free. Elite athletics, weird hobby niches, professional forums, on and on...Reddit's long tail, where much of the value was, relies on domain experts who were also good communicators. Those are hard people to find.

Stackexchange, love it or hate it, has the same thing going. Are you going to hire a pilot to mod the aviation stack, or a post-doc to moderate mathematics?

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

#137

Post by lumenwrites »

thewataccount wrote: post #59
erellsworth wrote: post #43

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…

I support the blackouts but > 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. They don't need to. Aww (36m), music(32m), videos(26m), futurology(18m), me_irl, and abrupt chaos are some of the biggest ones, if they seize just those 6 then they've reclaimed most of the r/popular anyway.

If that happens, wouldn't the next obvious thought for the "rebelling" users be "spam and troll these subreddits as much as humanly posssible"?

And they'd be extra motivated too, since forcibly removing the mods would be seen as escalation of the conflict.

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

#138

Post by seydor »

This will be good for reddit. Maybe they will manage to get rid of that group of moderators, and new subs will replace them. Reddit will find new mods and the renovation will be good for their audience

But first they have to make it easy for users to find alternative subreddits. Currently it s not even possible, their search sucks

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

#139

Post by Hunter_Barrett »

asciii wrote: post #110

I deleted Apollo and blocked all reddit in general. It was a nice discovery tool and formula1 subreddit was great (memes and all) but I think spez really screwed it up.

I have been a member of r/NASCAR for nearly a decade, and it's been a great place to gather with NASCAR fans outside of the stereotypical Facebook/Twitter crowd. Niche (ish?) sport/hobby/interest subs like that are going to suffer the most from reddit's potential downfall, as there isn't another viable, easily-accessible place for members of those communities to gather online.

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

#140

Post by majormajor »

CincinnatiMan wrote: post #93
xyst wrote: 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…

Your view is a little simplistic. There is plenty of useful information on Reddit. I'm a big fan of home-related subs for example, where a lot of trade-knowledgeable people seem to hang out. There is a wealth of information on subs like r/DIY, r/HomeImprovement, r/paint, r/woodworking, etc.

I've often wondered why people use Reddit for stuff like this since the information and conversation management and organizational tools seem vastly inferior to most any pre-Reddit forum software.

My current working theory is largely that internet search is just broken. It's easier to search for subreddit once you're on Reddit than to wade out into the sea of SEO crap and try to find a live, reliable format on the broader web. Google+search+display ads at scale killed the web, now we're back to AOL.

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