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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

#141

Post by yamazakiwi »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #115
depereo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Breaking the muscle memory has been the hardest part for me. I don't have that much investment in Reddit succeeding and I'll be damned if I don't try to tap the app on my phone 3 or 4 times a day still, even after deleting.

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

#143

Post by molave »

SecurityMinded wrote: post #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 rul…

There's a surface-level and deeper-level answer here.

Surface-level: the API price hikes are at a glance meant to force out third-party Reddit interfaces. To speculate, this is aimed to funnel users to Reddit's official application. I can say that because the mobile website is getting crippled over time to "encourage" users to use the app.

Deeper-level: it is reflective of Reddit corporate's attitudes towards its users. They are gearing for an IPO, so they want to tell investors that they will be profitable (read: milk its users, monetize everything, remove convenient features if it will mean profits, etc.)

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

#144

Post by searine »

SecurityMinded wrote: post #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 rul…

The deeper issue is the C-suite being unresponsive to users wants and needs. Reddits comments are a goldmine for LLMs, hiking the price on the API is to cash in on data greedy AI. 3rd party apps are just a pawn. Yes it is reddit's site, but the product is the community, and the community knows it.

People are mad because instead of being open and honest about their play, reddit tried sneak it it in. They are trying to give Reddit shareholders their win while everyone else loses.

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

#145

Post by moffkalast »

xyst wrote: post #76
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?

People underestimate how much goes into moderating a community. You can train the bots to remove posts based on age of account, or karma. But to respond and remove racist trash in comments or just spam takes a lot of time. Especially for large communities, the time spent can become a full time job (in terms of hours). And when you have to insert paid moderators, the cost to moderate all of the huge communities will b…

Hmm I wonder if one could just run comments through an LLM and have it classify for things they want to block, then moderate automatically based on that. Probably more accurate and less expensive than hiring people for it.

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

#146

Post by majormajor »

erellsworth wrote: post #43
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?

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…

> 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 scrutiny for the kinds of content they allow on their platform. I doubt they'd want to go there.

I don't think this is true at all. Twitter employs (employed? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/outsourced-content-mode... ) paid moderators. Facebook does ( https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo... ). Plenty of other forum sites have owner-operator mods.

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)).

That explicitly applies to providers and doesn't say they aren't allowed to moderate at all.

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

#149

Post by DSMan195276 »

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.

I suspect if Reddit starts replacing those mods outright you could see other mods leaving, it might work out for Reddit but it's a dangerous game. Also, which mods get removed, and would they be banned completely? The big subreddits have lots of mods, many who just help with small stuff and from my understanding do so over a lot of the large subreddits, so the actual details here of who stays, who's leaving what subreddits, etc. probably get murky pretty fast. (And that's besides the fact that the new mods would have little idea how things were currently run, unless some of the existing mods help them).

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

#150

Post by wahnfrieden »

rurp wrote: post #94
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…

> Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements. I agree this is likely, which will extend the negative reactions further and alienate even more users. Unless Reddit execs do a 180 in the very near future I think the platform will be forever crippled. Large net…

It already happened
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