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Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

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Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#141

Post by shmatt »

guardiangod wrote: post #64

The difference between Musk/Twitter and spez/Reddit is that the value of Reddit lies in its army of unpaid moderators, and Twitter's value lies in its brand recognition. When Musk took over and pissed off everyone, the only protest the users can do is to leave the platform. Some did but not enough to hurt Twitter. That's because the management (ie modding) is done by Twitter staff already. With a strong brand, Twitte…

except you don't need to be born a chosen one to become a mod. its not rocket science, and plenty of people want the power

have you every thought to yourself, wow, /r/pics is so much better since /u/DM_ME_BOOGERS joined the mod team, I really feel like there was a pre-2019 /r/pics and a post-2019 /r/pics

People don't even notice that mod teams could have completely rotated out this year and they didn't feel a thing

edit: ill add an example, /u/Cyxie up until a couple years ago, moderated 20% of the top 500 subreddits, their user is now deleted

Has anyone felt reddit is worse these days since they left? Is the day they left widely known as the day Reddit became bad?

Heres your answer: no one cares about Cyxie, Reddit was fine before them, during their tenure, and after they deleted their account

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#142

Post by AnotherGoodName »

bogantech wrote: post #107
agentgumshoe wrote: post #39

Mods do whatever they like: "things are fine" Mods hurt potential profits: "mods too powerful, need to act" If the community doesn't like the mods, they can... create a new subreddit with new mods.

> If the community doesn't like the mods, they can... create a new subreddit with new mods. If mods are going to permanently set subs private then they should be seized and given to someone who will use it

Why not just create a new subreddit?

Eg. /r/gaming became a meme ridden shitshow and someone made /r/games which bans memes and it's great.

No need to seize anything. Let people go where they want.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#143

Post by joshstrange »

Lol, users have been asking for this since almost the start of Reddit, and Reddit only cares now because it actually is hitting them where it matters.

This is always so annoying, when sites are stagnant for years and then suddenly they can pump out new features when it helps them even if people have been asking for forever.

See also mod tools (though they have broken that promise more times than I can count) and shit like NFTs. "Can't improve or fix basic bugs but we have time to add the scam of the week to our platform". Reddit doesn't deserve to continue.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#144

Post by kevinmchugh »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #91
guardiangod wrote: post #64

The difference between Musk/Twitter and spez/Reddit is that the value of Reddit lies in its army of unpaid moderators, and Twitter's value lies in its brand recognition. When Musk took over and pissed off everyone, the only protest the users can do is to leave the platform. Some did but not enough to hurt Twitter. That's because the management (ie modding) is done by Twitter staff already. With a strong brand, Twitte…

>If those moderators leave, Then they will find new ones. As long as Reddit has usecases, as long as the powertrip is worth the lack of ownership and poor tooling, there will be mods willing to moderate subs and feeling powerful and getting drunk off of it. 'Historically', this has happened in every social medium with moderation so far. There's no anarchy here. Most Redditors don't care for the mods in particular. If…

I don't totally disagree, but mods without good tooling are dead in the water, and reddit has failed for years to build good mod tooling.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#145

Post by [deleted] »

llm_nerd wrote: post #41
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #8

Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent. 'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!' It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one. Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#146

Post by ilyt »

lazystar wrote: post #60
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #8

Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent. 'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!' It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored over the course of their tantrum. I've commented more in the past few days than i have in the past few months, because it's obvious the mods have completely lost perspective of the average user experience.

I dunno, post on /r/games explaining why there were NOT going to black out is still sitting at 0 upvotes (a in "there is more downvotes than upvotes", with comments asking them to sitting on nice few k's of upvotes which would indicate that even people that never comment downvoted it and want the blackout.

The few lurkers coming out of woodwork asking people to allow for enshittification to continue is by definition vocal minority

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#148

Post by OrvalWintermute »

aluminussoma wrote: post #101
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #63

I'm torn. There is a well-known cabal of reddit mods that control many of the most popular subreddits [1] and many of them act like the subs they mod are their personal fiefdoms. Some of them have been alleged to exploit their subs for financial gain, or personal karma gain [2] at the expense of regular users Some of these mods have operated in cahoots with Reddit Administration to squelch stories they didn't like [3…

Here is why I find it hard to believe there is a cabal of mods: what is their motivation for shutting down Reddit? If this is true, these fiefdom mods are hurting themselves financially and personally by keeping their subreddits shut down. The simplest explanation to me is that they protest because they care. It is not just Apollo. They don't like the overall direction Reddit is heading in.

> Here is why I find it hard to believe there is a cabal of mods:

Reddit mods doing things like this is well known [1] [2]

What is really strange is how the mods will tend to infiltrate a subreddit, get mod rights, and then bring over a bunch of other mods that are already cross-modding important subs across Reddit.

This has led to weird situations where a few mods control much of Reddit's top subreddits [3]

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/modabuse/

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/zk39a1/cmv_mo...

[3] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/reddit-92-of-the-top-5...

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#149

Post by lawn »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #63

I'm torn. There is a well-known cabal of reddit mods that control many of the most popular subreddits [1] and many of them act like the subs they mod are their personal fiefdoms. Some of them have been alleged to exploit their subs for financial gain, or personal karma gain [2] at the expense of regular users Some of these mods have operated in cahoots with Reddit Administration to squelch stories they didn't like [3…

With reddit's increasingly desperate attempts towards revenue this will increase, not decrease.

Pay Reddit and you can do whatever you want. Maybe even buy a subreddit or two.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#150

Post by toddmorey »

cirgue wrote: post #105
sarasasa28 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you) Reddit is/was my first source of real human information for a lot of stuff (since google is unusable now). And this blackout was really a pain in the ass

It is effectively not possible to be a mod of a subreddit without third party apps. I don’t think people fully understand just how awful the native mod suite is for Reddit, and this is what the blackout is really about: the fact that Reddit seems to want to absolutely refuse to support the unpaid labor that makes the site a source of real human knowledge as opposed to a wasteland of bots and trolls.

This is really well said. It feels like a new Apple CEO who views investments in design as frivolous. There are valid points that Reddit needs to improve and adjust to be a healthy business but recent changes have all the hallmark of a company making a dangerous waiver that visitors will stay because, really, where else are they going to go?
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