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Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

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Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#181

Post by jmclnx »

kibwen wrote: post #13
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Before the blackout, many subreddits hinted at extending the blackout indefinitely if Reddit is being adversarial. This seems adversarial.

Extending the blackout indefinitely has now become a coordinated action via /r/ModCoord (which is the also the source of the list of blacked out subreddits that people are using), with an optional "solidarity mode" that involves blacking out one day a week in perpetuity (which they're calling "Touch Grass Tuesdays"): https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinit...

Funny you linked old.reddit, I find the new version unusable via firefox (I do not do mobile).

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#182

Post by Asdrubalini »

joecot wrote: post #157
samwillis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, if they remain closed, Reddit will just take ownership of them, suspend the mods and reopen the reddits. They will however need to do it carefully, probably after most others have folded and reopened, so as not to cause another blackout. But ultimately it's their platform, they can do what they want. Maybe they will just have to start actually employing the mods, which may actually end up a net positiv…

The problem is that reddit's entire system depends on unpaid labor from volunteer moderators. And they just pissed a lot of those moderators off. Yeah, reddit can reopen those subreddits if they want to and kick the mods. But who are they going to get to moderate it? They can't afford to hire staff to moderate themselves, reddit is already unprofitable. Are they going to do an application process for scab mods? That…

I personally woudn't mind not having moderators, as the ones we have at the moment are really bad and have pushed their political views in apparently impartial subs (like /r/politics).

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#183

Post by danaris »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #167
AustinDev wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is why they simply don't do what spotify does. Free acounts have to use the official spotify apps but paid accounts can use third party apps and apis as part of their subscription benefits. I would gladly pay for reddit gold monthly if I got to keep using my ad-free 3rd party client of my choice.

They want everyone to use the official app so they can advertise to paid users in the future. It's the cable TV model: get people to start paying for subscriptions by offering to remove ads, then slowly trickle the ads back in. A paid tier lets you easily identify which of your users have disposable income, and then you can sell the ability to advertise to them at a huge premium. Spotify's advertisements are quite di…

In other words: Because they think they can get 500% the revenue by abusing their users even more, they're unwilling to accept the 450% revenue they could get by making a reasonable compromise.

And now they're running the risk of getting 5% the revenue.

* No actual numbers were harmed in the making of this post.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#184

Post by data-ottawa »

EA-3167 wrote: post #16
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Before the blackout, many subreddits hinted at extending the blackout indefinitely if Reddit is being adversarial. This seems adversarial.

From Reddit's perspective overall this is a terrible idea, but from Huffman's perspective it's purely rational. If he has to walk this back it's probably not compatible with his continued tenure after all, the question of why this was done so hastily and rudely would inevitably undermine his leadership. If he just barrels ahead though, and prays that the addictions of mods and users are greater than their pride/desir…

> he can't realistically get rid of the mods and replace them

Out of hundreds of millions of users, finding new mods does not seem that difficult. There are a lot of power-hungry users and people looking to leverage moderating for political or financial advantage.

There would be backlash, but I don't know what it would take for the real mass-exodus of Reddit. Lemmy/Tildes aren't showing massive numbers of new users that would make a real exodus (Lemmy has gone from 1k users to 18k, but that's far from 500M on Reddit).

* Source on Lemmy numbers https://the-federation.info/platform/73

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#185

Post by Kazrath »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #62
TheFreim wrote: post #9

If the blackout is only for two days then they're right, but if they continue indefinitely it could force a change (reddit is currently unusable since all but one sub I enjoy is gone, if it was gone indefinitely then reddit would be indefinitely out of the picture for me).

> If the blackout is only for two days then they're right Yeah... I don't know the tradeoffs at play but 2 days is... extremely insignificant / probably a bad decision by all of the moderators? It sends a message sure but, it's a bunch of "whiny reddit mods" versus C-level executives in a "help us make API more affordable versus help us not lose a ton of money offering generous free API hosting/usage" negotiation. Ho…

>Why should they foot the bill for the API calls?

You have a serious misunderstanding of how this works. They are footing the bill for API calls regardless. All reddit access by users is to external public facing API's. We are not on their internal network. They MUST have accessible servers + data costs. In all honesty the 3rd parties are probably more efficient as they are a lot less bloated which means LESS costs.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#186

Post by pseudalopex »

legitster wrote: post #115

I would love nothing more than if actual independent communities actually had to build and maintain their own internet spaces again. I do not miss the days of forums - but there has to be something between the two, right? But... unfortunately the CEO is probably right. Reddit is first and foremost a community of addicts. No one is actually threatening to spin off their own superior community space. (The closest we se…

Why do you not miss the days of forums?

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#187

Post by mr_00ff00 »

kibwen wrote: post #117
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about revenue. As people have mentioned already, the CEO said the blackout has had almost no revenue impact. it’s funny to create a protest and hoping for change by showing Reddit that the community can walk away…and then using reddit to organize it. You are basically showing you can’t think of any good alternatives to organizing or chatting with people. So you will continue to use Reddit, even during a prot…

...Except that /r/ModCoord does have other venues, like the Discord linked in the sidebar. They mirror announcements to Reddit because that's the only place that's guaranteed to reach everyone involved, who are on Reddit by definition.

Sure, but shouldn’t they all not be on Reddit by definition?

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#188

Post by crznp »

smsm42 wrote: post #42
TheFreim wrote: post #18

I don't understand why reddit didn't respond to the initial criticism by decreasing the pricing/demands and just slowly implementing what they want over time. Doing it all at once seemed like a silly move.

Not so silly if they are sure they'll crush the opposition. If they are convinced the boycotts are powerless, then the sooner they demonstrate it, the better.

Reddit's main asset is its community, so it is odd to cast the community as their opposition.

Re: Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

#190

Post by the_snooze »

Asdrubalini wrote: post #182
joecot wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that reddit's entire system depends on unpaid labor from volunteer moderators. And they just pissed a lot of those moderators off. Yeah, reddit can reopen those subreddits if they want to and kick the mods. But who are they going to get to moderate it? They can't afford to hire staff to moderate themselves, reddit is already unprofitable. Are they going to do an application process for scab mods? That…

I personally woudn't mind not having moderators, as the ones we have at the moment are really bad and have pushed their political views in apparently impartial subs (like /r/politics).

I frequented /r/cfb and /r/collegebasketball, which are terrific and very on-topic. Very little drama there. I can easily imagine those going to the dumpster without their mod teams.
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