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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

#181

Post by CryptoBanker »

donmcronald wrote: post #125
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…

> 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. Oh. Wow. I never thought about that. Does anyone know if section 230 of the DMCA shields Reddit from liability as-is? >Reddit isn't even…

That would work for implementation. No chance a single policy would work for users

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

#182

Post by juujian »

Reddit already gave their strategy away earlier today when Hoffman wrote:

> We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us.[^1]

It's encouraging to see that some subreddits are responding to the fact that the company is just planning to ignore users.

[^1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...

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

#183

Post by bdw5204 »

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…

I don't see how they'd have difficulties replacing the mods. Even if it's hard to find replacements within the Reddit community there are lots of blue checks on Twitter who'd probably be thrilled to take over Reddit moderation and might even pay Reddit for the privilege.

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

#184

Post by linuxftw »

actionablefiber wrote: post #170
linuxftw wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they have metrics at this point on how often real humans take a particular action. If an account is reporting posts higher than some amount X, then shadow ban that account.

Do you think users will continue to report posts if they see that reporting too often will cause them to be shadowbanned? Conversely if you are in the business of publishing spam to Reddit, wouldn’t it be useful if you could overwhelm the site with spam such that the people who care enough report all of the spam they see will get banned?

I think the vast majority of Reddit's userbase, normies, won't know the difference and won't care. It will literally be an invisible change.

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

#185

Post by dmix »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #126
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…

> The only loser here is the corporation side. I'm not convinced they lose out either. The front page doesn't really feel different than it did before. There are a handful of "Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself). Read more in the comments" posts, but I'm kinda blind to them the same way I'm blind to ads as I scroll past. Otherwise it just feels like any other day on reddit.

People thought the meltdowns over the various FB redesigns or [x] decisions would hurt FB too (there were many major ones).

Most regular users on Reddit view it through feeds not individual subs. It’s very plausible the bulk won’t even notice, except when other people tell them it’s happening or it makes the news. Eventually others might wonder why they haven’t seen some sub posts recently but it will probably take a month or so.

These are the people clicking ads and using their mobile app.

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

#186

Post by WheatMillington »

ssl232 wrote: post #109
rurp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Where will reddit get enough mods to police the hundreds (thousands?) of subreddits each with tens of thousands of members that are rebelling against the API changes? Blocking/firing the existing mods would make the site descend into chaos.

They are really only going to care about the top tier subs, the rest will be replaced by the community. So really we're only taking 20-100 subreddits, depending on definitions.

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

#187

Post by thewataccount »

lumenwrites wrote: post #137
thewataccount wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Content spam is way easier to manage especially automatically and I don't mean with LLMs, just current tools.

The only reason why it's working right now is because the mods in charge of these subs are upset, and a few mods can shutdown a 30m+ sub. I suspect the number of users on r/aww that care _that much_ to get their account banned for spam.

If it was just users being upset (which would be the case if reddit reclaims them) I just don't think there's enough upset people for there to be an impact like that.

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

#188

Post by WheatMillington »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #126
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…

> The only loser here is the corporation side. I'm not convinced they lose out either. The front page doesn't really feel different than it did before. There are a handful of "Reddit is killing third-party applications (and itself). Read more in the comments" posts, but I'm kinda blind to them the same way I'm blind to ads as I scroll past. Otherwise it just feels like any other day on reddit.

Are we using the same website? Reddit is devoid of any decent content right now, on account of the blackout.

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

#189

Post by prox »

zamalek wrote: post #122
bastijn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That awkward moment you realize Reddit is in a better position to win this war because people like us just want to have a digital place to spend time, not fight a war. Truth be told I don't care much about all of this, I just want my subs back or replaced so I can mindlessly scroll them. Wasn't using a third party app, but if I was I'd probably feel unhappy for a week before I simply switch and don't think back.

I would agree with you were this drama not consistently hitting the frontpage on Reddit. If the users who wouldn't turn back aren't a majority, they are still a significant fraction. That's not good news for the IPO Reddit is hoping for.

From what I have gathered sofar, Spez was thinking win-win : raise the API price, if they pay, fantastic, fresh money hose. If they don’t: apps get killed (we are here) and people flock to our official offerings and we gain eyeballs.

Ofcourse this protest was probably not on his timeline. Let’s hope it kills all traction it had.

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

#190

Post by koolba »

Perhaps spez thinks he can replace all the free labor Reddit gets for posts and mods with an AI? The larger subs clearly have a large enough corpus to have a defined voice.

The next step after that would be an AI to generate the replies, worn out jokes, and repost complaints.

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