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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

#201

Post by imchillyb »

pkju62dqmx wrote: post #66
kart23 wrote: post #16

They're getting away with this because there really is no serious competitor for reddit. When people actually start migrating away from reddit and post/comment volume is significantly down, you'll see reddit suddenly be a lot more willing to engage with the community.

You’re right due to the network effects Reddit currently enjoys. Personally, I’ve quite enjoyed using tildes.net lately. I know everyone is jumping on Lemmy and federation, which is great in practice but Tildes feels more accessible to me and for that reason may have more potential to actually capture a user base.

I'd love an invite.

If you have one available, please consider throwing me a tildes.net invite.

Thanks m8.

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

#202

Post by colonwqbang »

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.

Reddit can't afford to pay the employees they already have out of the revenue they make. That's ostensibly the reason why they raised prices on the API in the first place. Losing all that free labour is absolutely the last thing they want at this juncture.

But even ignoring that, suppose all >15M subreddit suddenly get salaried mods. Don't you think the mods of e.g. a 13M subreddit would want a piece of the cake too, and would strike to get it? Or would they just wait around and keep working until their subreddit is also "siezed" by Reddit inc.

Is there any example of a community which successfully runs on mixed salaried/volunteer moderator labour in such a way?

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

#203

Post by moskie »

muttantt wrote: post #70
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…

AI will replace the mods.

AI will replace the users, too.

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

#204

Post by CryptoBanker »

ranger207 wrote: post #81
mrandish wrote: post #28

This may prompt Reddit to push ahead on their threat to take over key subs that stay dark by replacing the moderators with their own. Of course, Reddit can't afford to scale that to very many popular subs as modding those is extremely labor intensive. Worse for Reddit, dumping long-time community moderators en masse would be crossing a Rubicon that could tip Reddit into a death spiral of low-effort moderation reducin…

I'm really not sure the big subs would suffer all that much. Many of them are already modded by a clique of mods and are large enough that there's not really any community to be had there anyway. It would be pretty terrible for the small communities that were reddit's most valuable part

Replacing a few mods that moderate many large communities with paid mods is ripping the door wide open to lawsuits

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

#205

Post by predictabl3 »

bastijn wrote: post #124
wvenable wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been actively avoiding Reddit during this protest and I just signed up to a Lemmy instance. The UI isn't great but the communities are already pretty hopping. I need to subscribe to a few more things but it seems to handle the fix for now. I'm never using Reddit's awful app -- it's just not how I like to use Reddit. I'm an old.reddit.com kind of person.

The point is for any that is like you my guess is there are 2 more like me. Or 20, or 200. Never checked how much people use 3rd party apps vs. total users. Honest question, what is so bad about the Reddit app that you would give up browsing the content you like? I experience little ads, and if I would be annoyed by it I would probably find ways to get rid of it (pi-hole style). I'm OK with how the app displays comme…

>Honest question, what is so bad about the Reddit app that you would give up browsing the content you like?

I don't appreciate being lied to, treated like less than garbage? And I'm certainly not going to keep contributing to a platform that does that to me? Especially when this stuff is only going to get worse as they "march towards profitability"?

I gotta log off. I don't know if ppl here are young, naive, or if it's just the usual inability to remember anything from more than a few years ago, or the short-sightedness of not seeing where this is going. Catch ya on Digg.

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

#206

Post by eipie10 »

312c wrote: post #120
Whatarethese wrote: post #48

This is what will force Reddits hand to either backtrack or remove those mods and place their own. Which the ladder would no doubt be worse.

How is a company that is not profitable according to the CEO going to hire 20,000 people to replace the volunteer moderators?

Is it hard to find volunteer moderators who wouldn't block off access to sub reddits? I also doubt the number is as high as 20k. As long as the top mod aligns with Reddit, the other moderators can do nothing.

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

#207

Post by wvenable »

bastijn wrote: post #196
wvenable wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using 3rd party apps for over 15 years -- I used Alien Blue on iOS when I had an iPhone and I bought Relay for Reddit on Android over 10 years ago. I use old.reddit.com and always have (back when it was just reddit.com). How do I find and read that content that I like? It's a very different (and, for me, worse) experience in their official reddit app and on the non-old Reddit.com. If I'm going to adjust to…

But in this case the alternative is not MacOS or Ubuntu, but a distro nobody has ever heard of. Third-party app users may be the more die-hard/advanced user group - and the minority - but I wonder how many of them are willing to switch to a small distro which might not have the content or might have an even shittier app experience. If there are no alternatives, which today there aren't to the best of my knowledge, my…

There hasn't been a strong need for alternatives so there was little motivation to make one (or improve the ones that exist). I think that's going to be changing now.

I don't expect a rapid fall of Reddit or Twitter but rather a slow decline. It's not unprecedented.

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

#208

Post by bombcar »

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!

Replace re (enter) with ne (enter) and hang out in new. Hehe
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