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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

#291

Post by carstenhag »

joshstrange wrote: post #203
bluescrn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of them go waaaay too far. Mass purges of disagreement/dissent have become normal on there, but they're now going after 'prethoughtcrime' - banning anybody who's ever posted to any of a growing list of subreddits deemed 'bad'.

On the surface that seems like a bad idea but get enough users coming in from another sub and "just asking the question" or not arguing in good faith and you'll understand really quick why it's easier to ban them all than play games where they try to stay just barely on this side of the rules while still harassing your community. You also get a lot of the "I'm a gay black guy [0]"-type people which makes modding even…

This stuff started at the Donald subreddit and spread onto other similar subreddits. I haven't seen it in any sane subreddit.

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

#292

Post by darknavi »

checker659 wrote: post #57
pier25 wrote: post #18

Reddit wouldn't be what it is without mods. Good luck finding people that will work for free without a sense of ownership.

I've been on reddit for the majority of its life. Mods are dime a dozen.

It really depends on the sub. Some subs have a lot of very specific rules and higher quality bar and then some are just a shit show of sub-specific content.

Any community that operates with strict structure is done with dedicated mods and bots (which the mods manage).

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

#293

Post by deeviant »

George83728 wrote: post #260
deeviant wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community. I've yet to seen a single coherent argument that supports this statement. Please enlighten me.

You can read through this thread to find many coherent reasons. They won't necessarily be reasons you personally find persuasive, but that isn't what coherent means. People have different value systems and priorities and therefore they can legitimately conclude different things about the same information. People with whom you cannot find yourself agreeing probably don't share many values and perspectives with you, bu…

I have read through this thread and I have not found a single coherent reason, hence my question.

All of the arguments I see here on the other side are assumptions backed by nothing, i.e. "the majority users of subs didn't agree with the mods decision," which is patently false. Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support.

Even if it wasn't trivially easy to prove these arguments wrong, they don't even provide any actual evidence for their claims.

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

#294

Post by TheCapn »

marktangotango wrote: post #117
BeefWellington wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> delete your comments Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.[1] I agree with the sentiment though; if people en masse migrated away from Reddit the way they did with Digg, that would be the only really impactful long-term gesture. Edit: Regarding the sockpuppet thing, I mean, we've literally seen that happen a number of times. When you see an account created in 2…

I've been exploring the fediverse options like kbin and lemmy and I just don't see it. Maybe someone can explain. If one lemmy instance has a really popular community, say "Memes" how can that scale? There could be millions of posts and terabytes of data. Then if multiple lemmy instances have their own "Memes" communities, that's balkanized and a user would have to subscribe to each instances "Memes" community? Or ar…

I think one looking for alternatives needs to understand what they're hoping to gain from other resources.

If you want low effort jokes, or memes, the most likely outcome is you're going to migrate to where the most people are. Similar to how some subreddits overtook others in popularity, there'll be a federated instance that "wins". We're sort of in a new frontiers phase where people are scrambling to find new homes and there'll be a lot of duplication until winners and losers are settled.

But in the end, if good memes come out of the most populous place. Reddit will probably just simply be the best you have. Anything else will be second rate. Perhaps 'the best' will make its rounds through all sites as reposts just as 9Gag stuff and Imgur stuff finds its way to Reddit or Twitter, or TikTok.

But back to the main point. Lemmy/kbin/etc likely will never be reddit. I'm okay with that because I found most value in smaller niche communities (similar to how HackerNews scratches an itch that Reddit never could). I think there'll be plenty of opportunity to drop my reddit habits as I find moderately active NetSec/Programming/Networking/etc. communities on Lemmy. I'll keep Imgur for lazy image humor, and probably nod to reddit for catching the beat on my local community/provincial subs.

I still see it perhaps as a positive for myself. Loosening my Reddit addiction will be healthy long term. I'll be forced to make decisions on what topics matter to me and how I'll consume them instead of blindly marching through reddit on another doomscroll because it was convenient.

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

#295

Post by lelanthran »

ilyt wrote: post #160
arbitrage wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. 3rd party mod tools are not critical. Mods who claim this is so are really misrepresenting the issue. Power tools for mods are nice to have for some. I make use of automod extensively. The tools reddit provides are adequate to perform moderation tasks.…

> This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. How big subs ? Number of subs you moderate is entirely irrelevant to the topic

Is there any good reason that a single moderator should be allowed to moderate multiple subs?

I'd take that as an I dictator of a power hungry mod, not a mod passionate about the topic at hand.

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

#296

Post by cragfar »

mintplant wrote: post #274
fullshark wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you disagree with him here? Mods are too powerful, many have decided to try and murder the site because of something most users don't even care about. The idea that because I volunteered to moderate r/subcultureX for a few years I can make sure www.reddit.com/r/subcultureX can never direct to any content forever is ridiculous.

Mods give a subreddit its norms and structure. If you kick out the mod team and forcibly reopen r/subcultureX, you're not getting r/subcultureX back, you're getting something new puppeting around its skin. If users really just wanted to start talking about X again, nothing's stopping them from going and creating r/subcultureX2. You can't force people to continue donating the massive amounts of free labor that made th…

There already is a function that gives a subreddit its norms and structure. It's the upvote and downvote tool. Mods should not be shaping a subreddit, that's not moderating.

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

#297

Post by jfdbcv »

runnr_az wrote: post #261
deeviant wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community. I've yet to seen a single coherent argument that supports this statement. Please enlighten me.

I use Reddit to talk about local stuff, ultralight gear. The larger world of mods and “power users” and whatnot - not super relevant. I understand how ya’ll feel, but is blocking people from using r/tempe really useful? “I’m gonna make Reddit completely unusable so Reddit doesn’t become shitty”

Isn't the whole point of making communities private to make Reddit more unusable and therefore try to decrease engagement?

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

#298

Post by PM_me_your_math »

This is hilarious. The fact that he's just realizing this now confirms what I've said for years. Reddit mods act without oversight. It took them damaging his brand to act. Forgot that activist moderators fundamentally destroyed reddit with 1000 slow cuts.

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

#299

Post by tsimionescu »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #197
marktangotango wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been exploring the fediverse options like kbin and lemmy and I just don't see it. Maybe someone can explain. If one lemmy instance has a really popular community, say "Memes" how can that scale? There could be millions of posts and terabytes of data. Then if multiple lemmy instances have their own "Memes" communities, that's balkanized and a user would have to subscribe to each instances "Memes" community? Or ar…

You can have an account on one instance and subscribe to a community on another. There's no need for every instance to have a "memes" community, though there will undoubtedly be more than one. Then you can subscribe to the one(s) you like best. Not unlike how Reddit tends to have multiple subreddits for popular things with different mods, norms, and feels.

It is unlike that, because it scales completely differently. Basically what the GP is saying is that it's not possible (economically) in the Fediverse to create a community as large as, say, /r/funny.

Basically the federation is happening at the wrong level for that, since the whole community needs to be on a single server.

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

#300

Post by Y-bar »

Kiro wrote: post #256
slowmovintarget wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The posts here on HN about how all the mods are terrible human beings... that just read as an oddity.

How so? People generally hate reddit mods, for good and bad reasons. The belief that reddit mods are power hungry abusers is ingrained in internet culture so I don't find it strange that this common sentiment is leaking to HN. If anything I find it very surprising that people praise them as heroes now which would have been completely unheard of just a few weeks ago.

There are many mods I actively dislike, for example one on r/confusingperspective who gave me a warning because I tagged another user in a comment because I wanted to highlight something for them. But I still support the mods here. And I also support the third-party developers as well.

Ultimately Reddit depends on moderators being able to do their job, if Spez chooses to pull the rug out from under their feet so that they cannot do their job (which they do without cost for Reddit) effectively, why should I not cheer them on? Especially since they are pretty much the only ones able to coordinate any form of protest after Spez lied (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247130) about what the Apollo dev said?

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