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

theverge.com

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

#31

Post by tux3 »

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?

If they do, whatever thrown together group of reddit appointed substitutes get the task of trying to moderate all of reddit at once is likely going to be drowning very badly

And you can expect people engaged with the protest to take full advantage of this if it happens, making the problem that much worse

If you simply reopen without any of the current mods, the site will be overrun

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

#33

Post by jleyank »

How does / will Reddit make money? Selling ads? Harvesting data? Monthly subscriptions? Some combination of all three? I have difficulty imagining why anybody would pay a fee to join a bbs no matter how fancy it is. Might be just me as a cheap old codger. Now, they can use ai to generate posts and dispense with moderators and even posters I guess.

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

#34

Post by dybber »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #13

To the people who've been in this situation, what would you do in Huffman's shoes? From my fairly naïve perspective it looks like he's doing a pretty poor job managing this crisis but am I overestimating the trouble he's in? At some point he'll either be forced to back down or replace the mods of the big subs with people willing to cross the picket line, I don't see why he doesn't just pull the plaster off now either…

I haven’t been in a situation like this.

I think they should call it off, and announce that they will go back to the drawing board. Then restart talks with the API users and third party app developers.

What if they reduced the price of Reddit premium to $3/month and made API and third party apps only available for Reddit premium subscribers?

- Reddit would get many more premium subscribers

- App developers would be able to avoid managing subscription fee’s themselves and continue as before

- Users of the official Reddit app would not be affected

- Users of third party apps would have to pay for Reddit Premium - but maybe at a discount

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

#35

Post by [deleted] »

gumballindie wrote: post #30

Expect more sealed off content. Thanks to ai scrapers more companies will want to close their apis or charge a fee. Heck even openai, the main leech want to prevent others from “training” their bots against their ai that has been trained on other people’s work, bandwidth and ip. Mods closing subreddits are just a symptom.

[deleted]

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

#36

Post by sidfthec »

b59831 wrote: post #14
100011_100001 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shhh.... Conspiracy theorists just move to a new conspiracy, they never go back and evaluate how they got swindled the first time.

The important part is you feel superior.

What do you mean?

Those who follow absurd conspiracy theories, like the theory that mask mandates would never go away and that it was somehow solely a power play by government leaders, cause massive damage to society. And it's true that most never re-evaluate how their incorrect beliefs came to be before getting sucked into another conspiracy/grift.

You seem to be reducing the issue to someone feeling superior to another.

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

#39

Post by rgbrenner »

jleyank wrote: post #33

How does / will Reddit make money? Selling ads? Harvesting data? Monthly subscriptions? Some combination of all three? I have difficulty imagining why anybody would pay a fee to join a bbs no matter how fancy it is. Might be just me as a cheap old codger. Now, they can use ai to generate posts and dispense with moderators and even posters I guess.

They do all of those things plus selling 'coins'.. and generate $500-600m/year from it.

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

#40

Post by redmerchant2 »

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?

The big subs have figured out an extensive set up of bots and moderation guidelines, while investing their own time, all for free. Reddit’s mod tooling is extremely abysmal, that’s part of the protest. (Only 3P devs have bothered building more advanced tools.) A new mod will not have the expertise or careful set up from the previous mods.

Most of the mods are debatably not power hungry, particularly on a sub like Music or Videos. Finding a replacement mod team without specific agendas is going to be hard. Only the most power tripping or ideologically driven will want the position as paying mods seems out of the question given Reddit’s stance.

Inexperienced mods will also be unable to handle the torrent of spam and low effort posts and comments the big sub attract.

It’s not impossible to punish the dissident mods but having a functional replacement on short notice is impossible.

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