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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

#361

Post by pxmpxm »

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…

Am I missing something - all reddit has to do is one code change to prevent subreddits from getting private or closed.

Feels like a bunch of people are completely misreading their self-presumed social status and leverage. The content is what drives traffic and revenue, not their fungible volunteer labor.

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

#362

Post by throw16180339 »

linuxftw wrote: post #57
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 think you underestimate the ability of AI to literally solve this problem for almost nothing. The large subs can absolutely be automated moderation, if they're not already. Enough flags on a post? Just take it down, there will be 15 million new posts in an hour.

> Just take it down, there will be 15 million new posts in an hour.

I'm a mod at a 150k+ user subreddit. AI can probably handle removing objectionable content, but I spend most of my time on other areas that are much less susceptible to automation.

• Removing requests when there are recent similar posts. We've found that users disengage when the same requests are posted every week.

• Hosting AMAs. An AI isn't going to know who we should invite or whether they'll be a good fit for our subreddit.

• Detecting and banning people deceptively promoting their own products. This is incredibly common and often quite difficult.

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

#363

Post by actionablefiber »

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.

One possible outcome is that the pie shrinks. If Reddit hurts the user experience and drives away creators and mods, some people will leave with no alternative and simply spend less time on the Internet.

In my case, I've replaced my Reddit time ~50% with HN and ~50% with... something else, like doing work.

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

#364

Post by function_seven »

wmoser wrote: post #360
function_seven wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of plain up- and downvotes, you rated a given comment with one of several positives (insightful, interesting, funny, informative) or negatives (troll, flamebait, offtopic) The best part was you could set your personal filters to exclude “funny” comments, or boost “offtopic” ones if you want. With thresholds! So the funniest stuff could still break through, but you didn’t have to wade through a million pun pos…

If I remember correctly, you also couldn’t moderate on posts that you had commented on so it prevented using downvoting as extra signaling that others agreed with you in an argument. Also, you got 5 moderation points sort of randomly, you didn’t have the option to always be moderating. I browse Slashdot occasionally but once I found HN, the topics and discourse interested me here more, haven’t really spent much time…

Thanks. I forgot about the 5-at-a-time thing! But now I remember the tiny delight when I was entrusted with that little clutch of power. I “spent” them wisely.

And this is another thing I think made that mod system good. Only so many points available.

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

#365

Post by Scarblac »

function_seven wrote: post #356
tester457 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used Slashdot, how is the moderation model superior?

Instead of plain up- and downvotes, you rated a given comment with one of several positives (insightful, interesting, funny, informative) or negatives (troll, flamebait, offtopic) The best part was you could set your personal filters to exclude “funny” comments, or boost “offtopic” ones if you want. With thresholds! So the funniest stuff could still break through, but you didn’t have to wade through a million pun pos…

And it would show the sum of the +1 and -1 votes, and the most applied label, e.g. (+3, Informative).

I have to say the most enjoyable comments were often those that got to +5 but with a negative label, like (+5, Flamebait).

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

#366

Post by xboxnolifes »

majormajor wrote: post #140
CincinnatiMan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view is a little simplistic. There is plenty of useful information on Reddit. I'm a big fan of home-related subs for example, where a lot of trade-knowledgeable people seem to hang out. There is a wealth of information on subs like r/DIY, r/HomeImprovement, r/paint, r/woodworking, etc.

I've often wondered why people use Reddit for stuff like this since the information and conversation management and organizational tools seem vastly inferior to most any pre-Reddit forum software. My current working theory is largely that internet search is just broken. It's easier to search for subreddit once you're on Reddit than to wade out into the sea of SEO crap and try to find a live, reliable format on the br…

> My current working theory is largely that internet search is just broken. It's easier to search for subreddit once you're on Reddit than to wade out into the sea of SEO crap and try to find a live, reliable format on the broader web. Google+search+display ads at scale killed the web, now we're back to AOL.

This is clearly the reason in my eyes. I append "reddit" to most of search queries not because reddit always has the best advice/information, but because the alternative is usually wading through page after page of SEO blog spam. Even if I know the information is better found somewhere else, I can usually find that somewhere else from reddit.

Want to compare headphones? Search returns blog spam. Computer components? Blog spam. Software framework or library question? Blog spam. Healthcare / Medicine? 1000 government / hospital websites that all give the same useless information. Nutrition? Blog spam. Every search results is either endless affiliate spam blogs or endless blogs all sharing the same trivial parts about a topic.

It's possible that there is a ton of useful information on the internet, but it's certainly not easy to find. It's amazing to me that Reddit failed to take advantage of their position as quasi internet hub, and seem to just want to be yet another endless content scroller app.

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

#367

Post by 634636346 »

predictabl3 wrote: post #222
634636346 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> futurology(18m), I had no idea futurology was that big. I remember years ago when it used to be a singularity/life-extension/transhumanist subreddit, and then it got brigaded by climate change activists, to the point that most of the articles on the front page were about clean energy, rising sea levels, and recycling. Also a lot of doomer types actually bemoaning life extension outright, because of the usual nonsen…

lol good luck getting to the singularity when food scarcity hits riot levels and the coasts are flooding. The future we get is the future we deserve, not the one we fantasize about.

[flagged]

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

#368

Post by paulmd »

majormajor wrote: post #192
titusjohnson wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." (47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)) While Reddit started as a link aggregator, the vast majority of useful content on the site is not external links. It is content generated for reddit, on reddit.

It's content generated by users, and it's the source of the content that matters, not the source of the moderation. There's no generally accepted interpretation of 230 that restricts site owners from moderating user comments. https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 "Section 230 allows for web operators, large and small, to moderate user speech and content as they see fit." See again the FB/Twitter examples I linked - those…

People act like Facebook doesn’t pay their moderators or something. Paid moderation doesn’t make them liable for what users post.

People are coping super hard.

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

#369

Post by thereticent »

hayst4ck wrote: post #355
jaredhallen wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But next quarter's profit always destroys everything good. Why should this have been expected to turn out any differently?

I don't think that was a part of the collective consciousness 10 years ago. People said "but how are you going to monetize" and everyone said "we'll figure that out later." So even if it was true back then (and it was), spez was probably 20-25 when he sold his soul? You don't exactly have the benefit of worldly wisdom when you are that young.

You might be speaking specifically about Reddit and the Q4 profit question, but otherwise I want to point out that the idea that immediate returns in business ultimately destroys good products has been in the cultural consciousness for much longer than 10 years.

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

#370

Post by SirSourdough »

pxmpxm wrote: post #361
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…

Am I missing something - all reddit has to do is one code change to prevent subreddits from getting private or closed. Feels like a bunch of people are completely misreading their self-presumed social status and leverage. The content is what drives traffic and revenue, not their fungible volunteer labor.

Reddit forcing open the subreddits would result in massive backlash from moderators, who are often the main people providing content and enforcing content quality. It would crank the degree to which Reddit is tarnishing its reputation to 11.

A very small portion of users are responsible for the majority of the content and community building on Reddit. I think you might be underestimating how reliant the 99% of users who don’t post top-level content or serve as moderators are on the 1% who do.

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