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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

#41

Post by heyparkerj »

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…

Did Reddit actually make that threat or was that just a fearful suspicion from the userbase?

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

#42

Post by civilitty »

tux3 wrote: post #31
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

I’ve got my entire neighborhood teed up to go and spread rumors that spez likes to do weird things to porcupines the second the moderation walls go down.

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

#43

Post by erellsworth »

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 scrutiny for the kinds of content they allow on their platform. I doubt they'd want to go there.

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

#44

Post by manishsharan »

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.

If some people are willing to pay $8 for Twitter,they will happily pay more for Reddit.

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

#45

Post by SonicScrub »

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?

> other than the mods being free labor for Reddit

Is this not the answer to your question? Reddit can't afford to pay people to do this job. They rely on impassioned people to volunteer.

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

#46

Post by dragontamer »

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…

Is it too late to meme-stock this?

GME / BBBY is able to raise money from a mountain of APEs by basically giving the crowd what they want.

Reddit needs more funding to turn into a profitable company. They also need these 3rd party apps and other such features (that they're cutting because they don't make enough profits yet).

Just be honest with the world. Reddit needs money, please support the IPO, lets see how much money is raised and where it can go. Promise to use the money to buy out Apollo or something.

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

#47

Post by kokanee »

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 sell ads, but now they also charge for API requests. Unlike most forums, a significant amount of Reddit interactions happen via the API. They have all the best communities on the internet, but their software is HORRIBLE, so the community has created all kinds of popular 3rd party clients, tools, and bots for engaging the community without having to use the god-awful Reddit software.

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

#49

Post by unethical_ban »

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…

Don't get in bed with venture capital, focus on sustainability and technical continuity rather than continuous growth, and be community driven instead of profit driven.

An organization needs to make enough money to live, but it doesn't need quarterly RoI and growth. That is a demand of a public market. Reddit got greedy and sold out.

It's time to start building new communities outside reddit. It won't happen overnight, but it needs to happen.

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

#50

Post by xyst »

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 data via comments and posts. I said this in another post but the existing CEO needs to get replaced. Maybe throw in a few other C—level executives to serve as additional blood sacrifices.

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.

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