While it would be an unpopular move, it would be pretty trivial for Reddit just to force reactive some or even all of these subreddits.
I wonder if the average Reddit user would be upset enough over the action to stop using the site?
Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
421–430 of 485 posts
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#422I've never been a big reddit user but I increased my usage as Twitter devolved into what it is now, but now I'm going to have to find something else. I'll most likely start paying for Apple News for general/current event stuff, stick with HN for tech, but I no longer have a "turn off your brain and just decompress with some funny/random crap" outlet. Bummer, I'm sure it was floated, and probably shot down for some st…
They could have required Reddit Premium to use third party apps or something of the sort. Or injected ads into third party apps via the API. Or forced third party apps through a verification process to get an API key not unlike Google's Oauth process and monetize it differently for training use cases, etc.
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
I deleted my 8yo account. It was right after someone downvoted me because pointed out something that broke with their opinion. That kind of summed up my view Reddit. Groupthink circle jerks. Why was I part of any of that??
> It was right after someone downvoted me because pointed out something that broke with their opinion. It took you 8 years to realize that's how that place operates? Hell, that describes the culture on HN pretty well. Freewheeling downvoting was a flawed idea from the beginning. 20 years later it turns out Slashdot had the right model for moderation.
Of course, I realized that for years, however, and now I’m realizing maybe I should quit hackernews as well
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think that new mods would be any less oppressive than old mods?
Its statistically more likely than not replacing them. In democratic places they replace people for a reason
Well, no, mods on Reddit aren't democratic in the slightest, it's a basic dictatorship where the topmost mod has all the power. And in a dictatorship the best you can hope for is a BDFL, but BDFLs arise when a community starts small (and thus doesn't attract malevolent dictators) and congeals around someone benevolent. You can't take a large community and appoint a new dictator, because it will overwhelmingly attract exactly the type of person who shouldn't be the dictator. In practice, this will likely result in more malevolent dictators, not fewer.
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Impassioned people with domain experience, in many cases. /r/videos, sure, that's got its own culture, history, known reposts, moderation style needs, etc. It will take some work to for a group of communications majors to figure out how to moderate it. But /r/PLC, where I hung out frequently? You need reasonably intelligent electrical engineers to discern spammy press releases from interesting news! We don't work che…
Should voting by itself sort the good and bad content? So if the community knows things naturally the spam should fall down and good content be on top?
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#426Great opportunity for people to create derivative subreddits without oppressive mods.
Reddit makes it extremely hard for people to find alternative/small subreddits.
This is where they could really come in. Automatically forward anyone who tries to access old one to new one. And they could even migrate the content already there.
Win-Win. New community gets the boost they deserve and old one gets to stay dark.
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sports subreddits are a notable exception imo. While they might get a bit silly, r/cfb, r/nba, etc. are so much better than Twitter or any other public forum that losing them would be pretty awful.
I only follow motorsports so the only sports subs I'm on are motogp, v8supercars and formula1. The F1 subreddit (over a million subs)is one of the absolute worst places on the internet for any kind of discussion. It's totally dominated by The Hive Mind, dissenting opinions are absolutely unwelcome and the top posts on every single post are low-effort jokes, usually jokes that have been told a thousand times before. I…
Subreddits generally undergo twinkdeath between 100k and 1m users. Once enough people know about the sub they tell all their snoo friends and pretty soon it’s just a hivemind and memes and funny quips. Watched it happen to a lot of tech subs.
The exception is subs that lean heavily into over-the-top curation which is also its own special kind of groupthink hell imo.
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#428Reddit is free to tweak their monitization any way they like. I am curious how this will turn out, when we look back on this a year from now. This is an opportunity for new moderators to start new subreddits. Conversely Reddit management may back down.
I remember several controversies with Netflix and the New York times which resulted in public outcry and people leaving, or at least proclaiming it in mass on social media. But then it died down and both are still quite popular.
Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#429Re: Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely
#430This is what is needed to put pressure on Reddit. A two day protest then returning to normal is a blip in the grand scheme of things. But if they do not change their API pricing, stance on third party apps, etc, then a prolonged blackout could lead to an eventual exodus. I hope the communities I used to engage in partake in this prolonged blackout.
> A two day protest then returning to normal is a blip in the grand scheme of things. People keep saying this. It's true of the vast majority of protests. And yet, they keep happening, and I don't think it's because they're completely ineffective. I'll grant I don't entirely get it either, but here's my theory of how they work: by being a show of unity, protests are an honest signal of power. In any case where the pa…
I agree. In addition to your theory, I think that even if protests are ineffective in the short term, they can be effective in the long term. That is, the media attention given to protests can gradually change people's thinking. But it is a very slow and subtle shift, and impossible to measure. Of course, one might argue that shifts in the zeitgeist were already happening, and protests are just a symptom. Personally I think it goes both ways, they feed into each other.
We can hope that even if the Reddit protests ultimately go nowhere, they will at least have shifted public opinion, if only slightly.