Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by ranger207 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:39 PM UTC

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…

I'm really not sure the big subs would suffer all that much. Many of them are already modded by a clique of mods and are large enough that there's not really any community to be had there anyway. It would be pretty terrible for the small communities that were reddit's most valuable part

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

#82

Post by redmerchant2 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:39 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #51

redmerchant2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Mus…

> Most of the mods are debatably not power hungry Everything made sense except this part. Power goes to everyone's head.

I have no doubt, my point is the mods of r/music don’t have a specific leaning that they’d try to manipulate.

Most of the mods of bigger subs have been doing it for years and it’s just a quirky hobby/obligation.

Obviously the super mods are in the pocket of the admins, and political subs are very controlling.

But appointing a new round of mods for a sub with millions of subscribers will attract the most bottom barrel power hungry people.

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

#83

Post by katbyte » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #64

dyingkneepad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having people do the (absolutely necessary) moderation for free.

If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat. At some point, Reddit will just force all subs to be open again, and any mods that try to delete the sub or do no moderation will just get banned or whatever. It's pretty hard to fight against the corp using the corp's own platform.

> If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat.

no, because it is actual work to be a mod. work you don't get paid or rewarded for.

i'd say no without hesitation.

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

#84

Post by ranger207 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:40 PM UTC

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…

Haven't been in this situation, but from previous reddit outrages his best course is "do nothing and everyone will forget about this in like a month"

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

#85

Post by zucked » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #29

Reddit would be infinitely better without any subreddits bigger than about 100k subscribers.

That’s been the part of this blackout that has hurt the most, honestly. I’ve been on Reddit for longer than a decade and all but entirely shut out the front page subs like Videos, InterestingAF, etc. I wouldn’t miss those if they disappeared tomorrow.

Instead, I’m in far smaller niche and location-relevant subs. I didn’t realize what cutting off my city subreddit would do for my sense of connection to my city. I didn’t realize how shit general search results are for questions about hobbies.

It’s really made me question if can allow one entity to serve as such an important conduit to my interests again.

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

#86

Post by Alupis » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

dybber wrote: post #34

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 a…

I've gotta tell you - in 6-12 months nobody will even care anymore - and Reddit will still be used en masse like before.

Talking with regular non-techy people who use reddit regularly - nobody outside our bubble even knows about or cares about the whole API fiasco. Most people I've talked with shrug and say they'll just use the official app if that's what it all means. The others asked if they can just pay and use the same 3rd party app in the future.

Reddit has been, and is filled with drama. These public news pieces make the community appear extremely naïve, to a fault. When people hear some of these apps had tens, or hundreds of thousands of users that circumvented ad revenue for reddit - they mostly do not have sympathy for the 3rd party app developers.

Just being realistic. I like reddit as much as the next guy, and agree the leadership is terrible (reddit has a long history of terrible leadership).

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

#87

Post by whatyesaid » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

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.

Well that means bots can take anything down unless you become really good at detecting bots. Not like it's hard for bots to get points you can do so with reposting and GPT for comments.

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

#88

Post by tomstockmail » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

SonicScrub wrote: post #45

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.

And they're not doing it, so they will be replaced. There's always someone willing to step up.

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

#89

Post by Aaargh20318 » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #64

dyingkneepad wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having people do the (absolutely necessary) moderation for free.

If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat. At some point, Reddit will just force all subs to be open again, and any mods that try to delete the sub or do no moderation will just get banned or whatever. It's pretty hard to fight against the corp using the corp's own platform.

Sure, they’d get plenty or people who would want to get moderator rights. How many of those would actually put in the hours ? And how would you know before you hand over the sub?

Not only that, it would create a revolt among the moderators who were still left so you’d have to do this for all subs at once. Tens of thousands of people.

It would be an absolute disaster for Reddit.

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

#90

Post by OldManRyan » Tue, Jun 13, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

depereo wrote: post #74

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…

I added reddit.com to my ublock filters - it was kind of an automatic click a few times a day and it's been a nice way to break the habit so strongly. I've got friends doing the same, and our microcommunity has formed around another platform already, after collectively losing reddit. It was so clearly a half-assed, badly thought out policy. No mention of mod tools. No mention of accessibility tools. No mention of res…

I also added reddit to my ublock filters. Amazing how I never realized how often I go on autopilot and type reddit.com/r/whateversubreddit. If anyone else wants to do it, just add ||reddit.com^$all to your filters in ublock origin.