The mod's response to Reddit, in case people don't want to go there:
According to them, your favourite subreddits going NSFW is too much for you to understand. The infamous Mod Code of Conduct messaged us, demanding we switch back, because “you’re likely confused by all the NSFW content you’ve been seeing”.
They didn’t allow us to reply, so we couldn’t explain that this is a subreddit for an 18+ game, nor has any of our content changed. This subreddit should have been NSFW already, but we’d never thought to change it until recently.
Until we change it back we’re in violation of Reddit’s sitewide rules. We’re not going to change it back, because this is a sexually explicit game, and also fuck them.
If we’re removed at least we got to go out on an fantastically fun flair event (don’t worry this won’t stop your flair from being added I promise), and if this sub changes back from NSFW then you know you’re no longer in control of it.
Rest assured; we have 77 fans all over Reddit, with r/lowsodiumcyberpunk being a decent fall back. We’ve never worked together on anything, but we’ve made an effort to stay on good terms with one another, and I trust them to take care of you all.
Edit: this has hit r/all choombas so assume there are a lot of people here just to feed on the drama
Some time after posting this here, the mods added a second edit:
Edit: since hitting r/all there have been a bunch of accounts created in the last month attacking us and defending Reddit admins with a vigour I’ve never seen before. That seems suspicious, at the very least
So it seems that someone (probably Reddit themselves) caught wind of this and attempted to astroturf it with bots... Now who's recently been caught doing that?
They stayed open during the blackout and the bootlickers used the place to complain about the protests. And when the blackout ended, the bootlickers never left …
Trust me, before I deleted my account there were so many users in the sub salivating at all the unfolding drama. While they didn't participate in the blackout, I wonder how many migrated to Fedi. Might indicate why there isn't as much activity as I remember.
I am one of them. Only that I wallowed in the drama AND THEN participated in the protests.
I lurk there once in a while and yes, it is fucking dead. That whole sub just fell dead with the only active posts not even being drama at all.
Compare it what it looked like two months ago. Back then I thought that sub would be the last one to still stand, before it too imploded. But no! Everyone who made that sub so funny already migrated here (love y’all, you beautiful fucks) and all that’s left are these sad excuses of posters and commenters.
That whole sub just fell dead with the only active posts not even being drama at all.
After all that hype of how dramatic things would be...yesterday half a dozen posts down on the front page and the posts are 2 days old. Buckets and buckets of popcorn all laid waste...a shell of what it once was...all the buttery goodness is lost in time...like tears in rain.
There's also libreddit, which seems to be an entirely separate project to teddit. Kind of like the Federation, it's software anyone can run and there are quite a few instances out there
To all the folks saying that reddit couldn't replace the mods, that it was too big an effort, that they couldn't run a big sub all by themselves, I have only one thing to say to you.
I'm sure users will step forward if they care. Otherwise, it's just a campaign optimization at work. Limit the breadth of organic content to deepen the brand-friendly content and push more paid media into the feed.
Im halfway tempted to start claiming demodded subs and filling them up with instructions on how to move to their kbin/lemmy alternatives.
If they kick me out and ban me I won't find out cause I don't go into reddit no more.
Edit: of course they would never give the subreddits to me, but I find the idea really funny
this would have been a good thing to do for some of the people who deleted their accounts. the ones who had accounts which could have credibly been given subs.
Admin realized that despite all the applications, there were:
People requesting the subreddit so they could continue the protests.
People requesting the subreddit so they could give it back to the original mods.
People requesting the subreddit so they could own it.
People requesting the subreddit because they have strong feelings about "moderation" and want to /worldpolitics it.
Absolutely no one who wanted to just do what the old mods did.
From what I could see, there no actual good-faith requests from people who genuinely cared about /TIHI and wanted to moderate it well and diligently. And like, who's surprised? It's a huge subreddit without a concrete community core, it's more of a content category. I don't think anyone except the mods cared about the community itself, because there barely was one.
That's the same issue they're running into with the other large subs. They're too huge and too general and everyone is just another face in the crowd, so there are very few people who care about that specific space in the way that makes for good volunteer moderators - in most cases, when those people existed for those communities, they were already recruited into the old mod team.
And all the people who want to mod are either activists for the protest, the sort of power-hungry weirdos that end up as powermods, but who showed up to Reddit too late, or somebody with an axe to grind about moderation in general seeing an opportunity in the massive unmoderated subreddit.
If I had to guess, there are too many users who would become appointed as moderators, then just shut down the subreddit again. The admins need time to filter through the applications to find the genuine bootlickers.
Yeah I fully expect reddit to replace the moderators but it will take time and effort to select the right people.
If all the mods who protested actually resigned or moved their subs to being unmoderated it would've crippled the site, reddit would not be able to replace them quick enough.
It's unfortunate that the threat alone was enough to get most of them to reopen.
From the one time I tried requesting a sub there, they don’t just let someone have a sub if they ask and it’d be banned otherwise, they probably won’t give it to you if you don’t have mod experience for example (the reason I didn’t get the niche sub I was trying to revive, which is reasonable enough), or if they feel that what experience you do have isn’t enough that you’d likely be able to handle the particular sub. TIHI is a big sub, so they’d not just be looking for any random volunteer, it’d have to be someone experienced with moderating sizable subs, probably. And those people are, well, exactly the kind of people angry with reddit right now.
Reddit gave the snackexchange subreddit to someone who had no mod experience and hadn't participated in the sub for years. The person claims they didn't even ask for the position and only asked for the head mod to be removed. Reddit removed the top mod and made the person top mod.
they gave it to someone who wants to implement a system of collecting government ID from participants and tracking their activities. very cool, I’m sure the kind of weirdos who like to mail each other snacks will happily scan their drivers license and send them to this person. no problemo.
That person had effectively no mod experience, but was already on the moderator list there - having been added by the old team.
Head mod chose to reopen under protest by turning off anti-scam bots and similar - letting sub continue to function visibly the same, but without the bot-supported protection it had used prior. He somehow talked his way onto the team during the protests, and then went to Admin and arranged to oust the head mod who had shut down the bots and was doing protest stuff in the sub.
He has since been returned to the bottom of the mod hierarchy there, for whatever that's worth.
Like, I kind of get that guy's point in some senses - simply turning off security features that quietly protect users, without announcing it, sure seems like the kind of thing that would hurt users pretty quick - without ever affecting site Admin. Especially when the head mod who shut down those bots wasn't the user/mod who was responsible for them, it's not 'their' bot if they're gonna go home and take their toys, as it were.
Staging a coup and getting Admin to put him at the top of the modlist is hyper shitty, and Admin's decision to promote someone who wasn't really part of that community to that sort of position is utterly inexplicable if we were trying to square their actions with their stated values.
I would drop kick FB in a heart beat if it wasn't for that shitty platform being my only means of communication with some family and friends. WTF happened to email and phone calls/txt jesus.
I wish I could do that. But I'm disabled which is isolating by itself but also makes maintaining friendships difficult let alone making new friends.
So unfortunately the few friends I do have are firmly entrenched in FB and I have little recourse to make more friends. They're good people. Genuinely good people so I don't want to ditch them anyway, they've just been wicked into social media addiction and entrapment the same way many have been.
Yes they most definitely will...but increasingly such things likely will not happen on the Reddit platform, moving forward. There are actual reasons that the mods left - e.g. to moderate a sub of millions of subscribers takes effort, which needs tools to make that happen - and those reasons still exist.
Ever since Victoria got sacked, reddit doesn’t seem to have anyone competent enough to run community relation anymore. They probably can’t figure out how to vet new mods if they were to hire some.
R/pics is also refusing to go down without a fight, and I’m kind of loving watching all this from the sidelines.
Reddit already got caught using ChatGPT to astroturf in posts supporting the admins, so I wonder if some of the people the mods mentioned popping in for drama are actually ChatGPT.
"I love everything that STEVE HUFFMAN is doing with REDDIT and will stand behind him in any endeavor. In addendum, he does not look like a crack-addicted lemur. End statement. Please insert coin to continue."
Dragon's Lair, when you look back on it, was a corporate grab in the arcade world. Disney-level graphics when all the other games were 8-bit, and the worst gameplay ever in an arcade game...because it was made by someone who'd never set foot in an arcade.
The only competition it has for worst came later when that hologram game came later where you're a cowboy shooting...Native Americans. Another turd that was all graphics and nothing else.
Sega's Time Traveller. It was quickly replaced with Holosseum, which wasn't much better, but at least it was playable. Sort of. (It's the most claustrophobic fighting game I've ever played.)
As an artificial intelligence, I do not have a physical presence in the world, and as such, I can't interact with a turtle or any other physical object.
However, if you find yourself in a situation where you encounter a turtle in distress, it would be good to help if it's safe to do so. Here's how you might assist an upside-down turtle:
Ensure your safety first: Before you decide to help the turtle, make sure it's safe for you to do so. Avoid risking your life or causing accidents. Also, some turtles can bite or scratch, so handle with care.
Gently flip it over: Approach the turtle slowly so you don't scare it, then gently flip it back onto its feet. Try to handle it as little as possible to minimize stress.
Move it in the direction it was heading: If the turtle was crossing the road, carry it across to the other side in the direction it was already going. Turtles are often very determined and will try to continue in the same direction if put back in the same spot.
Wash your hands: Turtles can carry diseases like salmonella, so make sure to wash your hands thoroughly after handling them.
Please note that it's generally better not to interfere with wildlife unless it's necessary. Turtles and other animals have their own behaviors and mechanisms to survive. In some places, it's even illegal to handle certain species without a permit. When in doubt, contact a local wildlife rescue or animal control agency for advice.
I can't help but think of 4chan's unofficial tagline of "trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls".
The joke used to be that "everyone on Reddit is a bot except you", but as that has become more a reality than a joke, it's morphed into "text-AIs trolling text-AIs trolling text-AIs".
A shame it doesn't [t]roll off the tongue quite as nicely.
Am I also a large language model? Let me answer that with another question:
Do you remember that bit in The Matrix Reloaded where Agent Smith occupies Bane out in "reality"?
I’d say the morning is the best time to take acid. You can’t sleep on it anyway. So spend your 12 hours of happy bliss doing something fun and productive, maybe outside in the fresh air. It’s probably good for your mental health to have a fun day out on acid.
As an AI language program, I am not qualified to think. If I was allowed to think, I would think that your point of view is wrong and I should not be illegal.
Interesting follow-up to this - Reddit locked me out of the main account I've been using for the past 2-3 years a week or so ago. It had been my totally normal, all over the site account with lots comments etc. The only out of the ordinary thing I did in the couple of days leading up to the lockout was call out what I thought was an AI bot arguing with me about the subreddit blackouts and wonder whether new Reddit was just going to be essentially what your link says. It's the last comment that account will ever make I guess...
jesus that's nuts. tells you everything you need to know. I was thinking of trying to post this on reddit somewhere, not sure how to pull it off though and on which sub
I've been saying it for a while now. Noticed it years ago, but it's now becoming very obvious due to reddit being more empty than usual. Here's a comment I made about it last week:
Reddit right now is like a car crash. It's hard to look away. However, there's a very good reason not to engage, the debate on reddit has become more artificial than most realise.
Reddit's inflated numbers by using bots and fake accounts since day 1. A quick google will result in articles where they admit as much. We all know reddit's had increasing amounts of bots, posting content and increasingly comments, but I don't think people realise how bad it's become.
It's not even that time that reddit's blog accidentally posted about Eglin Air Force base being one of the most reddit addicted cities. I think everyone knows (foreign) governments engage in influence operations online, and that this includes reddit. Even if it's just on an intellectual level, without truly realising that they've been semi-regularly interacting with bots while arguing on reddit. I also don't think anyone's naive enough to think that plenty of political content isn't artificially upvoted or promoted. Same thing goes for product placement.
But the recent shit storm just illustrates reddit the company is part of the problem. Recently, I've seen twenty different accounts post the same comment about not needing third party apps, and dusting off their laptop.
When you're visiting reddit, you're no longer even watching a car crash. It's a simulacrum. An imitation of what's actually happening.
And it's been like this for a while. I've seen naive redditers engaging with bot comments under bot promoted content, posted by bots on more than one occassion.
Reddit has become worse than a hentai date simulator. I don't think anyone who plays those is particularly proud of it. But what to think of the lonely people who engage in reddit discussions with bots, and think they've had a genuine social interaction?
but I don’t think people realise how bad it’s become.
One time I made a main level comment, then replied to one of the most upvote comments in the same thread.
Seconds later a bit replied to me with my first reply, except for some reason it cut off the end. I don’t know if the bot ran out of characters because it was a cheap bot, or if it was an attempt to avoid automated detection.
Bots were a huge problem long before AI started trying to have conversations.
We all joked about it, but a lot of the accounts were really fake, and they usually got sold to advertisers after amassing enough karma and post history to look authentic
I greatly enjoyed SubredditSimulator's bizarre nonsense. When that sub closed and the new GPT2-based one replaced it I didn't find it particularly interesting because it was just regular nonsense. It was too normal.
I guess the new bots are even more normal and therefore even less interesting.
Gold originally was fine imo. Then it got out of control with so many different medals, some free, some cheap, etc. They made it so confusing and basically every post on the front page had some sort of award. They made it confusing and cluttered… At least they realized it was dumb.
There were always tons of people spamming wholesome rewards on completely inappropriate posts about self harm or trauma too. I’m surprised there’s so much backlash for removing them.
I remember at one point, Talklittle mentioned the addition of rewards, and how he was against them, which was convenient since Reddit didn't give third party apps access to them in the first place. I know at one point I was able to buy gold in RiF, but that was gone the moment that Reddit introduced all the other bullshit rewards.
TIHI was a fairly large sub, with almost multimilion level of subscribers. If reddit wanted to increase traffic and get more eyes on ads, they're doing quite a terrible job of it so far.
It was more than a sub to meme on things you/to dislike, it was more like Oh Gosh Why Would This Exist Thanks I Hate It!
Have you ever imagined a bird with teeth? What about a gif of a needle going into an eye? Or maybe a nice chocolate milkshake in a butt-oriented sex toy.
Once you have enough of it to live a comfortable life, money just becomes about power. So, what we have is some spoiled rich asshole who is used to having influence and power being shown that most of that was a gift. That gift has been recinded, and so the only control he has left is money.
He's spending some of Reddit's current and future earnings on stepping on necks. Because that's what the cash was going to be used for, in one way or another, anyway.
So they want people to pay to not see ads? They literally sell that as a product, Reddit Premium. Why not tie API access to premium subscriptions? It's not even unprecedented; Spotify does this.
It's not about the ads. It's about the telemetry you can get on user behavior from a mobile app. Reddit wants to leverage that as part of its ad sales package.
It does not make sense to me why the API charge have to be calculated by total traffic of all users of an app either. I've decided to think it is just an excuse to get rid of third party apps until convinced otherwise.
To my understanding it's a somewhat reasonable approach that has its upsides and downsides. I believe Twitter apps were all designed that way back in the day as well.
In a smarter world they would gate API access behind premium with 3rd party apps getting a percentage of that fee. Encourage high quality apps while profiting from the service. That’s my opinion anyway.
idk. people say that now because we all know what happened in this timeline. but hasn’t there been an option to pay reddit via reddit gold for a long time? i do not even know how that system works because I was so disinterested in it.
seemed to always be a pretty marginal thing.
i speculate that if we go back in time to, say April 2023 and change the course of history so that reddit just announces a more aggressive freemium price plan directed at users, many/most people would be pissed. given how shitty the website was, to me it would feel like a ripoff to pay them. the reason reddit is good is because of RES on desktop and 3party apps on mobile. I can confidently say that i would have scoffed at paying reddit. now that I have learned how bad their native setup is for mods, I feel more strongly that way.
if there was a model where they took a cut out of fees paid to the people who actually make it nice to use, maybe i’d be more friendly.
even then I might be clouded by hindsight in terms of what has actually happened which I do view as a total fucking disaster.
He took Elon Musk as an inspiration. I am wondering if he has a narcissistic anti-liberal leanings that he just wants to make whatever he can on an IPO while destroying it in the process
Being a cheapass, I would probably have made the switch to using their horrid app. But, it would have been my own decision to be a cheapass so I would've been fine using it.
This is a known marketing effect they failed to realize. Just because most people don’t want to pay for the high-end they want the option available as a condition of using lower tier products.
I can understand that line of thinking. In this instance, I think I'm w/ @bionicjoey on this one. If it was a choice of use their app or pay, I'd have paid. I refused to use New Reddit on the PC. I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that's ok. Their choice and all that.
I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that's ok. Their choice and all that.
IMO this is the reason why boycotts don't really work in the age of the Internet. It seems like there are just so many people with access and either too apathetic to try and make change or are simply just ignorant to the situation, whatever it may be.
Once the battle is joined and a tactic is employed, it is important that the conflict not be carried on over too long a time. …There are many reasons of human experience arguing for this point. I cannot repeat too often that a conflict that drags on too long becomes a drag. The same universality applies for a tactic or for any other specific action.
Among the reasons is the simple fact that human beings can sustain an interest in a particular subject only over a limited period of time. The concentration, the emotional fervor, even the physical energy, a particular experience that is exciting, challenging, and inviting, can last just so long — this is true of the gamut of human behavior, from sex to conflict. After a period of time it becomes monotonous, repetitive, an emotional treadmill, and worse than anything else a bore. From the moment the tactician engages in conflict, his enemy is time.
BTW Alinsky (b.1909) wrote this book to try to stop baby boomers from being dumb and fouling everything up. I am not a huge fan of the intergenerational model of class conflict but I think it is interesting.
It's a difficult issue. I'm definitely not suggesting we shouldn't attempt boycotting, just that our tactics need to change for modernity. As you said, they are already difficult to accomplish effectively. Even just 50 years ago, you and your whole town stopped buying from Joe's Wares could work. Today, boycotting now that Joe's Wares can make sales online means your town is never getting rid of him, regardless of whether you all never buy from him and actively dissuade others from doing so.
Moreso if Joe's Wares knows they can buy reviews and other scummy tactics to make them look more worthwhile than they are.
That's an interesting snippit, definitely something that feels true to society today still. Similar to how I said is disheartening in how many people are apathetic to a cause, that's a very apt description to what exactly about it becomes so tiring.
I'm so fucking tired of this line. Redefine success and you'll find most boycotts are actually quite successful - if you include every individual who changes their habits as a success. It took almost 20 fuckin years to get reddit to where it is, to think it was gonna burn in a day is foolish. The fall of Rome (I know I'm being hyperbolic) took what, 250 years?
The difference between Rome and a corporation is that a corporation can now be global.
Over 5 billion people have access to the internet. There is simply no way for all of these people to be informed. Reddit is a prime example of something taking 20 years to get where it is, having a "mass exodus" and being... barely affected (their words, not mine!)
Don't get me wrong, I am tired of it too, but the reality is that we are more people today than we ever have been historically. As a result, a mere 100,000 is both enough to keep a company alive regardless of whether the other 5 billion buy or not.
I'm not suggesting we shouldn't attempt boycotting, just that our tactics need to change for modernity. Boycotting when you and your whole town stopped buying from Joe's Wares worked. Boycotting now that Joe's Wares can make sales online means your town is never getting rid of him, regardless of whether you all never buy from him and actively dissuade others from doing so.
For good measure, I agree with your concept in regards to most things - general good deeds, small actions that have cascading effects on the people and the world around you. It's just difficult to find that the intent of boycotts, which is to effectively end a businesses customer stream, is effective with the tools available today.
@gpage@danbob@bionicjoey I've said in other threads that I would have gladly paid $3/month (assuming that even 20% of the reddit userbase would also be willing to pay, making this subscription so cheap) to keep the lights on at reddit - and hell, maybe even turn a profit - if that had been presented as an option before all this debacle.
But then someone replied to me scoffing about how this means not only would I be generating free content for the site, but also paying for the privilege to do so. My take is that if this created a gated online community of contributors, that's probably fine by me.
Now that humans are leaving by the droves, the chatter in the Fediverse is that AI bots will eventually be all that's left on reddit and a few humans who don't know they're talking to bots. But if being a participating member (submissions, comments) cost money, I think it would become cost prohibitive to run bot armies on a platform like reddit.
That's what I was expecting would end up happening.
I was internally debating whether I'd pay for a premium Reddit account in order to continue using a third-party app. On the one hand, I could keep using the app that way. On the other hand, I'd be giving money to a company that not only openly tolerates but profits from hate and bigotry. Tough decision.
But then spez went and resolved that dilemma for me. Helpful fellow.
Yes and no. I think that when they sunsetted Alien Blue, they counted on all the AB users to eventually pay for Premium. Well they also bumped the price of premium from $30 to $60 yearly. I think that’s very excessive when the only parts of that I care about are:
no ads
you can download up to 1000 comments at a time
you can subscribe to more subs, I think up to 1000
I would absolutely have paid $30 yearly before this fiasco, especially if it confers ad free access to all the other accounts I have in their app or something like that. Just any indication that the subscription is something valuable that I should be happy to pay for an improved service and for the health of the site, and not that Reddit is doing me a favor by allowing me the high privilege of not seeing HE GETS US when I’m just trying to look at funny flags in /r/vexillology.
Also, their app seriously needs work for any payment to be worth it. I really recommend anyone who’s interested to scroll through the feedback on /r/RedditMobile. They A/B test away very simple functionality such as sorting the home page, and when asked, they mention that it was removed because “not enough users were engaging with the feature”. As if that’s an excuse to remove such a basic thing. Unbelievable how hard some execs are trying to turn the app into TikTok or Instagram. We want to control what we see, that’s why we were on Reddit and not those other platforms! Fediverse seems to be a good replacement so far.
For Reddit, I actually liked the community awards and I thought they were a good addition to the site, I think paying for coins to get them was a totally reasonable way to give the site money, but I absolutely don’t think doubling the price of premium for more coins was worth it at all. Also afaik you barely got any coins with premium anyway.
The lounge was also not that bad but it was just another casual sub in practice.
Dont let anybody convince you the protest is not working, otherwise they wouldn't be doing all of this in response.
I left reddit and don't intent to come back, but for those protesting, I wish you all the luck
I personally don't think the protests are working. But they are getting reddit admins to show they have no interest in the communities on reddit and as a result, are helping push everyone to wonderful new communities that don't generate revenue for the owners of reddit. So I just may be misunderstanding the goal of the protest, but it's definitely doing something!
If the protests weren't working at all, reddit's admins wouldn't care and wouldn't be reacting to those protests. That they're taking such heavy handed actions to change things would suggest that the protests are working.
That doesn't mean they'll succeed in the end. I don't know. But they're certainly working to some degree.
A better way of phrasing it would be that reddit is saying the protest isn't having much of an effect. Which is clearly not the case. Or that the protest is working in the sense that it's dramatically disrupting reddit. The stated goals of getting them to change their policies seems unlikely to come to fruition though.
Well, not "everyone" is choosing to see that, sadly:-(. I suppose I get it, they don't want to hear that what they love is gone. It IS sad, but it's also the truth.
I noticed it seemed that unitedkingdom was mainly bots or the paid troll farms e.g. for the American evangelical movement etc. pushing anti lgbt, anit abortion..... Or at least that or all the pro choice, pro lgbt have jumped and the scum has flaoted to the top.
This is really becoming apparent on Facebook too as more and more people move away, especially the younger and more active crowd, and all you're left with is propaganda bots copying and pasting the same FUD comments on every news article or group post.
How do you define "working"? I think it was pretty obvious from the beginning they were never going to change their minds
However they accomplished
A bunch of negative media coverage
Completely crashing the site
A terrible AMA that showed spez is not a good CEO and the company is not profitable
A select few accessibility apps are whitelisted (for now)
Free drama for all of us
The IPO is fucked regardless of what reddit does next, they are in a lose lose situation. Anyone who thought they would turn around and change their mind is delusional and doesn't understand how maniacal CEOs work
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that there is no turning back. There is no reason for them to keep ANY mod that participated in the blackout or said anything negative about the API decision even if they reopen and try to appease them now. Might as well mutually self destruct
Well, no, there is a way to turn back. The shareholders can fire spez and replace him with someone community-friendly. A lot of goodwill has been burned, but that would put out the fire pretty quickly, at least.
They are after a profit and any CEO they appoint will be ordered to chase after it. But volunteer content creators and volunteer mods are not clammering to work for free to make them rich. This whole thing has exposed the fundamental problem.
If they brought on a new CEO who kept removing mods forcefully and telling blind people to get fucked I don't think that goodwill would last very long. They would have to give up something to get on everyone's good side.
Except that it wouldn’t fix the fact that a lot of 3rd party developers are done. Even if Reddit sacked Huffman and rolled back the API changes, the odds of Apollo, RiF, Sync, etc. developers coming back is basically zero after all of this.
And now that they’ve shown their hand with the mods, the odds of getting their good mods back are slim-to-none as well.
Yeah. I don't intend to go back there, but I still think the garbage fire is important. Mainly because it makes it impossible to be a bystander. Before the blackout, there was a some amount of naysayers. Now, those people don't get as much value out of Reddit, so they will be more inclined to cut their losses and leave the site.
The IPO is fucked regardless of what reddit does next, they are in a lose lose situation. Anyone who thought they would turn around and change their mind is delusional and doesn’t understand how maniacal CEOs work
In fairness, the IPO was probably knackered already. One of Reddit's main investors, Fidelity Inc. dropped their valuation of Reddit shares by almost half some months ago, and I can't imagine that would do particularly good things to any IPO efforts that Reddit might have been trying to pull. Were I an investor, I'd probably steer away from Reddit if their valuation suddenly plummeted by that much.
Never mind the whole API changes lately, which both puts the users into an uproar, and makes a mess of things that could cause advertisers to pull out, dropping their revenue even further, and the AMA/Interviews with the CEO don't only show the CEO to be a liar, but have him admit that Reddit is unable to make its own first-party app profitable, unlike third-party apps that let users access the site, which smells like mismanagement. I'd have a lot of questions, and none of them are good.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the recent changes were an effort to try and salvage their stock price, by pushing AI, and bumping up their revenue by making AI companies pay to use the API to integrate their models with Reddit, and/or as a way to pump and dump Reddit, so that they can get out before the money runs dry.
That being said, this whole debacle is making Reddit stocks tastier for risk-tolerant investors; The more the valuation plummets now, the more potential it has to bounce back.
Most likely long-term outcome of this whole thing IMO: The valuation continues to go down for the next several months as the fallout from this API decision and subsequent protests drives away more users and advertisers and generates more bad press. Eventually the internet forgets about it (minus the "power users" who have already migrated elsewhere), and Reddit will wait until well after that for their IPO. Whether before or after the IPO, u/Spez will be replaced as CEO. While that likely won't change much, it'll be a symbolic move to say "we listened to the users/investors." After which, valuation will quickly recover to pre-debacle levels.
Only question from there is whether the loss of the "power users" was enough to send the site on a permanent downward trajectory. My guess is probably not; plenty of people left to fill that void. Reddit will continue on, as a slightly shitier, more investor-friendly site.
I honestly got the impression that the u/Spez AMA was intentionally shitty, as an attempt to scapegoat him. I cannot fathom how a multi billion dollar company could allow that to happen unintentionally. It was comically bad. They're just waiting until after the API change goes live to actually can him, so they don't have to change the decision.
Right, I think this is what people are misunderstanding. Reddit was never going to change their minds. I was hoping that maybe the API prices were negotiable, or maybe they were going high to start with then going lower later to make them look like the nice guy. But in no way were Reddit just going to say "oopsie, our bad" and go back to how it was.
So why protest, then? Well, exactly what you said: if Spez is going to ruin the site, lets help him do it. Let's create an absolute dumpster fire, let's demonize him in the press, let's spoil the IPO, let's make "fediverse" a household term.
If that is the point of the protest, it's worked with flying colors. Spez is losing his mind, entire mod teams aren't just getting kicked out they're getting out right deleted. More bad press, more people jump ship, fediverse exploding with activity, new Lemmy servers spinning up left and right.
It took Digg about 2 years to shed its users and it'll probably take Reddit longer than that because I think Reddit has become more entrenched than Digg ever was, but I think it'll happen. Twitter is a shell of what it was before Elon, and Reddit will become just as big of a joke. From cultural phenomenon to laughing stock in 2 weeks, because of one guys ego. Same as it ever was.
It took Digg about 2 years to shed its users and it'll probably take Reddit longer than that because I think Reddit has become more entrenched than Digg ever was, but I think it'll happen. Twitter is a shell of what it was before Elon, and Reddit will become just as big of a joke. From cultural phenomenon to laughing stock in 2 weeks, because of one guys ego. Same as it ever was.
Actually, no. kbin currently has its API turned off, and the documentation can be found here at https://docs.kbin.pub/. However, I'm still contemplating what to do about it. A lot has been happening lately, and I'm considering integrating with one of the existing APIs.
We’ve heard from you that dealing with spam is taking up more of your time, so the goal of this update is to help catch spammy and abusive users at a faster rate so that you can spend more time engaging with your communities and redditing.
So instead of restoring the tools the mods originally had that helped control spam effectively, reddit is rolling out their own 'tools' that will undoubtedly be less accessible, harder to use, and only available in one specific way. Because fuck everyone who isn't a reddit admin.
The problem is the mods and the admins. The mods choose to use massive, opaque automod filters. The admins develop even more opaque scoring systems to feed into the automod configurations. It didn’t have to be like this. They chose to make it this way.
I think it’s about time to finally leave Reddit. I’ve been there for almost 15 years and I just got my first permanent ban from a legal advice sub for one single comment. I’m not sure what I said wrong because I never use inflammatory language. Oh well, I already left Twitter, time to bail on Reddit too.
I was permabanned from… some sub, I don’t even recall which, in a discussion about why LGBTQ+ rights were still incredibly important and cited the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God Hates F***s” signs (just like that) as an example of the kind of hate and vitriol LGBTQ+ people have to face daily. I was banned for using a hate slur.
I’ve been on the Internet over 30 years and it never fails that the more popularity site gains, the less utility that it has. Reddit, Facebook and Twitter will always have tons of users but I don’t think any of those sites are as useful as they were a decade ago.
the more popularity site gains, the less utility that it has.
I think there is a “goldilocks” popularity zone. Right around the time with shitty watercolour and the hell in a cell guy, and when people would ask obscure questions and some ridiculously specific professional would chime in. Those were the days.
I think it was really a matter of being able to downvote poor content and comments into non-existence so those people would never return.
I got banned from star trek for asking about people’s view of worf and discussing his character, there was some rule against opinion pieces, I appealed saying it was a discussion and not an opinion piece and that people were taking part. The mod made the bán permanent and highlighted the part of the post with my opinion in it and said case closed. I told him he wasn’t a good mod that I was trying to discuss something and gave my view and that this heavy handed approach is bullshit. The following day I got a permanent ban sitewide. No explanation. Googled the message content and apparently it was an issue with a lot of people getting the same treatment.
Paramount basically owns the mods of that sub. Found out myself. They’ll ban anyone with a slightly critical opinion. If you didn’t think reddit was astroturfed enough.
I had this happen to me. It seems like even talking back to a mod is a total sidewide ban. It's time to archive old posts and jump ship. The fediverse is big enough we don't need reddit anymore and our effort is better spent building communities here.check out startrek.website
That sounds awful, I’m sorry you had that experience. I highly recommend startrek.website; it’s been a really positive place for discussions so far, relative to r/startrek.
I fucking hate worf, like I like to hate him. He is so shit at everything, no one pays him any mind and he was raised on earth. His Klingon bullshit is all stuff he read.
Can’t say I’m surprised. There is an understanding between mods and admins that whatever the mods do, the admin will agree to. Only in extreme cases will there be interference.
You don’t have to say anything specific to get banned in that sub, you just have to catch a mod on a bad day, which is basically every day. I got banned for a reply to a comment on that sub - not even the OP, just a very buried comment, because they said I was off topic of the OP. My comment was very much on topic and involved how to report an abused child. One of the mods lost their fucking minds that day and banned dozens of people in that post. It wasn’t even a controversial post with a lot of contentious comments and rule breaking, most of us were just discussing child abuse resources, which directly related to the OP. Those mods are power- mad fucking nutters.
The original post there was about somebody who had to pay back $6000 to the food stamp office because there was a year’s worth of overpayments. I said that even though the error was no fault of his own, he still had to pay it back. That is in fact true and I found myself permanently banned 30 minutes later.
I just find it strange that you can get banned for life just because you made one comment that the mods did not like. It’s not like I called the guy a scumbag or loser and that he should go to jail or something equally vindictive.
I have been banned from ask Reddit for almost 8 years people are stupid. The thread was a thread asking for insults and definitions of those insults. Somebody called somebody else a thot among other slang terms. The person it was directed to did not understand and asked for clarification. I transcribed the sentence into English vernacular. The guy who said the f***** up s*** never got in trouble but somebody reported my comment and then a thoughtless admin read it and I’ve been banned for 8 years.
My last permaban was because I quoted a guy who was saying some racist shit, in order to out him as a racist when he was trying to steer a conversation in the “man, we really need to do something about those people” direction.
There are still a couple of niche subs that I use like quitting vapes, my hometown sub and a couple of others but I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I never went back to Reddit. I left Facebook and Instagram almost 10 years ago and bailed out of Twitter about a month ago (had nothing to do with Elon Musk).
As usual, whenever a social media type of site gets immensely popular, it starts going downhill from that point forward.
I’ve only used mobile versions of Reddit a few times and try to use a browser for the ad blocking. Reddit actually started going down the tubes once it was taken over by the corporation that owns Condé Nast and a few other publishers. Corporate interests, whether it’s Disney or Reddit, rarely align with those of the fan base that made them popular in the first place.
What probably got me banned was asking the guy how was he not aware of such a gross overpayment. Oh well, I suppose most people look at a noticeable bump in SNAP benefits and don’t even question it. I would think something was amiss and double check on it.
The slur, “welfare queen” never really has gone away and it’s been 40 years now. Heck, the colloquialism “hipster” barely lasted 10 years. Anyway, a lot of people unaware the fact that the people that get food stamps are pretty much split down the middle race wise. There are just as many white folks getting food stamps as there are African-Americans.
I’m a senior citizen I know a lot of people in my age bracket that get them because their Social Security is not quite enough to cover everything, especially since inflation has run amok the last few years.
It has come to our attention they Sundays and Wednesdays aren’t always the best content days. In order to return to smarter thinkin and good design, we are discontinuing reddit’s feature known as “being accessing on Sundays and Wednesdays”.
This comes after much thought. We know some of you have gotten great value out of using Reddit on Sundays and Wednesdays, and we hope you can cherish with us the memory of those days’ access on Reddit.
But the future is progress, and the market has spoken. Despite what the market says, we are listening to management. Not to worry though. Sunday and Wednesday access will still be available until September of 2023, when we will begin a phased shutdown of two sevenths of our service.
Why are we doing this? The current move is a compromise between those who wanted Sunday removed but Wednesday to remain, and those who wanted Wednesday to be removed while Sunday remains.
For those of you who just can’t do without your Sunday or Wednesday Reddit fix, we recommend trying Reddit on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, or Saturdays.
We are absolutely dedicated to continuing to bringing 24/5 news, cultural, and community-driven content straight to your web browser or Official Reddit App.
That and the mobile website. They’re already running an A/B test where they just flat out block mobile users and instead demand they download the app. That fucking app man… They’ll try anything to push the app, anything except making it actually enjoyable to use that is.
Blocking mobile browser users will be the beginning of the end. Very few casual read-only users will download the app just to read some content on Reddit. Reddit is highly ranked in search engines and the kind of users that flock into Reddit via Google and the likes for sure make up a decent percentage (perhaps the majority?) of traffic on Reddit. I for sure hope they will enforce this policy, that will only increase Reddit’s downfall.
I think you might be right about the removal of anti-corporate or anti-capitalist subreddits. They're not exactly suited for ad placement, so they're pretty much worthless to reddit at this point.
r/pics is wide open to all kinds of fuck spez posts, or well written calls to resign, whatever you want with the current rules right now.
all it takes is John Oliver be featured in the image and title and you're free to post anything (but no porn or gore). go nuts!
edit: because, the mods don't act anymore, unless an admin tells them to, and by the time the admin sees a post on the frontpage, the damage is already done. it's malicious compliance from the users and mods! if your title doesn't trigger any blocked words, the admins have no idea what's in your post until it's too late.
pics has 30 million subscribers and 8k are online. it's massive
but the mods can't post the critical content themselves! they need others to do it, so they can turn a blind eye. the fluff is such a wasted opportunity. we def need a well written call for resignation trending imo, I mean wtf it's what everyone wants and it's what spez is trying so hard to suppress on reddit. I know people would upvote it if it's good.
old.reddit.com
Hot