I was just going to say this. Holding on to the illusion of power as a major moderator is about to turn into a shitshow. Even Reddit themselves have been caught using chat bots to sway public opinion.
Reddit has decided to make every bad decision (favoring profits) possible, all at once.
I really wonder about bot synergy. How many haiku’s will one bot write that another will correct the spelling on and a third find that all words are in alphabetical order
Peck was a part of the EPA and had legitimate reasons to investigate them.
Venkman was a dick and didn’t cooperate with Peck’s investigation, so Peck got pissed and went nuclear on their ass cause he thought they were charlatans.
The guy who actually flipped the switch even told Peck he’s never seen anything like that and didn’t want to do it.
this fucking sucks. i am very disappointed that the protests lost steam and everything is just back to normal, swept under the rug. they showed their hand, acted like fucking dictators, and everyone is just like "welp thats it!" and gives the fuck up. it's just sad. it feels like 90% of the people who said they were in this were all just being performative.
so many of us dedicated a lot of time to the protests, left our communities, migrated, all for everyone to just go crawling back. i won't go back. i am staying on kbin. but man, it fucking sucks to see reddit face 0 consequences because Spez was right, "this will blow over"
You get used to it. Change is slow and a website like reddit won't die overnight. Much better and productive to focus on building up a new community than tearing down the old.
The goal here shouldn't have been to kill reddit. The goal is to start fostering the next community for the inevitable next meltdown. Start the fire, not set the toen ablaze. Which I feel is a when, not if.
I'm betting before the end of the year they start to make a big hit on sexual content on reddit. THAT is going to make the fire really rise.
Let’s be real, Joe Public doesn’t care about the changes that caused the protests. They just want somewhere to go to see content, and reddits algorithms serve them content. If they have to scroll past some apps on a less-than-ideal app or the regular website, so be it. Most of the internet is shit anyways, reddits clients aren’t much better or worse in that regard.
It’s introduced a lot of people to the fediverse, which is awesome. And will probably have done a non-zero amount of damage to Reddit. But it’ll survive so long as Joe Public is willing to put up with it to see their cat pictures.
It sucks, but with stuff like this it may help to change your perspective a bit. None of us have the power on our own to take some giant company like Trevor on when they don’t care about you.
What we can do is exactly what you have done; have the self-respect to leave a company that has none for you.
It doesn’t matter what happens to them once you remove them from your life. I do suspect you aren’t the only one though, and we can watch them burn together
There's always some people walking around dead malls, even if the mall died years ago. Reddit will be around for at least 5-10 more years but it's overall influence will start to decline. It will be slowly at first but I'd bet three years from now reddit will just be seen as a forum site for scammers, bots, incels and alt-right lunatics (more than it is now).
I think this has done damage to Reddit, but it'll be death by a thousand cuts rather than a big instantaneous failure.
To be honest, I really don't care what happens to Reddit at this point. I'd rather have Kbin be a smaller, more dedicated community than have it "kill Reddit".
I don't necessarily know if I agree with your take on "smaller" but it definitely would help stem the tide of enshitification. We could be that glowing bastion on the hill that always pops up in zombie flicks.
Most social networks have this "growth at all costs" mentality that is usually the root cause of enshittification. When I say 'smaller', I mean it more in terms of fostering a healthy community of dedicated contributors rather than trying to make the fediverse grow as much as possible as fast as possible. This is why I mostly support the notion of preemptively defederating from Threads. While it would help the fediverse 'grow', that's not necessarily what I want out of it. I don't want us to win, I want us to be good.
Yeah, this. It often takes a lot to kill titans of any particular industry... and like it or not, the old tech bro sites like Reddit, Twitter etc. have grown too large to kill with a single arrow or a single trip of their own.
Instead their death often has to happen as a slow and gradual reforming of opinion. The most popular media sites have been thrown into chaos, and have lost most all of their goodwill (or what amount they may have had of it anyways) leaving them gasping for air. Facebook didn't become "a place for old people" over night. It was a gradual thing.
Reddit will die off. Them locking the API behind a huge paywall will hurt them, not help them. VC's have already lost a lot of faith in the tech industry including social media. They'll have to find a way to make money... and I'm sorry to say, but if they couldn't make money all this time, they probably won't really ever be able to.
The age of high valuation with promises on return are gone.
"the mods decided to revert the NSFW designation because the community is a helpful resource for veterans experiencing mental health crises. The mod said that if Reddit removed the team, it could put the community at risk."
Bitch fudging please.
Please tell me again how these people are not power tripping their eyes out.
Imagine having no Reddit community to fall back on or having different mods into your community.. The horror!
Can these people;
Stop acting as if they really want change to happen.
Just start to bent over further for Reddit.
Get on with their life.
Admit that they really like their little power trip.
Imagine starting [a subreddit], hyping it up, patiently providing four-fifths of the content until people show up, moderating spam, moderating jerks, growing it gradually over time. Setting rules, establishing tone, running the weekly topical threads. Would you feel like that /r/whateverItWas existed because of Reddit the company? Would you feel like it fundamentally belonged to his Royal Highness Steve, and Steve was just delegating it to you to run? No! You started it! You shaped it! You collaborated with the people it attracted to make it what it is! Even those users – they could switch tomorrow to /r/whateverItWasTwo and you couldn’t do a thing about it – if they decided they didn’t like your vision for /r/whateverItWas, they would, so the fact that they’re still here is a kind of voting with your feet, it validates what you’re doing… To the extent that /r/whateverItWas exists as a thing within Reddit as a whole, to be run or misrun, managed or mismanaged? It feels like yours.
But at the same time, to an external observer – you can see how they would feel that this is pretty silly, right? The thing that’s “yours” is nothing but rows and columns in Reddit’s databases13, a series of flags giving you the power to moderate. The only thing you have is set in Reddit’s systems, a permission to edit stuff under a certain scope a bit differently than other users, wowee aren’t you important. It’s not you who has a license to the user posts, it’s not you who controls anything but a tiny little square of grass Reddit let you mow. You’re gonna protest over that? The world at large already doesn’t understand why you might volunteer for this work, why you might care enough to do it unpaid – you seem like a schmuck to them, a victim.
or a power tripper.
I’ll admit that some mods probably are on a power trip. A clear example of “probably not, they have an actual reason to want to stay in power” is r/askhistorians, where you probably don’t want random people replacing people with lots of historical knowledge on a subreddit specifically about history that only allows informative replies complete with a works cited. They care about the online space they’ve built, not that they have a ban hammer and can wield it with prejudice. I’d imagine a lot of other mods are pretty similar. Knowledge about their niche community, though probably not as much as the people on r/askhistorians, a certain subreddit culture that they don’t want to collapse and fall apart… they’d rather preserve the online space they and many other people enjoy. Even if it just looks like free labor and power tripping to outsiders whenever they don’t want to just up and abandon Reddit.
"A clear example of “probably not, they have an actual reason to want to stay in power” is r/askhistorians, where you probably don’t want random people replacing people with lots of historical knowledge on a subreddit specifically about history that only allows informative replies complete with a works cited."
Call it what you want. It is power tripping or having a sense of superiority or higher self for whatever reason.
Since when is Reddit the beacon of all that is right in regards of information? Why not pack up and start an community somewhere else?
Reddit is just a medium and nothing more.
The problem I have with these statements and the course of action overall is the following;
Why even protest? The most ironic thing should be that r/AskHistorians should know of all people what happens with mutinies or strikes that have weak or no resolve.
Why would you even strike when you would fold by the first sign of friction that is coming your way?
Just again, keep modding your community and ignore everything but don't act like they are so very wronged and need to have some sort of sympathy when they are literally happily providing labor...for free.
For example:
2 months ago there were strikes in my country regarding distribution centres of one or the biggest supermarket chain in the country.
In these distribution centres are working around 5500 people and 2700 of them are "migrant workers".
Quoting the union;
"The temporary workers in the distribution centers are almost all migrant workers. Hundreds of them have joined the strikes. That is special and very courageous, because they are in a weaker position and are often put under pressure to keep working."
The end result?
"After months of negotiations and eleven days of strike, the Union has achieved a result with the supermarket group. In it, salaries will increase by 10% and austerity of the Sunday allowance is off the table. Temporary workers also get more certainty about their schedules."
I’m not a mod, but I think if I became one I would hold onto my position unless I knew my replacement would be good. Don’t want them removing the rule against calling people slurs, then I and many others might start avoiding the community that gave me joy. Of course, this is a more drastic example about concerns over how a replacement mod would moderate—but you’ve probably seen internet fights about seemingly niche problems and mods probably don’t want a stable community position on that topic devolving into firefights over it again. Could be taken as power tripping, enforcing your opinion on a specific small position and being unhappy that someone else might not do that anymore, but could also just be genuine desire for a peaceful place and not wanting flame wars over that contentious topic.
Right now, if you don’t quit protesting and get your entire mod team removed by Reddit, you will all be replaced by an unknown. Will they take the “wrong” stance on Niche Problem and upset the community? More importantly, will they even care and remove harassment and ban rule-breakers? Or will it be a free-for-all as they do absolutely nothing? Now this might not be a problem if everyone would just move off of Reddit, but that’s easier said than done.
Also, people who probably have history degrees may not be better people than me or superior to me in general, but I’d imagine they’re more highly qualified to run a history subreddit than I am. There’s the arrogant “I’m superior to everyone” and there’s also the realistic “I am superior to the average person at this one particular task.” Most average people have some level of competence in an area that surpasses that of others in at least their immediate social group. Maybe this friend grows really good tomatoes, you’d want them to teach you to do that and not your friend who doesn’t do that. You’re all equally worthy people, but tomato-growing friend is honestly superior to the rest of your social circle in that one task. You don’t have to believe you have some amazing special gift nobody else can acquire, just that you might have interests some others might not and spent time gaining skills related to that interest that others spent elsewhere.
Since when is Reddit the beacon of all that is right in regards of information? Why not pack up and start an community somewhere else?
Reddit is not the beacon of everything right, it’s also carried disinformation before. But it is a place a lot of people liked to source information from. People might want to leave up posts to help other people who search something, keeping in mind Average Joe who just wants his tech problem fixed (and of course, found nowhere else online where it got solved) and favoring his plight over leaving good data in Reddit hands for them to get more clicks and money from.
Also, packing up and moving somewhere else is easier said than done. I’ve been trying to get people to move from one nice niche community to a Fediverse replacement, messaging moderation teams and posting about the existing Fediverse replacement in the subreddit. A lot of people just kept posting on the subreddit. Sometimes this post about the Fediverse replacement has extremely restricted visibility because it gets removed if not put in a self-promotion thread nobody reads. Mod teams don’t always reply. It’s easier with official backing instead of one random user doing it, but even still a lot of subs with official Fediverse replacements still have people posting on the original.
Why even protest? The most ironic thing should be that r/AskHistorians should know of all people what happens with mutinies or strikes that have weak or no resolve.
I actually have no idea what their actions are besides not all abandoning stepping down, but I’m pretty sure they have posts about it. Will edit this post with links to them.
EDIT: most current post (link is libreddit and will not give Reddit traffic)
Why would you even strike when you would fold by the first sign of friction that is coming your way?
Why do people make New Year’s Eve resolutions that they break within the first month? Because they don’t have a crystal ball and think they can do it, and not everyone is exposed to statistics about how most New Year’s Eve resolutions get broken. I think it’s encouraging they at least tried, not everyone is born a perfect protestor.
As for your last three paragraphs, good for the union, honestly, it would be nice if stories like that were more common. Especially from people who have a ton to lose if it goes wrong—that goes above and beyond in my eyes.
Yeah, as someone who modded for several years, there were two insults people loved to throw at us: Either we were power tripping or we were janitors who didn’t matter.
Either of these were used whenever we enforced the rules of our community and kicked out people who didn’t want to play nice with the rest of it. Of course, they will never have a positive opinion of people who enforce a community’s rules.
And that’s the thing: The community. You do not spend several years modding a subreddit without getting to know the people and having some sort of relationship with them. The community is not an abstract, it’s people you get to know - often over several years - and that’s not something you want to leave behind.
"And that’s the thing: The community. You do not spend several years modding a subreddit without getting to know the people and having some sort of relationship with them. The community is not an abstract, it’s people you get to know - often over several years - and that’s not something you want to leave behind."
Who is asking them to leave it all behind?
The only way you can be part of a community is by being a mod?
If mods are feeling as wronged by Reddit as how they say they feel, why not resign as a mod and just join the community as a member?
I mean you would still be part of the community you say they hold so dear but in a different capacity.
I would think stepping down has some risks at the moment because you don’t know who’s replacing you. Someone who also cares about the niche topic just like you, or someone on r/redditrequest who just wants to collect the subreddit as their 483th moderated sub and won’t do anything? Less of a big deal if you have several mods, but if you’re the only one…
"I would think stepping down has some risks at the moment because you don’t know who’s replacing you"
You could literally give an notice to the Reddit admin or whoever you are in contact with that you disagree with the way they handle things, that you are gonna step down but would like to pick your replacement personally.
Reddit would likely agree because it means that they don't have to search for a mod themselves and if the mods have such a strong connection with the community than finding a replacement should be in the realm of possibility.
The whole striking saga gives a whole lot of "We tried nothing and we are all out of ideas" vibe.
First off, Reddit is not responding to mods at all ATM. They don’t care and they don’t even have the resources.
Second, most people do not want to be mods, because they know that its lost of unpaid work. Even before all of this mess started, the subreddit I co-modded made attempts to recruit new mods without much success.
Third, the subreddit held a vote. The community had the choice between returning to normal, shitposting or closing down. They voted for closing down and the mods respect the community’s decision.
The Verges coverage of this has actually been really good. Most other media outlets that have covered it at all have had 1 or 2 that demonstrated a superficial understanding of the conflict.
The verge has been regularly keeping up with what’s going on and seem to have a pretty good grasp on the issues.
They're DMing mods. No one else is doing the investigative journalism on this.
I think someone at The Verge is really committed to this, and with good reason. Reddit is showing what can happen when you invest your energy into a corporate platform.
Different things. Tumblr actually banned NSFW, Reddit is reminding its mods that using tools provided by a platform to try and harm that platform is pointless. I have no idea what people thought would happen tbh. That Reddit would look at subs going "we're going to go NSFW mode entirely for the sake of denying Reddit ad revenue", not even bothering to change rules, and just say "yeah, fair cop"?
Didn’t they say this same thing last week? Maybe the admins are protesting too, and instead of doing their jobs are just looking at porn, memes and John Oliver as much as they can get away with…
It's not really a power trip for some mods. Community and support are things some people REALLY need, especially veterans and disabled people. Would you say the same if the Mods of r/blind capitulated as well? They are blind people modding for other blind people, having random Reddit mods step into their job doesn't make sense and will hurt the community.
Ik a lot of mods do power trip, but you're just being a cynical ass because you want to feel superior for having left the website when I reality you're just another person with another opinion. Nothing special
Would also like to add that even if they did step down, it might cause issues.
For a good deal of subs, I imagine a mod team opening and promoting a Fediverse equivalent, and totally dropping the Reddit community would be fine. Move to the Fediverse, or deal with spamming and random trolls from potentially inactive new mods or the community being led in a strange (possibly hateful) direction from active new mods. Or just stop looking at the Reddit community entirely. Although it’s still possible these mods stay because they want to prevent people from having their day ruined by inactive new mods allowing some surprise NSFL gore on a very SFW sub.
For other ones, like r/lgbtq, this suddenly doesn’t seem like such a great choice to force on people. I acknowledge targeted harassment might still happen outside of r/lgbtq, but if I wanted to be homophobic, I’d seek out people on the subreddit for gay people. It probably gets more of it than the average sub. And there’s an expectation of that sub being safe from harassment in a world where many of its users expect harassment in most other spaces. Do you want to leave these users out in the cold if you pack it up for good and abandon Reddit modding? It’s possible your new replacements might also remove harassment and homophobia and transphobia, but I think it’s more likely they’ll do nothing. It’s also possible some homophobe signs up to mod it and starts posting homophobic trash. Do you want to subject people to this if they don’t move accounts? Most people would probably choose leaving at least one person from the current mod team to prevent just that.
Also, the potential of getting less activity on the Fediverse might actually matter. Say 1% of people browsing a support sub will give needed help. If 100 people would see the post on Reddit, but then you migrated to the Fediverse and now only 30 people see each post, posters have a smaller chance of getting the help they need.
Maybe mods of stuff like r/aww won’t cause too much damage to their users by jumping ship and leaving Reddit, having to quit looking at cute pictures because now it’s being spammed isn’t really the end of the world. Mods of support communities could do more damage if they quit. Not getting the money for your insulin could be the end of your world. Popping into r/lgbtq after receiving hate in real life from loved ones, expecting to find community support for your struggles only to get hate speech on your feed and your post, could help push you along to ending your world a lot faster.
Fully aware that a similar situation could happen on r/aww too. Could be the one bright spot in someone’s day, they go there after receiving hate from loved ones, now there’s NSFL gore of a guy killed for being gay with the title “[insert slur here] gets what’s coming to them,” could help push them along to ending their world a lot faster. I think this kind of case is probably closer to “edge case” than “would probably happen frequently if mods left,” but it’s probably still present in the minds of some mod teams who didn’t totally step down yet.
Community and support are things some people REALLY need, especially veterans and disabled people. Would you say the same if the Mods of r/blind capitulated as well
Probably. I've been told for years to touch grass anytime I talk about issues important to me. But there are no local communities for my issues compared to veterans and the disabled. Maybe they should use that time to make actual connections.
you're just being a cynical ass because you want to feel superior for having left the website when I reality you're just another person with another opinion. Nothing special
People can do what they want. I was the same way in 2015. I just hope they open their eyes one day and realize that it's best to let go when you're disrespected for years on end. You have more power than these corporations want you to think.
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