After eight years, i resigned as a moderator of my community

I’ve been the main moderator of the same community since 2016. This evening, i approved my last comment.

I’m leaving for two reasons:

  1. Reddit went public a week ago. I didn’t volunteer to work for a publicly traded company, i volunteered to work for a community. As long as i live under capitalism i accept that my labor will generate value for shareholders, but damned if i ever do it for free. (this is not a Faulkner quote)
  2. April 1st is coming and i’m scared they might do another r/place. Doing in r/place 2022 and 2023 has left me dejected and bitter and i don’t want to feel obligated to participate again.

Leaving felt like ripping myself off of something warm i’ve been comfortably glued to for a long time. Still recommend it for anyone still giving Reddit shareholders free labor

EDIT: there are too many comments to respond to, but i’ve appreciated all of them! Thank you

mysoulishome,
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

I’m sorry. The corporate assholes don’t deserve to pad their fat wallets based on your free labor, but it’s still absolutely the loss of something you love when you step away and it hurts. I’m still grieving losing Apollo and all of the goofy, weird ass little subs and brilliant human beings who made me laugh and cry every day on Reddit. It’s not been replaced in my life. It took millions of us almost 20 years to make that stupid website something incredible…I can’t deny that it was incredible at points.

It’s gone, it’s just a website now and an app with ads every 3rd pixel just like the rest. There is still some good content and good people, just as there are on TikTok, Bookface, X and insta. The decent shit that is there, on all of the platforms, is overwhelmed by their horrible algorithm trying to sell you shit and increase engagement to monetize your every click.

Reverendender,

I’m tired of being monetized. They have more than enough money.

SoylentBlake,

When you have that much money the only thing left to buy is power.

That’s why they don’t stop. If you’re too exhausted just trying to pay for survival, but you can still survive, you are most likely just going to smoke a bowl, or drink a beer, or eat Taco Bell or any combination within and then go to sleep and do it all again.

You’re entirely predictable, your voice is contained, your information feed is curated, you’ve been outmaneuvered before you knew moves were being made.

Stop spending money. It’s literally the only way to take control back sans revolution and guillotines. Grow what foods you can, barter with those that can grow more. It might be impossible to fully divest - I haven’t been able to but I’m super close, but I think all of us can think of ways we can lessen our need for the dollar. It won’t be easy but you want to know a secret? Life isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s probably best to extricate that notion from your goals…I’m 43. Every year I’ve been alive the working class (99% of us) has seen their living conditions decline and our money be able to purchase less and less. That, is the only trend, the only metric by which I can look out at society with and 100% know will continue. 2020 was the easiest year of this decade.

If we all stop believing in the value of the dollar, guess what? Then it’s worthless and that lazy entitled delusional class of sycophants, socio and psychopaths that hoard all the wealth will regress to the mean.

I think the fountain of youth is made of tears from depossessed aristocracy. That’s my theory anyways, I’m looking forward to testing it.

ArbitraryMary,
@ArbitraryMary@lemmy.world avatar

I miss Apollo and Reddit too.

RecursiveParadox,
@RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world avatar

Second time for me. I migrated about ten years ago from Metafilter, which I eventually rage quit. That really fucking hurt, and Reddit filed that niche in my life (but not the meeting IRL or helping IRL part).

Now I’ve had to go through the same thing with Reddit. I’m into Lemmy, Mastodon, and Bluesky, but it’s not the same. I hope it’s just not the same, yet.

mysoulishome,
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t know that anything will be the same because it took so long for everyone to gather there and make 100,000 thriving communities about every random little thing from rare diseases to Pokémon made from toilet paper tubes, sexy John Oliver, kids getting hit on the head. If got interested in some random TV show, you could find a sub where there would be 100 interesting conversations about it. That just doesn’t exist outside of Reddit. Where even could it? Fucking Quora? Facebook groups?

I don’t know what anyone could have done to preserve it though. If it’s POSSIBLE to slap a million ads on it and make a billion dollars, but definitely ruin it forever…it’s inevitable. Nothing can stop that.

porksoda,

Thank you for putting into words some of the emotions I’ve felt over the last 9 months.

abbadon420,

If there’s good shit on any of those sites, I’ll surely read about it here. If not, it’s not worth it.

wick,

Someone should put Reddit’s stock price graph on r/place.

postmateDumbass,

Possible Spin: you get paid the same and have more free time?

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Plus it won’t look bad on the resume

AnUnusualRelic,
@AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

Welcome to life!

Crack0n7uesday,

r/place wasn’t nearly as good as the time 4chan gave us all Nazi my little pony.

Zoomboingding,
@Zoomboingding@lemmy.world avatar

Yo, I was mired in modding for several years. It felt good to maintain that space, and I helped create the best community for one of the most popular mobile games. It wasn’t the general community, it was the analysis/strategy focused sub, so we had very tight moderation policies. That made a lot of people mad, both those that wanted to post more general content, and those that wanted to rage about the game/developer. The work is constant and nearly thankless, not to mention unpaid.

Your point of not doing volunteer work for a publicly traded company is an excellent one. I definitely felt pride in doing that kind of community service for a public space. Now that Reddit is profit-driven and answering to shareholders, it’s asinine to do that work for free.

squid_slime,
@squid_slime@lemmy.world avatar

deleting my my account solidarity and just something i keep meaning to get around to

southsamurai,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Shit, man, I know how it feels.

I wasn’t any kind of big mod, but it was something I did out of love for a set of related hobbies/interest and the folks that took part in them. I had only really started being a relatively busy mod maybe six months before the shit hit the fan last year. I was having fun, expanding wikis, shooting the bull with everyone. Managed to streamline some automod stuff to filter out bots and trolls. Didn’t even mind most of the crap that goes with modding like having to throw a ban or whatever because idgaf, so it was done and over and forgotten once it was necessary.

It was fulfilling in a way I hadn’t thought I would have after my back gave out and I couldn’t work. I do some volunteer stuff that got started during the height of covid, but that was weekly even then, and had dropped off a lot. So having that “work” to keep my mind busy was nice.

So, yeah man, sorry you had to bow out, it sucks.

3volver,

Before I left I edited all of my comments to say “fuck u/spez”. Very relieving to get the fuck out of there. I fucking despise the idea of working to make money for the rich, never will. If they ever create an economy that forces me to work, the only labor I will do is to make sure they never feel comfortable again.

spiderman,

I know at the end spez made people to hate reddit but idt people should do this. Reddit still has lots of posts asking niche questions (which got answered) that aren’t even in stack overflow. Imagine looking up some question, you could find that only in reddit but the answer got edited to “HATE SPEZ, EAT BALLS”.

We might think Reddit is shit but if it’s shit let’s just leave it as it is.

Maalus,

Good, fuck em. They don’t deserve to be the go-to place for troubleshooting.

spiderman,

Yeah they don’t but that doesn’t mean that you have to destroy the existing discussions. This mob mentality is not going to harm reddit execs anyway or help lemmy gather crowd, but only the people who are searching answers for niche questions and people who still try to make reddit a better place despite the shit that’s going on.

Maalus,

That means that exactly. It was content created by me, I can do whatever I want with it. I don’t want reddit to profit off of it. So I get rid of it. Simple.

This is like saying “protests in the street don’t do anything other than piss off regular people, don’t do it pls :((((”

spiderman,

This is like saying “protests in the street don’t do anything other than piss off regular people, don’t do it pls :((((”

Nobody objected when subreddits shut down for protest.

The correct terminology here is “I will burn down my shop, because I hate the mayor of this town, why should anyone care because it’s my shop”. No offense to you bro, I wouldn’t be here too if I was content with Reddit.

Baphomet_The_Blasphemer,

I built a shop in a community for the benefit and betterment of the community. Then, a decade plus later, this respected co-founder of the community decides he isn’t rich and important enough, so he starts imposing his will over this community, making whatever changes he sees fit regardless of the backlash and how the community reacts to it. When finally driven out, why would I leave anything standing behind that he could profit or benefit from. So damn straight, I burned down my shop, even ripped out the foundation by destroying decades’ worth of content before moving to the next town over where I heard whispers about a community run community.

spiderman,

All you could have done is vacate the community and not burn your building in that community. He’s greedy but you are arson.

Kiernian,

The problem there is that the rise of reddit, specifically the fact that it has a much higher concentration of people discussing niche subjects due to its sheer size, ultimately led to the FALL of the forum.

Most of the places that USED to turn up in search results are GONE because there was no point in paying for hosting when a seemingly superior outside solution with greater reach and greater response times existed.

When helpful, contributing individuals remove their content from somewhere, it never hurts the big wigs that made the bad choice and it never teaches anyone any lessons because it never happens at a large enough scale to send a message. Hell, the giant reddit protest that led the lion’s share of people to Lemmy is barely a historical footnote and accomplished almost nothing particularly lasting or meaningful on Reddit itself despite being massive.

I’m not saying protesting is a waste of time, it’s not, it just needs to be better coordinated than even the aforementioned one was to be effective and stopping along the way to punitively shoot the largely innocent community itself in the foot does not produce any positive end results.

Don’t throw a temper tantrum and delete content, MIGRATE IT.

spiderman,

When helpful, contributing individuals remove their content from somewhere, it never hurts the big wigs that made the bad choice

Yes, it only removes a piece of knowledge which could be helpful and save their time fixing bugs or trying out new things for thousands.

Don’t throw a temper tantrum and delete content, MIGRATE IT.

Yeah, the proper way is to become a place that can solve your niche questions so that reddit will eventually die. You don’t have to “kill” it by changing your informative comments, help etc.

Maalus,

Nah buddy. The propper way is to abandon reddit with all of your data and go somewhere else. Maybe that somewhere else is Lemmy, although it probably won’t be. By leaving your shit in, you generate clicks for their website, nothing more.

spiderman,

abandon reddit with all of your data and go somewhere else.

where exactly you will pass those answers for niche questions? unless someone creates a similar community in lemmy, it gains traction enough and someone asks same question? if that’s the case, good luck for you, bad luck for that person who didn’t make any mistake but wanted to find a fix, spez isnt the one who’s going to be annoyed when you edit your comments, that stranger is going to be. let me know if any guys who edit their comments on reddit make and moderate similar communities here, i will be glad to be a member.

Maalus,

Okay then, why should I care about this niche information being on reddit? I want them gone. The comments that were made are made by me. I can do whatever I want with them.

spiderman,

i hope no one will be affected by your “niche and informative” comments being edited with “eat shit spez”. have a nice day, and make lemmy or other forums that you find useful grow in an organic way.

Maalus,

Yeah, people will be affected. That’s the point of deleting your comments from reddit.

spiderman,

but it’s not gonna be spez or other reddit execs, the ones who are responsible for api changes but your average joe who just uses reddit to find answers to niche questions? anyways, idt you are gonna understand so it’s useless to continue anyways. do what you want brotha. i doubt anyone will be affected by your informative comments being edited anyways.

Maalus,

And we are back to square one, and the protest that doesn’t inconvenience anyone. It’s you who doesn’t understand. Reddit doesn’t deserve being the site to go to for “niche info” and “troubleshooting”. You know jack shit about me, yet you say “nobody is going to need them” without knowing what I do. Newsflash, robotics, CNCs, programming and a lot of shit you probably couldn’t grasp.

spiderman,

Newsflash, robotics, CNCs, programming

then you prolly know how hard is to find some niche fixes that’s not on stack overflow, their own forums, not even on some random chinese forums where you need to translate everything to understand it but unfortunately in some random archived post on reddit.

listen i am not pro reddit, if i was I won’t be here. i could bring out other valid arguments but considering you are so adamant on things without trying to see on another perspective I can’t continue this. It would have been even better if you did understand and tried to counter argument but even after multiple comments, you didn’t. can’t waste anymore energy.

Reddit doesn’t deserve being the site to go to for “niche info” and “troubleshooting”

if it doesn’t try creating another place, not destroying the current one. create and moderate communities on lemmy that you are good at. make it grow, grow it big so people end up asking questions here instead of reddit so lemmy will slowly but surely become a place where people will find their answers for niche shit. that’s the ideal way.

the protest that doesn’t inconvenience anyone

because all we wanted was to send message instead of trying to just destroy what people built?

we think alike but one is extremist and another one is pacifist.

MonkeMischief,

Don’t throw a temper tantrum and delete content, MIGRATE IT.

That’s something I wish a lot of subs had the foresight to do before the API-block launched. I imagine it’s much more thankless and labor intensive to crawl the useful information from communities now. (But don’t worry, tons of Ais already did! /s)

I miss forums, too.

Most of the places that USED to turn up in search results are GONE because there was no point in paying for hosting when a seemingly superior outside solution with greater reach and greater response times existed.

Also the story with Discord. Hey, you wanna try and shout your question like you’re in the middle of the New York Stock Exchange in the 90’s and hope you get a response? It’s instant tho! Even if the solution will be completely ephemeral and your question will be asked a million more times.

Sigh.

dual_sport_dork,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

No, it’s all good. Yours was the millionth time the question was asked, so instead of an answer you’ll get everyone jumping down you throat to “just do a search.”

Your search results will return the previous 999,999,999 times the question was asked, and also the same chorus of “just search,” but not the answer. And it’s no good just scrolling to the oldest result, because that time the question was not answered. You need to land somewhere near the hundredth repetition, which was the one where somebody answered the question, but after when nobody answered the question, and also before everyone got tired of the question.

“But we have THREADS in Discord now! It’s so much better! Especially because no one reads or posts to them!”

MonkeMischief,

I hate when it also feels like you’re butting into a conversation with some “locals” by asking a question. Lol

Like with a forum you could just open up with “Hey guys, so I tried to do this and… thanks for any help!”

But in Discord you feel so awkward just hopping into “” because it’s the project’s only support board and going “HEY I TRIED THIS AND IT’S NOT WORKING ANY IDEAS?” as their chat about local weather scrolls your request away. Lmao

Maalus,

Again, okay, good, fuck reddit. The helpful content will move. They won’t get clicks and advertising money from my comments.

RecursiveParadox,
@RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world avatar

You’re getting downvoted, and I don’t 100% agree with you, but I agree with your principal: at least a decade’s, maybe 15 years’ worth of the best answers to niche questions on the internet are going to die with Reddit, either because people delete/replace their comments or, more likely, Reddit just fucks them up some how in trying to monetize the answers.

spiderman,

You’re getting downvoted

Well I don’t care about internet points. Even if one person reads everything, understands what I am trying to say and stop doing that or realises it’s wrong, it’s good for me. Even yesterday I had a problem with postgres and guess where I found a fix for that? not stackoverflow, not their forums, not on “lemmy” but reddit. I don’t use reddit often these days but I gotta give credit where it’s due and I wish lemmy becomes a replacement for reddit when it comes to finding answers for niche questions and not for getting mass downvoted to trying to have a proper argument against mob mentality.

fixerdude2,

I deleted my account and left the spez wasteland months ago. You should consider it too.

stebo02,
@stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I left my communities as a moderator last summer already, but kept my account because of a few communities I wanted to keep interacting with. However, after this IPO thing I decided to completely cut it and used a tool to mass delete my comments before deleting my account altogether. Felt relieving!

Ragnarok314159,

I tried that with my account and got it permabanned. Locked my 600k karma with a fake ass “you violated Reddit prime directive”.

stebo02,
@stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Just for deleting your comments? Well I guess your account was taken out of existence either way so ¯_⁠(⁠⊙⁠⁠ʖ⁠⊙⁠)⁠⁠/⁠¯

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Nope. Afaik your comments are still there even banned.

Mr_Blott,

. I didn’t volunteer to work for a publicly traded company, i volunteered to work for a community. As long as i live under capitalism i accept that my labor will generate value for shareholders, but damned if i ever do it for free.

I sincerely hope you said this in multiple places on Reddit

There will be a lot of people who don’t realise that that’s precisely what the IPO means

Ragnarok314159,

Anyone who comments on Reddit is now giving free information to the capitalists. I don’t care if people don’t go anywhere, so long as they abandon Reddit.

pineapplelover, (edited )

I participated and organized the Lemmy banner on the last r/place and it went pretty well. If they ever decide to do another r/place, I don’t know if I’ll do it. If people haven’t left already then they might be stuck there but idk.

I was pretty happy with doing lots of alliances last time with the Fuck Spez Coalition, Germany, and a few others. I just don’t want to visit that awful site, it already hurt me a lot last time participating it at all hours of the day and fueling traffic so I probably won’t do it again.

Edit: I believe this was the final result

lemm.ee/post/2028359

https://i.imgur.com/htMJuDy.png

lemm.ee/post/2033816

https://i.imgur.com/OrrPocQ.png

Ethanol,

oh hey, I was there too! Worked at the save3rdpartyapps logo, was really nice seeing everyone collaborate but it got really stressful at points. People were greedy for canvas space. Was a bit disappointing that we could only do so much, the banner was really small after all. But at least the protest didn’t go unnoticed with the giant “FUCK SPEZ” across the whole canvas.

pineapplelover,

Well, our banner is at the center of the canvas so for our small group size I think we did fairly well and I’m pretty sure we got a few people to visit the link

thawed_caveman,

I never knew there was a fediverse design, that’s neat

pineapplelover,

I tried to get the word out but received lots of downvotes because people didn’t want to give Reddit the traffic. A couple of my posts got taken out.

Furbag,

r/place has had the soul sucked out of it past the first iteration. I’m not even going to bother checking it this year because I can see the future and I know what the canvas will end up being - bots maintaining flags. I’d be nice if they restricted it to accounts that are at least a year old, but at this point all the accounts people were botting with the last two years are qualified under that definition.

Cool idea, consistently horrible implementation.

popemichael,
@popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Before June 2023, I was a mod on several Reddit communities for about 13 years and outside of Reddit since the turn of the century. I just kinda stepped back once the Reddit BS happened.

10 months later, my happiness and over all quality of life has improved. Not only am I no longer stressed (bye bye moderation based nightmares!), but I have way more time to dedicate to my passions and goals.

I thought that dedication to holding together a few niche communities and battling the “bad guys” defined me and gave me a sort of immortality.

I was VERY wrong.

Our great grand kids won’t be trolling reddit archives, telling everyone how “cool” grandpa was.

The greatest thing I ever did to improve my QOL was step away from moderating and leading communities on the internet as a whole. Doubly so if they involve political talk.

frostmore,

reddit claims to be the face of the internet. so obviously there are going to be good and bad people…only it seems like there are more bad than good.

you’ll also notice,cancel culture is pervasive in social media,to the point it became toxic. any time any facts that doesn’t fit the narratives of the idiots,you get downvoted and/or called/branded derogatory names.

an anecdotal observation,i have my fair share of run ins with right wing crazies spouting nonsense on social media such as reddit but honestly, it’s mostly the left where i saw true craziness and experienced fascist behaviours.

thawed_caveman,

it’s mostly the left where i saw true craziness and experienced fascist behaviours

That really depends which part of the internet you’re in, which politics you’re more sensitive to, and which point of view you’re observing them from. If you’re in leftist communities they tend to be a lot nicer on the inside.

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