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.

wizardbeard,
@wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

If you have it in you, please recreate your previous subreddit here in the fediverse. There’s less tools, but also far less users, and plenty of room to make tools.

A ton of niche communities didn’t make it over here during the “exodus”. Any little bit helps.

stoly,

Yes please

v4ld1z,
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip avatar

Shameless plug: /c/Sekiro, /c/Bloodborne

Doing my part :)

TeaHands,
@TeaHands@lemmy.world avatar

Gotta actually link things if you want people to find them, my friend! 😉

v4ld1z,
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip avatar

I’m always too lazy to link properly. Thanks for helping out :D

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

We need auto conversion ao that c/communityname actually links to the community if it exists on the home sub of the user (for example as a suggestion)

confluence,

That must’ve been tough to do. You have the respect of at least one internet stranger 🫡

RedditWanderer,

Lemmings did the tough thing months (years?) ago when thousands of third party apps and community development went to waste.

He took the easy way out and helped spez IPO.

Cethin,

Some of us take a longer path than others. All are valid. Sure, maybe some have better outcomes, but no one should be criticized for taking a step on the right direction, however late it may be. You don’t know what they’ve been through or what it meant to them. If you’re only going to be negative then you probably just shouldn’t comment.

RedditWanderer,

You call it “a longer path”, I call it having your cake and eating it, and whining about it

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.

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.

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.

wintermute_oregon,

I’m a capitalist and I would never do free work for a public company. Now I don’t mind a hobby but a public company isn’t a hobby.

roguetrick,

It's possible to craft a public company that has bylaws strict enough to make it like a good nonprofit, but why would you do that and still pay taxes?

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.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

I left my community of 12 years with >4M subs a year ago, when they killed the API. Without third party tools, my time modding had more than doubled. I spent almost as much time on reddit as I did on my full time job at some point.

ringwraithfish,

Honest question: what did you feel you got out of modding? I feel like it would be a thankless endeavor and would bring absolutely no satisfaction at any point.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

It started as a very niche community when I joined, so being a mod actually felt like being a “recognized” member of the community without doing a whole lot. And when the sub started growing, keeping the trolls out was more of a necessary chore to preserve the peace, that I did without really thinking about it.

Only once I left I started realizing how much time it consumed. I’ve signed up for a phd program since I left and I still have more free time despite the research and a full time job. That’s how much time it consumed in the end.

mysoulishome,
@mysoulishome@lemmy.world avatar

I wonder if they don’t even want mods. Just AI/algorithms and ads. What is 100 well moderated, mindful discussions worth compared to a single, well targeted ad?

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.

venusaur,
@venusaur@lemmy.world avatar

Congratulations! You’re doing the right thing. Reddit is trash now.

dumples,
dumples avatar

Bring it here. We need good moderators. Welcome back to the original corporate free Internet. It's great

Splatterphace,

Why do people like r/place, and why do others hate it? I never understood the phenomena.

Rhaedas,

The first r/place was one of those unique events in history. The later ones didn't work because people now knew what it was, techniques to use, and of course bots. I think the most enjoyable was how it not only sparked comradery within various subreddits to support their design and keep it alive, it also brought together some "opponents" to do the same (thinking my experience with the Star Citizen/Elite Dangerous agreement to help each other).

thawed_caveman,

Also streamers were a lot more influential on place 22 and 23 than they were in 17. Streamers are external to the website, don’t particularly have a dog in the race other than themselves, are encouraged to create spectacle, and the kind of personality that makes you a big streamer is not conducive to being a good neighbor in a competitive pixel art game. So while i hesitate to say that there was anything about Reddit in particular that made Place 2017 a good event, i do think the presence of streamers made 22 and 23 much worse.

janNatan,

It’s like an MMO for pixel art. The best part of MMOs is all the other players. The worst part of MMOs is… all the other players.

iAmTheTot,
iAmTheTot avatar

So accurate.

Splatterphace,

How do you gear/level up? What are the currencies?

Gullible,

The first time /r/place was offered was markedly different from the others. The first was a free-for-all hellfest for a long while where organization wasn’t even secondary or tertiary to the experience. Then came the age of “reason” and brands and flags sprouted up, obliterating any semblance of originality with an uninteresting mob of paint rollers. The second go around, there was nothing new, everything was pre-planned and strategically plotted, and genitals were a big no-no. To answer your question, novelty and the spontaneous lack thereof. Freedom and the spontaneous lack thereof.

ech, (edited )

Then came the age of “reason” and brands and flags sprouted up

Ugh. The domination of the space by advertisements and just straight-up nationalism is so lame and nauseating. I don’t know if it’s mainly bots or just peoples’ general lack of creativity, but it sucks.

SineSwiper,
@SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

It’s like that Woodstock concert in the 2000s. You can’t just recapture magic like that by repetition.

Spontaneity is spontaneous.

Cethin,

My understanding is it’s mostly bots. Not bot accounts so much, but people running scripts using their main accounts. I’m not totally sure on this, but I’m pretty confident I read about scripts communities used for their drawings.

mp3, (edited )
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

I did the same thing last July, left to switch full-time to Lemmy (I registered my first Lemmy account @mp3 a long time ago EDIT: jeez 5 years ago already?!) and somewhat abandoned my account.

I was then approached by the lemmy.ca admins, asking if I would be interested to help administer the website, which I gladly accepted. I do not regret one minute giving my time to the fediverse.

I went back to Reddit last month to remove my account from being a moderator on all the communities I was part of. I didn’t even tell anyone, I just left. Reddit is way past its prime.

nutomic,

I still remember your name from the early days, it’s great that you stuck around! How much Lemmy changed in these few years…

mp3,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

I could recognize that name anywhere, hello sir :)

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.

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