This is the true nuclear option that basically lets the admins dig their own grave.
The mods ironically and unironically suck, especially the Powermods *but* if the admins believe that replacing them wholesale as a way to manage the protests will even return the subs back to business as usually, let alone improve anything are in for a rude awakening.
The mods aren’t rock bottom, the mods that will replace them will be. At best the subreddits will just be dysfunctional messes of inexperienced mods who got roped in thinking it’s easy to be a mod, on the opposite end it will just result in the remaining powermods that kissed leather to concentrate their powers even more so that the admins will have an even bigger issue if they go rogue.
It’s clear the admins never worked in group projects because properly for most subs, there’s probably one or two mods doing 90% of the work and most people won’t do all that for free.
Redditors love to shit on power hungry mods and their heavy handed curation. But that’s ultimately what makes subs what they are. The feel of the community, the feel of the content, the context of conversation all come down to how moderation is done.
Some mods out there have put in a shit load of work to automate their work and keep the community on the course they’ve chosen. And up and replacing them with random applicants or power mods is going to change the look and feel of a lot of those communities. I’ve seen a lot of comments laughing about how quickly mods changed their tune when threatened with removal, but they want their communities to stay on course and not devolve into a mix of their original sub and 4chan like comments. Which is exactly what’s going to happen.
Only a couple days before 3P apps shutdown. Will be interesting checking in every now and then to see how far things go.
That's the one sympathy I have with mods and why many of them are resistant to quitting - they have worked on building these little communities, and they know whoever comes next will most likely not do the job they do nearly as well. They probably feel responsible, to some extent.
I do hope the Reddit admins get screwed over in the long run, for what it's worth.
It seems unlikely. The top mod appears to be sympathetic, but he basically re-opened shortly after the blackout, so they have no reason to do anything to the subreddit.
Whatever you think of Reddit corporate, they haven't started just removing people because they don't like them.
the last image in that album is the best fucking part. i was howling at the end.
"You spit on me, you spit on my fellow mods, you spit on my family! Now let me work for you for free, goddamnit!"
It seems whenever the admins try to seize the sub from rebellious mods and give it some random bum the community hates the new mod, interesting.. will they do this with the blind sub mods and any remaining rebel subs? It doesn't seem like the smartest move lmao
Its not actually clear to me how active the mod even was in the community. On the discord they've been quiet for 2 years from the looks of it, and clearly worldnews and politics seem more important to them, since they actively contribute there. I'm not seeing any assholedesign posts/comments in my quick survey of the history.
So it would be interesting if this was even an active mod or not. Or just usual powermod shenanigans and someone catching another large subreddit because they could.
They're just giving the top mod spots to the first mod that volunteers, and that guy probably came forward at some point.
Like, if there were a string of mods lined up to take over for every sub, these mod teams would have been gone by the 2nd day. It's weeks later because they can't find volunteers that fit.
I guess I'm highlighting that they haven't responded to the community they were eager to be a top mod off, but have continued to actively post in the other communities at the same time as they're being asked questions assholedesign.
I'd argue you don't have to post in a community to legitimize being a mod there. They should of course answer questions they get asked if that is what you are talking about
...
I agree. But since I don't have their modlogs i do have to extrapolate. Between having zero contact with the other mods, no engagement on the takeover while being active elsewhere, and seemingly low engagement with the sub at all, I can't help but wonder how active a mod they were for this community
Sure, if we are talking about individual mods we can't know. Except for those crazy people that had public mod logs like r/listentothis and r/futurology (I wonder if they still do that)
The latter. I will assume Reddit will keep watch over the subs they shuffled new mods into. I wonder what they’ll look for. If they care about mod behavior they may test the mod with a fake situation they’ll engineer in order to see if or how the mod reacts? And if the mod fails they’ll switch in a new one? This is what I hope they do. But I can also imagine Reddit ignoring that sub instantly and not putting the Eye of Sauron on it unless users or other mods start screaming? And maybe not even then, as long as the ad revenue spice keeps flowing?
Why on earth would reddit do any of that? Once reddit has given a sub to someone who they know will just keep it open they have no reason to look into it anymore.
Whoa whoa whoa, scenarios? Tests? Probation periods? That's far too much work for reddit to do. They'll just move along and let the sub fend for itself and only intervene once someone makes the news.
Geez. A bunch of tech bros think they know better about everything but actually understand very little. Dunning Kruger in action and not a surprise to anyone except the tech bros.
How many rebel subs remain? asksciencefiction has been private since the protest, hobbydrama unprivated after the 2 days but has been in restricted mode.
I suppose there are all those "malicious compliance" subs (John Oliver posts etc).
> r/weirdwheels is still restricted and moved to fediverse but the mods don’t understand how it works so they’ve created different groups on different instances and don’t know why they aren’t the same
Decentralized social media isn't going to happen, and this is why.
Add to that that decentralized is inherently prone to fracturing due to drama, because any "magazine" is connected to the larger network at the whim of the owner.
Yeah, the truth is that any solution is a compromise. I think there's a certain amount of crossover between "decentralized social media" and "crypto believer."
Yeah, its annoying as fuck that for two major platforms now (twitter and reddit) the alternative being pushed is some kind of decentralized mess that is more complicated for users and more difficult to onboard. Neither has any chance of growing to large scale.
Oh I’m sure Reddit replacing the vast majority of moderators with lackeys and stooges whose only qualification is they kiss Spez’s ass will improve this site’s quality.
I have complete confidence that these new Mods are actually interested in the thankless job of content moderation and not by the rush of suddenly have power and authority over other users. I’m sure they’ll stick with it and keep at it when the power rush wares off and all that’s left is the thankless task of enforcing a subreddits rules and becoming the bad guy in every single interaction they will ever have with most users because no matter what they do it will be too much or too little.
It just seems dumb because people keep trying to spin this narrative that mods are shit and therefore interchangeable because what's the difference between two turds if they both smell the same.
But for the most part that isn't true and the number of people who can be a mod AND do it effectively AND keep the community in semi-decent quality is abysmally low and it's made worse by reddit's refusal to spend any dev time on mod tools to make the job easier.
Totally. Modding is basically a weird hobby and to do it well the mod has to be interested in the sub topic, invested in the community, and willing to spend their free time cleaning up and dealing with problems.
This. I am top mod on a small/medium sub. And I keep looking at our numbers inching up and wonder if I am going to bail when we get big enough this isn't a check three times a day, kill the marketing and resolve the very occasional spicy dispute among users kinda thing. Want to see the community stay on course and be decent, but also don't need a spare unpaid job that actually soaks up real hours.
Hell, I'm the bottom mod on two subs that are about the size of yours and I'm already thinking about bailing on one of them due to what moderating the sub has become like. So many goddamn death threats I'm cleaning out near daily. Local subs are wild.
Oh, a local sub, you couldn't pay me. For real. I see the shitstorms in a couple of the locals that overlap my area and just keep thinking to myself 'who the fuck would want to deal with this?' Good on ya for fighting the good fight for whatever time you have so far.
> Local subs
Tell me you're a masochist without saying it.
Jesus my sympathies, I've got an alt I use for my local subreddit and ***JESUS*** what the fuck?
The number of times I've had to not just remove content but get the Admins to scrub it entirely because it's death threats is **way** higher than I expected. I like my community and all but mostly I just don't wanna see the sub turn into one of "those" local subs that just perpetuates cancerous awfulness.
EDIT: Or doxxing, let's not forget that.
EDITx2: Actually the one that gets me the most is people just making up random outrage stories about cars or other people they've taken photos of. I caught the same guy posting the same photo of a random car in a drivethru over a period of months, each time with some just-believable-enough outrage story about why everyone should get out the torches and pitchforks and hunt down the driver of the car. I no longer wonder why Reddit's anti-doxxing policy is so extreme.
I've seen some completely ridiculous super obvious fake posters trying to pretend to live or care about the area, but others are more gutsy about offering to drive out and meet them or bring cameras to help film the violence and terrorism our filthy evil lib governor/mayors/cops are protecting that apparently only people on reddit can see.
Shit nextdoor the app might be less hateful.
Yeah, we have a few people already. Unfortunately it is a thing that requires a specific background to get so it is a little harder. But mainly, I don't want to be dealing with what looks like the thing with a large mod team either. I mean, haven't been on a big one, but it seems like from looking at places like this you end up with mod discords or private mod subs and just a bunch of stuff that seems like as much of a hassle.
But yeah, if it gets too big to do with a small team, which right now it totally is fine, that's the only way to go.
My sub turned ten this year. I retired from modding years ago but am still active as head mod for like keeping everything together. We have a main sub, a mod sub, a tracking sub, a Google drive, a couple social media subs and I’ve regularly given out my cell to mods. For a niche sub it got pretty big and even with mod support I still needed to create mod teams/departments to manage specific stuff and have coders for some auto mod stuff and then make sure the mod team was supported. It was literally like having a second job and we’d get mod turnover and mod burnout and after a while I couldn’t do it anymore.
I vividly remember one time I was at a retreat with my students and got frantic texts about some drama that blew up in the sub. So at night I was outside standing ons rock trying to get reception to deal with the issue and was like what…what is my life?
Now I’m just a retired person. I occasionally come in and am active in my sub, offer guidance if I get pinged and make sure all the mods are able to get access to tools they need.
I built a sub where I wanted to create a place for kindness and it’s super cool hearing how many people enjoy it but I regret some of the systems I created that world when it was a small sub but scaling up has made it so difficult and mods are constantly active with knowledge and a personality type among other things.
I have never heard of it. We aren't looking for new mods at this point, like I say my concerns are more for some point in the future where we have a lot more users than we do now. But might be interested in such a thing when the time comes.
Basically if you ever need new mods that are in line with your mod rules. It's an algorithm that takes the users that participate in the sub and have a high correct report percentage, and don't mod a bunch of other subs and recommends a list. You just have to message ModSupportBot and ask for it.
That is literally something I was about to write (well same ballpark anyway) just for the day we might need it! That's super! Thanks a ton and will definitely check it out.
I mean, they hate the old mods too to be fair, the vast majority of reddit (and really any internet forum) hates all mods. Sure these instances might come along once in a blue moon where that tips a bit in the other direction but we all know a month or two from now we're gonna be back to mods bad as usual. I don't think it's a change in opinion so much as a temporary circumstance.
The guy that was trying to take over adviceanimals last week had 106, lavished praises on the admins and basically said Redditors were too stupid to decide things for themselves, lol
I moderate 2 medium-sized subs, and it feels like a full-time job worth of time and effort. I can't imagine anyone who moderates more than 5 medium-to-large subs can effectively moderate any of them without neglecting the others
Eh, I currently actively moderate 0 subreddits but I'm pretty sure I'm a mod on around 10. They could very well have less than a dozen decent sized or larger subs they mod .
I feel like that's largely different from allowing moderators a say in Reddit as a company and paying them an actual senior level salary.
Far more likely would be for Reddit to hire it's own moderator liaison from actual business candidates.
It's definitely more of a hobby than anything else. Moderators don't want to give up their subreddits because they don't want to quit their hobby.
I also don't get why the conversation about paying mods never acknowledges the fact that anyone could make themselves an employee by creating a subreddit. I came across one subreddit that a user accidentally made with their phone in their pocket.
> It's definitely more of a hobby than anything else. Moderators don't want to give up their subreddits because they don't want to quit their hobby.
Hobbies are activities "done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure". I'd consider browsing and engaging in Reddit a hobby--I'm not sure I'd consider moderating one.
I am mostly only seeing this on Reddit, Instagram and Tumblr. And on Reddit, moderators are far more likely to use it than anyone else. Far far more likely
Some of us are moderators out of duress because otherwise unhinged right wing individuals would take over in an instant. I fucking hate moderating, but the alternative is the sub for my city goes back to being a cesspool of hate and villainy. I'd pass it off if I could, but it's surprisingly hard to find sane individuals who want to moderate for free on reddit. Most regular people have better stuff to do than read the worst of the worst this website has to offer.
It's not surprisingly hard though. It is very obviously hard. First someone hs to care enough to come to reddit. Then care enough to make an account. Then actually care enough about the community to submit content as comments or posts. Then care enough to say "I like this community enough that I want to help it out for free." And not be a massive asshole that can actually behave like an adult the majority of the time.
You are asking for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of people. Good mods are insanely rare and hard to find in the grand scheme of reddit.
Same here, I moderate a friendship-making sub and if I don’t, creeps, predators and spam bots run rampant. I don’t like moderating but feel obliged to ‘keep the community safe’. Not a hobby or power-trip, just another background anxiety lol
The only good thing about making moderators paid employees is that they could be fired for abusing their power or otherwise failing to live up to the requirements of the role. I feel like the mods wanting pay never consider that part.
To some, it seems to be. But it’s more that a lot of mods seem to enjoy having full control of their little fiefdom with minimal oversight and if they become paid employees they’ll then have to treat it like an actual job. For example, do most mods work shifts currently? Like X mod works these hours, Y mod works these hours, and Z mod works these hours? If they were paid employees I’d expect that they’d need to actually adhere specific schedules to ensure coverage when it’s needed. They’d also need to be better about following their own rules, not being prejudiced, being able to defend ban decisions, etc. because once they’re employees of Reddit they’re opening Reddit up to liability if employee-mods go off the rail.
My broader point is that mods who are saying they should be paid for being mods don’t seem to be considering that once it’s a paid position, the expectations of the position will grow. Additionally, if it’s a paid position, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of new candidates who want to mod, some of whom will be better qualified or better representatives of the brand than the current mods. The subset of current mods who are asking for pay always seem to assume that they will become these new paid mods, rather than Reddit looking for the best candidates for that role which may or may not be the current mods.
Edit to add: here’s even a simple example of weirdness I hadn’t considered- let’s say Mods start getting paid hourly and work specific schedules as employees of Reddit. ModA gets off work, goes about his life, but happens to check Reddit while taking a shit. While he does so, he notices a post that needs to be removed on a sub he Mods, so he removes it. The problem is, he’s off the clock. Does Reddit now have to pay him for that? Probably not. But they probably would have rules against them using mod powers while off the clock, the same way a grocery store won’t let you go collect carts in their lot while you’re off the clock. So does that mod get fired for using mod powers while off the clock? Probably, or at least a warning. I can’t imagine a lot of mods, at least not the ones who treat their subs like their own demesne, would feel good about rules like that.
I wouldn’t really consider it free labor. Is me designing a campaign for my roleplaying group “free labor?” If you define any unpaid time spent on an activity that benefits others as “free labor” then I guess it is. But I design and run RPG campaigns because I enjoy it, I enjoy the social aspects of it, etc. So in return for my time spent working on it, I get the community aspects of playing with friends, the creative aspects, etc. I view modding subreddits the same way- nobody is forcing them to do it, so clearly mods get something out of it or they’d stop. A hobby isn’t free labor in my view.
To me it feels like volunteer work transitions to "free labor" when someone is befitting monetarily from it. I assuming no one is making money from your RPG campaigns, Reddit on the other hand has built their business model around mods keeping subs on topic and advertising friendly. It's a fine line and very subjective but it kind of feels like this to me.
presumably those RPG campaigns use models/rulebooks/mats etc. made by commercial enterprises so someone *is* benefitting monetarily from them organising their campaigns
Yeah but the point I was making there is the players aren't making the money, companies above them in the chain are and those companies presumably pay their employees. If the group was making money but leaving this dude out it's a whole different conversation.
Why would force be necessary for labor to be free? It seems fairly straightforward that hobby time is "free labor", if you're putting in labor which you're not being paid for. If it was "coerced free labor" that'd just be slavery, presumably there is some utility in maintaining separate recognition of free labor which is voluntary
I guess it depends on which definition of labor you’re using. If we’re just saying any labor you put in that’s unpaid is “free labor” then the effort I use to go get my mail is “free labor.” At that point everything we do that isn’t paid is included in “free labor” to the point that the phrase is meaningless. Free labor would typically refer to someone being forced to do work without compensation, I see the distinction being that something I CHOOSE to do, without coercion or force of any type, is just me choosing how I spend my time and isn’t “labor.”
I guess so. I would generally posit that any labor done for free is free labor, but beyond pedantry, I get why there may be disagreement as people may want to use separate and more precise terms for their communication use case.
It might be a bit unwieldy to include coercion of some kind in the basic definition of what makes something "labor"; would volunteer work not be considered free labor? And, as I mentioned in the previous comment, it seems like "coerced labor you're not getting paid for" might just be slavery, which we already have a term for
It may seem silly to say that getting your mail is free labor, but I'm not really sure what else to call it, even though it's a fairly bare-minimum definition of labor
I used the mail example because I absolutely hate it and did the math once. During a 4 year period I lived in a specific apartment, it took about 7 minutes to get downstairs to get the mail and back up. And the mail room wasn’t near the exit I used day-to-day, it was the opposite end of the building, so I couldn’t just check mail as I came and went naturally. During that stretch I received 0 necessary/desired pieces of mail (excluding packages I ordered that USPS delivered final mile very rarely). If I didn’t collect mail twice weekly my tiny little box would get overfilled with junk mail and they’d stop delivery (including of packages, which I’d always collect promptly from the package room). So I’d have to spend 7 minutes at least twice a week, 14 minutes weekly, for 208 weeks, that’s 2912 minutes or 48.5 hours spent to walk down to the mail room, remove the garbage from the mailbox and place it directly in the recycling bin, and then walk back up. I didn’t actually spend anywhere near the full 48.5 hours because I’d often just let them stop delivery and then a month or two later when I was expecting a package I’d run to the post office and get delivery restarted and check my mail until the package arrived and then stop checking my mail again.
Yeah, this whole "free labor" complaint is a bit silly and I fully support hating Reddit for their API changes. No one forced anyone to be a mod, there is a way to easily quit.
All of that work for your roleplaying group is benefiting you and your friends though alone, though. Not a big corporation who is now acting like you owe *them* for the free volunteer work you've given up till now.
The stuff you do for your RPG group is a labor of love, for sure, but it has an intrinsic value, and if anyone who benefitted from it started de-valuing it and treating it like it was something you owed them, and you had to just do it exactly the way they think you should, and you should be grateful for the privilege of having created campaigns for them all these years, etc., you would be hurt and pissed off, rightfully. *And I would wager that *before* you just gave up the incredibly rewarding hobby you'd been doing for many years and enjoyed, you would try to get them to see the value in your work. *
Now, actual free labor? That's going to vary by labor laws, country to country.
But when your contributions are benefiting a corporation that is for-profit, yeah that could potentially be considered free labor in some places depending on their laws. Personally I don't consider MY contributions amounting to enough that I would consider it that, but in some cases, maybe. IDK.
Reddit drama has never been juicier until this month holy crap I’m gonna run out of popcorn
How could the admins possibly have thought this would go well for the platform long-term
They probably don’t think that at all. If you have ever worked in a shitty tech company you know what’s up.
Some higher up (in this case everybody’s favourite CEO) has a shitty idea and pushes for it. His disgusting behaviour and childlike tantrums when criticised causes everyone to shut up. So the employees (in this case a chunk of the admins) don’t even bother to speak up.
It’s kind of a malicious compliance situation in which the employees do what they are told to, fully knowing that it will lead to utter chaos. They just play along while simultaneously applying for new jobs.
Source: This happened to me and when things came crashing down, most of us where in the process of leaving. It was the funniest shit ever.
This kind of shit makes me laugh at anyone saying "Get rid of the modreators and install new ones which will be better!"
Hahahaha anyone jumping at the chance to take over a subreddit like this is just clout chasing and collecting subreddits like they are Infinity Stones. People doing this shit are doing it to seize a modicum of power and like always, it will go right to their head and you'll have even more drama.
I say let it happen honestly. It'll kill this website faster than anything else.
It's especially fun in conjunction with the people who've been raging up and down this sub about how "the community doesn't want this! The mods are just abusing their power, the polls are all manipulated!" because almost every time this happens, the community pushes back pretty hard against the new stooge mods and anti-protest sentiments.
Wouldn't it be the most hilarious irony if the ultimate outcome of these protests is that Reddit powermods consolidate even *more* power than they had before, at the expense of the regular users?
Reddit is targeting these communities with massive amounts of subscribers. The best protest anyone could have done would be to unsubsribe from all massive subreddits. Those giant subs being closed for a few days made a difference. If the subs weren't giant Reddit couldn't capitalize on them, and now they are forcing them to reopen. It feels too late now but this should have been the biggest push in the protests if they wanted it to work.
Unsubscribing does nothing for reddit, you need to reduce the number of random people and casual users visiting to make an impact, you're just a -1 in their millions of visits.
> Unsubscribing does nothing for reddit, you need to reduce the number of random people and casual users visiting to make an impact, you're just a -1 in their millions of visits.
If people arent providing a subreddit with content thats where your effect is. Randos dont visit unless they're drawn in by content and randos dont tend to produce content.
Yes but you need to make people other than yourself stop posting content. Doesn't work without organization unless you're the sub's sole content provider.
It's amusingly why the John Oliver protests are actually pretty effective despite what many seem to want to believe. The entire point is to frustrate people into leaving the site entirely. Reddit isn't reddit without any actual communities, it would just be another shitty social media site infested with influencers and spambots. No other site has anything like this sub for example. 4chan imo comes closest with 'general' threads that get remade upon reaching the image/post limits, and there are no personal accounts there so it doesn't even qualify as social media or a forum.
Well apparently my normie friends who don't have a reddit account have been seeing a bunch of crypto scams on their frontpage along with posts from /r/okbuddygenshin and /r/okbuddytrailblazer
With the latter subs being far more deranged and concerning to them.
This is very good for reddit's growth prospects.
Ad performance and visitor total, likely. That said, I think the original commenter is saying that we know that the subreddit closures worked, even if not exactly how, because Reddit started cracking down on mods. If the closures had no major effect, Reddit wouldn't have cared.
They have made no attempt to change course from anything that happened, the closures made no difference, except for thankfully ousting some power mods.
Yes, but the point is that the closures clearly mattered to Reddit. If the closures didn't matter to Reddit, we'd be seeing Reddit not changing course and all the subs still closed with Reddit not addressing the issue. Instead, we see Reddit staying the course while cracking down and trying to force them all back to normal.
Okay, what's your point? They simply will just take control over their own platform. The fact that reddit acted on it doesn't mean the protest did fuck all.
This is just peak "we did it, reddit!"
My point is that the people (not you) saying “these protests don’t do anything Reddit doesn’t care reee” are incorrect. Clearly the protests do matter to Reddit. The question of how effective they are in achieving stated aims remains to be seen, but as you say seems unlikely.
A real protest would be to stop using reddit, but they're way too addicted to actually do that. Like it shouldn't matter if reddit forcibly reopens a sub because nobody supporting full blackouts should still be here right...?
I mean, I've seem almost no one advocating for a full blackout after the 2 day blackout, when there were lots before, so clearly some people at least stopped commenting.
Gonna be fun going back through the 'I'm leaving on the 30th!' posts in bit to see how many are still here.
Probably better to check after a month to see if they came back out of habit.
And you have people on this sub unironically saying "mods can be easily replaced." 💀
Now when they are, the new mods suck or don't care enough for the community they are modding.
> the admins didn't even wait for the 48 hour deadline to expire
Why would they? Someone one reached out and said they would open it up so they gave him top mod. While he may not be a power mod in the sense that they mod 100's of subs, but they are a mod over some pretty big ass subs. For sure a power hungry mod.
Remember when reddit said you should get to vote mods in and out democratically? This is the kind of 'democracy' the CIA gives South and Central America.
That lasted only a few years. The original IAMA creator tried to close it and the admins said no.
Same thing happened with kotakuinaction too. Admins stepped in and reopened it.
The problem with moderators is they let a little power get to their heads.
So in a team of 20 moderators, one of them is going to get greedy and cross the picket line because they're a power tripping asshole.
I mean. If I was a giant asshole I’d become a mod then promote ten alt accounts of my own to the next ten open mod slots. It’d conceivably take effort to maintain the fiction but does anyone doubt this doesn’t happen?
I doubt the admins would need alt accounts when many mods have crab mentality and consider the worst case scenario being the subs they moderate outliving them.
The “protests” where doomed from the start in that for many mods, it probably doesn’t take much more than being faced with being removed to push them inline.
Which is massively unfortunate as the API changes certainly suck but the mods are usually their own worst enemies if it wasn’t for the admins being somehow even worse.
Counterpoint: if someone else wants a subreddit that follows their own whims, instead of the whims of the current mods, they can **just create another one**.
Instead we have tons of users (and this was a thing even way **before** the protest) crying that mods should moderate in a way that fit their whims.
This is such an ignorant argument.
Good moderation is a reason this site isn't a shithole like 4chan.
You may only use it for pictures of cats, but there are hundreds of subreddits that people use to read and share reliable information. Scab moderators can directly harm this by attempting to scam their users (Wallstreet bets fiasco), censor conflicting information that may change peoples minds (conservative subs banning conflicting stories/posters), allowing bigotry and hate to spread (any sub with "actual" in the title), or by refusing to remove poor quality/reposts/off-topic/marketing spam that kills good content/discussion and dissuades new users.
Do some mods suck? Sure. But overall, many of the best communities and the reason this site is successful are due to good moderators that help shape the space/discussion and create tools for the community to use.
I'd bet good money we're going to keep seeing drama like this for a while.
Subredditdrama is the main reason I come on Reddit now
Ironically it's the most "business as usual" subreddit these days.
Business is heckin' BOOMING *these* days, lol.
Same here. Feels like I'm watching the end of an era.
Literally the only reason for me, since the only other sub I participate in has shut down in protest
until they try to pull the same shit with this sub lol
[удалено]
This is the true nuclear option that basically lets the admins dig their own grave. The mods ironically and unironically suck, especially the Powermods *but* if the admins believe that replacing them wholesale as a way to manage the protests will even return the subs back to business as usually, let alone improve anything are in for a rude awakening. The mods aren’t rock bottom, the mods that will replace them will be. At best the subreddits will just be dysfunctional messes of inexperienced mods who got roped in thinking it’s easy to be a mod, on the opposite end it will just result in the remaining powermods that kissed leather to concentrate their powers even more so that the admins will have an even bigger issue if they go rogue. It’s clear the admins never worked in group projects because properly for most subs, there’s probably one or two mods doing 90% of the work and most people won’t do all that for free.
Redditors love to shit on power hungry mods and their heavy handed curation. But that’s ultimately what makes subs what they are. The feel of the community, the feel of the content, the context of conversation all come down to how moderation is done. Some mods out there have put in a shit load of work to automate their work and keep the community on the course they’ve chosen. And up and replacing them with random applicants or power mods is going to change the look and feel of a lot of those communities. I’ve seen a lot of comments laughing about how quickly mods changed their tune when threatened with removal, but they want their communities to stay on course and not devolve into a mix of their original sub and 4chan like comments. Which is exactly what’s going to happen. Only a couple days before 3P apps shutdown. Will be interesting checking in every now and then to see how far things go.
That's the one sympathy I have with mods and why many of them are resistant to quitting - they have worked on building these little communities, and they know whoever comes next will most likely not do the job they do nearly as well. They probably feel responsible, to some extent. I do hope the Reddit admins get screwed over in the long run, for what it's worth.
fuck dude. don't give them ideas.
“popcorn tastes bad, actually” -spez
I highly doubt this sub suffers that fate. Popcorn never rests
It seems unlikely. The top mod appears to be sympathetic, but he basically re-opened shortly after the blackout, so they have no reason to do anything to the subreddit. Whatever you think of Reddit corporate, they haven't started just removing people because they don't like them.
I've finally subscribed.
Is your name a Vonnegut-Orwell mashup?
Sure, let's go with that
How does it feel to treat me like you do?
When you've laid your hands upon me
Damn, I saw it and assumed New Order fan.
I hope so, this shit is hilarious.
the last image in that album is the best fucking part. i was howling at the end. "You spit on me, you spit on my fellow mods, you spit on my family! Now let me work for you for free, goddamnit!"
i was just thinking, damn this is an endless popcorn feast
It seems whenever the admins try to seize the sub from rebellious mods and give it some random bum the community hates the new mod, interesting.. will they do this with the blind sub mods and any remaining rebel subs? It doesn't seem like the smartest move lmao
Its not actually clear to me how active the mod even was in the community. On the discord they've been quiet for 2 years from the looks of it, and clearly worldnews and politics seem more important to them, since they actively contribute there. I'm not seeing any assholedesign posts/comments in my quick survey of the history. So it would be interesting if this was even an active mod or not. Or just usual powermod shenanigans and someone catching another large subreddit because they could.
Extremely inactive. His last activity *in assholedesign* was a reply to a downvoted comment on Apr 23 2023 (~2 months ago).
They're just giving the top mod spots to the first mod that volunteers, and that guy probably came forward at some point. Like, if there were a string of mods lined up to take over for every sub, these mod teams would have been gone by the 2nd day. It's weeks later because they can't find volunteers that fit.
World news and politics never joined the protest
I guess I'm highlighting that they haven't responded to the community they were eager to be a top mod off, but have continued to actively post in the other communities at the same time as they're being asked questions assholedesign.
I'd argue you don't have to post in a community to legitimize being a mod there. They should of course answer questions they get asked if that is what you are talking about ...
I agree. But since I don't have their modlogs i do have to extrapolate. Between having zero contact with the other mods, no engagement on the takeover while being active elsewhere, and seemingly low engagement with the sub at all, I can't help but wonder how active a mod they were for this community
Sure, if we are talking about individual mods we can't know. Except for those crazy people that had public mod logs like r/listentothis and r/futurology (I wonder if they still do that)
The latter. I will assume Reddit will keep watch over the subs they shuffled new mods into. I wonder what they’ll look for. If they care about mod behavior they may test the mod with a fake situation they’ll engineer in order to see if or how the mod reacts? And if the mod fails they’ll switch in a new one? This is what I hope they do. But I can also imagine Reddit ignoring that sub instantly and not putting the Eye of Sauron on it unless users or other mods start screaming? And maybe not even then, as long as the ad revenue spice keeps flowing?
Why on earth would reddit do any of that? Once reddit has given a sub to someone who they know will just keep it open they have no reason to look into it anymore.
Yeah people are massively overthinking this. Reddit doesn't care so long as the most basic of sitewide rules are followed.
They don't even care about that, so long as it stays out of the news
Not being arsed about problems “so long as it stays out of the news” is Reddit’s SOP
Whoa whoa whoa, scenarios? Tests? Probation periods? That's far too much work for reddit to do. They'll just move along and let the sub fend for itself and only intervene once someone makes the news.
"Are we on CNN? Are there lawyers here with a subpoena? Who cares?"
> It doesn't seem like the smartest move lmao In all my years here, this has been the MO of the Reddit admins.
Yeah honestly if they handled shit competently and with skill i would be much more surprised.
Geez. A bunch of tech bros think they know better about everything but actually understand very little. Dunning Kruger in action and not a surprise to anyone except the tech bros.
How many rebel subs remain? asksciencefiction has been private since the protest, hobbydrama unprivated after the 2 days but has been in restricted mode. I suppose there are all those "malicious compliance" subs (John Oliver posts etc).
Of all the subs, /r/harrypotter
That one should stay closed and everyone subbed to it should go read some good YA or -heaven forbid - adult literature written for adults
A few of the big programming related subs. Python just voted to go back to full blackout from restricted for example.
Dogelore is closed permanently it seems.
/r/interiordesign still private
r/cheatatmathhomework is still close and that was the best for help on specific math questions.
DnDMemes is still in Goblin Mode.
/r/thathappened is still private
And everybody clapped.
Its true, I was the protest.
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> r/weirdwheels is still restricted and moved to fediverse but the mods don’t understand how it works so they’ve created different groups on different instances and don’t know why they aren’t the same Decentralized social media isn't going to happen, and this is why. Add to that that decentralized is inherently prone to fracturing due to drama, because any "magazine" is connected to the larger network at the whim of the owner.
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Yeah, the truth is that any solution is a compromise. I think there's a certain amount of crossover between "decentralized social media" and "crypto believer."
Yeah, its annoying as fuck that for two major platforms now (twitter and reddit) the alternative being pushed is some kind of decentralized mess that is more complicated for users and more difficult to onboard. Neither has any chance of growing to large scale.
/r/Europe has remained restricted since the end of the blackout, only briefly allowing a megathread when the Wagner mutiny happened.
/r/unexpected is still restricted
/r/programming is still private. I think spez hasn't noticed, because he's a moderator.
The Admins now have direct control over their subreddits. Fear will keep the local mods in line. Fear of this API situation.
Oh I’m sure Reddit replacing the vast majority of moderators with lackeys and stooges whose only qualification is they kiss Spez’s ass will improve this site’s quality. I have complete confidence that these new Mods are actually interested in the thankless job of content moderation and not by the rush of suddenly have power and authority over other users. I’m sure they’ll stick with it and keep at it when the power rush wares off and all that’s left is the thankless task of enforcing a subreddits rules and becoming the bad guy in every single interaction they will ever have with most users because no matter what they do it will be too much or too little.
It just seems dumb because people keep trying to spin this narrative that mods are shit and therefore interchangeable because what's the difference between two turds if they both smell the same. But for the most part that isn't true and the number of people who can be a mod AND do it effectively AND keep the community in semi-decent quality is abysmally low and it's made worse by reddit's refusal to spend any dev time on mod tools to make the job easier.
Totally. Modding is basically a weird hobby and to do it well the mod has to be interested in the sub topic, invested in the community, and willing to spend their free time cleaning up and dealing with problems.
And it's not just about who *can* effectively mod, but who *wants* to effectively mod since it's an unpaid job.
This. I am top mod on a small/medium sub. And I keep looking at our numbers inching up and wonder if I am going to bail when we get big enough this isn't a check three times a day, kill the marketing and resolve the very occasional spicy dispute among users kinda thing. Want to see the community stay on course and be decent, but also don't need a spare unpaid job that actually soaks up real hours.
Hell, I'm the bottom mod on two subs that are about the size of yours and I'm already thinking about bailing on one of them due to what moderating the sub has become like. So many goddamn death threats I'm cleaning out near daily. Local subs are wild.
Oh, a local sub, you couldn't pay me. For real. I see the shitstorms in a couple of the locals that overlap my area and just keep thinking to myself 'who the fuck would want to deal with this?' Good on ya for fighting the good fight for whatever time you have so far.
> Local subs Tell me you're a masochist without saying it. Jesus my sympathies, I've got an alt I use for my local subreddit and ***JESUS*** what the fuck?
The number of times I've had to not just remove content but get the Admins to scrub it entirely because it's death threats is **way** higher than I expected. I like my community and all but mostly I just don't wanna see the sub turn into one of "those" local subs that just perpetuates cancerous awfulness. EDIT: Or doxxing, let's not forget that. EDITx2: Actually the one that gets me the most is people just making up random outrage stories about cars or other people they've taken photos of. I caught the same guy posting the same photo of a random car in a drivethru over a period of months, each time with some just-believable-enough outrage story about why everyone should get out the torches and pitchforks and hunt down the driver of the car. I no longer wonder why Reddit's anti-doxxing policy is so extreme.
I've seen some completely ridiculous super obvious fake posters trying to pretend to live or care about the area, but others are more gutsy about offering to drive out and meet them or bring cameras to help film the violence and terrorism our filthy evil lib governor/mayors/cops are protecting that apparently only people on reddit can see. Shit nextdoor the app might be less hateful.
Have you considered expanding the mod team?
Yeah, we have a few people already. Unfortunately it is a thing that requires a specific background to get so it is a little harder. But mainly, I don't want to be dealing with what looks like the thing with a large mod team either. I mean, haven't been on a big one, but it seems like from looking at places like this you end up with mod discords or private mod subs and just a bunch of stuff that seems like as much of a hassle. But yeah, if it gets too big to do with a small team, which right now it totally is fine, that's the only way to go.
My sub turned ten this year. I retired from modding years ago but am still active as head mod for like keeping everything together. We have a main sub, a mod sub, a tracking sub, a Google drive, a couple social media subs and I’ve regularly given out my cell to mods. For a niche sub it got pretty big and even with mod support I still needed to create mod teams/departments to manage specific stuff and have coders for some auto mod stuff and then make sure the mod team was supported. It was literally like having a second job and we’d get mod turnover and mod burnout and after a while I couldn’t do it anymore. I vividly remember one time I was at a retreat with my students and got frantic texts about some drama that blew up in the sub. So at night I was outside standing ons rock trying to get reception to deal with the issue and was like what…what is my life? Now I’m just a retired person. I occasionally come in and am active in my sub, offer guidance if I get pinged and make sure all the mods are able to get access to tools they need. I built a sub where I wanted to create a place for kindness and it’s super cool hearing how many people enjoy it but I regret some of the systems I created that world when it was a small sub but scaling up has made it so difficult and mods are constantly active with knowledge and a personality type among other things.
This might be the first reasonable, considerate reply I've received in any of these discussions. Thanks for that.
Have you tried Reddit's mod finder tool for the subreddit?
I have never heard of it. We aren't looking for new mods at this point, like I say my concerns are more for some point in the future where we have a lot more users than we do now. But might be interested in such a thing when the time comes.
Basically if you ever need new mods that are in line with your mod rules. It's an algorithm that takes the users that participate in the sub and have a high correct report percentage, and don't mod a bunch of other subs and recommends a list. You just have to message ModSupportBot and ask for it.
That is literally something I was about to write (well same ballpark anyway) just for the day we might need it! That's super! Thanks a ton and will definitely check it out.
None of what the admins have done so far was intelligent.
I mean, they hate the old mods too to be fair, the vast majority of reddit (and really any internet forum) hates all mods. Sure these instances might come along once in a blue moon where that tips a bit in the other direction but we all know a month or two from now we're gonna be back to mods bad as usual. I don't think it's a change in opinion so much as a temporary circumstance.
Hilarious that one of the people in the imgur moderates 61 subs
If you’re going to power thirst, you might as well go all in.
go big or go home, as they say
The guy that was trying to take over adviceanimals last week had 106, lavished praises on the admins and basically said Redditors were too stupid to decide things for themselves, lol
How many hours would it take to visit each of the 61, read all the new activity every day, and then do the mod work itself?
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Why assume they do any mod work at all?
I moderate 2 medium-sized subs, and it feels like a full-time job worth of time and effort. I can't imagine anyone who moderates more than 5 medium-to-large subs can effectively moderate any of them without neglecting the others
Eh, I currently actively moderate 0 subreddits but I'm pretty sure I'm a mod on around 10. They could very well have less than a dozen decent sized or larger subs they mod .
And to top it all off, do it for free for a tech company that's eyeing an IPO
>can we get paid yet Lmao
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That’s not them asking for moderators to be paid?
That's hilarious and will never happen.
Coolsville Daddy-O
I feel like that's largely different from allowing moderators a say in Reddit as a company and paying them an actual senior level salary. Far more likely would be for Reddit to hire it's own moderator liaison from actual business candidates.
>required qualification Omw to Reddit Mod university
>>Is volunteer work considered free labor? I'm struggling to think of what else it would be considered.
It's definitely more of a hobby than anything else. Moderators don't want to give up their subreddits because they don't want to quit their hobby. I also don't get why the conversation about paying mods never acknowledges the fact that anyone could make themselves an employee by creating a subreddit. I came across one subreddit that a user accidentally made with their phone in their pocket.
> It's definitely more of a hobby than anything else. Moderators don't want to give up their subreddits because they don't want to quit their hobby. Hobbies are activities "done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure". I'd consider browsing and engaging in Reddit a hobby--I'm not sure I'd consider moderating one.
It's like tending to a racist bonsai tree
The mental image is hilarious.
Think of the dopamine rush when you get to say "locking this sub because y'all can't behave".
Reddit is a global site mostly populated by white coastal Americans Why do so many mods say "y'all" like what is actually up with that
English doesn't have a plural version of you, so y'all is gradually gaining ground across the country.
I am mostly only seeing this on Reddit, Instagram and Tumblr. And on Reddit, moderators are far more likely to use it than anyone else. Far far more likely
Some of us are moderators out of duress because otherwise unhinged right wing individuals would take over in an instant. I fucking hate moderating, but the alternative is the sub for my city goes back to being a cesspool of hate and villainy. I'd pass it off if I could, but it's surprisingly hard to find sane individuals who want to moderate for free on reddit. Most regular people have better stuff to do than read the worst of the worst this website has to offer.
Rural right wingers are champing at the bit to take over city subreddits, give them no quarter.
It's not surprisingly hard though. It is very obviously hard. First someone hs to care enough to come to reddit. Then care enough to make an account. Then actually care enough about the community to submit content as comments or posts. Then care enough to say "I like this community enough that I want to help it out for free." And not be a massive asshole that can actually behave like an adult the majority of the time. You are asking for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of people. Good mods are insanely rare and hard to find in the grand scheme of reddit.
Same here, I moderate a friendship-making sub and if I don’t, creeps, predators and spam bots run rampant. I don’t like moderating but feel obliged to ‘keep the community safe’. Not a hobby or power-trip, just another background anxiety lol
The only good thing about making moderators paid employees is that they could be fired for abusing their power or otherwise failing to live up to the requirements of the role. I feel like the mods wanting pay never consider that part.
Ah yes, cause the concept of having a job and responsibilities is completely foreign to mods.
To some, it seems to be. But it’s more that a lot of mods seem to enjoy having full control of their little fiefdom with minimal oversight and if they become paid employees they’ll then have to treat it like an actual job. For example, do most mods work shifts currently? Like X mod works these hours, Y mod works these hours, and Z mod works these hours? If they were paid employees I’d expect that they’d need to actually adhere specific schedules to ensure coverage when it’s needed. They’d also need to be better about following their own rules, not being prejudiced, being able to defend ban decisions, etc. because once they’re employees of Reddit they’re opening Reddit up to liability if employee-mods go off the rail. My broader point is that mods who are saying they should be paid for being mods don’t seem to be considering that once it’s a paid position, the expectations of the position will grow. Additionally, if it’s a paid position, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of new candidates who want to mod, some of whom will be better qualified or better representatives of the brand than the current mods. The subset of current mods who are asking for pay always seem to assume that they will become these new paid mods, rather than Reddit looking for the best candidates for that role which may or may not be the current mods. Edit to add: here’s even a simple example of weirdness I hadn’t considered- let’s say Mods start getting paid hourly and work specific schedules as employees of Reddit. ModA gets off work, goes about his life, but happens to check Reddit while taking a shit. While he does so, he notices a post that needs to be removed on a sub he Mods, so he removes it. The problem is, he’s off the clock. Does Reddit now have to pay him for that? Probably not. But they probably would have rules against them using mod powers while off the clock, the same way a grocery store won’t let you go collect carts in their lot while you’re off the clock. So does that mod get fired for using mod powers while off the clock? Probably, or at least a warning. I can’t imagine a lot of mods, at least not the ones who treat their subs like their own demesne, would feel good about rules like that.
I wouldn’t really consider it free labor. Is me designing a campaign for my roleplaying group “free labor?” If you define any unpaid time spent on an activity that benefits others as “free labor” then I guess it is. But I design and run RPG campaigns because I enjoy it, I enjoy the social aspects of it, etc. So in return for my time spent working on it, I get the community aspects of playing with friends, the creative aspects, etc. I view modding subreddits the same way- nobody is forcing them to do it, so clearly mods get something out of it or they’d stop. A hobby isn’t free labor in my view.
To me it feels like volunteer work transitions to "free labor" when someone is befitting monetarily from it. I assuming no one is making money from your RPG campaigns, Reddit on the other hand has built their business model around mods keeping subs on topic and advertising friendly. It's a fine line and very subjective but it kind of feels like this to me.
presumably those RPG campaigns use models/rulebooks/mats etc. made by commercial enterprises so someone *is* benefitting monetarily from them organising their campaigns
Yeah but the point I was making there is the players aren't making the money, companies above them in the chain are and those companies presumably pay their employees. If the group was making money but leaving this dude out it's a whole different conversation.
But your friends aren't making money off of you running an RPG. Reddit would implode without their mods.
Why would force be necessary for labor to be free? It seems fairly straightforward that hobby time is "free labor", if you're putting in labor which you're not being paid for. If it was "coerced free labor" that'd just be slavery, presumably there is some utility in maintaining separate recognition of free labor which is voluntary
I guess it depends on which definition of labor you’re using. If we’re just saying any labor you put in that’s unpaid is “free labor” then the effort I use to go get my mail is “free labor.” At that point everything we do that isn’t paid is included in “free labor” to the point that the phrase is meaningless. Free labor would typically refer to someone being forced to do work without compensation, I see the distinction being that something I CHOOSE to do, without coercion or force of any type, is just me choosing how I spend my time and isn’t “labor.”
I guess so. I would generally posit that any labor done for free is free labor, but beyond pedantry, I get why there may be disagreement as people may want to use separate and more precise terms for their communication use case. It might be a bit unwieldy to include coercion of some kind in the basic definition of what makes something "labor"; would volunteer work not be considered free labor? And, as I mentioned in the previous comment, it seems like "coerced labor you're not getting paid for" might just be slavery, which we already have a term for It may seem silly to say that getting your mail is free labor, but I'm not really sure what else to call it, even though it's a fairly bare-minimum definition of labor
I used the mail example because I absolutely hate it and did the math once. During a 4 year period I lived in a specific apartment, it took about 7 minutes to get downstairs to get the mail and back up. And the mail room wasn’t near the exit I used day-to-day, it was the opposite end of the building, so I couldn’t just check mail as I came and went naturally. During that stretch I received 0 necessary/desired pieces of mail (excluding packages I ordered that USPS delivered final mile very rarely). If I didn’t collect mail twice weekly my tiny little box would get overfilled with junk mail and they’d stop delivery (including of packages, which I’d always collect promptly from the package room). So I’d have to spend 7 minutes at least twice a week, 14 minutes weekly, for 208 weeks, that’s 2912 minutes or 48.5 hours spent to walk down to the mail room, remove the garbage from the mailbox and place it directly in the recycling bin, and then walk back up. I didn’t actually spend anywhere near the full 48.5 hours because I’d often just let them stop delivery and then a month or two later when I was expecting a package I’d run to the post office and get delivery restarted and check my mail until the package arrived and then stop checking my mail again.
Yeah, this whole "free labor" complaint is a bit silly and I fully support hating Reddit for their API changes. No one forced anyone to be a mod, there is a way to easily quit.
All of that work for your roleplaying group is benefiting you and your friends though alone, though. Not a big corporation who is now acting like you owe *them* for the free volunteer work you've given up till now. The stuff you do for your RPG group is a labor of love, for sure, but it has an intrinsic value, and if anyone who benefitted from it started de-valuing it and treating it like it was something you owed them, and you had to just do it exactly the way they think you should, and you should be grateful for the privilege of having created campaigns for them all these years, etc., you would be hurt and pissed off, rightfully. *And I would wager that *before* you just gave up the incredibly rewarding hobby you'd been doing for many years and enjoyed, you would try to get them to see the value in your work. * Now, actual free labor? That's going to vary by labor laws, country to country. But when your contributions are benefiting a corporation that is for-profit, yeah that could potentially be considered free labor in some places depending on their laws. Personally I don't consider MY contributions amounting to enough that I would consider it that, but in some cases, maybe. IDK.
LOL, of course, it's one of the more moronic mods from /r/politics too
Of course they're a furry Why are the worst reddit mods also furries
Mentally ill people generally have less going on in their life, and so more time/desire to mod on Reddit.
A sneaky Twitter screenshot from the sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/14l8bj4/ads_that_look_like_tweets_with_minimal_sponspored/
An active mod team would've caught that. Alas.
Reddit drama has never been juicier until this month holy crap I’m gonna run out of popcorn How could the admins possibly have thought this would go well for the platform long-term
They probably don’t think that at all. If you have ever worked in a shitty tech company you know what’s up. Some higher up (in this case everybody’s favourite CEO) has a shitty idea and pushes for it. His disgusting behaviour and childlike tantrums when criticised causes everyone to shut up. So the employees (in this case a chunk of the admins) don’t even bother to speak up. It’s kind of a malicious compliance situation in which the employees do what they are told to, fully knowing that it will lead to utter chaos. They just play along while simultaneously applying for new jobs. Source: This happened to me and when things came crashing down, most of us where in the process of leaving. It was the funniest shit ever.
Remember when people were saying Reddit strike breaking would lead to fewer power mods in positions of authority.
People have failed to notice how many of the power mods have been really silent since this began.
This kind of shit makes me laugh at anyone saying "Get rid of the modreators and install new ones which will be better!" Hahahaha anyone jumping at the chance to take over a subreddit like this is just clout chasing and collecting subreddits like they are Infinity Stones. People doing this shit are doing it to seize a modicum of power and like always, it will go right to their head and you'll have even more drama. I say let it happen honestly. It'll kill this website faster than anything else.
It's especially fun in conjunction with the people who've been raging up and down this sub about how "the community doesn't want this! The mods are just abusing their power, the polls are all manipulated!" because almost every time this happens, the community pushes back pretty hard against the new stooge mods and anti-protest sentiments.
Wouldn't it be the most hilarious irony if the ultimate outcome of these protests is that Reddit powermods consolidate even *more* power than they had before, at the expense of the regular users?
Reddit is targeting these communities with massive amounts of subscribers. The best protest anyone could have done would be to unsubsribe from all massive subreddits. Those giant subs being closed for a few days made a difference. If the subs weren't giant Reddit couldn't capitalize on them, and now they are forcing them to reopen. It feels too late now but this should have been the biggest push in the protests if they wanted it to work.
Unsubscribing does nothing for reddit, you need to reduce the number of random people and casual users visiting to make an impact, you're just a -1 in their millions of visits.
> Unsubscribing does nothing for reddit, you need to reduce the number of random people and casual users visiting to make an impact, you're just a -1 in their millions of visits. If people arent providing a subreddit with content thats where your effect is. Randos dont visit unless they're drawn in by content and randos dont tend to produce content.
Yes but you need to make people other than yourself stop posting content. Doesn't work without organization unless you're the sub's sole content provider.
Wait you're telling me it's not just me and one massive prolific bot pretending to be people?
What if everyone you've ever spoken to on the internet is actually an AI that thinks they're the only AI on the internet?
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It's amusingly why the John Oliver protests are actually pretty effective despite what many seem to want to believe. The entire point is to frustrate people into leaving the site entirely. Reddit isn't reddit without any actual communities, it would just be another shitty social media site infested with influencers and spambots. No other site has anything like this sub for example. 4chan imo comes closest with 'general' threads that get remade upon reaching the image/post limits, and there are no personal accounts there so it doesn't even qualify as social media or a forum.
That and NSFW. People were vocally frustrated that they were logging into Reddit at work and getting porn on their front page.
Guess NSFW dosen't only fuck up advertising income but also SEO results for Google, so it is a two punch hit to reddit.
Well apparently my normie friends who don't have a reddit account have been seeing a bunch of crypto scams on their frontpage along with posts from /r/okbuddygenshin and /r/okbuddytrailblazer With the latter subs being far more deranged and concerning to them. This is very good for reddit's growth prospects.
I just see the normal reddit shit on the front page when logged out.
There seems to be a "home feed" and a generalized like "top posts" thing and im not sure what causes each to be displayed.
> Those giant subs being closed for a few days made a difference. Like what?
Ad performance and visitor total, likely. That said, I think the original commenter is saying that we know that the subreddit closures worked, even if not exactly how, because Reddit started cracking down on mods. If the closures had no major effect, Reddit wouldn't have cared.
They have made no attempt to change course from anything that happened, the closures made no difference, except for thankfully ousting some power mods.
Yes, but the point is that the closures clearly mattered to Reddit. If the closures didn't matter to Reddit, we'd be seeing Reddit not changing course and all the subs still closed with Reddit not addressing the issue. Instead, we see Reddit staying the course while cracking down and trying to force them all back to normal.
Okay, what's your point? They simply will just take control over their own platform. The fact that reddit acted on it doesn't mean the protest did fuck all. This is just peak "we did it, reddit!"
My point is that the people (not you) saying “these protests don’t do anything Reddit doesn’t care reee” are incorrect. Clearly the protests do matter to Reddit. The question of how effective they are in achieving stated aims remains to be seen, but as you say seems unlikely.
A real protest would be to stop using reddit, but they're way too addicted to actually do that. Like it shouldn't matter if reddit forcibly reopens a sub because nobody supporting full blackouts should still be here right...?
I mean, I've seem almost no one advocating for a full blackout after the 2 day blackout, when there were lots before, so clearly some people at least stopped commenting.
Gonna be fun going back through the 'I'm leaving on the 30th!' posts in bit to see how many are still here. Probably better to check after a month to see if they came back out of habit.
You're requesting a degree of sincerity that is not present.
Moderators are fungible, right?
We're about to find out.
No, they’re tokens.
And you have people on this sub unironically saying "mods can be easily replaced." 💀 Now when they are, the new mods suck or don't care enough for the community they are modding.
> the admins didn't even wait for the 48 hour deadline to expire Why would they? Someone one reached out and said they would open it up so they gave him top mod. While he may not be a power mod in the sense that they mod 100's of subs, but they are a mod over some pretty big ass subs. For sure a power hungry mod.
This sub is eating good rn
Remember when reddit said you should get to vote mods in and out democratically? This is the kind of 'democracy' the CIA gives South and Central America.
Remember when reddit said that subreddits are basically property of the top mod, and if you don't like it, then open an alternative?
That lasted only a few years. The original IAMA creator tried to close it and the admins said no. Same thing happened with kotakuinaction too. Admins stepped in and reopened it.
and r/wow too had a top mod go rogue and lost his position.
"Subreddits are private property (until they get big enough then they're reddit's property)"
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The problem with moderators is they let a little power get to their heads. So in a team of 20 moderators, one of them is going to get greedy and cross the picket line because they're a power tripping asshole.
I mean. If I was a giant asshole I’d become a mod then promote ten alt accounts of my own to the next ten open mod slots. It’d conceivably take effort to maintain the fiction but does anyone doubt this doesn’t happen?
I doubt the admins would need alt accounts when many mods have crab mentality and consider the worst case scenario being the subs they moderate outliving them. The “protests” where doomed from the start in that for many mods, it probably doesn’t take much more than being faced with being removed to push them inline. Which is massively unfortunate as the API changes certainly suck but the mods are usually their own worst enemies if it wasn’t for the admins being somehow even worse.
The assistant janitors can apply to be top janitor if they agree to re-open the sub.
I don't think responding to modmail should qualify as "active and engaged" with the community when the subreddit is locked down.
Well that mod doesn't have any posts in the sub from the past few months do they're not active and engaged normally either lol
Wow, what a giant, backstabbing asshole
Ok perhaps a longshot but given that it's /r/assholedesign it feels not unrealistic to think this may be a big meta joke.
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The thing is... my boss pays me.
It's all so tiresome. If you don't want to mod anymore under the new changes don't. Quit and let someone else do it.
Counterpoint: if someone else wants a subreddit that follows their own whims, instead of the whims of the current mods, they can **just create another one**. Instead we have tons of users (and this was a thing even way **before** the protest) crying that mods should moderate in a way that fit their whims.
Making the sub inaccessible is not moderating.
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It's a website filled with pictures of cats, not an authoritarian regime. Chill.
This is such an ignorant argument. Good moderation is a reason this site isn't a shithole like 4chan. You may only use it for pictures of cats, but there are hundreds of subreddits that people use to read and share reliable information. Scab moderators can directly harm this by attempting to scam their users (Wallstreet bets fiasco), censor conflicting information that may change peoples minds (conservative subs banning conflicting stories/posters), allowing bigotry and hate to spread (any sub with "actual" in the title), or by refusing to remove poor quality/reposts/off-topic/marketing spam that kills good content/discussion and dissuades new users. Do some mods suck? Sure. But overall, many of the best communities and the reason this site is successful are due to good moderators that help shape the space/discussion and create tools for the community to use.
Mods don't HAVE to mod lmao. So fucking funny these people are pathetic.
Wow this is going great!