As some subreddits continue blackouts to protest Reddit’s plans to charge high prices for its API, Reddit has informed the moderators of those subreddits that it has plans to replace resistant moderation teams to keep spaces “open and accessible to users.”

Edit, there seems to be conflicting reporting on this issue:

While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout

  •  Thief   ( @Thief@lemmy.one ) 
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    1431 year ago

    Everyone needs to realise it doesnt matter. Enough people already came to lemmy for us to carry on without reddit. Now we just do the normal long haul work - help users who need help so people start searching lemmy for tech solutions, post our normal content here so there is a reason to stay, upvote and comment others work so there is engagement. The rest will follow as this grows and grows. We have already won. Lemmy is no longer a fringe interest.

      • I was a mod on a big sub for awhile many years ago and it was a literal horrowshow every day. It was an endless torrent that never stopped, the mod team basically ran 24/7. It was guaranteed you would see at least some fucked up bigotry every time you looked in the queue because the sub was a regular target for those people. It was really just a nonstop firehose of all the worst the internet has to offer, one reported Reddit comment at a time, forever. The tools I had access to were janky browser plugins and things like that, stuff previous mods had built themselves years before because the actual Reddit tools were inadequate. The sub involved so much moderation the team was very organized and you had to put in a certain amount of work every month, it really was like a part time job where you get to set your own hours but can be “fired” for slacking. You often feel emotionally drained afterwards just like a real job, and you start feeling anxious when you “clock in” because fuck not this same miserable bullshit yet again, just like a real job. I have so much respect for quality moderation, it is not at all easy in any way.

        •  Banjo   ( @Banjo@beehaw.org ) 
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          61 year ago

          With all the time and effort mods like yourself put into looking after subs, does Reddit not have at the very least a way of publicly rewarding moderators that do some much work keeping subs running? I know fellow Redditors can hand out ‘rewards’ but something directly from Reddit would show the community how much mods are appreciated and required.

          • Not that I’m aware of, but this was many years ago now so things could be different. I personally wouldn’t have wanted any kind of public reward because that can paint a target, you get direct messages from problem users and other issues that come with recognition. I never publicly mentioned being a mod anywhere on Reddit, it was one of the things the mod team warned new mods about because trolls and other problem users will start targeting you directly.

          • I don’t really have enough experience with them yet to have specific thoughts but my impression is they are very basic currently and need a lot of work. One thing that’s really important is being able to do bulk actions against multiple users quickly. I remember the times when big attacks would happen and we would have a sudden flood of obvious problem users posting comments blatantly intended to cause disruptions, being able to efficiently respond in the moment to that scenario can be really important. It sucks when the mod team lacks the ability to respond quickly because in the meantime users trying to have a real conversation end up getting harassed, angered, and driven away with the impression the mods are worthless. You don’t want to have to fight your tools and spend a bunch of time per individual action because by the time you get to dealing with the full swarm of trolls the conversation might have really taken a turn or be basically over so you end up cleaning things up after it doesn’t make much difference for the users. Also, bots like automod are extremely useful and important so I would say the fediverse needs them ASAP. I never messed with the bots when I was mod but they were definitely like a force multiplier for the mod team.

            • @coldredlight @rysiek It seems to me that search would be critical. An ideal workflow during a flood might look like:

              1. Search for a particular keyword (or regular expression 🤩)
              2. Multi-select relevant comments
              3. Optionally: Review list of the associated usernames, possibly annotated with account age etc. and allow deselecting any that were accidentally included
              4. One-click ban + remove recent comments of all users in list.
          • @rysiek @coldredlight @peyotecosmico from my experience modding on Facebook, the things I most often wished for were just better views of incoming comments. Being able to sort and group by time on a certain post, for example, and then filter that list by keyword so I can take bulk actions.

            Being able to restrict who can comment on a post helps a LOT. The amount of harassment I had to deal with dropped significantly when I could change a post to only accounts over a certain age, for example.

      • I think what will happen is that a lot of the subs are eventually going to end up in the hands of the few mods who love sucking up to the admins and the mods who are in it for the dopamine they gain power-tripping instead of the mods who are in it to make the subreddit the best version of itself.

        This will only further the “5 Mods Control 92 Of The Top 500 Subs” issue and lead to overall less happy, less engaged users.

        • undefined> This will only further the “5 Mods Control 92 Of The Top 500 Subs” issue and lead to overall less happy, less engaged users.

          With that many subs, they couldn’t be good mods even if they wanted to. It is truly only a power trip and badge collecting at that point.

          It’s like bragging that they’re the CEO of 3 companies…ok so you’re doing a terrible job managing 3 companies instead of trying to do good at 1.

  • Funny how he repeatedly uses phrases such as “the extent that they were profiting off of our API” but has never used the phrase “the extent that we rely on freely provided content and freely provided moderation. If it weren’t for the tens of millions of people who are giving us free stuff we wouldn’t even exist.”

  •  Pekka   ( @Pekka@feddit.nl ) 
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    591 year ago

    Simply replacing all the mods sound like a good way to kill a subreddit, Reddit probably has no way to pick good mods… Mods will need some connection with the topic, and you don’t want to pick random users with no experience for large subreddits.

  • Its probably going to end up like facebook.
    A big lumbering thing, still heavily populated but ad choked and overrun by bots and bad actors, indoctrinating unsuspecting users. Even if it stays big, hopefully its reputation will suffer enough to keep most new users away.

    • I feel like Reddit already turned into a general social media underneath us already, with so many reposts from TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it had nowhere near the amount of original style content as it used to.

      The comments became no longer worth reading, with the same lame jokes populating the top of the thread, the atmosphere became toxic and not like a community.

      What Reddit are doing is intended to turn the existing known entity into a profitable social media app, they don’t care about the quality decline. The existing owners will slowly sell as the valuation increases and they will get their winnings at the expense of the decade of free labour from the content creators, moderators & developers.

      We made them rich.

    • Have you checked out the official app? Last I looked, it defaults to about 1 post visible at a time. You can adjust it to about 4 posts visible. Last I check, 1 of those posts was an ad and another was a recommended post.

      It already feels like Facebook.

  • I can’t believe the amount of people I see that are supporting Reddits decision not only with the API pricing and changes, but in removing mods like this.

    The whole reason for the blackouts is a protest against Reddit and their new policy. Now they’re threatening to come in and remove mods with their own appointed ones to force subs to open? And they’re for this?

    I…just…wow.

    •  veaviticus   ( @veaviticus@lemmy.one ) 
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      1 year ago

      It’s not that they’re for this specifically… It’s that they are self centered. They’re the same 75% of the population that is willing to cross the picket line at Starbucks cuz they want their coffee. They don’t think about the workers rights, they only care about coffee.

      The same people just want memes and football and porn. They don’t care about what’s behind the scenes unless it directly impacts them. And let’s be honest, the reddit changes (for now) impact like 10% of reddits user base. That’s not enough for them to give up some dumb memes for

  • Yes, I got the “message” from the Reddit CEO, and decided to pre-empt that, and I spent a few hours today manually deleting each and every post I made in my subreddit. The content is already anyway on my blog, on The Internet Archive, and on the Fediverse. So my subreddit now looks like this (he is welcome to let someone else take it now):

  •  Plume (She/Her)   ( @Plume@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 year ago

    …and the subreddit rebellion has been foiled. The remaining locked subreddits will be hunted down and defeated!

    The attempt on my credibility by the Apollo dev has left me scarred, and deformed. But I assure you: My resolve… has never been stronger!

    In order to ensure the profitability and continuing advertising…

    REDDIT, WILL BE REORGINIZED…

    INTO THE FIRST…

    GALACTIC ADVERTISING PLATFORM!

    FOR A SAFE, AND PROFITABLE WEBSITE.

    — u/spez to potential investors. Maybe. Probably. Might be slightly paraphrased.

  •  pbjamm   ( @pbjamm@beehaw.org ) 
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    361 year ago

    From NBC News interview :

    “If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders,” he said. “And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”

    Eat sand /u/spez.

  • I doubt anyone is actually surprised by this. reddit owns the site, and (according to their TOS) they have rights to everything posted on their site (while they at the same time take zero responsibility for anything posted). I’m only surprised it’s not happened sooner.

    I’m also not surprised that this came about from someone that wants to take over one of the privated subs. Most likely to stroke their own egos.

  • I’m treating the blackout like a strike, and I don’t cross picket lines, and neither should anyone else. No scabs. No one should be agreeing to moderate a sub that has lost all of its moderators to forcible removal.