For those who don’t know, retrogaming on Reddit was a labour of love, there is a multireddit, m/retrogamingnetwork that networks over 60 subreddits under one banner giving the audience, banner, and reach of a big subreddit to some very small and niche spaces.
I bopped onto the main subreddit to grab their discord link for https://sub.rehab/ and was amazed to see the sub open. There’s a stickied post from “your new head mod” - they’ve made some changes already, ones that would stir debate if the userbase was still there to know about it: Reveddit Link
To quote the post opener:
First of all, you all know me probably at this point, but I’m Chalupacabra. We’re in the process of readjusting the mod team, so it’s not fully set up yet, but I’m your new head mod. It’s a process that’s been in the works for a bit now, I’m sure you’ve probably noticed some of the changes the team and I have put together to try to mix things up a bit based on what y’all told us you were interested in seeing.
And if there’s any doubts as to what the community “were interested in seeing” we had voted 88% in favour of a total blackout.
On the one hand I’m glad I don’t have anything to miss on reddit anymore, I’m not interested in being part of communities run by people more interested in themselves than anyone else, but it’s sad to see something that should have died peacefully be zombified instead.
@pterodactyl: Hey there, I’ll field this, since I was up until recently the most active mod on the subreddit. (Commenting from Mastodon, so excuse the weird formatting.)
First of all, there was no demodding involved; instead, there was an internal reshuffling by ZadocPaet, who was the previous de jure head mod and decided to leave formally at the same time I did. DreadedChalupacabra becoming head mod was a decision made between Zadoc and I.
@pterodactyl: In practice, the subreddit was and is run pretty much democratically between the mod team, so Chalupacabra being formally head mod doesn’t make much of a difference. He was a bit perplexed at the decision as well, for what it’s worth.
Now, I’d have been “ride or die” about sticking to the blackout, especially given the response in both the subreddit and the Discord. But I’m stubborn and principled. Since I was already stepping down, I wasn’t going to assert fiat over the decision.
@pterodactyl: The decision to reopen was taken based on an assessment of the response by the Reddit admininstrators and deciding that we didn’t want the subreddit falling into the hands of people who might use the subreddit to push malignant political positions, which are far too common in video gaming.
Notably, this was *not* a case of the mod team wanting to cling onto power at all costs like some people would cry. I want to nip that idea in the bud.
@pterodactyl: As for myself, I decided that spez’s response to the blackout was so overwhelmingly contemptuous that I felt there was no alternative but to leave Reddit. But I’d already been disillusioned with the direction of Reddit already, so it’s easier to make decisions like that when you’re practically on the way out as it is.
As mentioned in the post explaining the reopening, I have been conversant with and have full confidence in the moderators that have remained.
I am glad to find you here, this is wonderful information to know. Hope you can find a new place to call home and indulge in retro gaming.
@lavender @pterodactyl: I’m already following a few gaming accounts, retro or otherwise and retrocomputing accounts on Mastodon and I’m still moderating the RGN Discord (not the biggest fan of Discord as a platform, but it’s there), so I’m not short of places to discuss retro gaming.
We have raised the possibility of setting up shop on the Fediverse or even on an Invision discussion board; I think a fair few retrogamers remember when the latter was the main way to discuss games online.
Do let us know if you decide to open a federated Retro Gaming magazine or some such… would love to join.
Hey, we opened up a federated retro gaming magazine. We’re actually moving the entire community over here.
If you had such a large multireddit, I hope you seriously consider setting up a whole instance for you guys to use freely! Like /r/startrek did at startrek.website.
It’s cool to see you here! Thanks for giving the full story. I still don’t agree with the decision to open up against the community’s wishes but I am glad that you chose to step back rather than being pushed to. I know the discord is there and I see people starting to come together on kbin/lemmy too so I hope we get a positive space in line with the ethics many of us share again soon.
Thank you for sharing. It’s great to see mods from Reddit explain things to us so we know what’s going on.
Maybe some form of malicious compliance, like some subs are doing, is the better way to continue the protest. Especially if one already got threatened to get swapped out by the admins.
@DarkThoughts @pterodactyl: We’re observing the malicious compliance strategies actively and wondering how well they’ll go. I have to say that I especially like /r/history’s approach.
r/history has always been a class act. Been on that sub a long time. Gonna miss that one because they were so good about keeping content super high quality.
I haven’t been following. What approach did r/history take?
@abff08f4813c: They’re creating one thread a day, discussing a historical case of protest action or an aligned topic, like the history of scabs.
Here was their protest stance:
r/history will be joining the blackout from June 12-14 to protest the proposed API changes which will end 3rd party apps.
This Subreddit will be going private June 12-14. Don’t Let Reddit Kill 3rd Party Apps!
#What’s going on?
A recent Reddit policy change threatens to kill many beloved third-party mobile apps, making a great many quality-of-life features not seen in the official mobile app permanently inaccessible to users.
On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit, from Apollo to Reddit is Fun to Narwhal to BaconReader to Boost.
Even if you’re not a mobile user and don’t use any of those apps, this is a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface.
This isn’t only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators depend on tools only available outside the official app to keep their communities on-topic and spam-free.#What’s the plan?
On June 12th, many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy. Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app. This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.
The two-day blackout isn’t the goal, and it isn’t the end. Should things reach the 14th with no sign of Reddit choosing to fix what they’ve broken, we’ll use the community and buzz we’ve built between then and now as a tool for further action.
What can you do?
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Complain. Message the mods of /r/reddit.com, who are the admins of the site: message /u/reddit: submit a support request: comment in relevant threads on /r/reddit, such as this one, leave a negative review on their official iOS or Android app- and sign your username in support to this post.
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Spread the word. Rabble-rouse on related subreddits. Meme it up, make it spicy. Bitch about it to your cat. Suggest anyone you know who moderates a subreddit join us at our sister sub at /r/ModCoord- but please don’t pester mods you don’t know by simply spamming their modmail.
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Boycott and spread the word…to Reddit’s competition! Stay off Reddit entirely on June 12th through the 13th- instead, take to your favorite non-Reddit platform of choice and make some noise in support!
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Don’t be a jerk. As upsetting this may be, threats, profanity and vandalism will be worse than useless in getting people on our side. Please make every effort to be as restrained, polite, reasonable and law-abiding as possible.
#How does this impact r/history?
Even if you only use the official Reddit app and/or “New Reddit” on desktop, this change still impacts all of us. r/history uses third party apps and browser extensions for its moderation. Even though I mostly use r/toolbox for my moderation, I have to use it through a special browser on my mobile to get it to work properly.
We believe that people who wish to use this subreddit in the way that’s most accessible to them. We’ve also had several comments from people who are short sighted or even completely blind who cannot use the reddit mobile app to browse Reddit and require the use of third party apps. It’s unfair for them to have to suffer.
We hope this gets the message across to Reddit. We love this Reddit and I love this sub. I want to spend as long as I can beating down unofficial versions of history and making sure that big history has a suitable place to operate from for many years to come.
Thank you for reading!
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This is their current stance:
So the 48 hour blackout is over, and as promised the sub is back open, albeit in restricted mode. This means that we are not accepting new posts on this subreddit while we contemplate our next decision.
We feel as those Reddit has moved, but very slightly. Come the end of the month the API changes are still going ahead and all of the 3rd party apps will still suffer as a result, especially those that people can use to access Reddit.
So onto the main topic, what is wrong with the mobile app and why is access to other apps really that important? Surely it’s like Discord right? When you want to go on discord you just go on the discord app. There are no 3rd party discord apps at all.
Except Reddit existed for many years without an official app. In fact, the Reddit app you’re probably using to access this subreddit if you’re on mobile, was a third party app, known as Alien Blue See Wikipedia link here, that was bought and used by Reddit themselves.
The whole reason that the Reddit app exists was because of 3rd party apps that Reddit now intends to price out of existence, giving them less than 30 days notice to the impending changes. Reddit has had years to see something like this happening, it could have made suggestions for changes way back when Alien Blue became the Reddit app. But it didn’t. Instead it waited until now.
In addition, the Automoderator that every Reddit uses was also a third party app as well, something that I didn’t even know myself, having only been a moderator for the past two years, without Automoderator, modding even the smallest Reddit is nearly impossible. Our automod does the majority of the work for us, making sure that banned phrases, links to dodgy porn sites, spam content and everything else, don’t even make it to the comment section.
So now we sit and wait and see what happens, depending on how things move over the next few days will decide in what direction we will take r/history.
This bodes well for the quality of many subs: I’m sure turncoat figureheads will provide quality moderation. /s
Nah, it’s a democracy. Hi! I’m that mod in question. Man we protested for the users, that’s why all of that happened in the first place. I’m also the mod that started the discussion with the community about blacking out, and if the option was to either get a few people mad by having my hand forced by spez or seeing the place turn into kotaku in action? I’ll take the heat, I’m fine with that. I’d do it again.
My concern first and foremost is the people, I’m fucking PISSED at what spez pulled (and made that VERY clear in our return post) but he forced our hand. If they hand the place off to some of the random mods reddit has in their pocket for this kind of situation or anyone that requests it, it could fuck up the community. I’m literally a mod because I care about that not happening. And that didn’t change just because spez is a dickhead.
I’d prefer to see us migrate elsewhere. Until that happens I’m gonna do my best to make the sub the best environment possible for what we do. If that makes me a turncoat, I’ll own it, because this ain’t about my ego dude. It’s about the users. And I’m damn sure not being paid to do it.
It might be time to start thinking about the future and what happens the next time reddit tries to pull something like this because this is definitely not the last time. If what spez was saying is true he’s going to drastically cut down the moderators powers in the future, letting users take over subs more easily and also probably removing the option to put subreddits to private or readonly modes. The user experience on the site is going to go down and next time you want to protest you will not be as successful as this time.
What I’m trying to say is, if you want to protect your community it might not be a bad idea to have a backup plan anyway and get people ready for it. The longer you depend on reddits good will the harder it will be to move eventually. It can’t be done over night but it has to start somewhere. My 2 cents.
Oh, we do. It took a few to get it sorted but we’re actually doing it here. The community was really nice to me when this thread happened, and heard me out, I like the people here. So we’re moving here. I already started setting up the mags, and will be handing them off/recruiting mods from forum.fail after it’s all set up and people start coming over.
Eventually I’m going to crowdsource an entire instance just for us and get some bots to scrape whatever happens at reddit, build an archive and a website for the posts about rare hardware and just cooler stuff that pops up. We’re archivists first and foremost, that’s what retro gaming really is. I don’t trust that solely in the hands of reddit right now, you’re 100% correct.
There are a ton of very smart people in the community. I think a retro gaming instance would be awesome! Getting it setup and slowly pointing people to it would do wonders, maybe reach out to the mods that moved all of /r/startrek? They might offer some insights.
100% agree with this.
Just wanted to say that folks like you give me faith in the mods who are staying behind.
Thanks for caring, I’d love to see the whole sub migrating elsewhere. Preferably kbin or lemmy.
It is! Here, in fact.
EDIT: looks like the old head mod commented while I was still writing this. Their comments explain the situation much better.
According to this earlier post (reveddit link), the new head mod was part of the old mod team, and the old head mod willingly stepped down at the same time they reopened. According to the old head mod in the comments they were already planning on stepping down, and the situation with u/spez just sped up the process. As for opening the sub, according to the post the mod team was not happy about reopening the sub, but felt forced too as they did not want to get replaced.
Hopefully they do the thing that some other subs like r/pics are doing and make all the posts about something super specific but not really relevant.
Similar thing with r/piracy and some others too, whether the mods “agree to step down” (under pressure) or ignore the message or respond some way, it doesn‘t matter, they will be replaced with those willing to follow orders. That is the chosen course of action by the admins.
I have no insight into the internal discussions of the /r/retrogaming mod team, but my DMs with DreadedChalupacabra prior to the blackout indicated that they were heavily in favor of the protest. I think this turn of events was just coincidental.
Obligatory: https://kbin.social/m/retrogaming
