• That’s more a prudish American culture thing than a reddit-specific thing. We went to see the latest Guardians movie over the weekend, in which they foleyed out the line “classy hoes” from No Sleep Till Brooklyn, and showed all sorts of violence, gory deaths, and lots of pretty fucking serious child abuse. And finally dropped the first f-bomb in any MCU movie, in the line “open the fucking door,” which was said not in anger, but in exasperation.

      America loves its violence, but don’t you dare make any reference to anything close to sexuality.

    • huh, I remember they actually banned a sub (WatchPeopleDie, IIRC) about footage where people actually dying, like the sub is full of videos of people’s last moment, not like the PeopleFuckingDying which is a funneh sub, or WatchPeopleDieInside which is another funneh sub. Maybe it’s too morbid.

  • It’s crazy how reddit’s run like it’s a 1-2 year old startup still trying to figure out how guidelines, communication, consistent rule enforcement, etc. work.

    It’s becoming more and more apparent the site’s success was despite the company running it, not because of it.

    • Well, whether Reddit likes it or not, mods were a department of specialists working on some unique aspects of their business.

      That whole department got told to get bent, in essence fired, but they don’t even have contracts in place preventing “disgruntled employee” stuff.

      This is what happens.

          • I am starting to realize it’s not “work” I want to get away from, it’s Wall Street.

            I mean it’s not my boss or their bosses who are saying that my work won’t help cancer patients unless they pay a 100 bucks for something I can make for 3 bucks, it’s the Wall Street investors who bought the company.

            And it’s not the corporate hierarchy at Reddit that tells me that they need to blast ads in my face and make me argue with bots, it’s the Wall Street investor valuing its IPO.

    • If Reddit had just kept their mouth shut, 2 days after the blackout most subs would be back online and the others would eventually follow.
      But no Spez had to open his mouth and take actions, forcing subs to open again, telling lies about the app creators.
      Basically turning all of Reddit against him.

      • He’s panicking. His biggest lie is that this protest doesn’t matter and hasn’t and won’t impact Reddit financially. It already has and will continue to do so. You can tell that the people who actually post content worth viewing are here and not there, despite the smaller numbers over here.

      • I mean it’s not just reddit. While investors probably don’t care, the fact that he lied about easily disprovable things that did or did not happen doesn’t bode well. I don’t think it’s going to hurt their bottom line any time soon, but that kind of spinelessness isn’t exactly liked.

      • Yeah, the angry irrational reactions show that all the talk about the protests just being noise was a bluff. It might have blown over, but it hasn’t exactly because it got a reaction.

    • I think its going to end up a successful move for them.

      They built a platform. The users built the site over the years with minimal interaction from reddit.

      They now have a platform, millions of users, and full control of what they want on that platform.

      The writing has been on the wall for a while now, they want the traffic but don’t want the problems that come with mostly community driven content.
      All the profile redesigns, ability to “follow” users, profile pics, awards, all that has been an indication of the direction over the last few years. The last few steps was to kick out the problem users and be left with those who don’t really give a shit and just want to see memes on their phone while they take a shit. The people who hear about reddit and just grab the official app from the store. The people who don’t care about APIs and protests and modding or accessibility tools. Just eyeballs to look at their ads.

      Those people will stay. It doesn’t matter if 25% of the community leaves, because the natural growth in the next few months from the eyeballs will claw it back over time.

      Once they have an obedient user base who are strictly bound to what reddit want them to see, think TikTok or facebook users, that’s when they will see off. And it will pay off handsomely.

      • I would have agreed with you if it had just been the API changes, but the recent behaviour from admins is extremely alienating. All they needed to do to fix this situation is strike a deal with app developers and say sorry. The protest would have been over in a day and things would have largely gone back to normal.

        Instead, they dug in their heels and behaved like insecure little tyrants. They lie, they force mods out of their subs, they undelete comments, etc. There’s no trust left between admins and community, and in the long run that’s going to kill the website.

        The thing that makes reddit great is the user created content. That content is provided by a tiny minority, while the vast majority just consumes.

        Most of the people creating the content care about the platform, and they will leave if they are alienated enough. That’s not even mentioning the thousands of hours of unpaid mod work. You might find some power-hungry replacements for the bigger subs, but the quality of mods will decrease, which will make the community worse in the long run.

        If they continue on this path, reddit will end up like 9gag. There’ll be content, but very little of it will be original, and it won’t be all that interesting for targeted advertising like it currently is.

        It won’t disappear, but it certainly won’t be a multi-billion dollar company.

    • If you go by Spez (Hoffman) literally saying recently “We’re 18 years old. It’s time we grow up” and “It’s time we grow up and behave like an adult company”, it can give you insight into how he thinks of Reddit (and age, as he was a former /r/jailbait mod). The idea of ‘age’ in a company is such a man-childish way to think about it. The idea that after 18 years you, as a co-founder of a company, apparently have just such little thought into this is mind boggling and shows he’s basically just coasted the entire time. He apparently hasn’t:

      • Determined the vision of the company (therefore the guidelines, rules, etc)
      • Have a roadmap about where this is going (short of the sudden push for IPO)
      • Figured out how to turn a profit without alienating the user/mod base

      This should evoke no confidence from any current or potential investor and while I initially hoped for this guy to be forced out, so I could come back. I don’t think it will get rid of the issues of platform and community stagnation, toxicity, bots, or the push to make a profit. At this point with this whole Kbin/Lemmy/Threadiverse-era on the horizon, I’m actually excited. This is a great time to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and where we want to collectively go with these platforms and how make it work for us. I’m looking forward to the future and to shake off the malaise that clicking on Reddit basically everyday for the past 18 years has done to us.

      • At this point with this whole Kbin/Lemmy/Threadiverse-era on the horizon, I’m actually excited.

        Same. People always opine about how reddit was better X years ago, but it really was. Over the past dozen years, I’ve gradually unsubscribed from every default sub and most larger ones. They always turn into meme-factory shitholes full of puns, recycled one-liners, and totally irrational explanations why you’re wrong (many of these seem to come from intentional contrarian accounts/bots). There’s a demand for that stuff, sure, but it’s gotten harder and harder to find sincere, thoughtful comments.

        I’m planning to delete my reddit account next week, but already finding myself coming here more frequently because the quality of the interactions is better. I can’t recall the last time I received a comment there with as much time/effort as the one I’m replying to right now.

        • I always found Reddit to be more enjoyable in the niche subculture stuff anyways, hopefully some of those communities move over here. You would think that the admins for Reddit would understand the “innovate or die” mentality, but that unfortunately does not seem to be the case. I too am looking forward to what Lemmy/KBin brings as a replacement.

  • As much as Steve has already shown he’s willing to lie outright (especially we characterizing his talks with the Apollo Dev) I really can’t put it past Reddit to lie about the mods “encouraging” porn posts.

    • Tech companies can’t help but abuse people. They passed the law allowing gig workers to be a separate class in California and some immediately tried to dictate start times and schedules.

      All Reddit has to do next is tell their volunteers when they need to do their jobs and where.

    • Won’t SOMEBODY PLEASE think of the children!!!

      I’m so fucking sick of people using ‘protecting vulnerable people’ as a front for them being shitty. It’s so obvious that they don’t actually give a shit about them.

  • It’s only because they were default subs. A while back one of the news subs (r/world news? ) got flooded with porn and basically switched to a random anime porn type of sub. That caused the population to migrate to r/anime_titties for all their news needs. Now when it happens to a special sub though it’s a problem?

    • lol, I witnessed that historical moment, essentially r/worldnews become a wild west where any post is acceptable, and it’s all 50/50 NSFW, you either get a naked lady or a butthole, while r/anime_titties are the proper sub for world news…

      • It was /r/worldpolitics, with anime_titties being the actual world politics sub. Similar to how /r/trees is for weed, and /r/marijuana_enthusiests is for people discussing actual trees

    • Did they ask to be default subs, though? I remember at least two occasions where mods said they woke up one morning and there was a huge influx of users, reports, and comments, and they’d been defaulted without even being asked if they wanted to be.

  • Reddit’s response to everything over the last week or however long it has been:

    “Fuck you, we don’t care about you, we want to line our pockets, we literally think of users as dirt, we expect you to bow down and kiss our shoes”

  • I can’t blame reddit admins on this one. I support the protest and users shifting to Lemmy. But the sudden NSFW content is clearly going to get reddit to take action. Just the obvious response in my opinion. Just like killing third party apps causes a user base to leave. 🤷‍♂

  • The unfortunate thing is that in a lot of cases, the “Big Stick” approach actually worked. Many reddit moderators that were “leading” the protests caved under threats of replacement from the admins. Maybe it’s because they’re addicted to the little bit of power being a moderator over a reasonably sized community gives you. Maybe they’re just set in their ways and expected reddit to roll back their API changes. I can’t say. The one that really pissed me off was r/selfhosted. Like, your entire thing is autonomy and a very technical microcosm of DIY culture, but the second you’re faced with the possibility of just migrating to one of a million different other, self-hosted options, suddenly it becomes “too much of an inconvenience?” Totally pathetic.

    • The protestors aren’t organized, so of course some of them will respond to different things. It’s not surprising that a few have caved. I bet a few have joined the protests because they saw the big stick being used like that.

  • Haha fuck reddit. They will keep on changing the rules or apply them in even more retarded ways. The end of the month when all the api stuff dies can’t come soon enough.