I've seen some here openly despair that leaving reddit didn't do anything.
Spez, CEO of Reddit and former mod of the r/jailbait subreddit losing his shit very publically for days proves otherwise.
...And it's also a reminder that the reddit community we loved has already been destroyed by ownership, anyone returning would be returning to a shadow that disdains its own users and works to disempower them with every update. They're even undeleting user's deleted posts. If they can't respect users enough to be able to delete their own content, why enrich them?
Holy shit was he seriously a mod of that subreddit? Good lord...
Back in the olden days of reddit, mods didn't need to accept their position. So, it was a troll tactic to promote people to moderator of a controversial sub and then take a screenshot. I have no knowledge of spez's moderating history, but I imagine this is the most likely scenario.
If I let a bunch of crackheads live in my house and endlessly defended their presence until I was forced by public pressure to reluctantly send them away the shit they got up to in the interim was at least partially my fault in my opinion.
The real crime was how he didn't do anything about it once he knew about it. Same with many other questionable subs, perhaps he enjoyed them or maybe he didn't, but he sure tolerated them being around polluting the waters. They brought in traffic, aka money, and that's all he cares about.
That may be what happened but Reddit management definitely knew about what was going on because they created a special "Pimp Daddy" trophy just for that one mod as a kind of public reward for his work. Reddit was complicit to some degree.
he participated pretty heavily in the sub either way.
Maybe. On the other hand, Reddit wouldn't be the first major social media platform that got its start focusing on sexualization and sexual harassment if he was...
Oh wow, that's one of those quirks that in hindsight feels like a major oversight lol
It was hilarious the first couple times it came up - but it absolutely was a massive oversight, especially in light of how wild-west the subreddit space was in that same era.
He still was the mod there... Thats enough to make a fuss about it against him :)
They don't either right now here in Lemmy. But you can only promote users to moderator in Lemmy if they have posted something or commented on something in the same community.
I'm sure restoring deleted data will go over really well in Europe.
Already sent my GDPR request for my data and complete data deletion. In a few month, I will just have to look for my posts and comments, kindly provided by reddit, and denounce/sue them if they didn’t comply. That should sit well with investors ;-)
Where do you request GDPR data deletion to them? Did the data request already, still waiting, but haven't found anything about deletion yet
They were playing dumb when I asked, but it only needs to be in the initial email or comments on the form
Yes, but I only know of the form to request data, not of one to delete it, where did you send the request?
it took them less then a week to go from "were a community" to "shut up and do as your told". fuck that and them. whether kbin or lemmy works out only the future knows so far but im done with reddit.
Reminds me of leaving my ex. Went from "baby I love you, don't leave 🥺" to "fuck you, you're nothing without me, you're a crazy bitch" in the span of minutes.
Lol, this encapsulates it so well. But I am also out of that “community” now. Still debating whether to delete my account.
Even if the protest fails to produce capitulation from Reddit, it still effectively drove a fuckton of traffic into the Fediverse, which is a goal worth pursuing in itself. If corporations won't comply, then building workable alternatives is option 2.
In view of comments about restoration of deleted data, I had a look at the user agreement for NON EEU and it says "When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
tldr; they do not have to honor content deletion in the US. But I feel better that I deleted it, maybe it will be a little bit of pain to restore it. I will go back occasionally and re-delete if neeeded.
Not for nothing, but a key feature of fascism is that you're "enemy" is both weak and strong at the same time.
So the blackout is not a big deal AND the mods coordinating the blackout are too powerful...
ACAB - All CEOs Are Bastards
Meh. "Fascism"? That tactic is used in politics all the time against most prominent leaders and groups, no matter where they come from. They're both inept and totally powerful and Machiavellian.
It's the whole thing about "will bear them with humor and ridicule" but also "look at their evil actions".
A fascist tactic that is used in politics all the time.
My point is that I don't know what's specifically "fascist" about it if virtually everyone uses it.
“Fascist” is an adjective. Like “green.”
A bad example: l don’t know what’s specifically green about it if virtually all plants look that way.
Everyone is using a fascist tactic. It doesn’t become a benevolent tactic because everyone uses it. It’s still fascist.
Yeah let's see how that works out... Not like the communities literally voted... Nah...
I really, and truly, don't get why there are any mods left after this fiasco. If I were them I'd take down all the CSS and all the bots and all the things I'd worked on over the years and just quit. Reddit completely exists on the back of unpaid labor from the mods and they treat them like garbage. Not to mention that the overwhelming response I'm seeing from users is they despise the mods as well. So why are they even in this thing?
In my case, the biggest sub I help moderate has one mod who made the whole thing. From the ground-up, a great community of people, very few fights and a ton of people subscribed. It really is like a 'model' example of how the communities should work.
They jusy can't understand how we'd be willing to throw it all away over a company's stupid move. I guess in this instance, it is well over a decade of making a great place. And I can see why he feels awful.
But to me that is the only power we have...having people who will burn it down to make a stand.
I won't be there after this month ends and my 3rd party apps go.
There were (are?) a few truly decent threads on Reddit. r/zappa in my opinion was far and away the most well run community on that entire site that i has experience with, though there were certainly others that i know of. I never recall a single toxic moment in many years of being there. I didn't even check to see if they blacked out over this.. I just did it on my own and I don't think I'll go back, to be honest... But it's one place that I truly miss. I've only accessed the site from a third party app (RedReader) for the past 7 years or so, but I've been on Reddit from about 2009.. My current account live since 2011. Even though RedReader got the exemption for its accessibility features, I still couldn't stand for the principle behind this whole thing. There were some really good subreddits there, really good communities, and they'll be missed, but it's far more important to withdraw myself from that whole mess and take a firm stand by refusing to use the site. I saw some communities moderated by genuinely good people with genuinely good intentions, I hope that they have all left to make a stand against the data mining corporation that Reddit has become. You seem to be one of the decent ones. Thanks for having made the experience pleasant, but greater thanks for standing with your community and pulling the plug when the need arose. I hope you find a place to migrate to.
You are assuming that this moderator criticism applies universally; there are dozens of subs with fantastic, fair mods, which are the only ones I sub to. I actively avoid subs that have mods who I see lock or delete stuff too often for my taste. Reddit also has major pastimes like /r/FreeGameFindings that people are not willing to give up; that place is one of my favorite hobbies and I can only hope a Telegram bot gets generated to notify me of its Lemmy counterpart's posts, as one does of the subreddit's. (Someone, help!)
Mods' CSS work may also serve as a real-life portfolio for actual jobs; who knows? The bots could also be, depending on the content, helping them make real money or otherwise find irl opportunities for preferred alternative fitness (/r/AppLab) or lifestyle preferences.
/r/MealPrepSunday is still going. /r/legaladvice is going. People get real-world help here and they aren't willing to give that up. /r/BeerMoney is going absolutely strong and it literally helps people make money.
What these mods should be doing is staying open and making a pinned post saying "Consider joining our equivalent on Lemmy." But within Reddit's scope, they can shut that down, too. Reddit is a for-profit entity just like Facebook and Twitter, which have every right to clamp down on encouragement away to Mastodon, etc. even if it makes them look bad.
So, as I asked someone else here who was criticizing the continuation of the API shutdown or why people are not being as vehemently opposed to it as some Lemmy migrants: what subs were you frequenting?
Lastly, I am a mod of dozens of smaller subs. What matters to me most is making sure everyone has a home to discuss their favorite topics. They're generally niche enough to not actually need moderation, but I'm seeing I also don't have enough time to figure out how to generate (or just plain generate) Lemmy counterparts for everything, though I used to have sufficient time in the past. People's lives can change but they still depend on things that are important to them.
To all programmers, I am serious about all the extensive integrations into subs being a factor for why people still go there. I would love to see a Telegram bot for a counterpart to /r/GooglePlayDeals, like
https://t.me/r_googleplaydeals and /r/FreeGameFindings, like https://t.me/r_FreeGameFindings, which would help people leave more easily.
Because there will be some mods that have been doing it, but think they can run things better.
The implication here that the blackout was mods on a power trip when in my experience, most subreddits were already put to a vote, and the users voted for this.
He realized he needed to make a push in the press, so he resorted to the only way he apparently knows how to communicate: lying.
I already had it mulling in my head privately, but this shit conches it for me: spez has to go. He broke community trust, and continues to more and more as this thing drags out.
Can mods vote out the CEO?
he resorted to the only way he apparently knows how to communicate: lying.
Why stop at defaming Apollo, right?
I can already hear the voices of mods wishing him good luck moderating reddit on his own (in fact, I was certainly able to hear my own saying so before I de-listed myself as a mod).
I am impressed at how badly they are managing something that was initially merely "not the best idea" and now has become a true shitshow.
RIP reddit, you may very well survive this, but you'll never again be "the front page of the Internet".
I really wish users, who are the only ones that bring real value to a site like Reddit, could vote out the CEO. I guess we are voting with our feet, but it's a shame that we have to go through this stupid lather/rinse/repeat cycle with every user contribution site.
reddit is the means of production, but all of the value produced comes from the users, who are unremunerated
well maybe not - if we move to not-for-profit platforms, there’s no enshittification cycle.
Just mods having unchecked power. But the good thing is we can transfer to another instance if that happens.
If we all buy stock during their IPO, we could vote him out...
Driving up his share price and his wealth. This is what he wants, it's his exit strategy. He clearly doesn't care if reddit burns at this point.
We'd have to coordinate with WSB, and folks would lose money in this strategy, but those smooth brains with the diamond hands are good for it. As soon as the IPO happens, immediately buy all the shares available. Then do nothing. Volume needs to grind to a halt. Then at a predetermined time, a day later, a week, everyone dumps all their shares. Another huge spike in volume, but this time in a sell off. It will pop circuit breakers, and even those not part of the plan will join in. The price will plummet and Steve will be left holding the bag, trying to show that he has diamond hands.
Based on the reporting two things seem clear to me: (1) the commercial value of Reddit is fundamentally a question of selling data access; and (2) the major subreddits will be made to continue operations come Hell or high water.
When (not if) Reddit circumvents the blackout by force, the obvious next move is to poison the well—make the data worthless by drowning it in noise (AI-generated, if you've a flair for the poetic). I doubt that will happen since (a) it would require coordination among a substantially larger and more dispersed userbase than the moderators and (b) it's something of a nuclear option, but it's an interesting idea.
poison the well
It's already happening. /r/pics restricted the sub to sexy pics of John Oliver only after a poll.
Hah! That's great!
r/gifs too
this inspired me to paper over all my old comments and posts with clippings from random washington post articles from today. A labor of ... love
Funny. That is a feature I wanted for a long time. Question is how in the world will it be implemented. Probably going to pull another Elon and only allow Reddit premium members to vote. Kinda shows the blackout is working and he is trying to find a 'good' PR way to weasel his way out.
It sounds like he wants to replace that “landed gentry” with a landed gentry loyal to him.
Very good and very Democratic. Stable genius level.
Bots will vote in the mods they want.
Badly.
Too bad I shut off my premium as I refuse to give that assclown another cent from my pocket or my attention to ads on that site.
Unfortunately, I can't think of any way you could implement a voting feature for mods that wouldn't be abused. There are bots that would be inevitably able to vote in anyone they want
Also being a mod is difficult and you will have to make unpopular decisions. Sometimes the person you took action on will misrepresent what happened or outright lie to sway public opinion against you. People will take advantage of that to vote a mod out.
Do you have some way to prevent abuse like that happening?
It also doesn't account for the difference between what the anonymous mass of lurkers want, and what the people who actually post and comment and contribute to the sub want.
This conversation reminds me of difficulties in real life politics, especially on the local level. Something that always struck me in how it's spoken about is that the preferences of the "lurkers" are often presented in opposition to the "active users", when the entire problem is that it's hard to tell what the mass of people want.
I suppose it's different here though. On Reddit, the lurkers can be assumed to be okay with the status quo, but in politics, people who don't vote or engage with politics may be the complete opposite
Beatings will continue until morale improves!
The king is replacing his minions with more acceptable minions. So most likely inept as well. Can't sew how poorly this'll go.
LONG LIVE THE FEDIVERSE!
It is almost like we can't trust a for-profit owned social media site to have our interests as their first priority. I don't know what this CEO is doing but it's hard to see a bright future for Reddit in any case. Its too bad for the community but it is really too bad for those working there.
Really, it's totally in the category "when you're getting something for free, you're not the audience, but rather the product."
When people failed to buy in very deeply to the tchotchkes to "pay" for Reddit, it was the last gasp of any effort other than wholesaling the dataset to advertisers and anyone willing to pay for the content.
My break from Reddit wasn't driven by any one single act, but rather the continued (and organized) sanitization of the Internet to appease conservative, Christian investors who make demands on the morality of the content of a site.
Such a laugh and after putting in arbitray rules himself. If he is such a democratic guy maybe he and the board shoud be able to be voted out by the membership too.
So what will happen is that mods who enforce unpopular rules in a subreddit, such as "no NSFW", will get voted out. This can't possibly go wrong. /s
A lot people here have been saying similar stuff. Dedicated mods being replaced by scabs isn't gonna do any good for those communities...but maybe their degradation is a good thing.
Unless there is some kind of cooldown time (but even then), mods will constantly change...
Group A votes Mod B off and places Mod A there.
Group B doesn't like that and votes Mod A off and places Mod B (or a similar) back.
The longer that goes on, the more users (and even Mods) will get annoyed and leave that sub. There will probably the be originalsub, splitsubA, splitsubB. All of these subs will be weaker than the originalsub was before.
So basically the same what we see in current politics. Instead of finding a solution together, it just creates larger gaps between the members.
It feels less like democracy but more like temporary dictatorship that oscillates between opinions.
A better solution would be to have multiple mods with different opinions finding consensus together. But that's easier said than done...
I do think it must be hard for some of the mods. Me I can just walk away from this madness. Mods if you have put your heart and soul into it... well harder. Still how can it be much clearer. Time to move on for them too.
Specially for some mods of the smaller more niche subs. I talked to one who supports the blackout but couldn't do it for fear that he/she would lose the small community he/she has.
I don't have much sympathy for this. If you really just care about the community, then just move the community to lemmy/kbin/discord/irc/whatever. These people are just afraid to lose their power over the community, not the community itself.
Easier said than done. I doubt the decision to move to another place would be unanimous. If I were in a sub that decided to move someplace else, I wouldn't join if they were migrating to a site I don't like for whatever reason. Another example: some subs that migrated here still have active communities in reddit and members that didn't join the migration. For a small sub, that hurts more.
People value things differently.
Yeah I love the subreddit I moderate and haven't felt ready to "pull the plug" and walk away completely, though I'm putting up more boundaries around the time I put in to moderating, and have created an account here to start exploring Reddit alternatives, especially if this API thing ends up being step one (or maybe more like step five lol) of a larger "enshittification" process. More broadly speaking I feel like I've seen stuff like this happen enough times online to realize that the profit incentive itself is just harmful, so I want to support and be a part of communities that aren't ultimately going to ruin themselves for the sake of profit
I want to support and be a part of communities that aren't ultimately going to ruin themselves for the sake of profit
I agree. If I found lemmy before all of this, even in 2022, I probably would have signed up.
Yeah this is definitely step 5 type of deal. A while ago, they stopped adding api features for apps. So most apps couldn't add any functionality. And not only that but even if you do somehow keep access to the api, you can't do so with NSFW content. So they also took away something from api access.
Then there was the thing where apps couldn't start with the name Reddit (like Reddit Boost had to turn into Boost for Reddit). I think Reddit is Fun was okay because it sounded less like an official app and just describing reddit or something. Not sure why they got to keep it.
The whole new reddit redesign to feel more like Facebook is just gross.
All the 9,000+ awards that meant nothing? Like you get a free one a day and maybe you get the wholesome one so you ironically give that award to a post about dying animals or something. So many posts just have so many random "awards" that it just feels like jingling keys in front of us to keep us engaged.
Reddit may not be dead yet. Maybe not for a while. But I'm not going to be holding on to the very last second. It's been getting worse for a long time and this was just a good excuse to jump before it gets worse.
It will be fun to see what changes they make to moderators due to the blackout of this highly unpopular decision that they refuse to back down from.
Reddit is Fun (RIF) had to rename to "rif is fun" as well
Yeah, it was hard enough for me to walk away from my small hobby subs as a user, I can’t imagine the difficulty as a moderator. They’re usually some of the most invested in the subject to want to become a moderator in the first place, and then they’ve devoted all the time and energy to it for the love of the community. I don’t envy them either.
I don't have much sympathy for this. If you really just care about the community, then just move the community to lemmy/kbin/discord/irc/whatever. These people are just afraid to lose their power over the community, not the community itself.
It looks like you duplicate-commented this, FYI.
What an absolutely idiotic CEO lmao he is so clueless. He doesn't realize the community and the volunteers (moderators) have all of the power. The website is nothing without that.
Interesting that he mentions that CEOs can be removed by their shareholders, which is quite similar to how reddit currently works-mods can be removed by reddit itself. The "users voting mods out" analogue in the business world would be employees having to power to vote out and replace their CEOs.
Person with power: CEO::mod
Those who make money off of them: shareholders::reddit
Those who provide the content: workers::posters/commenters
End users: customers::advertisers
Sounds to me like spez just made a pretty compelling aruguement that his employees should be able to vote him out!
*edited for formatting
I adore the way you think, sincerely. Wouldn't that be a wonderful world, where employees could vote management/leadership out of their positions?
What a fantastic idea.
Again, sincerely, no sarcasm!
That's called anarcho-syndicalism :)
I would not have guessed that it would have a name. ... I mean, I should have.
Thank you for supplying me with a rabbit hole from which I'm unlikely to surface anytime soon.
I did a little research and it sounds like that's definitely a very important part of anarco syndicalism. Is it truly the main feature of it?
Glad I could help! Like all things there’s more to it, but the basic concept is to fire all bosses and have the workers run all the work places as a co-op. Personally, I believe this would end ‘greedflation’ and definitely make the world a better place :)
I mean you could still have greedy workers, but they'd be responsible for their destiny. The co-op could price their products or services out of reach of customers and consumers, but sharing the fruits of their labor shares that responsibility.
I feel it would make more sense to do it like the Romans did, compelled leadership by round robin IIRC. That, or elected leadership. I think it's important to have a focused job that does decision making for the good of the group.
Anarchy never really appealed to me. It always felt like a lot of anxiety. Also I suspect that our species won't survive unless we can all unite, so there's that...
There is a company in switzerland (i think?) that does it. So the employees vote on whos gonna be boss for the next year and whos gonna get hired and all that stuff, not just voting out.
I have seen a documentary about it and they all were VERY happy to work in that enrivonment
I REMEMBER THAT! I read N article about that a long time ago.
This whole thing is a shame and I still am going through a morning period about it. Reddit will persist in some diminished state. I can only hope the quality communities and people move here, and that Lemmy rapidly improves (though it is very usable now). The trends so far are good. The value of social media lies in the user base.
Let this be a lesson to all who produce and manage content (that's us users and mods). Don't use platforms that are destined to monetize your data at your expense.
For me, it has been slowly turning into a zombie site ever since they hid vote counts, which made it possible for bad actors to game the vote system without anybody being able to see it. When you can't see the hundreds of downvotes on a post signalling dissent or dislike, it becomes easier to unleash bots and minions to inflate your astroturfing.
Funny how that works. And here i was, thinking users made these communities and decided by themselves if they wanna be public or private.
Weird that he suddenly wants to change the system.
Yes when you're banned from a sub the message states verbatim: "Moderators get to decide who can participate in their subreddit." which apparently hasn't been an issue for spez over the last 15 years when directed toward users. Now it's directed toward admins and suddenly it's a top priority for the company to 'fix'.
In spez's interview with the Verge, he hyperfocused on the fact that locked communities whose "we're locking" posts were comment-disabled would have had a lot of dissent in the comments if the mods had been brave enough to leave them enabled. Completely ignoring, of course, the fact that the upvote ratios told a story of massively overwhelming support.
How does the literal CEO not realize that a comment section with a fair number of dissenters in a highly-upvoted post is just rabble-rousing and don't actually represent a majority? Like, in a scenario where you have 20k upvotes, 1k downvotes, and a comment section where a few hundred people are pissed off and arguing, spez is presenting that as a dissenting majority. What?
What are the odds he gets a rude awakening when he gives this power to the users and they vote in favor of keeping the mod teams in place? (That would imply some awareness of how his site works, though.)
It really feels like he's speedrunning killing reddit. I'm not even mad, it's impressive 🍿
In spez's interview with the Verge, he hyperfocused on the fact that locked communities whose "we're locking" posts were comment-disabled would have had a lot of dissent in the comments if the mods had been brave enough to leave them enabled. Completely ignoring, of course, the fact that the upvote ratios told a story of massively overwhelming support.
I think what was even more infuriating was his insistence on validating even the smallest dissent against sub locking as justifying overruling the mods and community, while the entire mess was caused by his refusal to engage in good faith with dissent against his company's decision.
Dissent against mods he also disagrees with is sacred and needs protecting. Dissent against himself and Reddit Inc is meaningless noise that he both doesn't care about and is actively working to silence and prohibit.
He's been such a mess of lies and contradictions in all this. It'd be funny if it weren't such a sad death knell for a site I genuinely enjoyed.
My other favorite contradiction from that interview was when he claimed that Apollo had millions of subscribers, then claimed it wasn't worth subsidizing the insignificant 10% of the userbase that uses 3rd party apps. Which one is it, spez? Is a single app stealing millions of paying subscribers (which would be only a fraction of free users), or are apps not worth bending to because they're only 10% of your userbase? They can't both be true.
I'm still trying to square "upvotes matter" with "brigading exists."
But then, it would appear that using Reddit for news and attempting substantive discussion put me in a much smaller minority than I realized.
If upvotes don't matter because brigading exists, wouldn't that hold true for a community vote to remove mods as well? They'd be just as open to brigading.
No matter how you slice it--and I'm honestly not sure which side of the argument you're sassing here, so looking at it both ways is valuable--spez is pretending votes are unimportant in one context but the key solution to solving the core issue minutes later. It's incredibly inconsistent; the man is having an entire meltdown.
Apologies for the lack of clarity. I'm not saying "in all cases, both must be considered."
What I meant is that given the latter, the former can't be used as a universal gold standard, and reducing it to that is disingenuous at best.
Everyone on reddit knows that if the mods are in the wrong, you start an alternative sub, and see if that takes off. This whole thing has been training users to start an alternative reddit.
blowing up their site expected with people being friends with elon musk
Man, that entire interview with The Verge was infuriating to read. I ended up deleting all of my comments/submissions from my almost 16 year old account right after reading it. Saying he wouldn't work with Apollo or RIF because they already "threw in towel", just reeks of insincerity. I mean, they both wanted to work with reddit but were basically shut out completely.
He keeps saying they knew about the changes for a while, but in reality the prices weren't released until a couple of weeks ago and it was less than 6 months ago (January) that they were told there were no major changes coming to the API in the medium to long term... like years. Then the changes, without mention of price, were announced April 18th and it wasn't until the end of May when the pricing was official. Plus, they changed how they calculated API limits. Before, it was Client ID + User ID, so each user of a 3rd party app had a limit and now it is just Client ID, so of course any app that has a significant amount of users is going to go over that limit instantly.
Everything, every step of the way has been so disingenuous and rushed.
Reddit talks about their new Developer Platform, but as of last week at least it was invite only and developers that inquired about it got no response. They talk about mod tools in the works to replace what 3rd party apps did, but none of it is released. Just so unnecessarily rushed when it would have been much better to get your dev platform and mod tools at least somewhat open and have like a 3 month grace period after announcing the prices so devs could have a chance to make changes to their apps. Spez just comes out of this looking so out of touch with the community. What a shame.
And I don't see a single thing about it on r/all. Or anything related to the blackouts.
Hmm wonder where he got that voting idea from????
CEO and admin making wildly unpopular decision that users almost unanimously went against complaining about how undemocratic his website is. Is he really this unaware?
Damn it. I already made my Revenge of The Sith Emperor's speech joke on another post... oh well. I don't have much of a snarky comment to make, this depressing and frustrating situation really speaks for itself, doesn't it?
he is not wrong about moderators being like "landed gentry" in a lot of cases; but on the other hand the blackout already did the damage. Time will tell if he is dead-man-walking, but I already deleted all my content (posts and replies) and unsubscribed from all. Some people may feel angst that the blackout did not "win", but it was a very useful occasion to focus on the reddit phenomenon and recognize our commoditization. I had been glad to contribute content, but if reddit is going to <do what they did> then I am done. That is all the win I need. I will contribute it here (lemmy servers) instead.
I think the landed gentry point sits poorly with me because many of the most committed mods (I mean the ones who actively put work into their communities, I'm not referring to the powermods collecting subs like General Grievous collecting lightsabres) put hours of work into curating and building a community. Reddit is built on so much volunteer labour and for Huffman to use phrases like "landed gentry" is outrageous
We all recognized there was a mod power issue in a ton of subs. Lots of local subs getting unjustly censored, mods swaying discussions, or companies astroturfing. The landed gentry thing is pretty spot on. That said, it's better than admins taking over if the mods don't toe the corporate line.
Reddit has been observed restoring deleted comments (yesterday?) so maybe check if your stuff is still dead?
Article says 3500 subs participated... More than double that did, hell more than that are still down right now.
I've noticed that a lot of articles have been underselling the protests.
That kid is in over his head here. He was "hired" as CEO after Ellen Pao's high heels poked through the glass floor, despite him having no education or experience in leadership of that level. There was no one else willing to pick it up at that time. He was like "ok, I'll do it" (as per his own introduction) and users were like "ok, he was there from the start, maybe he understands us. He's one of use, he also can't iron a shirt."
I'm all for letting the common man take control, but this is clearly a guy who thinks he's the next tech-jesus or something, just because the userbase grew out of Facebook.
The actions he's doing now only confirms that he's trying to get his payout and then let it rot. He is just like you and me. Get a check, go home. No visionary ideal, not virtues. Yeah well, at least I have some integrity.
I wouldn't trust him to operate a broomstick let alone a billion dollar company.
Reddit is over with.
I think that the Pao plot arc always planned on bringing Spez back.
Reddit - especially then - had a sort of reverence for the OG founders and discussion would often model them as the "real" redditors and people who really understood the community, changes since they sold were blamed on corporate interests and people were forever complaining that "shit like this wouldn't happen if ..." various founders or original staff were still around. I think it was always misplaced, but it was the culture at the time.
So Pao was brought in as a scapegoat - she was going to make wildly unpopular changes, take the heat, take a dive, and be replaced. She'd get a fat bag, an absolutely glowing reference on her CV, and a huge jump in her career - then Reddit would bring in the popular original founder that redditors liked and respected, and everyone would feel optimistic again. The changes would remain, the community would feel like they'd got their pound of flesh, that they had been appeased, and the site could get back on track.
Don't get me wrong, he's been a hack all along, he's been willing to sell his values to the highest bidder pretty much all along.
And now Spez is playing the same role. He's taking the face position and eating the heat over a bunch of shitty corporate boardroom decisions - that he definitely was party to - in order to inflate the IPO valuation and his cut of the cash. They're going to try and make it look profitable enough and healthy enough that someone else takes the hot potato and then make for the goddamn hills once they're not bagholding anymore.
It's wild that even robotic, psychotic Zuck is more in touch with his company than Stevie Huff-Huff.
Like at least Zuck seems to know what he wants. Metaverse is an insane idea but it's an idea. What Steve Huffing-man wants is money. Clearly. Nothing more. It's pathetic.
Good, the more damage he does to reddit, the better.
A conspiratorial part of me almost wonders if he isnt sabotaging the site before it's sold off to the highest bidder. Cause an outrage that reseeds the smaller message board style sphere of the internet and then as the sale comes about toss the match over his shoulder and watch the whole thing burn down. He's been on reddit long enough it's kind of crazy to think that he's this out of touch with the way redditors are. Like the AMA for example. He could have just put out an announcement clarifying things and it would have been received poorly, but it wouldnt have gotten as much heat as the AMA did.
Of course probably not. He probably is just a screwup, but its a nice little conspiracy theory.
Nah. I've just come to accept that the CEO can make bad decisions.
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
This comparison is so stupid; is spez gonna send me an ID or something? Will I need to hand Reddit my birth certificate or anything in order to keep using it and sign a contract with them or something? Where is that contract gonna be registered?
Anyone would be able to look for any place where there is a vote, then join the community, vote whatever they want and then casually walk away. Or you could follow all subreddits or a bunch of them that you want to influence (say any pro-ukrainian ones). Then you'd cast a vote to whoever you'd like and walk away.
It's so ridiculous!
@AllonzeeLV at this point mods who are staying on Reddit are just prisoners waiting to get castrated
I'm so glad to be free of Reddit. It looks so ugly from the outside.
Okay if you want to talk like that make Reddit a CO-OP or shut up.
How can this guybhave such a persecution fethish when he litterally holds all the cards.
It's amusing to see the manchild spez melting down because he can't get his way. 😹
@AllonzeeLV I deleted my account and left my sub to a mod I trusted. He opened it backup but the feedback he was getting from the Redditors told him to shut it back down lol
@AllonzeeLV im so fucking sad about losing Apollo...
Might have been welcome a year ago. But in this case, 'too powerful' means 'nobody should be able to stand up to me on MY website'.
I'd love to see some kind of voting process for mods or policy be enacted only to have the users vote for even more lockdowns.
Spez: this will blow over Also spez: this cannot be allowed to continue
Schrödinger's Protesters.
First rule of propaganda: the enemy is both terrifying and weak.
Ah, so the blackout isn't as "unsuccessful" as he wants people to believe it to be...
Yeah, really. Didn't the actual blackout technically end a few days ago? Seems that it didn't just go away.
What if the mods were all like. Let’s just say it’s 48 hours…
Maybe it’s more than a lot of noise
I've seen some here openly despair that leaving reddit didn't do anything.
Spez, CEO of Reddit and former mod of the r/jailbait subreddit losing his shit very publically for days proves otherwise.
...And it's also a reminder that the reddit community we loved has already been destroyed by ownership, anyone returning would be returning to a shadow that disdains its own users and works to disempower them with every update. They're even undeleting user's deleted posts. If they can't respect users enough to be able to delete their own content, why enrich them?
Holy shit was he seriously a mod of that subreddit? Good lord...
Back in the olden days of reddit, mods didn't need to accept their position. So, it was a troll tactic to promote people to moderator of a controversial sub and then take a screenshot. I have no knowledge of spez's moderating history, but I imagine this is the most likely scenario.
If I let a bunch of crackheads live in my house and endlessly defended their presence until I was forced by public pressure to reluctantly send them away the shit they got up to in the interim was at least partially my fault in my opinion.
The real crime was how he didn't do anything about it once he knew about it. Same with many other questionable subs, perhaps he enjoyed them or maybe he didn't, but he sure tolerated them being around polluting the waters. They brought in traffic, aka money, and that's all he cares about.
That may be what happened but Reddit management definitely knew about what was going on because they created a special "Pimp Daddy" trophy just for that one mod as a kind of public reward for his work. Reddit was complicit to some degree.
he participated pretty heavily in the sub either way.
Maybe. On the other hand, Reddit wouldn't be the first major social media platform that got its start focusing on sexualization and sexual harassment if he was...
Oh wow, that's one of those quirks that in hindsight feels like a major oversight lol
It was hilarious the first couple times it came up - but it absolutely was a massive oversight, especially in light of how wild-west the subreddit space was in that same era.
He still was the mod there... Thats enough to make a fuss about it against him :)
They don't either right now here in Lemmy. But you can only promote users to moderator in Lemmy if they have posted something or commented on something in the same community.
I'm sure restoring deleted data will go over really well in Europe.
Already sent my GDPR request for my data and complete data deletion. In a few month, I will just have to look for my posts and comments, kindly provided by reddit, and denounce/sue them if they didn’t comply. That should sit well with investors ;-)
Where do you request GDPR data deletion to them? Did the data request already, still waiting, but haven't found anything about deletion yet
They were playing dumb when I asked, but it only needs to be in the initial email or comments on the form
Yes, but I only know of the form to request data, not of one to delete it, where did you send the request?
it took them less then a week to go from "were a community" to "shut up and do as your told". fuck that and them. whether kbin or lemmy works out only the future knows so far but im done with reddit.
Reminds me of leaving my ex. Went from "baby I love you, don't leave 🥺" to "fuck you, you're nothing without me, you're a crazy bitch" in the span of minutes.
Lol, this encapsulates it so well. But I am also out of that “community” now. Still debating whether to delete my account.
Even if the protest fails to produce capitulation from Reddit, it still effectively drove a fuckton of traffic into the Fediverse, which is a goal worth pursuing in itself. If corporations won't comply, then building workable alternatives is option 2.
Was he really a mod of r/jailbait?
Man, what a pathetic creep. Fuck u/spez.
Which is weird because ... I thought Pity City already had a CEO.
In view of comments about restoration of deleted data, I had a look at the user agreement for NON EEU and it says "When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content. tldr; they do not have to honor content deletion in the US. But I feel better that I deleted it, maybe it will be a little bit of pain to restore it. I will go back occasionally and re-delete if neeeded.
Not for nothing, but a key feature of fascism is that you're "enemy" is both weak and strong at the same time.
So the blackout is not a big deal AND the mods coordinating the blackout are too powerful...
ACAB - All CEOs Are Bastards
Meh. "Fascism"? That tactic is used in politics all the time against most prominent leaders and groups, no matter where they come from. They're both inept and totally powerful and Machiavellian.
It's the whole thing about "will bear them with humor and ridicule" but also "look at their evil actions".
A fascist tactic that is used in politics all the time.
My point is that I don't know what's specifically "fascist" about it if virtually everyone uses it.
“Fascist” is an adjective. Like “green.”
A bad example: l don’t know what’s specifically green about it if virtually all plants look that way.
Everyone is using a fascist tactic. It doesn’t become a benevolent tactic because everyone uses it. It’s still fascist.
Yeah let's see how that works out... Not like the communities literally voted... Nah...
I really, and truly, don't get why there are any mods left after this fiasco. If I were them I'd take down all the CSS and all the bots and all the things I'd worked on over the years and just quit. Reddit completely exists on the back of unpaid labor from the mods and they treat them like garbage. Not to mention that the overwhelming response I'm seeing from users is they despise the mods as well. So why are they even in this thing?
In my case, the biggest sub I help moderate has one mod who made the whole thing. From the ground-up, a great community of people, very few fights and a ton of people subscribed. It really is like a 'model' example of how the communities should work.
They jusy can't understand how we'd be willing to throw it all away over a company's stupid move. I guess in this instance, it is well over a decade of making a great place. And I can see why he feels awful.
But to me that is the only power we have...having people who will burn it down to make a stand.
I won't be there after this month ends and my 3rd party apps go.
There were (are?) a few truly decent threads on Reddit. r/zappa in my opinion was far and away the most well run community on that entire site that i has experience with, though there were certainly others that i know of. I never recall a single toxic moment in many years of being there. I didn't even check to see if they blacked out over this.. I just did it on my own and I don't think I'll go back, to be honest... But it's one place that I truly miss. I've only accessed the site from a third party app (RedReader) for the past 7 years or so, but I've been on Reddit from about 2009.. My current account live since 2011. Even though RedReader got the exemption for its accessibility features, I still couldn't stand for the principle behind this whole thing. There were some really good subreddits there, really good communities, and they'll be missed, but it's far more important to withdraw myself from that whole mess and take a firm stand by refusing to use the site. I saw some communities moderated by genuinely good people with genuinely good intentions, I hope that they have all left to make a stand against the data mining corporation that Reddit has become. You seem to be one of the decent ones. Thanks for having made the experience pleasant, but greater thanks for standing with your community and pulling the plug when the need arose. I hope you find a place to migrate to.
You are assuming that this moderator criticism applies universally; there are dozens of subs with fantastic, fair mods, which are the only ones I sub to. I actively avoid subs that have mods who I see lock or delete stuff too often for my taste. Reddit also has major pastimes like /r/FreeGameFindings that people are not willing to give up; that place is one of my favorite hobbies and I can only hope a Telegram bot gets generated to notify me of its Lemmy counterpart's posts, as one does of the subreddit's. (Someone, help!)
Mods' CSS work may also serve as a real-life portfolio for actual jobs; who knows? The bots could also be, depending on the content, helping them make real money or otherwise find irl opportunities for preferred alternative fitness (/r/AppLab) or lifestyle preferences.
/r/MealPrepSunday is still going. /r/legaladvice is going. People get real-world help here and they aren't willing to give that up. /r/BeerMoney is going absolutely strong and it literally helps people make money.
What these mods should be doing is staying open and making a pinned post saying "Consider joining our equivalent on Lemmy." But within Reddit's scope, they can shut that down, too. Reddit is a for-profit entity just like Facebook and Twitter, which have every right to clamp down on encouragement away to Mastodon, etc. even if it makes them look bad.
So, as I asked someone else here who was criticizing the continuation of the API shutdown or why people are not being as vehemently opposed to it as some Lemmy migrants: what subs were you frequenting?
Lastly, I am a mod of dozens of smaller subs. What matters to me most is making sure everyone has a home to discuss their favorite topics. They're generally niche enough to not actually need moderation, but I'm seeing I also don't have enough time to figure out how to generate (or just plain generate) Lemmy counterparts for everything, though I used to have sufficient time in the past. People's lives can change but they still depend on things that are important to them.
To all programmers, I am serious about all the extensive integrations into subs being a factor for why people still go there. I would love to see a Telegram bot for a counterpart to /r/GooglePlayDeals, like https://t.me/r_googleplaydeals and /r/FreeGameFindings, like https://t.me/r_FreeGameFindings, which would help people leave more easily.
Because there will be some mods that have been doing it, but think they can run things better.
The implication here that the blackout was mods on a power trip when in my experience, most subreddits were already put to a vote, and the users voted for this.
He realized he needed to make a push in the press, so he resorted to the only way he apparently knows how to communicate: lying.
I already had it mulling in my head privately, but this shit conches it for me: spez has to go. He broke community trust, and continues to more and more as this thing drags out.
Can mods vote out the CEO?
Why stop at defaming Apollo, right?
I can already hear the voices of mods wishing him good luck moderating reddit on his own (in fact, I was certainly able to hear my own saying so before I de-listed myself as a mod).
I am impressed at how badly they are managing something that was initially merely "not the best idea" and now has become a true shitshow.
RIP reddit, you may very well survive this, but you'll never again be "the front page of the Internet".
I really wish users, who are the only ones that bring real value to a site like Reddit, could vote out the CEO. I guess we are voting with our feet, but it's a shame that we have to go through this stupid lather/rinse/repeat cycle with every user contribution site.
reddit is the means of production, but all of the value produced comes from the users, who are unremunerated
well maybe not - if we move to not-for-profit platforms, there’s no enshittification cycle.
Just mods having unchecked power. But the good thing is we can transfer to another instance if that happens.
If we all buy stock during their IPO, we could vote him out...
Driving up his share price and his wealth. This is what he wants, it's his exit strategy. He clearly doesn't care if reddit burns at this point.
We'd have to coordinate with WSB, and folks would lose money in this strategy, but those smooth brains with the diamond hands are good for it. As soon as the IPO happens, immediately buy all the shares available. Then do nothing. Volume needs to grind to a halt. Then at a predetermined time, a day later, a week, everyone dumps all their shares. Another huge spike in volume, but this time in a sell off. It will pop circuit breakers, and even those not part of the plan will join in. The price will plummet and Steve will be left holding the bag, trying to show that he has diamond hands.
Based on the reporting two things seem clear to me: (1) the commercial value of Reddit is fundamentally a question of selling data access; and (2) the major subreddits will be made to continue operations come Hell or high water.
When (not if) Reddit circumvents the blackout by force, the obvious next move is to poison the well—make the data worthless by drowning it in noise (AI-generated, if you've a flair for the poetic). I doubt that will happen since (a) it would require coordination among a substantially larger and more dispersed userbase than the moderators and (b) it's something of a nuclear option, but it's an interesting idea.
It's already happening. /r/pics restricted the sub to sexy pics of John Oliver only after a poll.
Hah! That's great!
r/gifs too
this inspired me to paper over all my old comments and posts with clippings from random washington post articles from today. A labor of ... love
Funny. That is a feature I wanted for a long time. Question is how in the world will it be implemented. Probably going to pull another Elon and only allow Reddit premium members to vote. Kinda shows the blackout is working and he is trying to find a 'good' PR way to weasel his way out.
It sounds like he wants to replace that “landed gentry” with a landed gentry loyal to him.
Very good and very Democratic. Stable genius level.
Bots will vote in the mods they want.
Badly.
Too bad I shut off my premium as I refuse to give that assclown another cent from my pocket or my attention to ads on that site.
Unfortunately, I can't think of any way you could implement a voting feature for mods that wouldn't be abused. There are bots that would be inevitably able to vote in anyone they want
Also being a mod is difficult and you will have to make unpopular decisions. Sometimes the person you took action on will misrepresent what happened or outright lie to sway public opinion against you. People will take advantage of that to vote a mod out.
Do you have some way to prevent abuse like that happening?
It also doesn't account for the difference between what the anonymous mass of lurkers want, and what the people who actually post and comment and contribute to the sub want.
This conversation reminds me of difficulties in real life politics, especially on the local level. Something that always struck me in how it's spoken about is that the preferences of the "lurkers" are often presented in opposition to the "active users", when the entire problem is that it's hard to tell what the mass of people want.
I suppose it's different here though. On Reddit, the lurkers can be assumed to be okay with the status quo, but in politics, people who don't vote or engage with politics may be the complete opposite
Beatings will continue until morale improves!
The king is replacing his minions with more acceptable minions. So most likely inept as well. Can't sew how poorly this'll go.
LONG LIVE THE FEDIVERSE!
It is almost like we can't trust a for-profit owned social media site to have our interests as their first priority. I don't know what this CEO is doing but it's hard to see a bright future for Reddit in any case. Its too bad for the community but it is really too bad for those working there.
Really, it's totally in the category "when you're getting something for free, you're not the audience, but rather the product."
When people failed to buy in very deeply to the tchotchkes to "pay" for Reddit, it was the last gasp of any effort other than wholesaling the dataset to advertisers and anyone willing to pay for the content.
My break from Reddit wasn't driven by any one single act, but rather the continued (and organized) sanitization of the Internet to appease conservative, Christian investors who make demands on the morality of the content of a site.
Such a laugh and after putting in arbitray rules himself. If he is such a democratic guy maybe he and the board shoud be able to be voted out by the membership too.
So what will happen is that mods who enforce unpopular rules in a subreddit, such as "no NSFW", will get voted out. This can't possibly go wrong. /s
A lot people here have been saying similar stuff. Dedicated mods being replaced by scabs isn't gonna do any good for those communities...but maybe their degradation is a good thing.
Unless there is some kind of cooldown time (but even then), mods will constantly change...
Group A votes Mod B off and places Mod A there. Group B doesn't like that and votes Mod A off and places Mod B (or a similar) back.
The longer that goes on, the more users (and even Mods) will get annoyed and leave that sub. There will probably the be originalsub, splitsubA, splitsubB. All of these subs will be weaker than the originalsub was before.
So basically the same what we see in current politics. Instead of finding a solution together, it just creates larger gaps between the members.
It feels less like democracy but more like temporary dictatorship that oscillates between opinions.
A better solution would be to have multiple mods with different opinions finding consensus together. But that's easier said than done...
I do think it must be hard for some of the mods. Me I can just walk away from this madness. Mods if you have put your heart and soul into it... well harder. Still how can it be much clearer. Time to move on for them too.
Specially for some mods of the smaller more niche subs. I talked to one who supports the blackout but couldn't do it for fear that he/she would lose the small community he/she has.
I don't have much sympathy for this. If you really just care about the community, then just move the community to lemmy/kbin/discord/irc/whatever. These people are just afraid to lose their power over the community, not the community itself.
Easier said than done. I doubt the decision to move to another place would be unanimous. If I were in a sub that decided to move someplace else, I wouldn't join if they were migrating to a site I don't like for whatever reason. Another example: some subs that migrated here still have active communities in reddit and members that didn't join the migration. For a small sub, that hurts more.
People value things differently.
Yeah I love the subreddit I moderate and haven't felt ready to "pull the plug" and walk away completely, though I'm putting up more boundaries around the time I put in to moderating, and have created an account here to start exploring Reddit alternatives, especially if this API thing ends up being step one (or maybe more like step five lol) of a larger "enshittification" process. More broadly speaking I feel like I've seen stuff like this happen enough times online to realize that the profit incentive itself is just harmful, so I want to support and be a part of communities that aren't ultimately going to ruin themselves for the sake of profit
I agree. If I found lemmy before all of this, even in 2022, I probably would have signed up.
Yeah this is definitely step 5 type of deal. A while ago, they stopped adding api features for apps. So most apps couldn't add any functionality. And not only that but even if you do somehow keep access to the api, you can't do so with NSFW content. So they also took away something from api access.
Then there was the thing where apps couldn't start with the name Reddit (like Reddit Boost had to turn into Boost for Reddit). I think Reddit is Fun was okay because it sounded less like an official app and just describing reddit or something. Not sure why they got to keep it.
The whole new reddit redesign to feel more like Facebook is just gross.
All the 9,000+ awards that meant nothing? Like you get a free one a day and maybe you get the wholesome one so you ironically give that award to a post about dying animals or something. So many posts just have so many random "awards" that it just feels like jingling keys in front of us to keep us engaged.
Reddit may not be dead yet. Maybe not for a while. But I'm not going to be holding on to the very last second. It's been getting worse for a long time and this was just a good excuse to jump before it gets worse.
It will be fun to see what changes they make to moderators due to the blackout of this highly unpopular decision that they refuse to back down from.
Reddit is Fun (RIF) had to rename to "rif is fun" as well
Yeah, it was hard enough for me to walk away from my small hobby subs as a user, I can’t imagine the difficulty as a moderator. They’re usually some of the most invested in the subject to want to become a moderator in the first place, and then they’ve devoted all the time and energy to it for the love of the community. I don’t envy them either.
I don't have much sympathy for this. If you really just care about the community, then just move the community to lemmy/kbin/discord/irc/whatever. These people are just afraid to lose their power over the community, not the community itself.
It looks like you duplicate-commented this, FYI.
What an absolutely idiotic CEO lmao he is so clueless. He doesn't realize the community and the volunteers (moderators) have all of the power. The website is nothing without that.
Interesting that he mentions that CEOs can be removed by their shareholders, which is quite similar to how reddit currently works-mods can be removed by reddit itself. The "users voting mods out" analogue in the business world would be employees having to power to vote out and replace their CEOs.
Person with power: CEO::mod
Those who make money off of them: shareholders::reddit
Those who provide the content: workers::posters/commenters
End users: customers::advertisers
Sounds to me like spez just made a pretty compelling aruguement that his employees should be able to vote him out!
*edited for formatting
I adore the way you think, sincerely. Wouldn't that be a wonderful world, where employees could vote management/leadership out of their positions?
What a fantastic idea.
Again, sincerely, no sarcasm!
That's called anarcho-syndicalism :)
I would not have guessed that it would have a name. ... I mean, I should have.
Thank you for supplying me with a rabbit hole from which I'm unlikely to surface anytime soon.
I did a little research and it sounds like that's definitely a very important part of anarco syndicalism. Is it truly the main feature of it?
Glad I could help! Like all things there’s more to it, but the basic concept is to fire all bosses and have the workers run all the work places as a co-op. Personally, I believe this would end ‘greedflation’ and definitely make the world a better place :)
I mean you could still have greedy workers, but they'd be responsible for their destiny. The co-op could price their products or services out of reach of customers and consumers, but sharing the fruits of their labor shares that responsibility.
I feel it would make more sense to do it like the Romans did, compelled leadership by round robin IIRC. That, or elected leadership. I think it's important to have a focused job that does decision making for the good of the group.
Anarchy never really appealed to me. It always felt like a lot of anxiety. Also I suspect that our species won't survive unless we can all unite, so there's that...
Edit: Also, forgot to link, Robert Reich on inflation and corporate profits.
There is a company in switzerland (i think?) that does it. So the employees vote on whos gonna be boss for the next year and whos gonna get hired and all that stuff, not just voting out.
I have seen a documentary about it and they all were VERY happy to work in that enrivonment
I REMEMBER THAT! I read N article about that a long time ago.
Into the internet rabbit hole I go. Thanks!
This whole thing is a shame and I still am going through a morning period about it. Reddit will persist in some diminished state. I can only hope the quality communities and people move here, and that Lemmy rapidly improves (though it is very usable now). The trends so far are good. The value of social media lies in the user base.
Let this be a lesson to all who produce and manage content (that's us users and mods). Don't use platforms that are destined to monetize your data at your expense.
For me, it has been slowly turning into a zombie site ever since they hid vote counts, which made it possible for bad actors to game the vote system without anybody being able to see it. When you can't see the hundreds of downvotes on a post signalling dissent or dislike, it becomes easier to unleash bots and minions to inflate your astroturfing.
Funny how that works. And here i was, thinking users made these communities and decided by themselves if they wanna be public or private.
Weird that he suddenly wants to change the system.
Yes when you're banned from a sub the message states verbatim: "Moderators get to decide who can participate in their subreddit." which apparently hasn't been an issue for spez over the last 15 years when directed toward users. Now it's directed toward admins and suddenly it's a top priority for the company to 'fix'.
In spez's interview with the Verge, he hyperfocused on the fact that locked communities whose "we're locking" posts were comment-disabled would have had a lot of dissent in the comments if the mods had been brave enough to leave them enabled. Completely ignoring, of course, the fact that the upvote ratios told a story of massively overwhelming support.
How does the literal CEO not realize that a comment section with a fair number of dissenters in a highly-upvoted post is just rabble-rousing and don't actually represent a majority? Like, in a scenario where you have 20k upvotes, 1k downvotes, and a comment section where a few hundred people are pissed off and arguing, spez is presenting that as a dissenting majority. What?
What are the odds he gets a rude awakening when he gives this power to the users and they vote in favor of keeping the mod teams in place? (That would imply some awareness of how his site works, though.)
It really feels like he's speedrunning killing reddit. I'm not even mad, it's impressive 🍿
I think what was even more infuriating was his insistence on validating even the smallest dissent against sub locking as justifying overruling the mods and community, while the entire mess was caused by his refusal to engage in good faith with dissent against his company's decision.
Dissent against mods he also disagrees with is sacred and needs protecting. Dissent against himself and Reddit Inc is meaningless noise that he both doesn't care about and is actively working to silence and prohibit.
He's been such a mess of lies and contradictions in all this. It'd be funny if it weren't such a sad death knell for a site I genuinely enjoyed.
My other favorite contradiction from that interview was when he claimed that Apollo had millions of subscribers, then claimed it wasn't worth subsidizing the insignificant 10% of the userbase that uses 3rd party apps. Which one is it, spez? Is a single app stealing millions of paying subscribers (which would be only a fraction of free users), or are apps not worth bending to because they're only 10% of your userbase? They can't both be true.
I'm still trying to square "upvotes matter" with "brigading exists."
But then, it would appear that using Reddit for news and attempting substantive discussion put me in a much smaller minority than I realized.
If upvotes don't matter because brigading exists, wouldn't that hold true for a community vote to remove mods as well? They'd be just as open to brigading.
No matter how you slice it--and I'm honestly not sure which side of the argument you're sassing here, so looking at it both ways is valuable--spez is pretending votes are unimportant in one context but the key solution to solving the core issue minutes later. It's incredibly inconsistent; the man is having an entire meltdown.
Apologies for the lack of clarity. I'm not saying "in all cases, both must be considered."
What I meant is that given the latter, the former can't be used as a universal gold standard, and reducing it to that is disingenuous at best.
Everyone on reddit knows that if the mods are in the wrong, you start an alternative sub, and see if that takes off. This whole thing has been training users to start an alternative reddit.
blowing up their site expected with people being friends with elon musk
Man, that entire interview with The Verge was infuriating to read. I ended up deleting all of my comments/submissions from my almost 16 year old account right after reading it. Saying he wouldn't work with Apollo or RIF because they already "threw in towel", just reeks of insincerity. I mean, they both wanted to work with reddit but were basically shut out completely.
He keeps saying they knew about the changes for a while, but in reality the prices weren't released until a couple of weeks ago and it was less than 6 months ago (January) that they were told there were no major changes coming to the API in the medium to long term... like years. Then the changes, without mention of price, were announced April 18th and it wasn't until the end of May when the pricing was official. Plus, they changed how they calculated API limits. Before, it was Client ID + User ID, so each user of a 3rd party app had a limit and now it is just Client ID, so of course any app that has a significant amount of users is going to go over that limit instantly.
Everything, every step of the way has been so disingenuous and rushed.
Reddit talks about their new Developer Platform, but as of last week at least it was invite only and developers that inquired about it got no response. They talk about mod tools in the works to replace what 3rd party apps did, but none of it is released. Just so unnecessarily rushed when it would have been much better to get your dev platform and mod tools at least somewhat open and have like a 3 month grace period after announcing the prices so devs could have a chance to make changes to their apps. Spez just comes out of this looking so out of touch with the community. What a shame.
And I don't see a single thing about it on r/all. Or anything related to the blackouts.
Hmm wonder where he got that voting idea from????
CEO and admin making wildly unpopular decision that users almost unanimously went against complaining about how undemocratic his website is. Is he really this unaware?
Damn it. I already made my Revenge of The Sith Emperor's speech joke on another post... oh well. I don't have much of a snarky comment to make, this depressing and frustrating situation really speaks for itself, doesn't it?
he is not wrong about moderators being like "landed gentry" in a lot of cases; but on the other hand the blackout already did the damage. Time will tell if he is dead-man-walking, but I already deleted all my content (posts and replies) and unsubscribed from all. Some people may feel angst that the blackout did not "win", but it was a very useful occasion to focus on the reddit phenomenon and recognize our commoditization. I had been glad to contribute content, but if reddit is going to <do what they did> then I am done. That is all the win I need. I will contribute it here (lemmy servers) instead.
I think the landed gentry point sits poorly with me because many of the most committed mods (I mean the ones who actively put work into their communities, I'm not referring to the powermods collecting subs like General Grievous collecting lightsabres) put hours of work into curating and building a community. Reddit is built on so much volunteer labour and for Huffman to use phrases like "landed gentry" is outrageous
We all recognized there was a mod power issue in a ton of subs. Lots of local subs getting unjustly censored, mods swaying discussions, or companies astroturfing. The landed gentry thing is pretty spot on. That said, it's better than admins taking over if the mods don't toe the corporate line.
Reddit has been observed restoring deleted comments (yesterday?) so maybe check if your stuff is still dead?
Article says 3500 subs participated... More than double that did, hell more than that are still down right now.
I've noticed that a lot of articles have been underselling the protests.
That kid is in over his head here. He was "hired" as CEO after Ellen Pao's high heels poked through the glass floor, despite him having no education or experience in leadership of that level. There was no one else willing to pick it up at that time. He was like "ok, I'll do it" (as per his own introduction) and users were like "ok, he was there from the start, maybe he understands us. He's one of use, he also can't iron a shirt."
I'm all for letting the common man take control, but this is clearly a guy who thinks he's the next tech-jesus or something, just because the userbase grew out of Facebook.
The actions he's doing now only confirms that he's trying to get his payout and then let it rot. He is just like you and me. Get a check, go home. No visionary ideal, not virtues. Yeah well, at least I have some integrity.
I wouldn't trust him to operate a broomstick let alone a billion dollar company.
Reddit is over with.
I think that the Pao plot arc always planned on bringing Spez back.
Reddit - especially then - had a sort of reverence for the OG founders and discussion would often model them as the "real" redditors and people who really understood the community, changes since they sold were blamed on corporate interests and people were forever complaining that "shit like this wouldn't happen if ..." various founders or original staff were still around. I think it was always misplaced, but it was the culture at the time.
So Pao was brought in as a scapegoat - she was going to make wildly unpopular changes, take the heat, take a dive, and be replaced. She'd get a fat bag, an absolutely glowing reference on her CV, and a huge jump in her career - then Reddit would bring in the popular original founder that redditors liked and respected, and everyone would feel optimistic again. The changes would remain, the community would feel like they'd got their pound of flesh, that they had been appeased, and the site could get back on track.
Don't get me wrong, he's been a hack all along, he's been willing to sell his values to the highest bidder pretty much all along.
And now Spez is playing the same role. He's taking the face position and eating the heat over a bunch of shitty corporate boardroom decisions - that he definitely was party to - in order to inflate the IPO valuation and his cut of the cash. They're going to try and make it look profitable enough and healthy enough that someone else takes the hot potato and then make for the goddamn hills once they're not bagholding anymore.
It's wild that even robotic, psychotic Zuck is more in touch with his company than Stevie Huff-Huff.
Like at least Zuck seems to know what he wants. Metaverse is an insane idea but it's an idea. What Steve Huffing-man wants is money. Clearly. Nothing more. It's pathetic.
Good, the more damage he does to reddit, the better.
A conspiratorial part of me almost wonders if he isnt sabotaging the site before it's sold off to the highest bidder. Cause an outrage that reseeds the smaller message board style sphere of the internet and then as the sale comes about toss the match over his shoulder and watch the whole thing burn down. He's been on reddit long enough it's kind of crazy to think that he's this out of touch with the way redditors are. Like the AMA for example. He could have just put out an announcement clarifying things and it would have been received poorly, but it wouldnt have gotten as much heat as the AMA did.
Of course probably not. He probably is just a screwup, but its a nice little conspiracy theory.
Nah. I've just come to accept that the CEO can make bad decisions.
@AllonzeeLV
This comparison is so stupid; is spez gonna send me an ID or something? Will I need to hand Reddit my birth certificate or anything in order to keep using it and sign a contract with them or something? Where is that contract gonna be registered?
Anyone would be able to look for any place where there is a vote, then join the community, vote whatever they want and then casually walk away. Or you could follow all subreddits or a bunch of them that you want to influence (say any pro-ukrainian ones). Then you'd cast a vote to whoever you'd like and walk away.
It's so ridiculous!
@AllonzeeLV at this point mods who are staying on Reddit are just prisoners waiting to get castrated
I'm so glad to be free of Reddit. It looks so ugly from the outside.
I say u/mellowboob is the first to go!
Okay if you want to talk like that make Reddit a CO-OP or shut up.
How can this guybhave such a persecution fethish when he litterally holds all the cards.
It's amusing to see the manchild spez melting down because he can't get his way. 😹
@AllonzeeLV I deleted my account and left my sub to a mod I trusted. He opened it backup but the feedback he was getting from the Redditors told him to shut it back down lol
@AllonzeeLV im so fucking sad about losing Apollo...
Might have been welcome a year ago. But in this case, 'too powerful' means 'nobody should be able to stand up to me on MY website'.
I'd love to see some kind of voting process for mods or policy be enacted only to have the users vote for even more lockdowns.