Removed as moderator of /r/Celebrities after 14 years

vaprz@lemmy.world to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 579 points –

They did not provide a reason. There was no further dialog. I just got a system message telling me I was removed.

I was also silmultaniously shadow banned from Reddit and my posts and comments stopped showing up. I had created a post complaining about being removed as the moderator (the only moderator for over a decade) of a sub that I built from the ground up and donated literally thousands of volunteer hour to over the last 14 years. It had zero upvotes or downvotes or comments and was not visable as an anon user.

In the end, I decided to rip the bandaid off and killed my 16.5 year account. I was one of the early supporters of Reddit (user #7758) and had left Digg for good in May of 2007 after the AAC contraversy. They showed their authoritarian side in that moment and I knew Digg had reached their high water mark.

Reddit is at that moment now. They won't be dead tomorrow. They won't be dead next week. However, it will also never be the same, and it's only downhill from here.

Much like Digg. Much like Myspace. I am sure there will be a blurb a few years from now as an addendum in some business journal how Reddit sold to a third party for an undisclosed sum and some Skittles...

The future is the Fediverse and I'm glad I was forced to remove my Reddit crutch and dive in full force.

92

This should be a lesson to all remaining mods to stop putting their effort into that site. Reddit doesn’t care about who helped build it. They only care about making money for themselves.

What a shitty way to remove you. Completely uncalled for.

Mods should quit moderating altogether IMO, more than 20 thousands participated in the protest, there's no way they could replace them all in a reasonable time-frame, it would be a much better chaos than the blackout.

Yeah, I get that they must be very passionate to what they do for free, but to keep putting energy into a place where they have been shown to be considered expendable seems difficult to find the motivation. Don't seem worth it to me unless the organization they volunteer for is supportive. People quit for less for paying jobs.

Maybe, for maximum damage, they should save this mass resignation for when the IPO happens, just to screw Reddit's admins. In the meantime, the mods should promote Reddit alternatives in the subs. Nothing too explicit, but some links being mentioned in sticky posts/comments should suffice.

No, just quit. Trying to get perfect with it when it just fails.

I got banned from both shittylifeprotips and interestingasfuck for posting porn which was in rules with the site-wide rules.

Why are they asking for chaos and then try to moderate it? They really should just quit being mods but they cant for some reason.

It's very possible it was the admins banning you, not the mods (admins are reddit employees for those who don't know, mods aren't).

There have been other reports of people being banned by admins for "contributing" to the protest with NSFW content, they're desperate, they're trying to keep the protest under check by any means.

There does not seem to be a celebrities magazine here yet. You could make one and become a mod of it.

How do you make your own magazine

Click the plus icon to the left of your username at the top right corner of the screen . Last option on the drop-down menu is “create new magazine”.

That sounds like a very good idea. The work must carry on!

I don't know if you need to hear this or not; but you also don't have to donate your time to anything for free anymore. Nobody would blame you for throwing in the towel (if you feel you need to, that is)

I think the fact it's called a magazine here is perfect for this

They def need to make it on kbin if they do.

Where can I find out what a magazine is on here? New to Lemmy. Is that like a subreddit?

It is! Magazines are a feature in kbin, and Lemmy calls this sort of thing a Community. You’re seeing the kbin terminology here because this thread started on kbin.social. If you pay attention to URLs, that’s also why it’s /c/subredditname on Lemmy and /m/subredditname on kbin.

The other major difference with kbin magazines is that you can configure them to pick up content from Mastodon using a hashtag, and it will show it in threaded format in a separate area of the magazine that’s easy to get to. It’s great for news, giving people an outlet for self-promotion without cluttering discussion, or helping get a magazine started if the topic is popular.

Thank you for your effort building a community on Reddit. It gave a lot of people enjoyment. I'm sorry that Reddit didn't treat you better.

I'm really sorry to hear that they did this to you. I went through something similar, but only as a poster.

There was a really famous Usenet poster called Humdog who, back in 1994, wrote a brilliant essay called Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace. It talks of how cyberspace, instead of doing away with hierarchy and creating equality, actually commodifies its users and transfers power to large corporations.

cyberspace is a mostly a silent place. in its silence it shows itself to be an expression of the mass. one might question the idea of silence in a place where millions of user-ids parade around like angels of light, looking to see whom they might, so to speak, consume. the silence is nonetheless present and it is most present, paradoxically at the moment that the user-id speaks. when the user-id posts to a board, it does so while dwelling within an illusion that no one is present. language in cyberspace is a frozen landscape.

i have seen many people spill their guts on-line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money-value. in the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories, which karl marx called “the means of production.” capitalists were people who owned the means of production, and the commodities were made by workers who were mostly exploited. i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul. people who post frequently on boards appear to know that they are factory equipment and tennis shoes, and sometimes trade sends and email about how their contributions are not appreciated by management.

You can read it all here:
https://archive.org/details/pandoras-vox-on-community-in-cyberspace-by-humdog-1994
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen\_Hermosillo

It really does show that none of this is new. It's what the internet really always has been.

Great perspective and a fanstastic way of seeing how we should view our participation in all this internet activity

A very good read and quite prescient.

@PippinVanderspiegel @vaprz I'd dispute that he gained nothing from "the sale of his soul". We all get something out of posting online, even if we're not paid for it. Money isn't the only thing of value one can receive. I greatly value the discussions I've had over the years and the knowledge I've gained from anonymous posters contributions. I don't think I'd even have the job I have today without online exchanges between people looking for and giving out helpful information.

It's a fair point but, I think, misses the gist of her argument. Humdog was super famous back in the 90s as a prolific online poster. Her entire life was pretty much online at a time when that was highly unusual. Keeping in mind that this was back in 1994 (so one year after the World Wide Web came into existence) and the prevailing attitude of most people back then was that the internet was a great leveller that would remove hierarchy from society and give power to the individual.

Her point was simply that the nature of posting on a large corporation's computer network actually gave more power to these companies than to the user. She wasn't saying that posting online was pointless or valueless.

She was pretty much the first person to ever say this.

@PippinVanderspiegel @vaprz

This is completely tangential, but it's pretty wild that I could reply to your comment by simply pasting the link into Mastodon. No account creation on a Kbin instance required.

It's great isn't it?

It's actually the first time I've been excited for web technology in the last decade!

I can't imagine how it feels to put so many hours into building a thriving community just to have it thanklessly ripped from your hands.

As an 12 year reddit user who almost never posted or commented, thank you for all of the hard work you and others like you put in to make reddit as great as it was.

Hopefully fediverse will prove more resistant to greedy corporate interests in the years to come. I'm looking forward to building this new community with all of you!

That’s just insane. Even if the content is good.. I’m just not sure I could justify going back to a place like that.

Yup. any site that treats their userbase and mods that way isn't worth using. Mods and users put in countless hours to make that site a better place, and this is how Spez treats us. Fuck that. Fuck spez. Fuck reddit

It's hard to articulate. Reddit is at its core only a platform. All it did was give users a place to create, curate, contribute, and connect to, with, and for communities. Reddit was our magic feather. We didn't need them all along. All it did was tear down some mental blocks, so we could get started.

We wouldn't even be that mad if Reddit was trying to be reasonable. They're just being parasitic toward us, if we're being honest with ourselves. They want us to do all the work, so they can make all the money from our work, and then they want to charge us money for the honor of having been monetized. And it's not even that they're just chasing multiple different monetization schemes in moderation so that everyone profits. They intend to be greedy fucks in every transaction. They want users to pay subscription fees for Reddit premium (which isn't well priced, and therefore doesn't sell many subscriptions). Furthermore, they want developers to pay outrageous API licensing fees (which aren't well priced, and therefor almost all the developers are just shuttering). Not only that, they want to charge API fees toward AI training companies. My guess? Their prices are again too high, and the result will be that AI studios will just not pay for an official license and will do web scraping. It will require more work for them to get the scrapers to properly parse the threads, since what AI studios are interested in are threaded conversations right now. The AI studios will determine it is worth it to pay some engineers to do that rather than to pay the money Reddit wants (per my understanding, Reddit is charging the same money for AI studios as 3rd party apps).

So, where does that leave Reddit? Only with advertising revenue. They could lower the prices for their other services and make more money than that, but you would need to understand long-term cause and effect to do that, and u/spez has NOT demonstrated that kind of awareness. As evidence, note that advertisers are starting to reassess their contracts with Reddit (which by the way, their ads suck! You've collected all this demographic info about your users, but you can't provide advertisements that draw any kind of interest!? And you think you can be of value to AI companies!? What the fuck are you doing!?). Reddit's greed is losing them money.

Yup. Any platforms deserve to get paid for their API. They're not a charity. But what reddit is doing is absolutely ridiculous. They knew that the TPA devs wouldn't be able to pay costs that high. They knew all along that it would shut down, most, if not all, of the TPA.

AI companies will scrape reddit, doing it on old reddit is easier, so they will shut down old reddit.

Mark my words.

I'm so sorry. It's a real loss of something you valued and took pride in. It's also a loss of community. Be kind to yourself while you mourn the loss. (We're all feeling it to some degree.) But you have a fresh, new community right here for you.

If you're the sole-mod of a sub - always add like 4 of your own alt-accounts as mods below you

I was added as a mod to one sub without sub-settings permissions and the main mod account was deleted, so I deleted all the posts and stickied a text-comment saying 2023 blackout, message mods to join private community hehe~

Welcome aboard! Glad to have you here!

Also, eff spez!

Also, eff spez!

Whoa, there! Language!

Try this instead: Fuuuuuuuuuuck Spez. Fuuuuuuuck Steve Huffman. Fuuuuuuuuuck that vile sociopath.

Are you talking about Steve The Pigboy Huffman? That Steve Huffman?

I like to believe that spez has a room, down in his bunker, that is full to the tits with freeze dried dicks. Just bag after bag jammed in there so tight that the door pops open and they spill out. The door is probably labeled “Steve’s Num-Nums.”

And every night, spez sneaks down there to eat a bag of freeze dried dicks.

Also, eff spez!

That was my only departing comment in the, "Why are you deleting your account" box.

Already full at work building something better, so happy to have another experienced power user among our ranks!

At least we have something better now... Kbin seems to be better all around, with a great pwa for phone, no need for Reddit's crap.

Reddit won't die in a big catastrophic Digg moment, that was a rare event that doesn't usually happen so blatantly.

However, Reddit has reached its high water mark though, I absolutely agree. It'll slowly continue to bleed good, contributing power users like yourself in favor of becoming an algorithm-run mass-appeal corporate shit hole just like Facebook. It is very sad to see moderators like yourself being treated so poorly though and I hope you stick around here at least somewhat even if it's just for your own sanity.

Terrible mate, it sucks that you got the shit end of the stick. Reddit admins are putting the squeeze on heaps of mods, they're not interested in resolving any issues, just silencing opposition.

It's a shame that something you put that much time and effort in has all of a sudden vanished, hopefully you find a new home / community here.

Damn, that's extremely shitty and I agree that someday we will see the ashes of reddit being scattered in the digital wind

@vaprz Sorry this happened to you. I'm not surprised. Mods are going to be thrown over the side at an accelerating rate IMO. The protest is indeed hurting F u/spez otherwise he wouldn't have to do this. My opinion is that he will do whatever it takes to try to get his numbers back up and his ability to sell Reddit and buy his island depends on it.

I'm glad a good experienced mod has come over from reddit. Having good content providers here will help speed reddits demise.

I'm so sorry for what they did. I hope you can feel at home on the Fediverse. Starting over sucks so bad, but I'm sure you will find awesome people here. Heck probably the same awesome people as there!

I really hope the decline clearly shows before Reddits IPO. If Spqz and co. are allowed to profit from this, then the future looks bleak...

The tonedeafness of this C-suite is remarkable. And like twitter, I'm stunned at how quickly they are steering the clown car off the cliff.

I liked twitter, despite its flaws. I liked reddit too--some of it was a swamp, but you could have your little island and mostly be ok. Like most tools they could be used for good or bad, and you could focus on the good.

But they flushed all of the good. What a really stupid plan.

The fact Spez has come out saying he admires Musk's work at Twitter is insane. Once the third-party apps stop working it's going to get a whole lot worse over there too.

I’m sorry this happened. I deleted my Reddit account yesterday. I build up a subreddit from the ground up as well with 18k subscribers, which is a huge amount for me.

Someone has offered to take over the Reddit and with a tear in my eye I deleted my account. For me it is proven that I can no longer trust Reddit and I don’t want to be part of it anymore. Your message confirms my choice.

Chin up, new chances will arrive!

You add years upon years of value, get nothing more than a sense of fulfillment while they get paid, and get booted out.

I’m sorry, man. That has to sting.

Wow. That really sucks.

Welcome to the fediverse, though!

Expected behavior from Steve Huffman's lackeys.

I’m glad I was forced to remove my Reddit crutch and dive in full force.

Pretty much the silver lining in all this. Best of luck to you and your adventures here in the Fediverse.

Friend, is there any truth to the rumours of a lawsuit from current and former mods against Reddit, for back pay? I'm pretty convinced there's a case there, and your story is a prime example. One argument from Reddit might be that you and the community were the primary beneficiaries of your volunteer labour, but for Reddit to take your mod powers unilaterally sure makes them look like an employer rather than a maintainer of a public forum.

In the US, there are no circumstances under which a private for-profit company can legally accept volunteer labour like that. Further strengthening your case would be how much Facebook pays for moderation of their platform. Reddit built an entire business on the backs of people like you, and your stake in that should be recognised and compensated.

I just read a write up AOL that someone linked on another thread. AOL started selling ad space and changing the chatrooms up on their whim even though it was the unpaid works or volunteers that built the community. AOL expanded and looked for a pay out. It normally happens, but the way they did it destroyed any good faith between their unpaid workers and AOL proper. They ended up having a class action lawsuit and settled for 15 million. 5 to each, unpaid workers, lawyers, some charity. I could see a class action lawsuit building for this.

We are happy to have you. We need as many contributors here as we can get.

Contributor? That’s like calling a janitor an artist.

Musk poured $44 billion into Twitter. The global population is 8 billion people. He could have given $5 billion to each individual and still had money left over. Most people’s lives would be changed if they received a $5 billion check. But he squandered it all on Twitter.God I want to have sex with Stelle from Honkai: Star Rail so fucking badly, I jerk my meat to Stelle porn multiple times a day and I still can’t stop thinking about her constantly. Her emotionless, uncaring face looking down at me as I stroke my beat my meat to her praying that she may one day materialize if I project my energies hard enoug.As far as we know the PAW Patrol has the capabilities of international travel and possible covert operation capabilities. However, the PAW Patrol failed to assist in any way during the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979, which is unacceptable seeing as the US diplomats were hostages from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981. Could it be that the PAW Patrol is run by Islamic extremist that utilize PAW Patrol to increase positive images of the extremist, while also taking money from the UN? Or that the PAW Patrol is US run, and was told by the CIA to not intervene with the hostage crisis? If it is the former, why so? Could the Iran Hostage Crisis be a hoax, used to crack down on Iran for bringing down the monarchy that was ruling Iran, made possible by a coup from the US and UK?Paw patrol is police propaganda.Who's the main "pup"? That's right, you guessed it, Chase. Which "pup" experiences the most development? Chase. Who gets the most jobs? Chase again.Not on the contrary, who gets the least jobs? You guessed it, Rocky.Now, what's so significant about Rocky getting low representation within the series? Well two things, Rocky represents recycling and conservation, two ideologies that don't exactly like up with the opinions and supporters of the police. Well, so what, only some think like this, what else is amiss? Well, Rocky is a "mix-breed pup," and what do cops perpetrate the most in their crimes? Racism.The fact that they put this minority, obviously liberal "pup" in the least powerful position, and the obviously purebred police dog in the highest renown only proves this.TL;DR don't support paw patrol and it's insidious agenda to promote police to our children.Im gonna be blunt right now.Asking someone what their pronouns are is completely dumb and isn’t going to make a any kind of difference in daily life… in fact it’s prob more insulting to a trans person then anything else. People are gendered in daily life based on presentation… nothing is ever going to change this. People are gonna calls em like they sees em🤷‍♀️E.g Someone looks like a man - he/him Someone looks like a woman - She/herIf you want to be gendered correctly… then change your presentation to match what you wantThat random person in the super market isn’t going to say “they/them” if you look like a specific gender… they’re gonna say he/she. Wearing a sticker on your shirt with your pronouns isn’t going to change that. It just doesn’t make sense… it a complete waste of energy, you can’t make people use a specific pronoun for you… it’s the reality of the world that you’ll be gendered based on presentation. Trysail Sail ho Corsair red ensign hulk smartly boom jib rum gangway. Case shot Shiver me timbers gangplank crack Jennys tea cup ballast Blimey lee snow crow’s nest rutters. Fluke jib scourge of the seven seas boatswain schooner gaff booty Jack Tar transom spirits.Carnage TransformationCasting of SlimeCorruptors' DreamingCurse of Become Charismatic SpeakerCurse of Melt TiarasDisrupting Chant of the Black ChimesField of Metal and HidingGlamour of AngerGlamour of Blending TransformationGnome KillingHellish Darkness BlastsIllusion of Absorbs ManaImmovable HandIncatation of Seduce Cunning CrushersRite of Inversion AlterationRitual of Hypnotise Drunken NomadSacred Spirit BreathsSadistic Spectre's Hex of NecromancySpell of Voidness and BreathingStorms of LightThe Glamours of Future DustThe Goblet of CrueltyThe Pit of LightningThe Three Castings of Defender HypnotismTitans' Working of Muck

I don't know what the hell I just read (okay, skimmed) but 44 billion divided by 8 billion is 5.5, not 5.5 billion.

He could have given $5 to each person and had money left over.

It's a troll account. If you click on their name it looks like they're just spewing and spamming a bunch of crap all over the place.

I just deleted my account on Reddit. This behavior is not acceptable anymore at all. Sorry for what happened to you, this must feel disappointing and betraying having put so much of yourself into the platform that simply kicked your out of the door.

@vaprzThe Fediverse is definitely the way to go for true freedom and inclusivity. Are there any other Reddit horror stories out there? Share your experiences

holy fuck

i'm just some asshole with a 13+ year old account that would bitch and moan in the comments section

i can't imagine dedicating so much of my time to build a wonderful community and then being unceremoniously cast away as part of a large purge of dissent

So many stories like yours are coming out. Thanks for sharing.

The momentum definitely seems to swinging Lenny’s way. Glad to see it.

I'm sorry for what they put you through. I hope you find more joy here.

I manually deleted all of my comments from the past 13 years because I don't trust an app to complete that process. It took a long time, partly because I revisited a few threads along the way. I'm feeling great about my content being unavailable to Reddit, regardless of whether anyone cares or misses it.

Yes, I do miss Reddit. No, I will not go back. Not because I don't find any value in it -- I do -- but because my personal sense of justice gets in the way of wanting to contribute any longer. The time I used to spend scanning Reddit for new information or drama or funny anecdotes is now spent thinking about how I can contribute to my community in other ways.

The materials that make up the earth could only have been formed in the supernova of a 3rd or 4th generation star that has coalesced, ignited, lived, and died in this place since the birth of the universe.

The universe in general is expected to continue on for several billion TIMES longer than it has so far.

The disintegration of reddit seeds the raw materials for the next good thing.

I have to imagine the reason would have been this

This is a stickied comment on the pinned post from a deleted account around 11 hours ago. So I am assuming it was you. If I had to guess admin either decided to do it or another mod in that team complained to the admins because they wanted to take control.

Yes, that was my post as we actually had a survey concerning NSFW content going on and the community agreed that they wanted to continue to see NSFW content.

So I did take that opportunity to change the sub to 18+ and that very well could have been trigger that got me removed.

Considering the current state of other subs turning to NSFW content to hurt Reddits chances with advertisers I imagine that is what happened.

Seems like it was an innocent enough thing that happened at a bad time and you got hit by it by either accident or another mod stabbing you in the back.

I'm guessing the latter. They had been lobbying me hard the last few days and I had made it clear I was not changing my stance.

The irony is out of all the subs that have switched to NSFW in the last few days, this was one in which the most popular posts are actually NSFW.

C'est la vie.