After eight years, i resigned as a moderator of my community
I've been the main moderator of the same community since 2016. This evening, i approved my last comment.
I'm leaving for two reasons:
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Reddit went public a week ago. I didn’t volunteer to work for a publicly traded company, i volunteered to work for a community. As long as i live under capitalism i accept that my labor will generate value for shareholders, but damned if i ever do it for free. (this is not a Faulkner quote)
-
April 1st is coming and i'm scared they might do another r/place. Doing in r/place 2022 and 2023 has left me dejected and bitter and i don't want to feel obligated to participate again.
Leaving felt like ripping myself off of something warm i've been comfortably glued to for a long time. Still recommend it for anyone still giving Reddit shareholders free labor
EDIT: there are too many comments to respond to, but i've appreciated all of them! Thank you
I’m sorry. The corporate assholes don’t deserve to pad their fat wallets based on your free labor, but it’s still absolutely the loss of something you love when you step away and it hurts. I’m still grieving losing Apollo and all of the goofy, weird ass little subs and brilliant human beings who made me laugh and cry every day on Reddit. It’s not been replaced in my life. It took millions of us almost 20 years to make that stupid website something incredible…I can’t deny that it was incredible at points.
It’s gone, it’s just a website now and an app with ads every 3rd pixel just like the rest. There is still some good content and good people, just as there are on TikTok, Bookface, X and insta. The decent shit that is there, on all of the platforms, is overwhelmed by their horrible algorithm trying to sell you shit and increase engagement to monetize your every click.
I'm tired of being monetized. They have more than enough money.
I miss Apollo and Reddit too.
Second time for me. I migrated about ten years ago from Metafilter, which I eventually rage quit. That really fucking hurt, and Reddit filed that niche in my life (but not the meeting IRL or helping IRL part).
Now I've had to go through the same thing with Reddit. I'm into Lemmy, Mastodon, and Bluesky, but it's not the same. I hope it's just not the same, yet.
I don’t know that anything will be the same because it took so long for everyone to gather there and make 100,000 thriving communities about every random little thing from rare diseases to Pokémon made from toilet paper tubes, sexy John Oliver, kids getting hit on the head. If got interested in some random TV show, you could find a sub where there would be 100 interesting conversations about it. That just doesn’t exist outside of Reddit. Where even could it? Fucking Quora? Facebook groups?
I don’t know what anyone could have done to preserve it though. If it’s POSSIBLE to slap a million ads on it and make a billion dollars, but definitely ruin it forever…it’s inevitable. Nothing can stop that.
Thank you for putting into words some of the emotions I've felt over the last 9 months.
If there's good shit on any of those sites, I'll surely read about it here. If not, it's not worth it.
If you have it in you, please recreate your previous subreddit here in the fediverse. There's less tools, but also far less users, and plenty of room to make tools.
A ton of niche communities didn't make it over here during the "exodus". Any little bit helps.
Shameless plug: /c/Sekiro, /c/Bloodborne
Doing my part :)
Gotta actually link things if you want people to find them, my friend! 😉
I'm always too lazy to link properly. Thanks for helping out :D
We need auto conversion ao that c/communityname actually links to the community if it exists on the home sub of the user (for example as a suggestion)
Yes please
That must've been tough to do. You have the respect of at least one internet stranger 🫡
Lemmings did the tough thing months (years?) ago when thousands of third party apps and community development went to waste.
He took the easy way out and helped spez IPO.
Some of us take a longer path than others. All are valid. Sure, maybe some have better outcomes, but no one should be criticized for taking a step on the right direction, however late it may be. You don't know what they've been through or what it meant to them. If you're only going to be negative then you probably just shouldn't comment.
You call it "a longer path", I call it having your cake and eating it, and whining about it
Before June 2023, I was a mod on several Reddit communities for about 13 years and outside of Reddit since the turn of the century. I just kinda stepped back once the Reddit BS happened.
10 months later, my happiness and over all quality of life has improved. Not only am I no longer stressed (bye bye moderation based nightmares!), but I have way more time to dedicate to my passions and goals.
I thought that dedication to holding together a few niche communities and battling the "bad guys" defined me and gave me a sort of immortality.
I was VERY wrong.
Our great grand kids won't be trolling reddit archives, telling everyone how "cool" grandpa was.
The greatest thing I ever did to improve my QOL was step away from moderating and leading communities on the internet as a whole. Doubly so if they involve political talk.
I participated and organized the Lemmy banner on the last r/place and it went pretty well. If they ever decide to do another r/place, I don't know if I'll do it. If people haven't left already then they might be stuck there but idk.
I was pretty happy with doing lots of alliances last time with the Fuck Spez Coalition, Germany, and a few others. I just don't want to visit that awful site, it already hurt me a lot last time participating it at all hours of the day and fueling traffic so I probably won't do it again.
Edit: I believe this was the final result
https://lemm.ee/post/2028359
https://lemm.ee/post/2033816
oh hey, I was there too! Worked at the save3rdpartyapps logo, was really nice seeing everyone collaborate but it got really stressful at points. People were greedy for canvas space. Was a bit disappointing that we could only do so much, the banner was really small after all. But at least the protest didn't go unnoticed with the giant "FUCK SPEZ" across the whole canvas.
Well, our banner is at the center of the canvas so for our small group size I think we did fairly well and I'm pretty sure we got a few people to visit the link
I never knew there was a fediverse design, that's neat
I tried to get the word out but received lots of downvotes because people didn't want to give Reddit the traffic. A couple of my posts got taken out.
I sincerely hope you said this in multiple places on Reddit
There will be a lot of people who don't realise that that's precisely what the IPO means
Anyone who comments on Reddit is now giving free information to the capitalists. I don’t care if people don’t go anywhere, so long as they abandon Reddit.
I deleted my account and left the spez wasteland months ago. You should consider it too.
I left my communities as a moderator last summer already, but kept my account because of a few communities I wanted to keep interacting with. However, after this IPO thing I decided to completely cut it and used a tool to mass delete my comments before deleting my account altogether. Felt relieving!
I tried that with my account and got it permabanned. Locked my 600k karma with a fake ass “you violated Reddit prime directive”.
Just for deleting your comments? Well I guess your account was taken out of existence either way so ¯\_(⊙_ʖ⊙)_/¯
Nope. Afaik your comments are still there even banned.
I left my community of 12 years with >4M subs a year ago, when they killed the API. Without third party tools, my time modding had more than doubled. I spent almost as much time on reddit as I did on my full time job at some point.
I wonder if they don’t even want mods. Just AI/algorithms and ads. What is 100 well moderated, mindful discussions worth compared to a single, well targeted ad?
Honest question: what did you feel you got out of modding? I feel like it would be a thankless endeavor and would bring absolutely no satisfaction at any point.
It started as a very niche community when I joined, so being a mod actually felt like being a "recognized" member of the community without doing a whole lot. And when the sub started growing, keeping the trolls out was more of a necessary chore to preserve the peace, that I did without really thinking about it.
Only once I left I started realizing how much time it consumed. I've signed up for a phd program since I left and I still have more free time despite the research and a full time job. That's how much time it consumed in the end.
I’m a capitalist and I would never do free work for a public company. Now I don’t mind a hobby but a public company isn’t a hobby.
It's possible to craft a public company that has bylaws strict enough to make it like a good nonprofit, but why would you do that and still pay taxes?
Yo, I was mired in modding for several years. It felt good to maintain that space, and I helped create the best community for one of the most popular mobile games. It wasn't the general community, it was the analysis/strategy focused sub, so we had very tight moderation policies. That made a lot of people mad, both those that wanted to post more general content, and those that wanted to rage about the game/developer. The work is constant and nearly thankless, not to mention unpaid.
Your point of not doing volunteer work for a publicly traded company is an excellent one. I definitely felt pride in doing that kind of community service for a public space. Now that Reddit is profit-driven and answering to shareholders, it's asinine to do that work for free.
Congratulations! You’re doing the right thing. Reddit is trash now.
Bring it here. We need good moderators. Welcome back to the original corporate free Internet. It's great
I did the same thing last July, left to switch full-time to Lemmy (I registered my first Lemmy account @mp3@lemmy.ml a long time ago EDIT: jeez 5 years ago already?!) and somewhat abandoned my account.
I was then approached by the lemmy.ca admins, asking if I would be interested to help administer the website, which I gladly accepted. I do not regret one minute giving my time to the fediverse.
I went back to Reddit last month to remove my account from being a moderator on all the communities I was part of. I didn't even tell anyone, I just left. Reddit is way past its prime.
I still remember your name from the early days, it's great that you stuck around! How much Lemmy changed in these few years...
I could recognize that name anywhere, hello sir :)
r/place has had the soul sucked out of it past the first iteration. I'm not even going to bother checking it this year because I can see the future and I know what the canvas will end up being - bots maintaining flags. I'd be nice if they restricted it to accounts that are at least a year old, but at this point all the accounts people were botting with the last two years are qualified under that definition.
Cool idea, consistently horrible implementation.
The only thing I remember about r/place was that they dropped it anytime they did something stupid, like kill the free API, and that they would mod the content which made it a bot spam war fest.
Also the Pakistani flag getting defaced by r/Chodi because insert rent free joke here.
They did that once actually, when they killed third-party apps they decided to do a surprise r/place hoping it would calm people down. In July. Not even a year after the last one. It came as a horrible surprise
Fuck em, welcome to the fediverse!
@thawed_caveman sorry that happened to you, it sounds difficult. But I think you've made the right decision.
Hope you find a silver lining. For me, moving to the fediverse has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. It's fun being part of something cool that can never be sold out by people like Spez.
Shit, man, I know how it feels.
I wasn't any kind of big mod, but it was something I did out of love for a set of related hobbies/interest and the folks that took part in them. I had only really started being a relatively busy mod maybe six months before the shit hit the fan last year. I was having fun, expanding wikis, shooting the bull with everyone. Managed to streamline some automod stuff to filter out bots and trolls. Didn't even mind most of the crap that goes with modding like having to throw a ban or whatever because idgaf, so it was done and over and forgotten once it was necessary.
It was fulfilling in a way I hadn't thought I would have after my back gave out and I couldn't work. I do some volunteer stuff that got started during the height of covid, but that was weekly even then, and had dropped off a lot. So having that "work" to keep my mind busy was nice.
So, yeah man, sorry you had to bow out, it sucks.
Possible Spin: you get paid the same and have more free time?
Plus it won't look bad on the resume
Had a 12 year old account. Just got permad. Honestly feels like a weight off my shoulders. That place was making me so toxic.
May be an unpopular opinion but I always had an issue with the toxicity of Reddit going all the way back to 2014. I don't know what it is about that site but the people act like absolute pieces of shit more often than should be expected.
It's because of the anonymity and lack of consequences. If it were in person they'd actually be confronted about it. Online however you can spout the most horrific shit all day ,every week and nothing could happen.
I think it's more than that, a lot of ganging up on people for really stupid reasons. I personally blame the karma system, it's like a dystopian social system that prevents people from being genuine and it's used to hurt people they don't like or agree with
I give this comment 5 Meow Meow Beanz.
Lost a 14 year old account for an anti-Nazi comment. No more free content for them from me.
How was place a bitch for mods? I honestly never heard anybody talking about it and im genuinely curious
I felt a duty to not only place pixels but also coordinate efforts. Picking the design, updating the design, spreading information so the people placing pixels know what's going on, advertising, talking to other communities...
I don't remember them very well but i'm pretty sure i've had 4 hour nights for the entire duration. For place 2023 i spent most of my waking time in Discord calls.
And all this for a game that can be emotionally devastating. Getting overrun by a streamer feels shockingly similar to having big kids trample your sand castle, it's this little thing that you built together getting destroyed by stronger people and they're mocking you relentlessly.
Gah. Ok yeah that sounds like ass.
Welcome to life!
Before I left I edited all of my comments to say "fuck u/spez". Very relieving to get the fuck out of there. I fucking despise the idea of working to make money for the rich, never will. If they ever create an economy that forces me to work, the only labor I will do is to make sure they never feel comfortable again.
I know at the end spez made people to hate reddit but idt people should do this. Reddit still has lots of posts asking niche questions (which got answered) that aren't even in stack overflow. Imagine looking up some question, you could find that only in reddit but the answer got edited to "HATE SPEZ, EAT BALLS".
We might think Reddit is shit but if it's shit let's just leave it as it is.
Good, fuck em. They don't deserve to be the go-to place for troubleshooting.
The problem there is that the rise of reddit, specifically the fact that it has a much higher concentration of people discussing niche subjects due to its sheer size, ultimately led to the FALL of the forum.
Most of the places that USED to turn up in search results are GONE because there was no point in paying for hosting when a seemingly superior outside solution with greater reach and greater response times existed.
When helpful, contributing individuals remove their content from somewhere, it never hurts the big wigs that made the bad choice and it never teaches anyone any lessons because it never happens at a large enough scale to send a message. Hell, the giant reddit protest that led the lion's share of people to Lemmy is barely a historical footnote and accomplished almost nothing particularly lasting or meaningful on Reddit itself despite being massive.
I'm not saying protesting is a waste of time, it's not, it just needs to be better coordinated than even the aforementioned one was to be effective and stopping along the way to punitively shoot the largely innocent community itself in the foot does not produce any positive end results.
Don't throw a temper tantrum and delete content, MIGRATE IT.
That's something I wish a lot of subs had the foresight to do before the API-block launched. I imagine it's much more thankless and labor intensive to crawl the useful information from communities now. (But don't worry, tons of Ais already did! /s)
I miss forums, too.
Also the story with Discord. Hey, you wanna try and shout your question like you're in the middle of the New York Stock Exchange in the 90's and hope you get a response? It's instant tho! Even if the solution will be completely ephemeral and your question will be asked a million more times.
Sigh.
No, it's all good. Yours was the millionth time the question was asked, so instead of an answer you'll get everyone jumping down you throat to "just do a search."
Your search results will return the previous 999,999,999 times the question was asked, and also the same chorus of "just search," but not the answer. And it's no good just scrolling to the oldest result, because that time the question was not answered. You need to land somewhere near the hundredth repetition, which was the one where somebody answered the question, but after when nobody answered the question, and also before everyone got tired of the question.
"But we have THREADS in Discord now! It's so much better! Especially because no one reads or posts to them!"
I hate when it also feels like you're butting into a conversation with some "locals" by asking a question. Lol
Like with a forum you could just open up with "Hey guys, so I tried to do this and... thanks for any help!"
But in Discord you feel so awkward just hopping into "#general" because it's the project's only support board and going "HEY I TRIED THIS AND IT'S NOT WORKING ANY IDEAS?" as their chat about local weather scrolls your request away. Lmao
Again, okay, good, fuck reddit. The helpful content will move. They won't get clicks and advertising money from my comments.
Yes, it only removes a piece of knowledge which could be helpful and save their time fixing bugs or trying out new things for thousands.
Yeah, the proper way is to become a place that can solve your niche questions so that reddit will eventually die. You don't have to "kill" it by changing your informative comments, help etc.
Nah buddy. The propper way is to abandon reddit with all of your data and go somewhere else. Maybe that somewhere else is Lemmy, although it probably won't be. By leaving your shit in, you generate clicks for their website, nothing more.
where exactly you will pass those answers for niche questions? unless someone creates a similar community in lemmy, it gains traction enough and someone asks same question? if that's the case, good luck for you, bad luck for that person who didn't make any mistake but wanted to find a fix, spez isnt the one who's going to be annoyed when you edit your comments, that stranger is going to be. let me know if any guys who edit their comments on reddit make and moderate similar communities here, i will be glad to be a member.
Okay then, why should I care about this niche information being on reddit? I want them gone. The comments that were made are made by me. I can do whatever I want with them.
i hope no one will be affected by your "niche and informative" comments being edited with "eat shit spez". have a nice day, and make lemmy or other forums that you find useful grow in an organic way.
Yeah, people will be affected. That's the point of deleting your comments from reddit.
but it's not gonna be spez or other reddit execs, the ones who are responsible for api changes but your average joe who just uses reddit to find answers to niche questions? anyways, idt you are gonna understand so it's useless to continue anyways. do what you want brotha. i doubt anyone will be affected by your informative comments being edited anyways.
And we are back to square one, and the protest that doesn't inconvenience anyone. It's you who doesn't understand. Reddit doesn't deserve being the site to go to for "niche info" and "troubleshooting". You know jack shit about me, yet you say "nobody is going to need them" without knowing what I do. Newsflash, robotics, CNCs, programming and a lot of shit you probably couldn't grasp.
Yeah they don't but that doesn't mean that you have to destroy the existing discussions. This mob mentality is not going to harm reddit execs anyway or help lemmy gather crowd, but only the people who are searching answers for niche questions and people who still try to make reddit a better place despite the shit that's going on.
That means that exactly. It was content created by me, I can do whatever I want with it. I don't want reddit to profit off of it. So I get rid of it. Simple.
This is like saying "protests in the street don't do anything other than piss off regular people, don't do it pls :(((("
Nobody objected when subreddits shut down for protest.
The correct terminology here is "I will burn down my shop, because I hate the mayor of this town, why should anyone care because it's my shop". No offense to you bro, I wouldn't be here too if I was content with Reddit.
I built a shop in a community for the benefit and betterment of the community. Then, a decade plus later, this respected co-founder of the community decides he isn't rich and important enough, so he starts imposing his will over this community, making whatever changes he sees fit regardless of the backlash and how the community reacts to it. When finally driven out, why would I leave anything standing behind that he could profit or benefit from. So damn straight, I burned down my shop, even ripped out the foundation by destroying decades' worth of content before moving to the next town over where I heard whispers about a community run community.
All you could have done is vacate the community and not burn your building in that community. He's greedy but you are arson.
You're getting downvoted, and I don't 100% agree with you, but I agree with your principal: at least a decade's, maybe 15 years' worth of the best answers to niche questions on the internet are going to die with Reddit, either because people delete/replace their comments or, more likely, Reddit just fucks them up some how in trying to monetize the answers.
Well I don't care about internet points. Even if one person reads everything, understands what I am trying to say and stop doing that or realises it's wrong, it's good for me. Even yesterday I had a problem with postgres and guess where I found a fix for that? not stackoverflow, not their forums, not on "lemmy" but reddit. I don't use reddit often these days but I gotta give credit where it's due and I wish lemmy becomes a replacement for reddit when it comes to finding answers for niche questions and not for getting mass downvoted to trying to have a proper argument against mob mentality.
r/place wasn't nearly as good as the time 4chan gave us all Nazi my little pony.
Glad to hear you stepped away, it is not worth letting them exploit your labor for their personal profits. Reddit changed a lot since 2016 and not for the better. They should be forced to cut checks for community leaders or hire an internal mod team at this point, but too many rubes are willing to mod for free. Of course reddit is more then happy to let them warm the seats and increase their value.
Offering you a bucket of moral support. Congratulations on your latest big step to fully joining the Fediverse! Every little bit of time and energy you can provide is appreciated.
Good on you.
I walked away from my sole moderatorship as well, but I think my contribution was considerably less significant than yours... I moderated a tiny all-but-dead niche interest sub where I was also basically the only poster.
That's, like, no difference whatsoever from what I do here. So I just upped sticks and moved to Lemmy, with no noticeable change in my life or workflow.
Congrats!
EDIT: This confused me a lot at first, but now I get it, the "it" is you recommend others to quit too. First I read "it" as "reddit", meaning you still recommend reddit.
Anyways, I hope you find value in moving on, and will be happy with your decision in the long run.
I never understood the point of place and why it made people become so evil.
Place was loved by people because it was interesting and showed lots of human ingenuity. People were so angry that reddit abused it in an attempt to take attention away from the criticism and protests. Especially because it was assumed to only happen every 5 or so years, and having two close together felt very abusive by reddit.
Oh you meant subreddit, not community. Yeah fuck that shit hole, not worth your time
deleting my my account solidarity and just something i keep meaning to get around to
It's heavy to give up on something after 8 years but power to you for sticking to your guns, your energy will be far better spent elsewhere.
Sorry to hear about your experience, hope you I'll have a better time here
Someone should put Reddit's stock price graph on r/place.
and if you leave and abandoned that sub by delete your account. admin just need to find a new mod on that sub
reddit claims to be the face of the internet. so obviously there are going to be good and bad people...only it seems like there are more bad than good.
you'll also notice,cancel culture is pervasive in social media,to the point it became toxic. any time any facts that doesn't fit the narratives of the idiots,you get downvoted and/or called/branded derogatory names.
an anecdotal observation,i have my fair share of run ins with right wing crazies spouting nonsense on social media such as reddit but honestly, it's mostly the left where i saw true craziness and experienced fascist behaviours.
That really depends which part of the internet you're in, which politics you're more sensitive to, and which point of view you're observing them from. If you're in leftist communities they tend to be a lot nicer on the inside.
This is silly to me. So you're happy working for free at a private company, but not a public one? The fact that them going public was known for a while was fine? The lack of care they showed you as a private company while taking the shitty concrete steps to go public were all fine?
If yu want to take a hard look at your role, when the last revolt during the API changes happened, the revolt failed because mods like you wouldn't stand up. So it's funny to me to see what the "final straw" is for you, because in the grand scheme of things, it seems like nothing.
I certainly don't understand why you would move to another place in the Internet and announce this silly view.
No need to be an asshole about it, the important thing is that he moved on, the path he took is not relevant.
I didn't think I was being an asshole. The questions I asked were genuine, and I think I was pretty neutral with pointing out how OP shares blame in the situation they are in.
And, through all that, i summed it up with how silly this whole situation is - especially when you look at how OP is responding in the thread. This comes across as a "look at me, I did something good, tell me how nice I am" post. Given the rest of the situations context, just ugh.
"This is silly to me". Followed by a bunch of snide questions.
"the revolt failed because mods like you wouldn't stand up". Throwing blame on someone that did nothing that harmed you directly, and that even assumes a niche mod would have had any impact in the results at all.
"I certainly don't understand why you would move to another place in the Internet and announce this silly view." Then you go on to call them silly again, and criticize them for making a post in the proper C/ for that kind of venting.
Then your entire comment here is repeating that, doubling down on the same thighs, and then accuse them of begging for attention.
I get it. You didn't think you were being an asshole. You were. To avoid that in the future, try not using language that denigrates, belittles, or dismisses someone, and you are much less likely to end up being an asshole. And you 100% were being an asshole. If there were a textbook in being an asshole online, your two comments could serve as perfect examples of how to do it without resorting to cursing. That's pretty much the only thing you could have done to make it worse without going entirely off topic.
One asshole to another? You gotta either learn not to be an asshole, or own that shit and not pretend you aren't.
I can agree with your point, the API changes should have been the breaking point. Keep in mind there's going to be a lot of different final straws for people though, it is inevitable as traditional social media collapses into itself. The best time was yesterday, the next best is now.
I totally get that - but coming to another platform to announce it is just funny to me, and I think the questions I asked at the start were valid and I'm genuinely curious about the answers.