Reddit CEO slams protesters as "landed gentry," says he'll change site rules

IntlLawGnome@lemmy.ca to Technology@beehaw.org – 142 points – Reddit CEO slams protesters, says he'll change site rules
nbcnews.com

Huffman said in an interview that he plans to institute rules changes that would allow Reddit users to vote out moderators who have overseen the protest, comparing them to a “landed gentry.”

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if MODERATORS are landed gentry, what the fuck does that make rich bastards like him?

Using gentry as a slam indicates he views himself as royalty. Gentry is defined as "people of good social position, specifically the class of people next below the nobility in position". FUCK SPEZ!!!

And there it is. They're going to implement a system that will enable them to remove mods without cause, justified by anonymous voting...when they have millions of bots that can vote however Reddit wants them to. People said they'd replace mods and instill puppets and this is quite literally that.

Won't solve thile moderation shit show it will cause but the removing the mods forcibly part is now in the works.

Honestly I don't know why any mods would stay after this, and I see more of them leaving. Reddit doesn't care about you mods. It's an abusive one way relationship that they need to walk away from.

I see it backfiring already.

"Hey we host a sub that's SFW about this popular actress we like. Rule 1, don't post pictures of her boobs"

Alright let me just go fire up the spambot hive and put down $3.50 for 500,000 votes to oust this mod

"Wtf guys, I just wanted to talk about her acting, couldn't you make a new sub for her boobs?"

Hey welcome everyone I'm your new mod and here's soandso's boobs"

If only people were to just LEAVE the site, even just temporarily until changes were made in their favor. A massive drop in user activity would be a huge hit to u/spez and at that point it wouldn't matter if his cronies took over the mods because no one would be on.

I find it funny that a lot of the people who were yelling for a blackout were still active during the 12th and 13th. This blackout was the wrong move man. Wrong move.

There never were that many people yelling for a blackout or complaining in general. Fact simply is, that the average Reddit User doesn't care about it, since it doesn't affect them directly. If we throw in all mods, the 3rd party app users and all the people that care, we don't even reach 10% of Reddits userbase.

They had a drop of about 30% during the blackout which is already a lot more than expected, but that's mainly because subs are closed and people can't post.

They're not the last place we'll go. Neither is this. The core of free discussion on the internet moves with the times and it is moving here. All the way from Usenet to AOL to UBB boards to Myspace pages and Slashdot all the way to Reddit and now Lemmy, and so it goes.

Even if he were right, that only a minority supports the protest, it'd still be the particular minority that runs your freaking site.

I personally called the protest a “jr high school style walkout” in the post asking my sub if we should participate, and the response was overwhelmingly “yes, you idiot, shut it down”, and now here we are

So yea, fuck you spez

“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,” he said.

Cool, the first business owner voted out should be spez!

Also, a moderator is a volunteer - not a politician on six figures a year, or a mega business owner on seven. A volunteer is perfectly in their rights to pause volunteering when they feel their work is not appreciated.

He's not completely wrong with the powermod=landed gentry analogy (and the implied spez=king analogy, for that matter). People have been (weakly) protesting and trying (not very successfully) to leave over the powermod situation for years, and it's true that the powermods aren't friends of ours.

But he seems to be suggesting that the protests are just the actions of the powermods, as if other users (and smaller mods) aren't also leaving. I think he's going to be disappointed when he discovers that the peasantry are also upset. They just don't have has his ear because he's so removed from them, so all he hears are the powermods.

The landed gentry were landlords, making money off of other people's domestic and business activities.

Spez is the landed gentry.

The audacity. The bullshit. The outright lies.

Spez is an embarrassment and I have no idea why the Reddit BoD hasn't asked for his resignation.

Aaron Swartz is turning in his grave right now. Despicable. Who knew his dream of a free and open place for expression and information wouldn't come from Reddit, but the Fediverse. I hope he would have taken some semblance of solace in what we've created.

That article was a wild ride. He said he wants to put the reddit changes to a vote. Just saying whatever I guess. If Reddit actually does that I'll eat a hat and a crow.

You just know that vote's going to be rigged. Trust nothing Spez says.

Oh yeah, this isn't going to backfire at all.

Ikr! Like there aren't already millions of bots infesting the site as it is ready to sway public opinion in the most optimal way for u/spez. There are so many Russian bots on reddit, they should call it a social nyet-work.

Even if he revolts against the mods, and replaces them with his cronies. Then what? Reddit is built off the backs of unpaid mods. The company simply doesn't have the resources to manage these subreddits or they would have a long time ago to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening. Because you gotta know that this API price change was a long time coming, with sites like Teddit, and Libreddit, and Stealth on F-Droid. Or my favorite TamperMonkey extension, Unedit Reddit. It had to be costing them money, because there were people like me who wouldn't step foot in that ad ridden cesspool without using a frontend alternative.

So it's treason, then.

Dig in, folks. Time to bring the pain.

How often to corporations have to make polls that backfire on them before they realize they're a bad idea?

So reddit would rather pay hundreds, if not thousands of employees to moderate the site? Seems like a great business decision

This is the time when volunteer mods finally get their paycheck!

Step 1: Use alt account to trash talk your mod account. Step 2: Apply to oust your mod account with a small compensation Step 3: Profit!!!

Okay so, nuance, this should've been allowed way before this. Too many mods don't reflect the opinions of the communities they moderate. It should be somewhat of an elected position as opposed to the BDFL approach. (Benevolent dictator for life.)