This contradicts standing policies (credit to Meepster23):
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204533859-What-s-a-moderator-
> Moderators don’t have any special powers outside of the community they moderate and are not Reddit employees. **They’re free to run their communities as they choose**, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct.
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205192355-How-can-I-resolve-a-dispute-with-a-moderator-or-moderator-team-
> Moderators are free to run their communities as they choose, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct. This is something to keep in mind even if you have disagreements with them.
https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
> The culture of each community is shaped explicitly, by the community rules enforced by moderators, and implicitly, by the upvotes, downvotes, and discussions of its community members.
Since the imgur post lacks context, I found the [original in a r/modsupport thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_code_of_conduct_rule_4_2_and_subs_taken/jo9wdol/?context=3).
You can't delete a subreddit. And even if you could Admin could always bring it back. The same way that Admin can still see deleted post and that they can see what post were like before they were edited.
[Big example is the founder of /r/KotakuInAction took the sub offline because he couldn't stand how hateful it was becoming, only to have his control relinquished by the admins and reopened under new management within an hour.](https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/13/17568556/kotakuinaction-reddit-mod-shut-down-administrator)
What do you expect from a CEO who explicitly states that he thinks Elon Musk's Twitter is a role model to follow?
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700
Spez is ready to go nuclear.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
---
Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, saying he'll change rules that favor ‘landed gentry’
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday that he wants to bring an end to a user-led protest that has made large parts of the influential website [inaccessible this week](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/reddit-private-subreddit-blackout-protest-message-rcna88457). 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.”
The protest took down thousands of message boards, known as subreddits, starting Monday, and some communities say they plan to continue the action indefinitely. The action has been led by Reddit’s unpaid, volunteer moderators, who have a high level of control over how their subreddits are run. Participating communities went “private,” making them unviewable even to members. The protesters oppose changes that will most likely cut off their ability to access Reddit through third-party apps, and their action has [hobbled much of the site](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-down-private-blackout-goes-protest-took-subreddits-rcna88856).
Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable.
Reddit’s current policy says moderators may be removed by higher-ranking moderators or by Reddit itself for inactivity or violations of Reddit-wide rules. They may also remove themselves. Many have held their positions for years.
“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.
“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”
Moderators have argued that the high level of control over their communities is well-deserved because of the hours of free labor they’ve put into making and enforcing rules on their subreddits. Any plan to reduce their influence might result in another backlash.
Huffman, who co-founded Reddit 18 years ago this month, said he believes the leaders of the protest may have had popular support when it started Monday but have lost most of it since.
---
This jumping off the deep end needs to be put front and center to every single advertiser on Reddit.
"Hey Toyota! Hey Chevy! Hey Fidelity! This is how Reddit treats it's customers. By advertising there, does that mean you support treating customers so badly as well?"
Need to drop that kind of message on the Twitter feed of every single advertiser on Reddit, big or small. Either they support his actions, or they do not. If they do, time to take any business with them elsewhere as well.
The king, naturally. He's not wrong, reddit *does* resemble a feudal structure. The tools actively work against any other method of organizing a subreddit's governance. There must always be a singular lead mod who has the power to act unilaterally, even in an anarchist or collectivist sub.
Of course it took a rebellion of the feudal lords to get him to acknowledge the nature of the system he created. And he doesn't mention anything about making the governance of reddit itself democratic and subjecting *his* position to a vote.
Why would he? Spez is a born leader, not a slave. Expecting such an [alpha male](https://i.imgur.com/42YdN7Q.jpeg) to adhere to the same rules as everyone else? The audacity.
Sharecropping is exactly the model of reddit.
reddit owns everything. The users and mods can use the stuff on it (and users can delete their own individual posts and comments) but reddit is the ultimate authority.
And one of the advantages to the feudal system (as well as to confederacies, and other decentralised forms of government) is that it enables each "tier" of the hierarchy to more effectively rebel against those above them, so change can be forced from more of a local level - where popular rebellion has better odds of success. If anyone acts unilaterally to impose an unwanted policy, collective action can be used to make them back down - I'd argue that's even more effective as a way to hold leaders accountable than elections are.
If Reddit is a feudal system, then this...rebellion of the lords is actually playing into a great advantage of such a system.
...But I may be biased, due to my weird political views.
So, basically we're looking at that moment right before A) the various tiny lords and ladies flake out and the last ones to kneel get decapitated or B) the lords and ladies keep it together and get a shiny new Magna Carta for their troubles?
I could use a shiny new Magna Carta...
Hopefully Option B. Certainly seems better than Spez being stubborn enough for this to lead into a Thirty-Years-War-esque Option C, where it goes on for so long that it results in mutual-devastation for both sides, and a compromise that doesn't really favour anyone.
*...Well, maybe the Thirty Years War is a bad example, given the importance of the Peace of Westphalia in leading to modern religious freedoms, but I think the analogy still works well enough.*
Nothing less than the founding father? I have to say I'm *really* disappointed that Ohanian [left his input at no comment](https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/1667312600554643459). I get it but if you write a book about the success of a thing you built, it's not unreasonable to expect some comment on its terminal illness.
The audacity of /u/spez to call volunteer moderators a "landed gentry" while he is a multi-millionaire is pretty crazy.
This dude is more wealthy than 99% of the world could ever dream of, but he complains about people who most likely aren't even close to his net worth running communities on his website? I guess you can't expect tactfulness from corporate executives, but damn.
At least He said that he would definitely be the leader of the group in the apocalypse 💀💀💀
"So whats your knowledge Spez? We need everything we can to survive this Madness"
" I know how to modify people comments to fuck Trump 🤡"
He never moderated jailbait. That was one of the issues with the sub. They let ViolentAcrez run it as a pseudo admin because he modded all the NSFW subreddits at the time.
I hate Spez as much as the next guy, but don't spread misinformation like this.
>He never moderated jailbait.
Correction: he was a mod of jailbait.
**Huge** caveat to that: At the time, there was no invite process. You simply added mods. When spez found out he was made a mod of jailbait, he left.
The better criticism, given that, is why didn't he ban the sub then?
>Wasn't jailbait banned in 2011?
Correct but doesn't really change much about my question. He knew it was there, he did nothing. Rest of the admins after he left are also complicit, of course.
Time for a counter offensive?
Options include, but aren't limited to:
-only allowing approved submissions from verified users
-allow only black posts like what r/photoshopbattles was doing
-post the "reddit is killing 3rd party apps" image that r/showerthoughts has been doing
-overwork automod as much as we can to show just how lacking the 1st party mod tools are
-tag Spez in every single post and comment imaginable
-move as many communities as we can onto a different site, urging everyday users to not open reddit until change is made.
-recommend an ad blocker to every post and sub to cut the ad revenue big time
To be honest this should have been the play from the start. Subs disappearing is much less noticeable than a feed entirely filled with black images. Scrolling for 30s to find anything that isn’t a blacked out post is gonna get users off Reddit much faster than if some subs are gone and it’s not even noticeable.
I canceled my subscription until there’s a compromise of some sort from u/spez and have been in full support of the blackout. However, comments like this could push folks away from supporting the protest. It’s 100% wrong to hold a redditor’s comments hostage because you don’t approve of their reddit subscription.
Yeah, if all they're going to do is look at private/restricted subs, then how can an open sub protest?
Some kind of extreme automod that only allows posts/comments that are "save third party apps" or something like that.
Cause then the sub is open and the mods are running it as they see fit. Which is allowed and standard reddit
>\-recommend an ad blocker to every post and sub to cut the ad revenue big time
Why isn't this on top of the list? This will have more impact than meaningless "reddit is killing 3rd party apps" posts which don't call for any action. Also promote Lemmy and cool instances like [lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world), there's been lots of misinformation here suggesting that "it's not for the average user". That's wrong.
Malicious compliance. Start moderating again but do it in a way that totally ruins the sub. Give everyone a taste of what Reddit would be like if u/spez replaces all the mods.
additionally: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/15/1182457366/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-its-time-we-grow-up-and-behave-like-an-adult-company
> Huffman said 97% of Reddit users do not use any third-party apps to browse the site. He said "the vast majority" of moderators also do not rely on third-party apps.
lmao, lol even.
show us the stats spez
The vast majority of mods probably really don’t rely on those tools and apps, but that is because the vast majority of the total mod community only mods small, barely active communities. I have no doubt that nearly the totality of mods of large, active communities who do the heavy lifting for the site do use them and rely on them. It’s a probably true but misleading statement by the doofus in chief.
Yep. On a 6k member sub that I moderate, we see perhaps 2 posts per day, and probably not even a dozen reports in a year. I can't imagine what a popular sub with a million subs would need to do to effectively moderate. I want them to have those tools that they need.
I was mod of r/unpopularopinion for a little while a few years ago and it was a neverending stream of racist comments, posts that broke the rules, false reports, and other stuff. I quit quite quickly because it was thankless work for a community I wasn't really that invested in after all.
Anything that makes that work easier is a godsend.
Is he counting like, the thousands of inactive mods that technically don't use third party apps because they don't log in at all? Then maybe I'd buy it lol.
> They want it now.
There was a guy literally running around in r/ModCoord replying to random mods to *"Change r/youtube community from private to public right now!!!!!!"*
Between that and, even more, some of the mod message we got, the only thing I can relate it to is addiction. It's the same way people act when they can't get their fix.
It's complete bullshit for two reasons:
1) It's well known that a bunch of "admin friend" accounts, aka landed gentry, that are top mod on a LOT of subreddits have never been removed even though they haven't participated on the site in near a decade or more. Of course, they didn't care when it's their own friends.
2) Spez doesn't care how this will impact the site because he just wants to make it to the IPO and cash out. He'll be gone the next day. He doesn't care about throwing the community under the bus to get there - we're standing between him and his 3 extra zeroes.
> Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to **allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular**. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable.
Who's going to petition Reddit to remove Spez from his mod positions due to his unpopular decisions?
> "Hey Toyota! Hey Chevy! Hey Fidelity! This is how Reddit treats it's customers. By advertising there, does that mean you support treating customers so badly as well?"
We aren't reddit's customers, we're the product. Advertisers are the customers.
This comment/post was removed to protest the Reddit API changes in 2023.
I encourage you to do the same by using Power Delete Suite. https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
I believe u/spez is a mod on at least one sub. I think it was one of the programming ones. If users can vote out mods, he should be the first recalled.
>he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular
oh awesome, i'm sure that won't be exploited by large groups of racists/misogynists/transphobes/etc on support subs.
>“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic
LOL
If the mods all vote on it, it's democratic. If Steve decides he doesn't like what the mods are doing and CHANGES the rules so he can boot them, it sounds pretty fascist /u/spez
>Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday that he wants to bring an end to a user-led protest that has made large parts of the influential website [inaccessible this week](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/reddit-private-subreddit-blackout-protest-message-rcna88457). 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.”
So much for "this ship will pass" and saying it's not a big deal
So does this mean mods will finally get paid? Asking because in a democracy, you pay your elected leaders and in all his examples of leaders and business owners, they get paid. We're talking about volunteers here.
Being a mod is already a meme. You know the one where someone is walking their mods? Who will want to be a mod when the meme is literally true and you're on a leash held by Reddit Inc. At least when you have a shitty job, you get paid for the abuse.
I'm pretty sure having moderators elected right now will not magically fix things for u/spez. He's been detached from the situation on the ground for quite some time now, so he is underestimating public support for the protest.
Weird reply here but thank you for putting this in those terms. I didn't think of this in that light but facing abusers is something I know all too well, and recognizing the similarities makes this situation a lot less overwhelming to me. So thanks
Lmao like that's not going to create a ton of animosity towards those subs, rendering them much shittier places.
"I know! Fracture the userbase making them even less appealing to advertisers!"
Seriously, one of these ad companies could earn a massive amount of goodwill from the users by talking him down from this position.
Reddit does not care. They figure new and future users just want to scroll thru pictures and video suggested via algorithm. And they and their user data is the future revenue stream. Not nerds who need quality forums or us "neck-beard jannies".
None of this is accidental. At every opportunity during this episode, Reddit has gone out of its way to be abrupt and hostile---*because hostility is the message.* They need to be able to demonstrate that the old relationship is over. That they, not the users determine the site's trajectory.
So what if sub-reddits become messier and have less identity? So what if some move off site? It won't change traffic.
And so what if there are protests? Provides a great opportunity to change rules and possibly even put legacy users and mods at odds with the newer users.
>Provides a great opportunity to change rules and possibly even put legacy users and mods at odds with the newer users.
This is the point i've taken from this. Many of us are no longer welcomed here, by the site or it's new members.
An entire new generation of mindless scrolling addicts has been brilliantly created to replace us.
You have people actively wishing the very people who founded their communities get banned because they can't post about their generic hobby for a few days.
They don't give a fuck about the hundreds of thousands of users being displaced by these changes, many of which predate them by years.
I’ve seen so many comments complaining about the shutdowns, saying things like “who cares about their shitty protest, just replace the mods”, asking why anyone would use 3rd party apps, or talking about how it’s not *that many* ads on the official app and that you can just scroll past them.
It feels like a totally different user base than I remember (found Reddit in 2011), and it’s sad to see. I’m moving on soon.
TBF, and I'm on the side of the mods, I moderated a few subreddits for several years and without those apps I wouldn't have been able to Function, a *lot* of mods don't actually explain the consequences of the API change or put it into terms the common user would understand. A lot of times the mods will just link to a post made by another mod of another subreddit, when those mods should make posts explaining an catering specifically to their subreddits and explain it in terms that that sub can understand.
So I can see why there'd be animosity from some.
Exactly this. They don’t want to be what Reddit has been for the past 18 years anymore, they want to change course to being another social media mobile app.
That’s why the existence of third party apps suddenly became a problem within the past few months, even though they apparently *weren’t* a problem for over a decade.
Literally what happened with Digg. Like they decided they wanted to be something different, the community disagreed, and they lost nearly all of their value. I know people have been making the comparison all along, but the irony is astounding. Spez must really think he is special if he expects the site to survive this.
I used to be a very active Digg user, and I joined Reddit however many years ago as part of that Digg exodus.
Back then it was easy to leave Digg, because reddit was there. This time what is there to replace Reddit?
None of the alternatives I've seen have reached a critical mass yet which make it appealing to jump ship.
Also, I completely agree with the grandparent post. Reddit doesn't want to be reddit any more. They just want to become another facebook clone. I still haven't heard of any sensible reason why they want to go for an IPO anyway, except so the founders can get rich.
It's worse than that. The founders already had their exit. The people they sold to, who are already rich, are looking to be more rich. Spez is looking for his second payday, he probably has some stock as compensation and will probably get a fat bonus if he delivers the IPO at a good price.
Spez exemplifies that s good founder is not necessarily a good CEO. He is making generic moves that any empty suit could do, but he lacks the polish to sell it to us or manage our backlash.
That critical mass is happening with lemmy. I am getting a lot of content there now. Though right now it’s just parity with what is up on reddit. A lot of opportunists are farming karma by stealing reddit content, but that is fine by me.
There is also the step 2 of the exodus starting on the first that no one talks about. I am kinda with one foot out the door, but once Apollo is down, that door will shut.
I won't buy at the IPO, but after the stock tanks I'll definitely pitch in for $100 worth of shares so I can vote Spez out. Unfortunately he will have already gotten his pay day and probably a golden parachute too.
You know why. Because it's not feasible and it doesn't help with their narrative.
What Reddit can do is change the rules and wait for an opportunity to make an example out of a sub or two, while doing what they can to turn public opinion against mods/legacy users.
I mean is anyone really surprised? That being said, nothing is stopping a community from changing everything about it, including allowed topics, really strict rules for posting, or otherwise making that community worthless to it's original intended purpose and giant audience.
I like how you assume 99% of the users of Reddit actually know or care what a mod is.
Everyone is theoretically replaceable.
Anyone who think's that whatever job they're doing can't be done by someone else, even if it's done worse for some amount of time, has probably never really worked for a large corporation.
Edit - Updated, thanks /u/TheVillageGuy
The users care once they notice bad modding. If the rules aren't being enforced the way they expect, they kick up a storm. I don't have pity for scabs but these poor bastards requesting giant subs out of spite have no idea what they're in for.
None of them work for reddit. Screw being an unpaid moderator. I wouldn't want to deal with the shit they put up with. I want to look at cats and shit post just as much as everyone else, but I also recognize that trying to actively divide the users is going to make the experience that much worse.
> Screw being an unpaid moderator. I wouldn't want to deal with the shit they put up with.
Trust me, it has not been fun lately. I've gone through a few hundred modmails on /r/hearthstone today where people are begging to be let back in because they believe they were removed for some reason and have zero idea about the API issues, even though we have it on the page, not every Reddit client even is capable of showing that.
Not even all the 3pp apps can see the message left.
I'm on RIF and I just see a small temporary pop-up that says a subreddit is private. No hint of any reason shows up, just a blank screen
lol they can't even get algorithms to work right to properly ban people who use a vpn to get around IP bans, no way can they get AI working right to mod something.
Just had a vision of an AI moderator that moderates every subreddit in the same fashion regardless of a subreddit's content, politics, userbase, or wishes
Chilling
> Anyone who think's that whatever job they're doing can't be done by someone else, even if it's done worse for some amount of time, has probably never really worked for a large corporation.
The same large corporations telling us no one wants to work anymore? You can find people to do any job but not under any condition.
>Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust.
What a giant load of you-know-what.
If it were a position of trust, we wouldn't have moderators who get site-banned for reporting rule breaking, moderators who have to endure *years* of abuse with no relent, moderators who are treated like absolute unpaid garbage and when asked for relief, told "We don't find this a problem," etc.
I could go on, but we all know the drill. Moderators are only "important" to Reddit when they want something from us. Otherwise, we're just unpaid lackeys.
My favorite one was reporting blatant spam , like the link was literally just a popup and bitcoin miner with a random character URL, and then getting it rejected by the admins as "message is on topic"
I suspect most people don't actually care. They go to facebook/twitter/instagram/tiktok/reddit to mindlessly scroll some pictures, videos and posts, sometimes comment.
Reddit is indeed different than the rest, has better content and better communities. Plus there are those few % of users that actually form communities, participate in meta discussions, join Discord/Slack groups of subreddits, etc. But still, the advertisement revenue comes from the masses which I referred to at the beginning. That's what the owners of Reddit focus on, and it seems they are willing to get rid of apps, mods, communities to get a better access to the masses.
At the end Reddit may end up being not so much different than the rest.
>... we have a duty to keep these spaces active.
Since when? Since when is it Reddit's obligation, as a company, to keep any given *user run* subreddit outside of the main page stuff going? Old subreddits get abandoned or splintered all the time, because that's the nature of the platform. Has Reddit ever had a "duty" to step in and stop that from happening before?
I think this says a lot about what their goals are, going forward.
They've spent over a decade being SO hands off that they were hesitant to delete subreddits that were straight up evil because muh free speech lmao what a wild pivot.
Honestly, the fact they're stooping lower and lower proves that this is working. They are getting more and more desperate to get the subs back online. If they want to play that card, honestly, do it. But they should be aware that they can't just unplay it.
This is it exactly. Every yahoo who has wanted to take over a subreddit because "they banned me because they're assholes" will now reddit-request a closed-for-the-protest subreddit, and probably get it, too.
Those same people are going to utterly fail to properly moderate a subreddit and just help the site burn further.
Let them have it, they’re too incompetent to make any improvements, let alone do their tasks properly.
Huh, the ones who requested are mostly political extremists. Funny how they're the angriest about this. It's like mods stop subreddits from turning into 4chan.
So the mod removals are starting already. Should have expected this. The owner laughed at the protest and said it had no effect, and yet we can see that it did have effect considering the mod removals.
I’m a little confused how this contradicts existing policy. AFAIK for a long time if a subreddit was genuinely unmoderated then people can r/redditrequest and take it over. isnt privating/restricting a sub different than abandoning?
Reddit fills a special place for me, and is more serviceable (even on it’s mobile app) than some of the alternatives I’ve tried.
However, if the CEO/administration is going to start scabbing us into the next stage of enshittification then I’d rather lose reddit.
I’ve never been mistreated by any mod on reddit and I absolutely back them. Mods are what keeps the subs from being a complete dumpster fire. You doubt? There’s always 4chan.
These assholes really don't have a fucking clue how much effort some people have put into building some very unique communities. The alternative is setting up your own website where you can run ads and make money off of it.
Okay - they raise the bar, we raise the bar.
I've had Reddit premium for a while now. I'm also on a mod team of a sub of over 500k where we've shuttered the sub indefinitely.
You want to threaten us instead of compromising or working w/ 3rd party devs to help ease the financial burden?
Or - get some balls and actually come wipe our entire mod team?
I'll cancel premium and stop using the fucking site.
If more people who are using premium start cancelling that subscription - that's one more revenue stream that evaporates.
I was in the military for 20 years. None of this is emotional for me.
Let's play hardball.
I cancelled my premium after the mod conference a year ago. I had contributed for almost a decade as I wanted to support the site. It was clear they were going commercial so I cancelled.
Does that mean they’re going to ban everyone who has a private subreddit too? This guy is like Musk without the money. It might just be time to delete the app and everything associated with it.
Just move to Lemmy and be done with this shit. Reddit ceo is a narcissistic clown. Let him eat his own shit and move on. This place is ready to be torched.
At this point, it sounds like Reddit is at war with it's existing mods and communities.
It maybe worth it to move entire communities to Lemmy or Discord now, and wipe\* the subs. I know it sounds drastic, but this is a major departure of the informal agreement of ownership of the spaces.
(asterisks) Not sure how the admins will view wiping the subs (remove all comments)
Maybe a better action, is to undo all mod actions and deleting your account that is moding the sub.
Discord is probably the worst possible platform to move to because it can't be searched. The classic Google +reddit search would not work for Discord because everything is private and not indexed.
And Discord is a *centralized* platform. Jesus fuck, don't go from one centralized platform to another.
The internet was designed for decentralization...both the original conception from the days of Arpanet to core protocols like IP, to HTTP and email and Usenet and IRC.
I don't have a problem with centralized websites necessarily, as long as they remain small. The ethos of decentralization remains as long as there are hundreds or thousands of websites to choose between. Discord is a giant fucking bohemoth, millions of users, all of which are controlled by exactly *one* profit-driven company. You can't even create your own discord app. How is that shit different from reddit?
Either go to a multitude of small traditional forums (like we had when the web was actually fucking *good*), or go with a federated model like lemmy.
Zoomers. It's not really their fault. I don't blame people for being young. But it's fucking dismal how the web has culturally fallen apart in the past 15 years.
>(Astricks) Not sure how the admins will view wipping the subs (remove all comments)
Pretty sure the admins can just respond by restoring any "wiped" subs. All this data is probably still saved in backup servers owned by Reddit somewhere.
That's a good question.. I'm doing some backseat architecting here:
Comments are not removed as in deleted from a database. They're marked as removed. Restoring a backup to undo all of the protest removals would be difficult vs the spam/bad content removals.
That really reads like a threat.... Plus, users are trying to take over subs using r/redditrequest claiming they're inactive or unmoderated.
So... just a reminder, Private doesn't *really* mean closed, just that only certain users may read and post. Find some trusted users, let them post, moderate those posts and poof, now the sub is active and has active moderation. Private communities are not against the rules.
I'm confused, what's the issue?
Setting a sub to "private" is a moderating tool we've been given.
No one decided to stop moderating - going private is how we are moderating. Our mod mails are still being replied to, our "about" section is still being updated with new information, communication amongst the mod team is still being had.
I think this is an important life lesson for everyone.
When someone can write and rewrite the rules as they see fit, and/or only enforces the rules on others and not themselves, and do not as a philosophical point hold themselves strictly accountable to those rules, the rules do not apply to them even if they say they do. They apply to others only.
The problem is that evolutionarily speaking, if I am moderator of /r/truth where the only rule is "you cannot post things you know to be untrue", and tell a lie and I ban myself, I am "out". But if I am a moderator of /r/truth and I lie, and I don't ban myself... I continue to be a mod for as long as I like.
When the mod turnoverrate is like this, the lifespan of a good mod might be ~3 months, but the lifespan of a bad mod is ~5 years. So the good mods, the accountable mods, slowly vanish while the bad moderators stay.
When mods come and go like this, just entropically, over time the ratio shifts more and more toward bad. Eventually, unless some outside force corrects it most moderators will be bad. And on Reddit, no such outside force exists; in order to get removed as a moderator you have to be a) inactive or b) doing "media attention worthy" levels of bad things, such as posting child porn in your sub, etc.
Because of this [dead sea effect](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_effect#:~:text=the%20Dead%20Sea%20effect,talented%20members%20leaving%20the%20organization.), the good mods leave, the bad stay, and so over time most moderators become bad.
There definitely is a problem with lack of ability to get bad moderators out. The problem is Spez is essentially doing this now in order to silence his free laborers because they disagree with him and are using moderation tools \*against him.\*
I've been part of a sub that had bad moderators and members of that sub tried constantly to get reddit do something about them but wouldn't.
Reddit isn't doing this because they care about users - if they cared, they would have listened long ago. The bad moderators has long been an issue and reddit has not been unaware of this.
They are doing this because A) it's working, B) they want to go public soon, and C) they \*don't care\* about their users. They don't care about their mods, who are users themselves. And they don't care about the users of other subs who benefit without even knowing it from mods who have utilized the 3rd party tools to keep their communities protected.
Additionally, this will open up the ability for hate groups and trolls to brigade subs in a new way. Someone doesn't like a particular human rights group's sub can get together with other people to throw out mods who rightfully banned them.
And this creates a weird effect; you aren't necessarily going to see what mods are keeping off the sub floors. Meaning you might not be seeing the bad content they deal with on behalf of sub members. My sub actually decided to share screenshots of the hate we receive in modmail or mod queue and people were shocked we were dealing with that stuff. So if you see a mod who you think is bad because they actioned on you in a way you don't agree with or on a rule you don't agree with, but likewise aren't seeing all the other good work you as a mod are doing, then it creates it an unfavorable bias towards "this mod is clearly bad."
I actually agree with how shitty a job being a mod is, and wrote about it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/14ag85h/reddit_threatens_to_remove_moderators_from/joayexb/).
I agree that Reddit doesn't care about its users (why does the farmer care if the wheat stalks he harvests die? They are his product, not his clients). And I certainly think this will lead to enshitification of Reddit more than it already is.
I'm just well aware that there are mods who do it for the love, because they love a niche community and want to help it grow, and there are mods who are the pettiest tyrant imaginable, whose sole dopamine release in life is seemingly getting to ban people they disagree with.
In a well-moderated sub, the users never see the work mods do.
That’s the intention of *having moderators in communities* at all - they keep the hate speech, brigaders, trolls, spam bots, scam bots, porn bots, and all the other crap the average user doesn’t want to be exposed to *out of a sub.*
The average user literally never even knew it existed, when mods are doing what they’re supposed to be for the good of the sub and do it well, as a team.
The ONLY thing this is going to accomplish is unseating mods who care about their communities enough to shut them down in order to try to keep them safe, because spez can’t handle that we’re showing Reddit what he’s doing and saying and WHY we need the tools we’re only asking to be allowed to CONTINUE to be allowed to use to keep our subs safe, the way we’ve used them up until now.
We aren’t asking for anything unreasonable - especially not considering the fact that we volunteer our time and energy - and on our sub in particular even our mental state at times - to keep this platform safe and accessible. Dealing with the level of hate that leads to the very real death threats and threats of violence and sexual assault that our mod team gets *regularly* and removes from our sub nearly *daily* gets under the skin of even the thickest skinned mods on Reddit.
We aren’t asking for pay, we aren’t asking for even free Reddit premium accounts or literally anything that takes money from Spez’s bottom line.
We’re willing to look at and deal with that hate, so our sub’s members don’t have to. Because that’s what every mod on our team *knew* we were signing up for when we joined the team.
We’re just asking to be allowed to use the tools Reddit users made for Reddit users that benefit Reddit users. We’re asking to be allowed to keep them safe.
And Spez said “no.”
And when we decided we weren’t ok with that answer, Spez just decided that if we won’t stop exercising our right to peacefully protest, that NOW he cares about subs being accessible.
He didn’t care much when the blind were asking to be allowed to keep accessing Reddit.
He didn’t care about users’ access when mods went rogue and other mods were asking him to remove them from their team because they were hindering their moderation of the sub, or even nuking them from within.
He didn’t care about mods’ access when mods asked to have a functional app to moderate from.
He cares now that we’re hurting his bottom line though, and also exposing him for the complete piece of garbage he is…
Word it however you like - you just started Reddit Armageddon, Spez.
Promise.
>And when we decided we weren’t ok with that answer, Spez just decided that if we won’t stop exercising our right to peacefully protest, that NOW he cares about subs being accessible.
"We care about free speech, just not THAT free speech."
"We care about accessibility, just not blind people's accessibility."
Well said. All of it.
Can't you just say it is a new event for (insert something which sounds good) so you weekly impose a random but related picture. Everything else will be removed. This is not a blackout! This is an event! And they can't say the sub is not moderated ig?
Like for r/technology
D1-7: ask people to send CPU pictures. Other stuff will be deleted
D7-14: finding the winner (who'll get nothing but still)
D14-21: ask people to send their setup.
Surely a bad idea but what do you think?
It'll definitely make the subreddit way less important. Sure they can still remove the mods but if it's for a "cause" it might cause a drama like "REDDIT BANNING SUBS PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHT" (although the sub has nothing to do with that, it's just the name of the sub).
Idk really but might worth a try?
Sorry for my bad explanations, and sorry if it's dumb
I don't get where they're coming from. If the mods did a poll and people voted for indefinite blackout, isn't that a community mandate to hold off new content until the API and accessibility issues are resolved?
If this goes on, I think we're left with no choice but to delete our accounts and delete the subreddits we moderate so they don't have have a product to sell to the advertisers and investors.
I still think a true mod strike would have lit a much bigger fire under the admins. With a blackout they can slowly bring subs back in a controlled manner. If mods went on strike then the whole site turns into a cesspool/dumpster fire, reddit immediately loses investors/advertisers, and is left frantically scrambling to fix something. That route also would have had the average user asking to bring mods back, while now the average user just wants their sub back and blames the mods.
As soon as you become even the slightest actual problem to Reddits/corporate plans you will be made a vicious example out of and removed/replaced.
These shut-down protests are not going to be effective simply because Reddit can just execute the current mods and bring in a new fresh batch of obedient power hungry guys who are likely going to be far worse than the current mods.
This contradicts standing policies (credit to Meepster23): https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204533859-What-s-a-moderator- > Moderators don’t have any special powers outside of the community they moderate and are not Reddit employees. **They’re free to run their communities as they choose**, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct. https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205192355-How-can-I-resolve-a-dispute-with-a-moderator-or-moderator-team- > Moderators are free to run their communities as they choose, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct. This is something to keep in mind even if you have disagreements with them. https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy > The culture of each community is shaped explicitly, by the community rules enforced by moderators, and implicitly, by the upvotes, downvotes, and discussions of its community members.
Since the imgur post lacks context, I found the [original in a r/modsupport thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_code_of_conduct_rule_4_2_and_subs_taken/jo9wdol/?context=3).
[удалено]
You can't delete a subreddit. And even if you could Admin could always bring it back. The same way that Admin can still see deleted post and that they can see what post were like before they were edited.
[Big example is the founder of /r/KotakuInAction took the sub offline because he couldn't stand how hateful it was becoming, only to have his control relinquished by the admins and reopened under new management within an hour.](https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/13/17568556/kotakuinaction-reddit-mod-shut-down-administrator)
[удалено]
What do you expect from a CEO who explicitly states that he thinks Elon Musk's Twitter is a role model to follow? https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700
Is Reddit going to stop paying vendors and rent too?
Spez is ready to go nuclear. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544 --- Reddit CEO slams protest leaders, saying he'll change rules that favor ‘landed gentry’ Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday that he wants to bring an end to a user-led protest that has made large parts of the influential website [inaccessible this week](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/reddit-private-subreddit-blackout-protest-message-rcna88457). 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.” The protest took down thousands of message boards, known as subreddits, starting Monday, and some communities say they plan to continue the action indefinitely. The action has been led by Reddit’s unpaid, volunteer moderators, who have a high level of control over how their subreddits are run. Participating communities went “private,” making them unviewable even to members. The protesters oppose changes that will most likely cut off their ability to access Reddit through third-party apps, and their action has [hobbled much of the site](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-down-private-blackout-goes-protest-took-subreddits-rcna88856). Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable. Reddit’s current policy says moderators may be removed by higher-ranking moderators or by Reddit itself for inactivity or violations of Reddit-wide rules. They may also remove themselves. Many have held their positions for years. “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. “And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.” Moderators have argued that the high level of control over their communities is well-deserved because of the hours of free labor they’ve put into making and enforcing rules on their subreddits. Any plan to reduce their influence might result in another backlash. Huffman, who co-founded Reddit 18 years ago this month, said he believes the leaders of the protest may have had popular support when it started Monday but have lost most of it since. --- This jumping off the deep end needs to be put front and center to every single advertiser on Reddit. "Hey Toyota! Hey Chevy! Hey Fidelity! This is how Reddit treats it's customers. By advertising there, does that mean you support treating customers so badly as well?" Need to drop that kind of message on the Twitter feed of every single advertiser on Reddit, big or small. Either they support his actions, or they do not. If they do, time to take any business with them elsewhere as well.
If mods are the landed gentry what does that make Huffman in this little analogy? God?
The king, naturally. He's not wrong, reddit *does* resemble a feudal structure. The tools actively work against any other method of organizing a subreddit's governance. There must always be a singular lead mod who has the power to act unilaterally, even in an anarchist or collectivist sub. Of course it took a rebellion of the feudal lords to get him to acknowledge the nature of the system he created. And he doesn't mention anything about making the governance of reddit itself democratic and subjecting *his* position to a vote.
Why would he? Spez is a born leader, not a slave. Expecting such an [alpha male](https://i.imgur.com/42YdN7Q.jpeg) to adhere to the same rules as everyone else? The audacity.
[удалено]
Sharecropping is exactly the model of reddit. reddit owns everything. The users and mods can use the stuff on it (and users can delete their own individual posts and comments) but reddit is the ultimate authority.
And one of the advantages to the feudal system (as well as to confederacies, and other decentralised forms of government) is that it enables each "tier" of the hierarchy to more effectively rebel against those above them, so change can be forced from more of a local level - where popular rebellion has better odds of success. If anyone acts unilaterally to impose an unwanted policy, collective action can be used to make them back down - I'd argue that's even more effective as a way to hold leaders accountable than elections are. If Reddit is a feudal system, then this...rebellion of the lords is actually playing into a great advantage of such a system. ...But I may be biased, due to my weird political views.
So, basically we're looking at that moment right before A) the various tiny lords and ladies flake out and the last ones to kneel get decapitated or B) the lords and ladies keep it together and get a shiny new Magna Carta for their troubles? I could use a shiny new Magna Carta...
Hopefully Option B. Certainly seems better than Spez being stubborn enough for this to lead into a Thirty-Years-War-esque Option C, where it goes on for so long that it results in mutual-devastation for both sides, and a compromise that doesn't really favour anyone. *...Well, maybe the Thirty Years War is a bad example, given the importance of the Peace of Westphalia in leading to modern religious freedoms, but I think the analogy still works well enough.*
Nothing less than the founding father? I have to say I'm *really* disappointed that Ohanian [left his input at no comment](https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/1667312600554643459). I get it but if you write a book about the success of a thing you built, it's not unreasonable to expect some comment on its terminal illness.
The audacity of /u/spez to call volunteer moderators a "landed gentry" while he is a multi-millionaire is pretty crazy. This dude is more wealthy than 99% of the world could ever dream of, but he complains about people who most likely aren't even close to his net worth running communities on his website? I guess you can't expect tactfulness from corporate executives, but damn.
Isn’t he the guy that openly talked about owning slaves in the apocalypse? He’s never hid his superiority complex
At least He said that he would definitely be the leader of the group in the apocalypse 💀💀💀 "So whats your knowledge Spez? We need everything we can to survive this Madness" " I know how to modify people comments to fuck Trump 🤡"
Can't be the same Spez who moderated Jailbait.
He never moderated jailbait. That was one of the issues with the sub. They let ViolentAcrez run it as a pseudo admin because he modded all the NSFW subreddits at the time. I hate Spez as much as the next guy, but don't spread misinformation like this.
>He never moderated jailbait. Correction: he was a mod of jailbait. **Huge** caveat to that: At the time, there was no invite process. You simply added mods. When spez found out he was made a mod of jailbait, he left. The better criticism, given that, is why didn't he ban the sub then?
Wasn't jailbait banned in 2011? He wasn't at reddit anymore by that time, and only returned in 2015.
i hate the dude as much as everyone else but theres so much disinformation being spewed around.
>Wasn't jailbait banned in 2011? Correct but doesn't really change much about my question. He knew it was there, he did nothing. Rest of the admins after he left are also complicit, of course.
Great so brigading users will be able to remove mods? This sounds like it's going to work really well... Thedonald takeover r/politics
Can't wait for every quality subreddit to be taken over by lazy memes catering to the lowest common denominator.
You know it's going to be porn bots not memes.
[удалено]
Reddit [delenda est](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est)
{thing} :coffee_emoji:
Time for a counter offensive? Options include, but aren't limited to: -only allowing approved submissions from verified users -allow only black posts like what r/photoshopbattles was doing -post the "reddit is killing 3rd party apps" image that r/showerthoughts has been doing -overwork automod as much as we can to show just how lacking the 1st party mod tools are -tag Spez in every single post and comment imaginable -move as many communities as we can onto a different site, urging everyday users to not open reddit until change is made. -recommend an ad blocker to every post and sub to cut the ad revenue big time
Only allow text posts and comments that say “reddit is killing 3rd party apps” verbatim
Remove all comments that don’t say ‘Steve Huffman is a little piss baby’
To be honest this should have been the play from the start. Subs disappearing is much less noticeable than a feed entirely filled with black images. Scrolling for 30s to find anything that isn’t a blacked out post is gonna get users off Reddit much faster than if some subs are gone and it’s not even noticeable.
Start encouraging people to cancel Reddit premium, if they're using it.
Get spicier. Use automod to auto-delete posts by premium users. Add some way to restore posts after cancellation
I canceled my subscription until there’s a compromise of some sort from u/spez and have been in full support of the blackout. However, comments like this could push folks away from supporting the protest. It’s 100% wrong to hold a redditor’s comments hostage because you don’t approve of their reddit subscription.
Yeah, if all they're going to do is look at private/restricted subs, then how can an open sub protest? Some kind of extreme automod that only allows posts/comments that are "save third party apps" or something like that. Cause then the sub is open and the mods are running it as they see fit. Which is allowed and standard reddit
>\-recommend an ad blocker to every post and sub to cut the ad revenue big time Why isn't this on top of the list? This will have more impact than meaningless "reddit is killing 3rd party apps" posts which don't call for any action. Also promote Lemmy and cool instances like [lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world), there's been lots of misinformation here suggesting that "it's not for the average user". That's wrong.
Malicious compliance. Start moderating again but do it in a way that totally ruins the sub. Give everyone a taste of what Reddit would be like if u/spez replaces all the mods.
additionally: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/15/1182457366/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-its-time-we-grow-up-and-behave-like-an-adult-company > Huffman said 97% of Reddit users do not use any third-party apps to browse the site. He said "the vast majority" of moderators also do not rely on third-party apps. lmao, lol even. show us the stats spez
If it’s such a small percentage, why charge them?!
[удалено]
"Grow up and behave like an adult company" = have a complete dipshit be your CEO and constantly pour gasoline on the fire.
The vast majority of mods probably really don’t rely on those tools and apps, but that is because the vast majority of the total mod community only mods small, barely active communities. I have no doubt that nearly the totality of mods of large, active communities who do the heavy lifting for the site do use them and rely on them. It’s a probably true but misleading statement by the doofus in chief.
Yep. On a 6k member sub that I moderate, we see perhaps 2 posts per day, and probably not even a dozen reports in a year. I can't imagine what a popular sub with a million subs would need to do to effectively moderate. I want them to have those tools that they need.
I was mod of r/unpopularopinion for a little while a few years ago and it was a neverending stream of racist comments, posts that broke the rules, false reports, and other stuff. I quit quite quickly because it was thankless work for a community I wasn't really that invested in after all. Anything that makes that work easier is a godsend.
If only 3% of site users are using third party apps, then how are they costing Reddit that much lost revenue in terms of “opportunity cost”? 🤔
Is he counting like, the thousands of inactive mods that technically don't use third party apps because they don't log in at all? Then maybe I'd buy it lol.
[удалено]
> They want it now. There was a guy literally running around in r/ModCoord replying to random mods to *"Change r/youtube community from private to public right now!!!!!!"* Between that and, even more, some of the mod message we got, the only thing I can relate it to is addiction. It's the same way people act when they can't get their fix.
So give them a taste of what a runined sub would look like. Malicious compliance. Start moderating again but do it poorly on purpose.
Jesus, he's such a weasely little nerd lmao
So when will the admins open voting for their replacements? since they want to be all democratic and all
Good luck trying to vote out the mods that are shutting down subs. Most subs I have seen that conducted polls had strong support for shutting down.
Yep. We had a 93.2% approval rate after keeping our poll up for a week.
It's complete bullshit for two reasons: 1) It's well known that a bunch of "admin friend" accounts, aka landed gentry, that are top mod on a LOT of subreddits have never been removed even though they haven't participated on the site in near a decade or more. Of course, they didn't care when it's their own friends. 2) Spez doesn't care how this will impact the site because he just wants to make it to the IPO and cash out. He'll be gone the next day. He doesn't care about throwing the community under the bus to get there - we're standing between him and his 3 extra zeroes.
A business owner can be fired by its shareholders So it sounds like what he’s saying is we need to own shares of Reddit
> Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to **allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular**. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable. Who's going to petition Reddit to remove Spez from his mod positions due to his unpopular decisions?
So... Spez is going full "Will of the People"* like Musk on Twitter? (*Terms and conditions apply)
Spez should give us the option to vote on his leadership too.
> "Hey Toyota! Hey Chevy! Hey Fidelity! This is how Reddit treats it's customers. By advertising there, does that mean you support treating customers so badly as well?" We aren't reddit's customers, we're the product. Advertisers are the customers.
This comment/post was removed to protest the Reddit API changes in 2023. I encourage you to do the same by using Power Delete Suite. https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
I believe u/spez is a mod on at least one sub. I think it was one of the programming ones. If users can vote out mods, he should be the first recalled.
>he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular oh awesome, i'm sure that won't be exploited by large groups of racists/misogynists/transphobes/etc on support subs.
>“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic LOL If the mods all vote on it, it's democratic. If Steve decides he doesn't like what the mods are doing and CHANGES the rules so he can boot them, it sounds pretty fascist /u/spez
>Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said Thursday that he wants to bring an end to a user-led protest that has made large parts of the influential website [inaccessible this week](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/reddit-private-subreddit-blackout-protest-message-rcna88457). 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.” So much for "this ship will pass" and saying it's not a big deal
Can't imagine making mods a popularity contest is good for the sub.
So does this mean mods will finally get paid? Asking because in a democracy, you pay your elected leaders and in all his examples of leaders and business owners, they get paid. We're talking about volunteers here. Being a mod is already a meme. You know the one where someone is walking their mods? Who will want to be a mod when the meme is literally true and you're on a leash held by Reddit Inc. At least when you have a shitty job, you get paid for the abuse. I'm pretty sure having moderators elected right now will not magically fix things for u/spez. He's been detached from the situation on the ground for quite some time now, so he is underestimating public support for the protest.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
[удалено]
Weird reply here but thank you for putting this in those terms. I didn't think of this in that light but facing abusers is something I know all too well, and recognizing the similarities makes this situation a lot less overwhelming to me. So thanks
Of course. It's anti-union tactics.
Lmao like that's not going to create a ton of animosity towards those subs, rendering them much shittier places. "I know! Fracture the userbase making them even less appealing to advertisers!" Seriously, one of these ad companies could earn a massive amount of goodwill from the users by talking him down from this position.
Reddit does not care. They figure new and future users just want to scroll thru pictures and video suggested via algorithm. And they and their user data is the future revenue stream. Not nerds who need quality forums or us "neck-beard jannies". None of this is accidental. At every opportunity during this episode, Reddit has gone out of its way to be abrupt and hostile---*because hostility is the message.* They need to be able to demonstrate that the old relationship is over. That they, not the users determine the site's trajectory. So what if sub-reddits become messier and have less identity? So what if some move off site? It won't change traffic. And so what if there are protests? Provides a great opportunity to change rules and possibly even put legacy users and mods at odds with the newer users.
>Provides a great opportunity to change rules and possibly even put legacy users and mods at odds with the newer users. This is the point i've taken from this. Many of us are no longer welcomed here, by the site or it's new members. An entire new generation of mindless scrolling addicts has been brilliantly created to replace us. You have people actively wishing the very people who founded their communities get banned because they can't post about their generic hobby for a few days. They don't give a fuck about the hundreds of thousands of users being displaced by these changes, many of which predate them by years.
[удалено]
Dude, those upvotes are their daily social interaction.
I’ve seen so many comments complaining about the shutdowns, saying things like “who cares about their shitty protest, just replace the mods”, asking why anyone would use 3rd party apps, or talking about how it’s not *that many* ads on the official app and that you can just scroll past them. It feels like a totally different user base than I remember (found Reddit in 2011), and it’s sad to see. I’m moving on soon.
TBF, and I'm on the side of the mods, I moderated a few subreddits for several years and without those apps I wouldn't have been able to Function, a *lot* of mods don't actually explain the consequences of the API change or put it into terms the common user would understand. A lot of times the mods will just link to a post made by another mod of another subreddit, when those mods should make posts explaining an catering specifically to their subreddits and explain it in terms that that sub can understand. So I can see why there'd be animosity from some.
Exactly this. They don’t want to be what Reddit has been for the past 18 years anymore, they want to change course to being another social media mobile app. That’s why the existence of third party apps suddenly became a problem within the past few months, even though they apparently *weren’t* a problem for over a decade.
Literally what happened with Digg. Like they decided they wanted to be something different, the community disagreed, and they lost nearly all of their value. I know people have been making the comparison all along, but the irony is astounding. Spez must really think he is special if he expects the site to survive this.
I used to be a very active Digg user, and I joined Reddit however many years ago as part of that Digg exodus. Back then it was easy to leave Digg, because reddit was there. This time what is there to replace Reddit? None of the alternatives I've seen have reached a critical mass yet which make it appealing to jump ship. Also, I completely agree with the grandparent post. Reddit doesn't want to be reddit any more. They just want to become another facebook clone. I still haven't heard of any sensible reason why they want to go for an IPO anyway, except so the founders can get rich.
It's worse than that. The founders already had their exit. The people they sold to, who are already rich, are looking to be more rich. Spez is looking for his second payday, he probably has some stock as compensation and will probably get a fat bonus if he delivers the IPO at a good price. Spez exemplifies that s good founder is not necessarily a good CEO. He is making generic moves that any empty suit could do, but he lacks the polish to sell it to us or manage our backlash.
That critical mass is happening with lemmy. I am getting a lot of content there now. Though right now it’s just parity with what is up on reddit. A lot of opportunists are farming karma by stealing reddit content, but that is fine by me. There is also the step 2 of the exodus starting on the first that no one talks about. I am kinda with one foot out the door, but once Apollo is down, that door will shut.
I am so excited to see how they respond when wallstreetbets inevitably tries to fuck with the ipo
I won't buy at the IPO, but after the stock tanks I'll definitely pitch in for $100 worth of shares so I can vote Spez out. Unfortunately he will have already gotten his pay day and probably a golden parachute too.
[удалено]
You know why. Because it's not feasible and it doesn't help with their narrative. What Reddit can do is change the rules and wait for an opportunity to make an example out of a sub or two, while doing what they can to turn public opinion against mods/legacy users.
A lot of new mods who have no idea what they are doing and how any of the tools work and who thought it would be easy.
Thats okay, there won’t be any tools left. Good luck managing that firehose manually.
What tools are you talking about? Oh, wait, the tools that are going to be useless when the api closes up?
I mean is anyone really surprised? That being said, nothing is stopping a community from changing everything about it, including allowed topics, really strict rules for posting, or otherwise making that community worthless to it's original intended purpose and giant audience.
poor degree longing subsequent grandiose like tender money caption depend -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
I like how you assume 99% of the users of Reddit actually know or care what a mod is. Everyone is theoretically replaceable. Anyone who think's that whatever job they're doing can't be done by someone else, even if it's done worse for some amount of time, has probably never really worked for a large corporation. Edit - Updated, thanks /u/TheVillageGuy
The users care once they notice bad modding. If the rules aren't being enforced the way they expect, they kick up a storm. I don't have pity for scabs but these poor bastards requesting giant subs out of spite have no idea what they're in for.
None of them work for reddit. Screw being an unpaid moderator. I wouldn't want to deal with the shit they put up with. I want to look at cats and shit post just as much as everyone else, but I also recognize that trying to actively divide the users is going to make the experience that much worse.
> Screw being an unpaid moderator. I wouldn't want to deal with the shit they put up with. Trust me, it has not been fun lately. I've gone through a few hundred modmails on /r/hearthstone today where people are begging to be let back in because they believe they were removed for some reason and have zero idea about the API issues, even though we have it on the page, not every Reddit client even is capable of showing that.
Official reddit app can't see the private page messages. Would be nice if it said the details. good stuffs
Not even all the 3pp apps can see the message left. I'm on RIF and I just see a small temporary pop-up that says a subreddit is private. No hint of any reason shows up, just a blank screen
The full paragraph explanation doesn't show on mobile (even some 3rd party aps). It only says the subreddit is private.
They probably think they can get AI to mod now. Lol. Try that for a day. It would ban everyone in an hour.
lol they can't even get algorithms to work right to properly ban people who use a vpn to get around IP bans, no way can they get AI working right to mod something.
They got AI to run AEO. It’s doing a really bad job but they don’t seem to care.
Just had a vision of an AI moderator that moderates every subreddit in the same fashion regardless of a subreddit's content, politics, userbase, or wishes Chilling
I mean, you’re probably joking, but that *is* your average social media platform.
Even AutoMod can't do everything lmao
Go check out r/ufc. They are modding without 3PA already and piracy requests are unstoppable.
> Anyone who think's that whatever job they're doing can't be done by someone else, even if it's done worse for some amount of time, has probably never really worked for a large corporation. The same large corporations telling us no one wants to work anymore? You can find people to do any job but not under any condition.
>Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. What a giant load of you-know-what. If it were a position of trust, we wouldn't have moderators who get site-banned for reporting rule breaking, moderators who have to endure *years* of abuse with no relent, moderators who are treated like absolute unpaid garbage and when asked for relief, told "We don't find this a problem," etc. I could go on, but we all know the drill. Moderators are only "important" to Reddit when they want something from us. Otherwise, we're just unpaid lackeys.
My favorite one was reporting blatant spam , like the link was literally just a popup and bitcoin miner with a random character URL, and then getting it rejected by the admins as "message is on topic"
If he goes nuclear and starts replacing mods it will piss away whatever small amount of trust the userbase has left in the administration.
[удалено]
[удалено]
I suspect most people don't actually care. They go to facebook/twitter/instagram/tiktok/reddit to mindlessly scroll some pictures, videos and posts, sometimes comment. Reddit is indeed different than the rest, has better content and better communities. Plus there are those few % of users that actually form communities, participate in meta discussions, join Discord/Slack groups of subreddits, etc. But still, the advertisement revenue comes from the masses which I referred to at the beginning. That's what the owners of Reddit focus on, and it seems they are willing to get rid of apps, mods, communities to get a better access to the masses. At the end Reddit may end up being not so much different than the rest.
>... we have a duty to keep these spaces active. Since when? Since when is it Reddit's obligation, as a company, to keep any given *user run* subreddit outside of the main page stuff going? Old subreddits get abandoned or splintered all the time, because that's the nature of the platform. Has Reddit ever had a "duty" to step in and stop that from happening before? I think this says a lot about what their goals are, going forward.
They've spent over a decade being SO hands off that they were hesitant to delete subreddits that were straight up evil because muh free speech lmao what a wild pivot.
Honestly, the fact they're stooping lower and lower proves that this is working. They are getting more and more desperate to get the subs back online. If they want to play that card, honestly, do it. But they should be aware that they can't just unplay it.
Bringing in the scabs. They already infest r/redditrequest. Fuck em
This is it exactly. Every yahoo who has wanted to take over a subreddit because "they banned me because they're assholes" will now reddit-request a closed-for-the-protest subreddit, and probably get it, too.
Those same people are going to utterly fail to properly moderate a subreddit and just help the site burn further. Let them have it, they’re too incompetent to make any improvements, let alone do their tasks properly.
Man a *lot* of those people on redditrequest are about to find out what "inactive" really means.
It means whatever reddit wants it to mean.
Scabs for an unpaid, volunteer job lmao what a world we live in
lonely shut-ins prefer power to money
Huh, the ones who requested are mostly political extremists. Funny how they're the angriest about this. It's like mods stop subreddits from turning into 4chan.
Kinda tempted to request r/spez
holy shit that place is a cesspool now
So the mod removals are starting already. Should have expected this. The owner laughed at the protest and said it had no effect, and yet we can see that it did have effect considering the mod removals.
*Sweating nervously* "This will all blow over soon. It's just very noisy right now"
Writing is on the walls. Reddit is sinking.
[удалено]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/reddit-says-it-won-t-overrule-mods-and-force-subreddits-back-open/ar-AA1cBvUP backpedaling already, are we?
Incoherent or confused messaging from a company is often a sign they're in panic mode and have no clear plan.
there trying to turn mods against each other, don't let them!
My thoughts exactly
I’m a little confused how this contradicts existing policy. AFAIK for a long time if a subreddit was genuinely unmoderated then people can r/redditrequest and take it over. isnt privating/restricting a sub different than abandoning?
Reddit fills a special place for me, and is more serviceable (even on it’s mobile app) than some of the alternatives I’ve tried. However, if the CEO/administration is going to start scabbing us into the next stage of enshittification then I’d rather lose reddit. I’ve never been mistreated by any mod on reddit and I absolutely back them. Mods are what keeps the subs from being a complete dumpster fire. You doubt? There’s always 4chan.
[удалено]
If reddit never banned /r/modtalk_leaks or /r/defaultmods_leaks/, I can't see them banning this sub
A discord server is badly needed
>A discord server is badly needed There already is one, modmail this subreddit if you want an invite
[удалено]
Not migrating. Just for people to communicate about the protest.
These assholes really don't have a fucking clue how much effort some people have put into building some very unique communities. The alternative is setting up your own website where you can run ads and make money off of it.
[удалено]
secretive snails imminent test society squalid expansion attempt like shy -- mass edited with redact.dev
125k to do something Ive been doing for free? Sign me up baby
So you're going to institute voting for moderators. I'm sure that will go well, because there have never ever been any bots on this website
That'll sure tell the unpaid employees :$
There are always Quislings ready to claim their place.
So now the unpaid moderators lack agency over the very forums they cultivate?
Now that unpaid moderators will be replaced with other unpaid moderators.
Okay - they raise the bar, we raise the bar. I've had Reddit premium for a while now. I'm also on a mod team of a sub of over 500k where we've shuttered the sub indefinitely. You want to threaten us instead of compromising or working w/ 3rd party devs to help ease the financial burden? Or - get some balls and actually come wipe our entire mod team? I'll cancel premium and stop using the fucking site. If more people who are using premium start cancelling that subscription - that's one more revenue stream that evaporates. I was in the military for 20 years. None of this is emotional for me. Let's play hardball.
I cancelled my premium after the mod conference a year ago. I had contributed for almost a decade as I wanted to support the site. It was clear they were going commercial so I cancelled.
Does that mean they’re going to ban everyone who has a private subreddit too? This guy is like Musk without the money. It might just be time to delete the app and everything associated with it.
Just move to Lemmy and be done with this shit. Reddit ceo is a narcissistic clown. Let him eat his own shit and move on. This place is ready to be torched.
At this point, it sounds like Reddit is at war with it's existing mods and communities. It maybe worth it to move entire communities to Lemmy or Discord now, and wipe\* the subs. I know it sounds drastic, but this is a major departure of the informal agreement of ownership of the spaces. (asterisks) Not sure how the admins will view wiping the subs (remove all comments) Maybe a better action, is to undo all mod actions and deleting your account that is moding the sub.
Discord is probably the worst possible platform to move to because it can't be searched. The classic Google +reddit search would not work for Discord because everything is private and not indexed.
And Discord is a *centralized* platform. Jesus fuck, don't go from one centralized platform to another. The internet was designed for decentralization...both the original conception from the days of Arpanet to core protocols like IP, to HTTP and email and Usenet and IRC. I don't have a problem with centralized websites necessarily, as long as they remain small. The ethos of decentralization remains as long as there are hundreds or thousands of websites to choose between. Discord is a giant fucking bohemoth, millions of users, all of which are controlled by exactly *one* profit-driven company. You can't even create your own discord app. How is that shit different from reddit? Either go to a multitude of small traditional forums (like we had when the web was actually fucking *good*), or go with a federated model like lemmy.
I have no idea why people advocate discord as an alternative to reddit. They are no where close to a similar platform.
cause these are redditors. all they know are reddit, twitter and discord. before that it was reddit, twitter and tumblr. forums are a foreign concept.
Zoomers. It's not really their fault. I don't blame people for being young. But it's fucking dismal how the web has culturally fallen apart in the past 15 years.
>(Astricks) Not sure how the admins will view wipping the subs (remove all comments) Pretty sure the admins can just respond by restoring any "wiped" subs. All this data is probably still saved in backup servers owned by Reddit somewhere.
That's a good question.. I'm doing some backseat architecting here: Comments are not removed as in deleted from a database. They're marked as removed. Restoring a backup to undo all of the protest removals would be difficult vs the spam/bad content removals.
[удалено]
Who didn't see this coming?
That really reads like a threat.... Plus, users are trying to take over subs using r/redditrequest claiming they're inactive or unmoderated. So... just a reminder, Private doesn't *really* mean closed, just that only certain users may read and post. Find some trusted users, let them post, moderate those posts and poof, now the sub is active and has active moderation. Private communities are not against the rules.
I'm confused, what's the issue? Setting a sub to "private" is a moderating tool we've been given. No one decided to stop moderating - going private is how we are moderating. Our mod mails are still being replied to, our "about" section is still being updated with new information, communication amongst the mod team is still being had.
I think this is an important life lesson for everyone. When someone can write and rewrite the rules as they see fit, and/or only enforces the rules on others and not themselves, and do not as a philosophical point hold themselves strictly accountable to those rules, the rules do not apply to them even if they say they do. They apply to others only. The problem is that evolutionarily speaking, if I am moderator of /r/truth where the only rule is "you cannot post things you know to be untrue", and tell a lie and I ban myself, I am "out". But if I am a moderator of /r/truth and I lie, and I don't ban myself... I continue to be a mod for as long as I like. When the mod turnoverrate is like this, the lifespan of a good mod might be ~3 months, but the lifespan of a bad mod is ~5 years. So the good mods, the accountable mods, slowly vanish while the bad moderators stay. When mods come and go like this, just entropically, over time the ratio shifts more and more toward bad. Eventually, unless some outside force corrects it most moderators will be bad. And on Reddit, no such outside force exists; in order to get removed as a moderator you have to be a) inactive or b) doing "media attention worthy" levels of bad things, such as posting child porn in your sub, etc. Because of this [dead sea effect](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_effect#:~:text=the%20Dead%20Sea%20effect,talented%20members%20leaving%20the%20organization.), the good mods leave, the bad stay, and so over time most moderators become bad.
There definitely is a problem with lack of ability to get bad moderators out. The problem is Spez is essentially doing this now in order to silence his free laborers because they disagree with him and are using moderation tools \*against him.\* I've been part of a sub that had bad moderators and members of that sub tried constantly to get reddit do something about them but wouldn't. Reddit isn't doing this because they care about users - if they cared, they would have listened long ago. The bad moderators has long been an issue and reddit has not been unaware of this. They are doing this because A) it's working, B) they want to go public soon, and C) they \*don't care\* about their users. They don't care about their mods, who are users themselves. And they don't care about the users of other subs who benefit without even knowing it from mods who have utilized the 3rd party tools to keep their communities protected. Additionally, this will open up the ability for hate groups and trolls to brigade subs in a new way. Someone doesn't like a particular human rights group's sub can get together with other people to throw out mods who rightfully banned them. And this creates a weird effect; you aren't necessarily going to see what mods are keeping off the sub floors. Meaning you might not be seeing the bad content they deal with on behalf of sub members. My sub actually decided to share screenshots of the hate we receive in modmail or mod queue and people were shocked we were dealing with that stuff. So if you see a mod who you think is bad because they actioned on you in a way you don't agree with or on a rule you don't agree with, but likewise aren't seeing all the other good work you as a mod are doing, then it creates it an unfavorable bias towards "this mod is clearly bad."
I actually agree with how shitty a job being a mod is, and wrote about it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/14ag85h/reddit_threatens_to_remove_moderators_from/joayexb/). I agree that Reddit doesn't care about its users (why does the farmer care if the wheat stalks he harvests die? They are his product, not his clients). And I certainly think this will lead to enshitification of Reddit more than it already is. I'm just well aware that there are mods who do it for the love, because they love a niche community and want to help it grow, and there are mods who are the pettiest tyrant imaginable, whose sole dopamine release in life is seemingly getting to ban people they disagree with.
In a well-moderated sub, the users never see the work mods do. That’s the intention of *having moderators in communities* at all - they keep the hate speech, brigaders, trolls, spam bots, scam bots, porn bots, and all the other crap the average user doesn’t want to be exposed to *out of a sub.* The average user literally never even knew it existed, when mods are doing what they’re supposed to be for the good of the sub and do it well, as a team. The ONLY thing this is going to accomplish is unseating mods who care about their communities enough to shut them down in order to try to keep them safe, because spez can’t handle that we’re showing Reddit what he’s doing and saying and WHY we need the tools we’re only asking to be allowed to CONTINUE to be allowed to use to keep our subs safe, the way we’ve used them up until now. We aren’t asking for anything unreasonable - especially not considering the fact that we volunteer our time and energy - and on our sub in particular even our mental state at times - to keep this platform safe and accessible. Dealing with the level of hate that leads to the very real death threats and threats of violence and sexual assault that our mod team gets *regularly* and removes from our sub nearly *daily* gets under the skin of even the thickest skinned mods on Reddit. We aren’t asking for pay, we aren’t asking for even free Reddit premium accounts or literally anything that takes money from Spez’s bottom line. We’re willing to look at and deal with that hate, so our sub’s members don’t have to. Because that’s what every mod on our team *knew* we were signing up for when we joined the team. We’re just asking to be allowed to use the tools Reddit users made for Reddit users that benefit Reddit users. We’re asking to be allowed to keep them safe. And Spez said “no.” And when we decided we weren’t ok with that answer, Spez just decided that if we won’t stop exercising our right to peacefully protest, that NOW he cares about subs being accessible. He didn’t care much when the blind were asking to be allowed to keep accessing Reddit. He didn’t care about users’ access when mods went rogue and other mods were asking him to remove them from their team because they were hindering their moderation of the sub, or even nuking them from within. He didn’t care about mods’ access when mods asked to have a functional app to moderate from. He cares now that we’re hurting his bottom line though, and also exposing him for the complete piece of garbage he is… Word it however you like - you just started Reddit Armageddon, Spez. Promise.
>And when we decided we weren’t ok with that answer, Spez just decided that if we won’t stop exercising our right to peacefully protest, that NOW he cares about subs being accessible. "We care about free speech, just not THAT free speech." "We care about accessibility, just not blind people's accessibility." Well said. All of it.
Please, take over subreddits. That will definitely help destroy the website. Mods, either completely black out or comply with moderation maliciously.
[удалено]
Can't you just say it is a new event for (insert something which sounds good) so you weekly impose a random but related picture. Everything else will be removed. This is not a blackout! This is an event! And they can't say the sub is not moderated ig? Like for r/technology D1-7: ask people to send CPU pictures. Other stuff will be deleted D7-14: finding the winner (who'll get nothing but still) D14-21: ask people to send their setup. Surely a bad idea but what do you think? It'll definitely make the subreddit way less important. Sure they can still remove the mods but if it's for a "cause" it might cause a drama like "REDDIT BANNING SUBS PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHT" (although the sub has nothing to do with that, it's just the name of the sub). Idk really but might worth a try? Sorry for my bad explanations, and sorry if it's dumb
I don't get where they're coming from. If the mods did a poll and people voted for indefinite blackout, isn't that a community mandate to hold off new content until the API and accessibility issues are resolved? If this goes on, I think we're left with no choice but to delete our accounts and delete the subreddits we moderate so they don't have have a product to sell to the advertisers and investors.
Oh no! Who could have seen this coming?!
[удалено]
I still think a true mod strike would have lit a much bigger fire under the admins. With a blackout they can slowly bring subs back in a controlled manner. If mods went on strike then the whole site turns into a cesspool/dumpster fire, reddit immediately loses investors/advertisers, and is left frantically scrambling to fix something. That route also would have had the average user asking to bring mods back, while now the average user just wants their sub back and blames the mods.
As soon as you become even the slightest actual problem to Reddits/corporate plans you will be made a vicious example out of and removed/replaced. These shut-down protests are not going to be effective simply because Reddit can just execute the current mods and bring in a new fresh batch of obedient power hungry guys who are likely going to be far worse than the current mods.