As some subreddits continue blackouts to protest Reddit’s plans to charge high prices for its API, Reddit has informed the moderators of those subreddits that it has plans to replace resistant moderation teams to keep spaces “open and accessible to users.”
Edit, there seems to be conflicting reporting on this issue:
While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout
Glad I left Reddit tbh, so far Lemmy/the Fediverse seems to be way better.
I’m tempted to say it’s better, but, unfortunately, in many ways it’s not.
What Reddit had, most of the time, was semi-canonical communities. There was /r/python, /r/linux, /r/privacy, etc. The diaspora of Lemmy is a shadow of all of that. Surely, there are a dozen or so (at least) /c/python communities on Lemmy, but is there a single one that’s anywhere near as active as the Reddit one? No. Not so far, at least.
And unfortunately, I can say as an instance admin, the lemmy moderation tools are just flat bad. We had to turn off open registration and enable email verification, not because we would otherwise need it, but the Lemmy moderation tools are 100% reactive and only operate on a 1-by-1 basis. If a spambot signs up 100 fake accounts, I have to go and individually ban each and every one of them. There’s no shift+select, ban.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to be here, and Lemmy’s great, and there’s far less toxicity (so far). All I’m saying is, (1) there’s work to do, (2) don’t gloat.
Yes, I got the “message” from the Reddit CEO, and decided to pre-empt that, and I spent a few hours today manually deleting each and every post I made in my subreddit. The content is already anyway on my blog, on The Internet Archive, and on the Fediverse. So my subreddit now looks like this (he is welcome to let someone else take it now):
…and the subreddit rebellion has been foiled. The remaining locked subreddits will be hunted down and defeated!
The attempt on my credibility by the Apollo dev has left me scarred, and deformed. But I assure you: My resolve… has never been stronger!
In order to ensure the profitability and continuing advertising…
REDDIT, WILL BE REORGINIZED…
INTO THE FIRST…
GALACTIC ADVERTISING PLATFORM!
FOR A SAFE, AND PROFITABLE WEBSITE.
— u/spez to potential investors. Maybe. Probably. Might be slightly paraphrased.
I mean… did you even ask his permission before just ripping his words verbatim for your own post?
😎
This is too emotionally intelligent to be u/spez
As of now, more than 80% of our top 5,000 communities (by DAU) are open
I’m a bit paranoid that this could be a technical truth because the communities still closed have dropped in DAU.
Edit: Checked the blackout tracker, of the ones listed 205 are still closed or restricted, so it’s probably an accurate claim, though it seems about half of the participating subreddits are still closed.
Hahaha you know before this many people didn’t think of reddit as corporate corporate. They scewed themselves and ruined their goodwill
I have to admit, it has changed the way I think of reddit, both as an entity and as a source of information.
the idea that a cabal of mods were going to take things in a good direction was always unsound
Notoriously mature and level headed mods that spend all day on the internet putting an excessive amount of emotional energy into something most people barely care about… Who could have predicted this?
The least they could do is make it less obvious who they will replace the mods with. I expect this kind of blatant takeover attitude from a place with less legal department. Like twitter.
I swear Reddit is not only not learning from history but purposely trying to repeat it again thinking oh the previous guys were just too weak…
Its probably going to end up like facebook.
A big lumbering thing, still heavily populated but ad choked and overrun by bots and bad actors, indoctrinating unsuspecting users. Even if it stays big, hopefully its reputation will suffer enough to keep most new users away.Getting into fediverse platforms has been a godsend. Talking to real people and not dealing with the high percentage of bots is incredible.
I literally forgot what it was like to browse content without sponsored ads strangling my feed.
If you put people in charge who don’t know / care about particular communities in charge, there could be huge trouble.
You know… like the legal advice subr×ddit being moderated by cops. Which it is.
They already removed some mods, it’s not a threat it’s Spaz being a jerk and awful person.
Everyone needs to realise it doesnt matter. Enough people already came to lemmy for us to carry on without reddit. Now we just do the normal long haul work - help users who need help so people start searching lemmy for tech solutions, post our normal content here so there is a reason to stay, upvote and comment others work so there is engagement. The rest will follow as this grows and grows. We have already won. Lemmy is no longer a fringe interest.
help users who need help so people start searching lemmy for tech solutions
For a moment, I misread this as “tech positions” and got excited about a job board on here.
Community idea: we develop a fake company that we all “work” at so that we can vouch for each other and use our “experience” on our resumes.
How many people think any such “election” Reddit holds will be a sham?
I have no faith that spez won’t add fake votes to his preferred candidate
Good luck with that! I’m excited to see the fireworks as their brand-new mod teams use their brand-new mod tools right as they go public. Should be quite a show.
There are enough power hungry people ready to jump in the first opportunity they get to moderate
Sure, but let’s keep in mind eagerness does not equal competence.
So much for moderators being “free to run their communities as they choose” as this article outlines
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204533859-What-s-a-moderator-
It’s pretty obvious they’re given free reign until they happen to disagree with admins and then it’s “they’re holding subreddits hostage”, “they’re just Stewarts” etc
Reddit admins will legitimately say and do anything to frame this as not their own fuck up
Lol stewards.
