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
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Hey everyone we’re trying to keep the reddit threads centralized in technology in beehaw. I’m not locking this one because there’s a lot of discussion, but consider moving the chat over to https://beehaw.org/post/576904
the fuckening just doesnt stop. u/Spez lost complete touch with the platform itself.
But hey, they own the joint. they can make their own decisions.
He has not lost touch, he doesn’t care. He’s bought and paid for. If shit does go south, he’s the fall guy.
And he will leave with a huge payout so he is set either way.
Yeah and we own this joint! I’m going to open my own instance, with blackjack and hookers
I think the mods should open up-and only use the official app to mod. If anything would scare future investors away, it would be giant mess reddit would become.
Guess it’s time to back up certain subreddits off of Reddit and then perhaps… delete them entirely? If it isn’t hosted on Reddit anymore, Reddit can’t do anything about it.
This would be a job for some data hoarders, though.
Archive Team is already on it
Really digging their heels in
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.”
Honestly entirely predictable. Should really be a wake up call to moderators and communities that haven’t gone dark that Reddit, Inc is not trustworthy (just like how spez has been willing to edit posts).
Good luck to Reddit trying to moderate 5000 new communities and not devolve into Twitter 2.
Moderate 5000 new communities using unpaid labor specifically. Because we all know Reddit doesn’t have the employee power to commit to moderation and they definitely don’t have the budget to hire it out.
Simply replacing all the mods sound like a good way to kill a subreddit, Reddit probably has no way to pick good mods… Mods will need some connection with the topic, and you don’t want to pick random users with no experience for large subreddits.
get ready for sudden and radical rule changes, non enforcement of rules, nsfw, bots, spam, all kinds of fun crazy shit in the subs with mods removed. I’m sure a percentage of subs would stay the same, but I don’t think that percentage is very high.
I can already hear the CPA/affiliate marketing bots spinning up lol.
Man, I was mod for a tiny subreddit for a TV show that was niche. We still got slammed with bots, nsfw, spam, etc. I can’t imagine what the big subs are like, and I laugh at Reddit trying to insert their people into that situation.
I’m mod of one and I’m worried about that kicking up, I feel like I’m not ready. Any recommendations?
Just make it part of your routine to check on things. Encourage your users to report spam, etc.
Don’t forget there are literally Nazis being employed as Mods
Finally! Godwin’s law!
Union busting 101 - claiming the organizers are lazy and trying to skirt work and fire them asap
It’s not union strike cause those mods didn’t get paid. It’s more like I stop doing something I care deeply about to just say “fuck spez.”
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Spez “this isn’t impacting our bottom line” surely is acting like it is. Let the fire begin. Turn off all mod tools, all spam filters. Let the website turn into a shithole.
I read an article yesterday that had a brief mention of an advertising manager advising his clients to hold their campaigns, etc and see how this develops. The hold seemed to be less permanent than with Twitter. But seeing how it’s not resolving totally on its own with some communities even permanently abandoning the platform (/r/StarTrek and associated subs), it might start having a bigger impact.
I can’t say I’m shocked, but I am disappointed. But at the same time - Lemmy/Kbin is the answer. This is the way.
The changes are coming at a good enough clip that it feels like it’s worth taking a stand here. Even if things don’t feel like reddit yet, we’re getting there. Enough people leave and they’ll have a pool of content consumers and no creators and that’s a fast ticket to a quick death.
It’s important to remember it’s early days. Things aren’t as smooth as reddit now, especially with Federation, but they’re going to improve.
This is the way.
I knew this is what they would do. :) OpenAI hired Kenyans at 2$/hr to train their AI chatbot. This is what Reddit will do. Hire Africans at 2$/hr to moderate the most popular sub and generate traffic, than try and recruit new volunteer mods, all the while going for the IPO.
Yeah, there seemed to be a consensus that it would happen eventually
There is no way they’d pay $2 having grown used to getting it for free.
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.
I feel like Reddit already turned into a general social media underneath us already, with so many reposts from TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it had nowhere near the amount of original style content as it used to.
The comments became no longer worth reading, with the same lame jokes populating the top of the thread, the atmosphere became toxic and not like a community.
What Reddit are doing is intended to turn the existing known entity into a profitable social media app, they don’t care about the quality decline. The existing owners will slowly sell as the valuation increases and they will get their winnings at the expense of the decade of free labour from the content creators, moderators & developers.
We made them rich.
It feels a lot like Reddit wants to be Facebook, especially with the recent changes it made to the official app to remove control over what Redditors read.
However, I don’t think Reddit can afford the moderation required to be Facebook.
I felt strongly that the updated Reddit interface was explicitly meant to look like facebook, to make fb users more comfortable.
Have you checked out the official app? Last I looked, it defaults to about 1 post visible at a time. You can adjust it to about 4 posts visible. Last I check, 1 of those posts was an ad and another was a recommended post.
It already feels like Facebook.
I would argue that the default subs already suffer from a lot of those problems. What’s kept me around in Reddit is definitely the more specialist subs.
Was rather foreseeable but seals the deal for me. I will will waste my time here.
Well, removing the abusive, ban-prone mods of /r/Firefox wouldn’t be a bad idea.
LMAO their response to the VPN ads they rolled out to every Firefox user was hilarious. Any poster got the comment from a mod that the user should use the already existing posts about it, the thing is, each and every post was locked by the mods with the same comment, not one post was available to comment on the situation. Eventually some posts went through after a while, but these hours, man, that’s when i went Chromium, if i get fucked either way, i might as well use the objectively superior browser.
Oh, and to fix the issue “browser.vpn_promo.enabled” needs to be disabled, sure dude, the next week there is the next sponsor you have to disable before it even appears.
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I also switched to Brave - Firefox’s memory leaks had become untenable for me. Now if I have enough Brave tabs open, the whole browser just freezes. I’m sticking with it though.
Brave has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar too much for me to use it. I tried it for a bit, but then all the articles of them doing stuff they promised not to do kept piling up. There is a reason they used the data-hoovering Chrome base.
Agreed. That sub has done a lot to convince me that leavin FF would have been a good idea. Good job /s.
