Damn, /u/spez is scamming all reddit moderators to work for free.
Literally.always been the way.
Interestingly in some jurisdictions this may be illegal. I am United Kingdom. A friend worked at a medium size music festival (not Glastonbury but not just someone’s backyard). For a long time the deal.wqs.just a free ticket and food tickets for 8hrs work a day for the 3featival days and a day either side setup and takedown. As the festival made more profit for the owners the tax man got interested and found the ticket and food was less than minimum wage and started that the benefit of getting to see the whole thing and be communtity" was just the ticket price no matter what the “volunteers” said.
Interesting. Someone should ask a lawyer about it. A class action lawsuit against Reddit right before IPO would be hilarious.
“We’re open but we’re not going to approve anything”
Quiet modding
Good news for scammers
The new description is also good
This is the way. Reddit cannot expect people to dedicate the same amount of time in volunteer work if they don’t enjoy the platform.
I think it’s a bit more than enjoyment. People felt a sense of ownership in the communities they helped build. And whilst they were always contributing to Reddit inc they still felt some control. Now that Spez has gone full on world’s dumbest capitalist and keeps yelling about companies having to pay for “his” data, data which he didn’t pay for himself, it’s really exposed what’s always been true. That Reddit is just another company, it’s not your friend, it’s not a community.
This is the best malicious compliance so far, still reddit could ‘force’ them to remove the approval restriction.
But subreddits like pics doing the john oliver thing are completely missing the point, reddit dont care if they do that, it’s still getting thousands of views and upvotes because its ‘cool and funny’, its such a ‘we did it reddit’ moment. Just stop using reddit, let the subreddits go to shit with no moderation, make a sticky linking to alternatives.
The point of the John Oliver pictures is to make it hard for him to NOT at least spend a segment of his next show talking about it.
I think it will have the opposite effect people want. It will drive traffic to reddit to see the funny pics, it wont suddenly stop the masses using reddit, a garbage experience has to occur for that.
But it will get them talking, which is the main point of it. Regular people will wonder why the sub is full of John Oliver, letting them find out about the API changed and everything.
It’s also a way to get people to see what is actually happening from a more unbiased source. Since spez did a whole interview circuit, that might be all some people know about the situation.
“what the hell is an A-PI ?”
I still don’t know what an API is. But people who know more about it than me have told me in no uncertain terms that spez is scum for it, and I was able to confirm that because he put his whole ass on display in that AMA, and so here I am.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is basically a way to let apps communicate with the server (Reddit, in this case) directly, in ways that are faster and more efficient (but less user friendly) than the site page.
For apps, having an API for Reddit meant that they could just ask Reddit directly for a list of posts, and submit any interactions without having to pretend to be a user and “read” the site, which might break as soon as Reddit changed something, like redesigning the website.
For Reddit, that meant that it didn’t need to send the apps a whole page, and waste valuable bandwidth/processing power. It could just send the relevant bits the apps needed, and save resources/cost.
Running an API isn’t free, since it is basically another part of the site to maintain and deal with. Reddit officially claims that the costs associated with the API (from sending the data to apps) are too great, which why they are clamping down on it, and increasing costs so significantly (although it is worth noting that the numbers are orders of magnitude higher than the API costs for similar services, like Imgur, and higher than what Reddit’s own costs would be, so take with a mountain of salt).
A loose analogy would be to compare it to a restaurant kitchen. The kitchen serves up food for customers dining in (official Reddit app) but also has a takeout window (the API) which anyone can use to get their food without having to go into the restaurant (3rd party apps).
It might get a short bump in traffic, but I don’t see traffic increasing on the longer term because of this. And it certainly does spread awareness while also reducing advertising value.
Its funny right now but its very much decreasing the quality of posts longer term aswell as creating publicity about whats going on.
14 days? Haha, that’s good. Almost feels like a scam.
r/piracy, r/scams… They’re forcing the best subreddits open!
r/scams was anti-scam, though.
Should rebrand to allow scam guides only.
I know, it’s just a joke
Why continue to mod it then? Let the place wreck itself with whatever nefarious modder shows up to do the dirty work.
Maybe malicious compliance is more effective than a full strike.
It’s hard to just quit something you’ve nurtured for years.
I was never a mod, but i was an avid reddit user for close to 15 years. It was a sad day when I deleted my accounts, and it wasn’t a decision i made lightly.
I think this is their way of not modding but not being replaced by other people who would mod as normal. Malicious complicance as @sisyphean said
That’s basically what /interestingasfuck is doing. Anything goes within global rules.
These guys are good. I love it!
And I was just banned from r/WatchPeopleDieInside for calling them out on bending over to Reddit admin.
Did you feel like you die inside? Maybe you can post that to /r/WatchPeopleDieInside…oh wait…
I’m not sure if I buy this. /r/videos was the first sub to go dark early and hasn’t been brought back. If the admin were really going in and forcing subs to open you’d think they’d start with the sub that started everything and actually got coverage. Not some random subs.
It could be the smaller subs for precisely that reason. /r/videos is high-profile, and is likely to kick a fit, so smaller subs would be a better testing ground, to see what the reception is, before steamrolling the others.
Start with smaller subs and then the bigger ones lose momentum and support too. I also wouldn’t put it past reddit to use astroturfing and bots to change the overall vibe and make it seem people are against protests, but it seems like people are addicted and dumb enough on their own and want it to stop. The “malicious compliance” ones are still generating traffic and being active on reddit so this is already compromising that is defeating the purpose too.
If I were Reddit, I’d first target subs who aren’t able to fight back well. Then, after I’ve proved that I’m serious and not bluffing, I’ll go after bigger subs. This is why many subs are allowing submissions again. In their sticky posts, they often mention that Reddit isn’t bluffing.
I think this is the direction they should all take. Open but “quiet quit” and either do like /r/scams is doing with requiring approval but working on their own timetable, or let the subs devolve into unmoderated bot-a-thon mess.
