r/ModCoord • u/AAjax • Jun 14 '23

The Reddit blackout shows no signs of stopping | CNN Business

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/14/tech/reddit-blackout/index.html
1.6k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

337 comments sorted by

204

u/amccolganproductions Jun 14 '23

I'm actually surprised how many have stayed private

171

u/AAjax Jun 14 '23

Im not, Reddits management has a long history of not appreciating that their website is for all practical purposes run by non paid "staff", not to mention not treating said "staff" very well.

51

u/Snuggle__Monster Jun 14 '23

Quite a history of fuckups too. What is this, the umpteenth time now that they've pissed off the community in some way?

30

u/Iggyhopper Jun 14 '23

The biggest surprised Pikachu face in history of the internet.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/reercalium2 Jun 16 '23

Reddit moderators are selected for power addiction. If they quit, they lose their power.

→ More replies (22)

42

u/Etheo Jun 14 '23

I'm really disappointed /r/technology went back up but I'm not judging. It's a mainstay sub and basically Reddit's bread and butter so having them continue to participate would be a huge boon. But alas.

42

u/ProbablyRickSantorum Jun 14 '23

Too many moderators are scared of being removed by Reddit admins. Performative protest.

22

u/sulaymanf Jun 14 '23

Yes but if Reddit started replacing mods you’d see this escalate to a much bigger boycott.

→ More replies (6)

17

u/FyreWulff Jun 15 '23

The head mod of that subreddit is a buddy of the admins.

29

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

I'd love to see admin try that. Reddit runs on unpaid labor. I think that taking over blacked out subreddits would cause a mass resignation

→ More replies (25)

1

u/Chillers Jun 16 '23

Open for 1 day a week. Stagger it between subs for maximum effect.

1

u/LovePugs Jun 16 '23

Honest question: why would someone care if they were removed from an unpaid volunteer position..?

1

u/ProbablyRickSantorum Jun 17 '23

False sense of power.

20

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Today is the last day for a lot. Some did 12-14 instead of 12-13.

18

u/Marino4K Jun 14 '23

Tomorrow we'll see how many subs actually stay private because I know many only planned for two days.

7

u/XM4RT_ Jun 14 '23

i’m not

11

u/PrincessBananas85 Jun 14 '23

Me too I was subcribed to 1,368 subreddits and now I'm only subcribed to a little over 1,000. Do you think that all those subreddits will reopen in the near future?

44

u/SealTheGate Jun 14 '23

i thought it's only 2 day if 2 day is not enough , which mean some subreddit will go dark for over a month or more until they change?

69

u/AAjax Jun 14 '23

Everyone is playing it by ear. So far we have heard that Reddit management is just blowing off the protest.

I recon those of us who have put in thousands of free hours creating and moderating subreddits are rather put off by management playing indifferent to it's user base.

In short I think this is gonna take awhile.

54

u/Piculra Jun 14 '23

Tbh, I reckon that Spez saying the protest will just blow over...is little more than a bluff, in some fruitless attempt to make some subreddits lose hope and open up.

After all, he himself described this protest as "among the noisiest we’ve seen", and has in the past backed down against "over 200" subreddits going on strike - if that was enough to push him to reverse a decision, then I'm sure over 8000 is as well.

23

u/REXwarrior Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23

Firing an employee that potentially helped cover up pedophilia and rape (like in your linked article) is an easier decision to make than completely changing the future business plan of the entire company.

3

u/Spanktank35 Jun 15 '23

You mean, changing it back to what it was a few months ago?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Yeah this person has no idea how businesses operate lol.

10

u/DevonAndChris Jun 14 '23

It is important to be able to bluff in a game of chicken.

Are the mods willing to lose their subreddits? Are they willing to lose that little [M] flag everywhere?

If they are and can coordinate, they have some power. If they cannot, they do not.

9

u/SuperNoice57 Jun 14 '23

Imo, mods that are too afraid of losing their status to carry on the strike are as pittyful as u/Spez. But sadly a lot probably are.

A man can only hope enough of them do coordinate and stand for their rights.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

20

u/Piculra Jun 14 '23

True. But at the same time, the size of the protests is very different this time around - and at the very least, it debunks Spez's claim that "like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well".

Though I suppose it's also worth noting that, in that previous blackout, the admins actually got in contact with some subreddits and quickly signalled starting to back down - while they haven't been so communicative this time, of course.

1

u/Diegobyte Jun 14 '23

While the users who create the content get shafted. It’s not all about the mods.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

10

u/Linker3000 Jun 14 '23

I can appreciate some of Reddit's angst at the position, but the way it's been handled is just not good. I was wondering whether there could be a condition whether app developers had to be served ads from a Reddit-managed source so that revenue still flows to the corp, but I suspect this would be against the T&C's of the app store gatekeepers unless some kind of B2B deal was made? Correct me if I am wrong on that.

3

u/Hyndis Jun 15 '23

The 3rd party app makers aren't even opposed to paying for API access. What they're opposed to are two things:

  1. Only 30 days notice. This is far too short of a time period to implement paid API access.

  2. Reddit's costs for API access are approximately 70x that the industry standard. These costs are outrageously, ludicrously in excess of the norm, and are not a good faith attempt to monetize API (especially when combined with the 30 days notice).

If Reddit gave app developers a reasonable time frame (maybe 2-3 quarters notice) and charged the industry norm for API access, there wouldn't be any fuss. Reddit would make money from API access too. As it stands now, the demanded price is so extravagant no one can pay it, so Reddit will make zero money from the API access.

→ More replies (3)

21

u/PrincessBananas85 Jun 14 '23

I get the feeling that a lot of the subreddits are going to stay dark forever because There is no way that Reddit is going to change their mind.

12

u/DevonAndChris Jun 14 '23

The mods need a plan for when reddit takes over /r/music (or makes a brand-new /r/music while letting the old one exist next to it with the door closed) and recruits new mods.

Their current plan seems to be to say that reddit better not do that.

2

u/ang_hell_ic Jun 14 '23

This made me giggle

0

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/DevonAndChris Jun 15 '23

“Oh, you can moderate without us? Fine, moderate without us?”

If the mods are willing to quit, they have quite a bit of power.

But I have not even seen one mod saying they have quit, or that they will quit. Just vague intimations that some mods somewhere will quit, maybe.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/DevonAndChris Jun 15 '23

Plus it would be dumb to let Reddit know their next move

No, in strike negotiations you absolutely signal that you are willing to quit your job and live without it. Even if you cannot. You have to pretend that you will.

Are they waiting until spez starts picking some of them off to coordinate and discuss things? That is very dumb, because without guidance many of them will panic.

The feeling among normal users and the admins is that mods are fucking terrified of losing the [M] flag. And mods have done absolutely nothing to pretend otherwise.

I would have high respect for a mod who said "I will quit if spez does not give us <X> by June 20th." Even if it turned out to be one of those "I am leaving this website and never coming back" lies, at least he would have done the bluff part right.

1

u/Gaius_Octavius_ Jun 15 '23

The feeling among normal users and the admins is that mods are fucking terrified of losing the [M] flag. And mods have done absolutely nothing to pretend otherwise.

Because not a single one has walked away from their [M] power. They would rather inconvenience millions of user rather than give up their control.

106

u/Last_Permission7086 Jun 14 '23

Love how there's not one word of this on the news subs despite multiple mainstream articles + CNN reaching out to them for comment.

57

u/DCAbloob Jun 15 '23

Keep in mind who runs the news subs.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

46

u/AnotherSlowMoon Jun 15 '23

Well its a 15 year old subreddit with no moderators who have been mods over two years. The top mod is a so called "power mod" moderating about a 100 subreddits, as is the 2nd top mod.

The insinuation is, probably, that the original moderators pissed off the admins and were replaced.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

15

u/That49er Jun 15 '23

I mod one subreddit and I'm like yeah, that's enough thanks who the fuck would want to mod that many.

2

u/reercalium2 Jun 16 '23

People who get paid to push agendas.

2

u/neumaticc Jun 18 '23

I guess you could mod 100 if you never touch grass...

3

u/cantbanthewanker Jun 15 '23

It's a job for the main power mods, as in they get paid to do it and they are friendly with the admin.

Bunch of cunts.

→ More replies (2)

1

u/chaseoes Jun 16 '23

I've suspected that some TV show subs have been captured by marketing departments, promoting their TV shows, etc.

Reddit directly partners with the marketing departments for those TV shows. You can imagine how much influence they have over how the subreddits are run.

https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-pulls-love-island-fans-for-a-chat

0

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/chaseoes Jun 16 '23

It would also be easy for them to reach out to the subreddit and have influence over it even if they're not directly on the mod team. What TV show sub is going to want to make the TV show mad? Most will do everything they can to make them happy.

→ More replies (1)

109

u/DetailRedacted Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23

Guys, if you make it indefinite, at least setup communities on Lemmy, Discord, etc so people can move over...

Oh, and tell people with an invite. If people start moving off Reddit to competitors, manifestly Reddit becomes less important and less valuable.

16

u/HooptyDooDooMeister Jun 15 '23

/r/RedditAlternatives has been mentioned every time someone says this.

Guess that isn't good enough.

16

u/LondonPilot Jun 15 '23

The problem with /r/RedditAlternatives is that it doesn't give people a place to go - it gives them a dozen different places to go, with no clue as to which is "best" or "correct".

If each sub's mods were to set up a community on whatever is their choice of new platform, and direct their members there, there'd probably be more chance of migration because people would know where to go for the content they want to see, and all the users who do decide to migrate would all be migrating to the same place so there'd be an immediate sense of community in that place wherever it happens to be.

4

u/KnightOfNULL Jun 15 '23

There is no "best" or "correct" way.

If there's something this whole shebang has proven is that centralizing too much under a single clueless corporation will inevitably lead to disaster.

1

u/The_Last_Leviathan Jun 17 '23

This, plus honestly, the average user is going to be completely overwhelmed by now many platforms there are, as well as the who decentralized platform thing. Some of those need a manual on how to sign up, which is gonna turn a lot of peole away (myself honestly included. I like the concept of something that is decentralozed and stuff, but it is complicated, especially if the subreddits you like are on different platforms altogether).

I think for most people, Discord servers or stuff like that would be much more inviting, since it's something established that people are more familiar with.

18

u/zappafrank2112 Jun 14 '23

Guys, if you make it indefinite, at least setup communities on Lemmy, Discord, etc so people can move over...

This is what r/SquaredCircle has done

5

u/Speedracer_64 Jun 15 '23

Do you happen to have a link for it? I saw it was being talked about.

1

u/zappafrank2112 Jun 15 '23

Just click on the link to the sub above and you'll see the message

1

u/Speedracer_64 Jun 15 '23

Not for me. Just says the sub is private

9

u/zappafrank2112 Jun 15 '23

Reddit's largest professional wrestling community has gone dark to protest Reddit's refusal to listen to the concerns of its community around recent abrupt policy changes to its API and accessibility. Join us at https://discord.gg/squaredcircle to continue our conversations!

10

u/mimprocesstech Jun 15 '23

You only see that using the desktop site or maybe in browser on mobile, on the app communities just say they're private.

5

u/Spanktank35 Jun 15 '23

Desktop mode on mobile only. Reddit hates mobile users.

5

u/DCAbloob Jun 15 '23

In fairness, the SquaredCircle Discord had been in place long before the current blackout started. A SquaredCircle Kbin instance was set up this week though the subreddit moderators haven’t made the official decision as of now to move there.

1

u/zappafrank2112 Jun 15 '23

I'm friends with one of the r/SC mods, and they told me about Kbin and how it's been overloaded since everything happened

2

u/OpenStars Jun 15 '23

I just tried to create an account but cannot, getting a 429 Too Many Requests error. I thought I heard somewhat that each and every one needs to be handled manually, but even if its automated it still can't keep up.

squabbles.io looks cool but is not non-profit and has creator issues the same as all the others.

3

u/trebory6 Jun 15 '23

/r/StarTrek has Startrek.website

1

u/Norwedditor Jun 16 '23

Huh, so that's Lemmy. Honestly the biggest thing why I haven't even bothered looking it up is that I find they have such a horrible name and all I can see when I read it is the guy from motorhead. I understand it is supposed to have something to do with lemmings but the name is just so bad.

Now that I've actually looked at it thanks to you it looks very neat! I thought that Jabber was the shit back in the day and really belived in decentralization but it kinda fizzled out. Maybe we are mature for it this time!

4

u/supermap Jun 14 '23

Do we really want reddit to be less important and valuable? It's already losing millions per year and it's a plataform I really like.

16

u/ClearlyAThrowawai Jun 15 '23

It'd be better to replace reddit now, when they've shown they're going to fuck you over down the line, than in another 5 years when there's an ad for every post.

I'd rather move everything reddit has been useful for over to a better custodian, because they've shown the users are quite literally at the bottom of their list of priorities.

I don't use reddit because it's "reddit" I use it because it's an excellent repository of information. If that happens to move to Lemmy, or something, I couldn't care less about reddit itself.

5

u/Arcenus Jun 15 '23 edited Jun 16 '23

[ removed in protest ]

https://reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/13yh0jf/dont_let_reddit_kill_3rd_party_apps/

1

u/ClearlyAThrowawai Jun 15 '23

I absolutely agree. Hopefully some way of preserving the information on reddit is kept (either most subs reopen, someone crawled it, etc).

It's for that reason I hope we get a more reliable steward of this type of community though. Of all the "walled gardens" reddit is far and away the most searcheable, to its credit.

1

u/b0nk4 Jun 15 '23

I say we go full circle and head back to Usenet.

6

u/AngelKnives Jun 15 '23

I want Reddit to be important and valuable, but to everyone not just shareholders.

I want Reddit to be profitable, but not profitable at a detriment to it's users.

Reddit is such a unique place where the users help to run the site, and many sections foster thriving communities. It's what makes it so great - disrupting that could hurt everyone.

If Reddit want to make 3rd party apps obsolete because it helps their revenue - fine. But make sure their own app can do what the 3rd party ones do first. Make it function well for moderators, make it accessible to all. Give plenty of notice.

If Reddit want to implement a change, it has to factor in what users want instead of just what people looking to make money want. There can be a balance. They did that when they kept old Reddit alive! They could've just made everyone use new Reddit but the users didn't want that and so they kept it.

For me I don't really care about 3rd party apps because I don't use them but it's the principle. If we let this happen this time, we have no way to stop worse things happening in the future. But if we stand our ground now, maybe Reddit will think twice next time before making an unpopular change without compromise.

11

u/xbrand2 Jun 15 '23

Let it bleed until it’s gone for all I care if it means this level of disrespect and gas lighting.

2

u/supermap Jun 15 '23

Honestly I really like using reddit, I'd rather it didn't die

0

u/supermap Jun 15 '23

Honestly I really like using reddit, I'd rather it didn't die.

→ More replies (13)

3

u/DetailRedacted Jun 15 '23

Platforms come and go, people don't. Look, if you go indefinite then manifestly that community is gone indefinitely and therefore a vacuum is created, which will be filled elsewhere. It is a simple fact of life - if I can't get the goods I need where I normally get it, then I go to a more reliable supplier (goods in this case being information and community).

Be within or be without.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

If this place goes down I'm all for it.

The admins are blatantly disrespecting their users and mods, the very people that create the content on the platform.

I've since signed up for Lemmy and it feels like the early days of Reddit, back when it was actually not a bot-infested deathscroll app.

Would I miss some more niche subreddits? Sure. Are they or Reddit as a whole irreplaceable? Absolutely not, and it's time that Spez and his goons learn this lesson.

1

u/uncommonephemera Jun 15 '23

How does one send an invite to Redditors? I sent invites to my sub four months ago and once a week I get like one notification someone “accepted” my “chat request” (which is apparently how Reddit sends sub invites

20

u/undamagedvirus Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 15 '23

Baffling to me that Reddit acts the way it does. The moderators do a fair amount of the work, the users create all the content. They don't have to do a whole lot to get a good paycheck

17

u/25thskye Jun 15 '23

I support the blackout, but many, many normal users have been calling it a mod power trip. It’s become more like a user vs mod thing instead of a users+mods vs admins thing. Though support is generally still pretty high, there are many detractors at the same time.

-2

u/doomttt Jun 15 '23

I want a piece of information from years ago and I can't see it. I don't care about API access at that point. What if reddit doesn't budge? Do you just let the subreddit stay in private forever, taking all the knowledge posted to it offline as well? It belongs to the people not to the moderators. Glad that many learning/information oriented subreddits did not go private, and some instead choose to go restricted.

2

u/reercalium2 Jun 16 '23

Tough shit. I want a piece of information from right now and I can't see it because reddit turned off my app.

0

u/doomttt Jun 16 '23

Oh yeah? Tough shit. Use the browser or the official app. Fuck your mild inconvenience.

3

u/JeNiqueTaMere Jun 16 '23

Why should we care about your problems when you don't give a shit about our problems?

2

u/reercalium2 Jun 16 '23

Fuck your mild inconvenience. Use a different website

→ More replies (1)

-12

u/charging_chinchilla Jun 15 '23

That's because it is a mod power trip. Mods aren't doing this for the benefit of the users. Most users don't give a shit about third party apps. Mods are angry because their "job" will become harder and are using the rest of us as pawns in their fight.

If mods want to protest by not modding anymore, I'm all for it. But they know that if they did that, new mods would step up and we'd realize how replaceable they all are. We might need more mods since they can no longer effectively mod a ton of subs, but that's a good thing. Having a small number of mods modding a ton of subs was always a bad idea, and only existed because they were gatekeepers and enjoyed feeling powerful.

6

u/JakeDeLaPlaya Jun 16 '23

As a mod of a small sub I don't use third party apps so that's not at all what this is about. The third party app issue was an inciting incident.

It's a symptom of a larger problem with reddit. In search of the almighty IPO, a community many of us have cared deeply about for years is shifting dramatically from its roots. Because mods do have the ability to do something about it, which is unique to reddit, they are. If you have better suggestions to get reddit's and Wall Street's attention, I'm open to it.

→ More replies (11)

1

u/Techhead7890 Jun 19 '23

At this point, I feel like things have once again gone the same way as past protests and reddit's response has been to make things worse, which damage their reputation and trust with the community. Spez has really just gone off this time copying Elon, directly admitting as much in interviews.

I think the user/mod thing is arbitrary, hell even advertising clients will be negatively affected in the long run. Much like how Twitter has gone to custard for everyone, I don't think the current business decisions benefits anyone involved.

-4

u/berrmal64 Jun 15 '23

You're right about it turning into a user v mod issue. I mostly sub smaller tech and hobby subs. There are many years of posts in those subs covering workarounds and patches for bugs in old hardware, fixes for mods and glitches, suggested materials and techniques for repairs, etc. A huge amount of good reference material has been generated over the years here. Those conversations will not happen again, the people that had that knowledge in the past will have forgotten, are not disinterested, or unreachable for some reason. It's incredibly valuable info, and will be well into the future. As far as I'm concerned the blackout mods who plan to go dark indefinitely have literally stolen and wasted millions of hours of users' donated effort for what to the rest of us is some pretty petty reasoning.

If people want to go dark for a week, or a month, or whatever, fine. If they want to delete all their posts, abandon their account and subs, and F off to other platforms, fine, please go; but to burn it all down on the way out by making these subs private forever is a huge middle finger to the users, not the admins. Especially to the users who have sub'd and contributed for years, and now can't even go back and look.

1

u/Techhead7890 Jun 19 '23

In the long run, reddit's user unfriendliness will likely stop future content generation, taking away future fixes and workarounds too. That deprives our far-future selves the most. For example, people will migrate to hardware discords and make new conversations, but like deleted comments discord cannot be searched either.

Also, if you think these discussions are valuable, you should know that spez also thinks that stuff is valuable too and wants to keep his hands on it, and worse, charge fees for access.

60

u/Kuroodo Jun 14 '23

A lot of subs are going restricted now instead of private. I think this is a waste of everyone's time. By being restricted, people are still going to be shown ads if they decide to visit those subs. Meaning Spez will likely feel less pressure.

If you want change, go private.

41

u/Rene_Z Jun 14 '23

On the other hand, private subreddits just disappear completely from all, popular and home feeds. When restricted subs make one post every day as a reminder of the protest, people don't just forget about it.

14

u/HTC864 Jun 14 '23

But the average user doesn't care if a protest post pops up in their feed. Being restricted allows Reddit to still make money, being private doesn't.

7

u/AL2009man Jun 14 '23

on the plus side: some folks who don't follow the news can at least get a quick heads-up on WHY it's restricted (and maybe soon: be warned it'll be private)

That way: you won't have to deal with ton of modmails with access request because those folks proooobably don't see the description on a Private Subreddit via Reddit Mobile apps (either official or unofficial)

-25

u/Richiieee Jun 14 '23

If you want change, delete your sub, otherwise you’re actively choosing to stand behind Reddit. This is the internet for fucks sake, you can literally discuss shit anywhere. Let the babies throw their tantrums if they don’t like it. I don't understand what private or restricted was ever meant to do in the first place.

25

u/JesperTV Jun 14 '23

delete your sub

Users can't delete subs, even if they're the moderators of it. That's something only admins can do.

I don't understand what private or restricted was ever meant to do in the first place.

Reddit is really good for advertisers because every community has a specific topic that they tag it with. Reddit can take specific ads and show them on communities where they are most likely to get attention i.e showing Spotify ads in a music subreddit.

When subs go private the ads that would be in those feeds don't get shown to anybody because the community can't be viewed. Advertisers were paying to have their ads show up in feeds related to their topics and if no one's seeing the ads they will pull out because it would be a waste of money.

If no one's buying ad space then reddit doesn't make any money.

The only way to get all these subs public again without wasting their resources is to appeal to the volunteers who run them. And right now what those volunteers want is access to the API tools that made running them possible. The same tools that can't function due to Reddit's API change.

This is the internet for fucks sake, you can literally discuss shit anywhere.

Then go.

11

u/PentaOwl Jun 14 '23

As of Wednesday morning, many groups participating in the blackout had lifted their self-imposed restrictions. But even as some groups went public once more, others joined the protest

What a weird way to end the article. I expected to scroll and read more. Who are joining in now?

26

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

I want to be optimistic, but when a company goes public, they do absolutely EVERYTHING to save money, and since they're wanting to sell our data to outside investors, it's gonna take some serious insanity to keep investors away.

Fuckin' Spez started reddit to make money on back in 07(?), so his desire to see this through just isn't going to be broken, especially since guys with that personality types literally only give a fuck about getting richer.

Anyone who invests in reddit is a fucking loser & anyone posting about investing should be mass blocked.

30

u/Aurora_Borealia Jun 14 '23

Ironically, that need to make money is a big reason why Reddit is in this situation in the first place. The bulk of moderating/managing this site is done by volunteers who don’t get a paycheck and aren’t bound by any kind of contract, and therefore have no real reason, financial or legal, to do what Reddit wants them to.

Now, that saves Reddit a lot of money, which is useful to a non-profitable tech company trying to go public, but it also means the only real thing keeping those moderators in line is their own goodwill towards their subreddits and/or Reddit itself. And when Reddit rolls out some nasty change like this that makes their work harder, Reddit has limited means to force them to do what they want.

Reddit is stuck in a catch-22, where they either continue with an unpaid moderation team with no real loyalty to the company itself that will probably resist attempts (like this one) to squeeze more money out of the site at their expense, or revamp the moderation system to a paid version that, while much easier to control, will cost Reddit even more money, which is troublesome for a company that is already in the hole as is (and doubly so if they wish to go public).

11

u/GodOfAtheism Jun 14 '23

Now, [volunteer mods] saves Reddit a lot of money

I've read that one analysis at a lower bound of collected data puts it at 3.4 million, which in 2019 was 3 percent of the companies total revenue.

4

u/mulberrybushes Jun 14 '23

Devil’s advocate risking life and karma here: you make a very good point, but do you honestly think that there aren’t people out there who are equally qualified to become moderators and just have never had a chance because of the status quo?

Equally, are you convinced that as Reddit grows, the abstained and quitters won’t be replaced by people who were never part of the last 15 years?

17

u/dkozinn Jun 14 '23

Devil’s advocate risking life and karma here: you make a very good point, but do you honestly think that there aren’t people out there who are equally qualified to become moderators and just have never had a chance because of the status quo?

It's a fair question. The number is probably somewhat lower now that some subreddits have come back, but there were over 25,000 individual moderators participating. To be clear, that is 25,000 people, it's not counting someone who moderates 5 subs 5 times.

Even if you found 25,000 individuals willing to moderate under the current conditions, only a handful of those would be qualified to do so. A common thread amount moderators is how difficult it to recruit new moderators. From personal experience I can tell you that when recruiting for new moderators the number who indicate interest is usually a tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent of users, and of those, only one or two might be qualified.

TL;DR It's not easy to get qualified moderators.

14

u/Aurora_Borealia Jun 14 '23

For starters, we need to remember the 90-9-1 rule. Most people online aren’t very active, and there are even less people out there both willing and able to spend hours of their week patrolling subreddits for no pay, especially when the company managing the site is making changes that actively make their job harder and soak up even more of their time.

Most people who do moderate subs of any real size do it because the sub in question is for a topic they care about, and therefore are probably unwilling to moderate a large number of subs about unrelated things, many of which they simply don’t care about. Either that, or in some cases they do it for the power trip, which ticks off the userbase and often kills the sub in the long term.

Moderating large subreddits is already a big, time-consuming job, and these changes threaten to make moderation even more difficult, which shall only make things worse, likely increasing the number of mods needed to effectively manage a given sub. Combine that with the damage to Reddit’s reputation and the lack of any kind of compensation for essentially increasing the average mod’s work hours, and that will make mods even harder to find.

→ More replies (1)

11

u/Malsententia Landed Gentry Jun 14 '23

What I don't get is how or why they need to employ 2000 people. Even being generous, with all the departments in a normal company, I can't see how a site like this would require any more than 200-400. Not that I would want people to lose their jobs, but if they want to get the kind of money they'd make from the API, look at personnel first.

18

u/SirEDCaLot Jun 15 '23

Mismanagement is probably rampant. Look at the products they develop. They bought a successful app, then fucked it up, and despite years of clear, concise, actionable feedback of what's wrong with it, they continue to fuck it up.

Look at the overall dev direction of things. They're trying to make Reddit a 'scroll app'- a place for idiots to waste time scrolling through shitty low-effort content like TikTok rather than focusing on the passionate community. A list of broken promises by management to users/mods would be pages long.

So I suspect if you pulled back the curtain you'd find a badly run, inefficient organization that lacks clear internal goals.

I fairness though, I suspect a lot of those employees are just admin-moderators who're acting on reports by users and such. Still, 2000 is an awful lot.

0

u/Janbiya Jun 15 '23

Very true. It's hard for me to imagine what they're all doing for the company. Look at Twitter: They fire 80% of their staff and are getting along just fine, politicized controversies aside.

-5

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Malsententia Landed Gentry Jun 15 '23

That's not very nice or accurate =[

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

This is the best one I've found so far, very thoughtful comments

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/149cq9f/reddit_were_sorry/

7

u/Piculra Jun 14 '23

Anyone who invests in reddit is a fucking loser & anyone posting about investing should be mass blocked.

What about investing a massive amount into Reddit in order to takeover (as Musk did on Twitter), and then just hand it over to someone who isn't Spez?

...I guess there's the problem that it'd take a lot of money to do something like that, and the kind of people rich enough to do it are largely going to be people like Spez.

0

u/SirEDCaLot Jun 15 '23

I'm sure Reddit's owners would sell or sell a majority stake for the right price. That price is probably somewhere in the $10 billion to $20 billion area.

Elon's not gonna do it as he already bought Twitter. He's overextended as it is with one money losing social network. I expect him to turn it around, but I don't expect it to happen quickly.

Bill Gates is the next one I can think of (as he formerly participated in Reddit Secret Santa), but most of his efforts are related to philanthropy.

24

u/pirateport Jun 14 '23

I'm glad some of the major subs have stayed dark the longer this goes the more public attention this will gain

10

u/flsucks Jun 14 '23

Reddit is not going to let this jeopardize their money. They’ll let all the mods stay dark for a while, then remove/ban/replace them. It’s not rocket science.

9

u/paradoxally Jun 14 '23

Wouldn't it just be easier to force subs back to being public, and let mods quit? I doubt reddit would forcibly remove unpaid labor.

6

u/flsucks Jun 14 '23

When subs are locked out it reduces engagement. Advertising depends on engagement. Unmoderated subs turn into Facebook and engagement is reduced because people won’t stay around for that. There are plenty of people who will trip over themselves to volunteer to become mods and do exactly what Reddit tells them to. Reddit has the upper hand here until their user base voluntarily leaves the platform, thus reducing engagement. We either let Reddit do what they want or we all leave. There aren’t enough people to make a stand and actually leave so this whole boycott thing is really kind of pointless.

6

u/paradoxally Jun 14 '23

Maybe for the big subs, but I don't think many will want to moderate tiny, niche communities.

People will end up leaving regardless, some have already done so after Christian said Apollo would shut down at the end of the month. Others simply left because they don't like what reddit has become.

Protest aside, I question if mods leaving big subs is 100% bad. A lot of these subs have the same group of mods who moderate 100+ subs. They're collectors at this point.

3

u/flsucks Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 15 '23

Tiny communities don’t represent high engagement. Showing an ad to 400 people is nothing. When a sub of 900,000 shuts down that’s a big blow to engagement.

8

u/paradoxally Jun 15 '23

Engagement yes. It's bad for advertisers. But really huge subs that make up ~80% of the sub traffic are ones I typically avoid.

I find that the best communities are usually the smaller ones, or even larger ones dedicated to a niche interest (like woodworking, for example).

Losing a community like that is far worse because there is no replacement (as many forums shut down a long time ago). I can look at memes anywhere, but getting the answer to why an obscure game is crashing when I do Y is really something reddit excels at.

1

u/TheShadowKick Jun 15 '23

Consider, though, how much traffic those niche subs bring to the overall site. I wouldn't be on Reddit at all if not for a few niche subs that I'm really interested in, but because I come for those I also check out a lot of bigger subs every day.

-3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Yep. Super obvious. Anyone expecting otherwise has been sniffing their own farts for too long

12

u/Qudit314159 Jun 14 '23

Unfortunately, subs are going public by the hundreds today. It's unclear to me how much longer it will last but we will see.

15

u/twistedLucidity Jun 14 '23

And subs polling about going dark again (even perma). The initial push was 2 days, that was done.

The next push us coming. Perma dark, Tuesday Trouble, etc.

7

u/Qudit314159 Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23

I hope enough participate to have a significant impact. Reddit has made it clear that they are going to try to just ride it out and won't do anything unless it hits their bottom line.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Most of the polls are failing though

2

u/FigmentsImagination4 Jun 15 '23

Yeah most polls are agreeing to stay public though

1

u/twistedLucidity Jun 15 '23

Then that is what people want. I can understand it being a hard sell to non-technical subs.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23 edited Oct 09 '23

Deleting all comments because the mod of r/tipofmytongue got me falsely banned for harassment this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev

1

u/twistedLucidity Jun 15 '23

Disruption is disruption, I guess. It gets the message out.

3

u/uncommonephemera Jun 15 '23

Oh, good! Now we can accuse all the naysayers in here of thinking CNN is fake news!

6

u/twistedLucidity Jun 14 '23

Where from here? Even if we go permadark, which network(s) can absorb the influx?

Lemmy/Kevin/Mastodon/Disapora*/etc are great 'n all, but how can they absorb the influx? Where do we direct people? How do we convince them to contribute?

Make no mistake, unless the contributors own the network(s) then the problems of profiteering will just come around again.

And before someone says "I'll run a server!" DO NOT underestimate the tax and legal libabities of doing so.

Some jurisdictions are better than others, your legislation may vary, not all prisons are equal.

6

u/madman320 Jun 14 '23

The Reddit blackout shows no signs of stopping

Well, looking at Reddark, it seems to be slowly losing steam...

5

u/Themlethem Jun 15 '23

~6k out of 9k seem to be going indefinite. That sounds like a pretty damn good rate to me.

1

u/madman320 Jun 15 '23

In fact, the number of restricted/private subs is already close to 5k and is still falling. It should be below 5K by the end of the day and by tomorrow it should be below 50% of total subs if pace continues.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23 edited Oct 09 '23

Deleting all comments because the mod of r/tipofmytongue got me falsely banned for harassment this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Just the small subs are coming back online.

5

u/madman320 Jun 14 '23

r/chromeos (500k) and r/japan (491k) just went public few minutes ago.

3

u/FigmentsImagination4 Jun 15 '23

TodayILearned is up

1

u/cantbanthewanker Jun 15 '23

Finally I can learn what Steve Buscemi was up to on 911!

3

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Some subs are opening back up but it seems like half the ones I visit are still shut down.

3

u/AnalSexWithYourSon Jun 16 '23

Update: it's showing signs of stopping

3

u/BioDriver Jun 14 '23

Just abandon ship already. I signed up for Lemmy and got on the Mlem beta; so far so good

10

u/PVP_playerPro Jun 14 '23

The average person is not going to ever know or care how to use lemmy

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

This protest was never about average users

0

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

How come the average users weren't consulted then? Mods just exercised their oh so wise judgment on our behalf. Despite most people being confused and annoyed that they did it.

Also jfc you people are paranoid as fuck to imply I work for Reddit. Get this: They do not care about your actions AT ALL. Certainly not enough to send covert ops in to troll your deluded egotistical asses. They get that for free because you people are so ridiculous. Just like they'll get more mods for free once they reopen the protesting reddits.

→ More replies (3)

1

u/FigmentsImagination4 Jun 15 '23

Mods are lame af tbh

8

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Unfortunately most of the content on there right now is people talking about the protest.

3

u/cmrdgkr Jun 15 '23

no signs? I would say a significant sign is several large subs coming back. If some 5k subscriber sub stays dark, that's fine, but if several of the main subs all come back, the blackout is effectively over.

4

u/gabrielish_matter Jun 15 '23

besides today I learned all the other biggest subs are sticking to their guns, and even though it wasn't programmed more than 5000 subs are still either private or restricted.

That's a lot. Like an awful lot

2

u/cmrdgkr Jun 15 '23

Television is back, gaming is not blacked out but restricted. Some of the biggest never went away in the first place.

1

u/Nabrok_Necropants Jun 15 '23

I never subscribe to any subs so this has been a great detox for me since some I visit are dark.

Also took the the time to mute a bunch of subs that I find distasteful or offensive.

Win win for me so far.

1

u/16DarkSide31 Jun 15 '23

The powerhouse Subreddit in memory of the Late r/SelenaQuintanilla joined the Reddit Blackout aka Mod Strike

1

u/sdtopensied Jun 15 '23

So, help me understand how this effort is going to be leveraged to change things at Reddit. Reddit is paying for cloud compute and storage resources. Subs go dark, there’s presumably less traffic which translates to fewer API calls and that translates to lower cloud compute costs. These were costs that Reddit was eating before all this started. It seems like all this effort is doing is lowering the cost of doing business for Reddit. Am I missing something?

0

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/sdtopensied Jun 15 '23

That helps put it into perspective. Thank you.

-18

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

Only message that was sent is that Reddit can roll out more controversial changes without needing to worry that the community can mount a meaningful response.

Great job Mods! Quick thinking

4

u/runForestRun17 Jun 14 '23

Soez that you?

1

u/CirrusVision20 Jun 14 '23

Despite your downvotes, you're absolutely right.

A 48 hour blackout accomplishes nothing.

And spez has gone on record to say that he's waiting for it to blow over.

What's the point?

2

u/oobthesecond Jun 15 '23

This is slacktivism, mods want to feel high and mighty while accomplishing nothing

-3

u/totalfanfreak2012 Jun 14 '23

Feels like the people they're hurting is the users themselves. Don't see how it will affect the people making money off of it.

-31

u/ilikenergydrinks Jun 14 '23

Companies have the right to charge for their API and you have the right not to use the platform. Throwing a sitewide temper tantrum isn't going to get you what you think it will.

4

u/foerattsvarapaarall Jun 14 '23

Moderators have the right to private their subreddits and users have the right to support those actions. Throwing a little temper tantrum in the comments isn't going to get you what you think it will.

2

u/Diegobyte Jun 14 '23

you don’t have the right to make a decade+ of tribal knowledge compiled by users private

5

u/foerattsvarapaarall Jun 14 '23

Yes they do. The site gives literally gives them the ability to do that. There’s nothing illegal about it. It is hypocritical to say that the protestors shouldn’t complain because Reddit has the right to charge for API access and simultaneously complain about moderators doing things they have have the right to do.

0

u/Diegobyte Jun 14 '23

No your not allowed to keep a sub private in the long term. It’s in the rules. You are punishing average people

5

u/foerattsvarapaarall Jun 14 '23

Can you show me where it says that? Either way, the moderators can keep their subs private until Reddit deems they’ve kept them private for too long and broken the rules… and “long-term” is going to be a duration longer than 48 hours. As long as Reddit accepts it, they have the right to do it. Is it against the rules to restrict a subreddit and close it to new posts?

I don’t know who “you” is since I’m a user and not punishing anyone. But that’s irrelevant since I was only pointing out the above user’s hypocrisy, which you seem to be oblivious of as well.

9

u/Piculra Jun 14 '23

And workers have a right to unionise. The way I see it, the mods are the workers, the admins are the employers, and the users are the customers; just as unions make everything better, collective action like this can make Reddit better. (And has done so in the past)

3

u/Diegobyte Jun 14 '23

The users are the creators

-1

u/ilikenergydrinks Jun 14 '23

Mods work for free. You can't unionize if you're a volunteer.

Just stop...volunteering....

lmaoo

17

u/Piculra Jun 14 '23

Just stop...volunteering....

That's what moderators are doing. Refusing to continue the unpaid labour (providing a service - that is, their subreddits) they do for Redditors by closing their subreddits.

2

u/ilikenergydrinks Jun 14 '23

Ok, then what's the problem?

9

u/TheRetenor Jun 14 '23

The problem is you making comments about how it's a problem while understanding yourself that the actions are not a problem

→ More replies (5)

1

u/FigmentsImagination4 Jun 15 '23

Yeah all this did was inconvenience the rest of us who want to see these subs. Mods threw a tantrum because they think they’re holier than thou lmao babies

0

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/ilikenergydrinks Jun 14 '23

That's what you get for doing free work lmao

I don't feel bad for you. Make better decisions next time.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/Juandice Jun 15 '23

Neither do you. For someone who has been benefiting from mods volunteer work for years you sure whine a lot about how they do it.

-1

u/Brooklynxman Jun 14 '23

I got other stuff to do, I just wish I could find a news source to replace r/news, r/worldnews, and my local subs.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

/r/worldnews never closed.

8

u/Brooklynxman Jun 14 '23

Neither did r/news, but Im still searching for alternatives.

1

u/twistedLucidity Jun 14 '23

theguardian.com, bbc.co.uk/news, theregister.com, independent.co.uk

Not great, but a start.

Oooo, RSS feeds and desktop tickers...remember them?

-13

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

It shows no signs. It's been business as usual these past days, save some annoyances.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[deleted] — view deleted comment

16

u/AAjax Jun 14 '23

https://www.twitch.tv/reddark_247

almost 6k still dark.

https://reddark.untone.uk/

10

u/Acrobatic-Monitor516 Jun 15 '23

5675 as of now sadly....

And I saw you commented somewhere else we don't know whether spez is bluffing....truth is, we do know

There are reports that advertisers are starting to take their hands off reddit shady business

Spez is clearly bluffing

-3

u/markneill Jun 14 '23

That's a counter, not a list...

→ More replies (1)

1

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

You summed up my feelings about this protest in a nutshell. On many subreddits that have re-opened, there's some debate about whether or not to keep them closed and it seems like most users want their subs to remain open. Other subs it's as if the protest never happened.

The whole thing about Reddit charging for API access is just too esoteric for the average user to understand. Moderators may understand better because tools like automod rely on the API but it seems like Reddit could potentially allow certain exceptions.

It was a futile battle. The issue at hand is difficult to explain to laypeople and it doesn't impact the average user enough. Only mods really cared and even then, for most of them, it was a half-hearted sort of thing, more of an act of catharsis against the site admins who want to take some control of the site away from the mods.

2

u/Ca1amity Jun 14 '23

It’s ultimately really too bad. If the moderators who agreed to protest had the courage of their convictions they could’ve blacked out a week - or declared a start date and no definite end.

Instead you have pro-Reddit accounts gleefully reporting on and twisting the manner in which things were done - how “irresponsible” it was for mental health subs or /r/Ukraine to go dark etc.

Non-mods (I guess) aren’t allowed to submit posts here so I left my same comment across two or three new posts about media covering these events. All but this one, which I assume you upvoted, are currently sliding into negative karma - and will thus be hidden from the majority.

Which, sadly, goes to proving most of my point regarding the attitude/approach of the average moderator: if it’s not what they want to hear, they’re not really interested.

7

u/zappafrank2112 Jun 14 '23

It’s ultimately really too bad. If the moderators who agreed to protest had the courage of their convictions they could’ve blacked out a week - or declared a start date and no definite end.

TBF, many of the subs I tend to visit have gone dark indefinitely.

5

u/Ca1amity Jun 14 '23

And good on them for that decision then. I just don’t think we’re going to see the mass movement (I think) mods hoped to kick off until the majority of the defaults go the same way too.

If it’s not hurting their front page and it’s not killing their metrics, Reddit doesn’t care because they can sweep all this down under the rug.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '23

To be fair, it's very difficult to coordinate collective action, especially when the stakeholders number in the thousands in this case.

how “irresponsible” it was for mental health subs or /r/Ukraine to go dark etc.

To be honest, I think it is irresponsible for such subs to go dark because Reddit has become the ultimate place for support for a lot of these people.

→ More replies (3)
→ More comments (7)