1- Their threats aren't actually working, and they don't have enough quality mods to replace the ones they've overthrown (as evidenced by subs where the mod teams were nuked remaining frozen)
2- PR move to pretend like they're listening and reduce anger.
Seriously, what is the point of this attempt AFTER they've nuked so many mods and users?
Edit: I feel like this comment is right on the money
wasure_boshi
better yet, they will listen but only in "small groups" of people "they pick" as to curate the the overall mod "response" and then will claim that all mods across all communities will share this same slated opinion.
I agree. This is a) a PR move and b) part of their “divide and conquer” strategy: They’ll keep on schmoozing the mods who go along with Reddit’s bullshit and keep on kicking out mods who aren’t.
Has to be #1, or I think they would have replaced the mods on /r/pics by now. They’ve silently removed mods from other big subs without much, if any justification already, so them not doing it in this case makes me think something is wrong.
I was just going to say this. Holding on to the illusion of power as a major moderator is about to turn into a shitshow. Even Reddit themselves have been caught using chat bots to sway public opinion.
Reddit has decided to make every bad decision (favoring profits) possible, all at once.
Peck was a part of the EPA and had legitimate reasons to investigate them.
Venkman was a dick and didn’t cooperate with Peck’s investigation, so Peck got pissed and went nuclear on their ass cause he thought they were charlatans.
The guy who actually flipped the switch even told Peck he’s never seen anything like that and didn’t want to do it.
I really wonder about bot synergy. How many haiku’s will one not write that another will correct the spelling on and a third find that all words are in alphabetical order?
Remember, this is the guy who said this about his chances in the event of societal collapse:
Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
Given how much of a douche he's being (and only because he has organizational power, and not because he has people skills) in the event of a disaster, he'd probably be one of the ones to bite it first, or to be sent on an mission for expendables, to be honest.
When you can't just wave around money or org chart power to solve your problems, then people will start showing how they really feel about you. The way he's running Reddit into the ground shows that he's not a good leader, and the way he's pissing everyone off right now by following in the footsteps of a huge failure (Musk) who's also a jerk is just proving that he's an idiot AND a douche that wouldn't do well if society went awry.
Imagine starting [a subreddit], hyping it up, patiently providing four-fifths of the content until people show up, moderating spam, moderating jerks, growing it gradually over time. Setting rules, establishing tone, running the weekly topical threads. Would you feel like that /r/whateverItWas existed because of Reddit the company? Would you feel like it fundamentally belonged to his Royal Highness Steve, and Steve was just delegating it to you to run? No! You started it! You shaped it! You collaborated with the people it attracted to make it what it is! Even those users – they could switch tomorrow to /r/whateverItWasTwo and you couldn’t do a thing about it – if they decided they didn’t like your vision for /r/whateverItWas, they would, so the fact that they’re still here is a kind of voting with your feet, it validates what you’re doing… To the extent that /r/whateverItWas exists as a thing within Reddit as a whole, to be run or misrun, managed or mismanaged? It feels like yours.
But at the same time, to an external observer – you can see how they would feel that this is pretty silly, right? The thing that’s “yours” is nothing but rows and columns in Reddit’s databases13, a series of flags giving you the power to moderate. The only thing you have is set in Reddit’s systems, a permission to edit stuff under a certain scope a bit differently than other users, wowee aren’t you important. It’s not you who has a license to the user posts, it’s not you who controls anything but a tiny little square of grass Reddit let you mow. You’re gonna protest over that? The world at large already doesn’t understand why you might volunteer for this work, why you might care enough to do it unpaid – you seem like a schmuck to them, a victim.
or a power tripper.
I’ll admit that some mods probably are on a power trip. A clear example of “probably not, they have an actual reason to want to stay in power” is r/askhistorians, where you probably don’t want random people replacing people with lots of historical knowledge on a subreddit specifically about history that only allows informative replies complete with a works cited. They care about the online space they’ve built, not that they have a ban hammer and can wield it with prejudice. I’d imagine a lot of other mods are pretty similar. Knowledge about their niche community, though probably not as much as the people on r/askhistorians, a certain subreddit culture that they don’t want to collapse and fall apart… they’d rather preserve the online space they and many other people enjoy. Even if it just looks like free labor and power tripping to outsiders whenever they don’t want to just up and abandon Reddit.
"A clear example of “probably not, they have an actual reason to want to stay in power” is r/askhistorians, where you probably don’t want random people replacing people with lots of historical knowledge on a subreddit specifically about history that only allows informative replies complete with a works cited."
Call it what you want. It is power tripping or having a sense of superiority or higher self for whatever reason.
Since when is Reddit the beacon of all that is right in regards of information? Why not pack up and start an community somewhere else?
Reddit is just a medium and nothing more.
The problem I have with these statements and the course of action overall is the following;
Why even protest? The most ironic thing should be that r/AskHistorians should know of all people what happens with mutinies or strikes that have weak or no resolve.
Why would you even strike when you would fold by the first sign of friction that is coming your way?
Just again, keep modding your community and ignore everything but don't act like they are so very wronged and need to have some sort of sympathy when they are literally happily providing labor...for free.
For example:
2 months ago there were strikes in my country regarding distribution centres of one or the biggest supermarket chain in the country.
In these distribution centres are working around 5500 people and 2700 of them are "migrant workers".
Quoting the union;
"The temporary workers in the distribution centers are almost all migrant workers. Hundreds of them have joined the strikes. That is special and very courageous, because they are in a weaker position and are often put under pressure to keep working."
The end result?
"After months of negotiations and eleven days of strike, the Union has achieved a result with the supermarket group. In it, salaries will increase by 10% and austerity of the Sunday allowance is off the table. Temporary workers also get more certainty about their schedules."
Yeah, as someone who modded for several years, there were two insults people loved to throw at us: Either we were power tripping or we were janitors who didn’t matter.
Either of these were used whenever we enforced the rules of our community and kicked out people who didn’t want to play nice with the rest of it. Of course, they will never have a positive opinion of people who enforce a community’s rules.
And that’s the thing: The community. You do not spend several years modding a subreddit without getting to know the people and having some sort of relationship with them. The community is not an abstract, it’s people you get to know - often over several years - and that’s not something you want to leave behind.
"And that’s the thing: The community. You do not spend several years modding a subreddit without getting to know the people and having some sort of relationship with them. The community is not an abstract, it’s people you get to know - often over several years - and that’s not something you want to leave behind."
Who is asking them to leave it all behind?
The only way you can be part of a community is by being a mod?
If mods are feeling as wronged by Reddit as how they say they feel, why not resign as a mod and just join the community as a member?
I mean you would still be part of the community you say they hold so dear but in a different capacity.
I would think stepping down has some risks at the moment because you don’t know who’s replacing you. Someone who also cares about the niche topic just like you, or someone on r/redditrequest who just wants to collect the subreddit as their 483th moderated sub and won’t do anything? Less of a big deal if you have several mods, but if you’re the only one…
"I would think stepping down has some risks at the moment because you don’t know who’s replacing you"
You could literally give an notice to the Reddit admin or whoever you are in contact with that you disagree with the way they handle things, that you are gonna step down but would like to pick your replacement personally.
Reddit would likely agree because it means that they don't have to search for a mod themselves and if the mods have such a strong connection with the community than finding a replacement should be in the realm of possibility.
The whole striking saga gives a whole lot of "We tried nothing and we are all out of ideas" vibe.
this fucking sucks. i am very disappointed that the protests lost steam and everything is just back to normal, swept under the rug. they showed their hand, acted like fucking dictators, and everyone is just like "welp thats it!" and gives the fuck up. it's just sad. it feels like 90% of the people who said they were in this were all just being performative.
so many of us dedicated a lot of time to the protests, left our communities, migrated, all for everyone to just go crawling back. i won't go back. i am staying on kbin. but man, it fucking sucks to see reddit face 0 consequences because Spez was right, "this will blow over"
I think this has done damage to Reddit, but it'll be death by a thousand cuts rather than a big instantaneous failure.
To be honest, I really don't care what happens to Reddit at this point. I'd rather have Kbin be a smaller, more dedicated community than have it "kill Reddit".
I don't necessarily know if I agree with your take on "smaller" but it definitely would help stem the tide of enshitification. We could be that glowing bastion on the hill that always pops up in zombie flicks.
Most social networks have this "growth at all costs" mentality that is usually the root cause of enshittification. When I say 'smaller', I mean it more in terms of fostering a healthy community of dedicated contributors rather than trying to make the fediverse grow as much as possible as fast as possible. This is why I mostly support the notion of preemptively defederating from Threads. While it would help the fediverse 'grow', that's not necessarily what I want out of it. I don't want us to win, I want us to be good.
Yeah, this. It often takes a lot to kill titans of any particular industry... and like it or not, the old tech bro sites like Reddit, Twitter etc. have grown too large to kill with a single arrow or a single trip of their own.
Instead their death often has to happen as a slow and gradual reforming of opinion. The most popular media sites have been thrown into chaos, and have lost most all of their goodwill (or what amount they may have had of it anyways) leaving them gasping for air. Facebook didn't become "a place for old people" over night. It was a gradual thing.
Reddit will die off. Them locking the API behind a huge paywall will hurt them, not help them. VC's have already lost a lot of faith in the tech industry including social media. They'll have to find a way to make money... and I'm sorry to say, but if they couldn't make money all this time, they probably won't really ever be able to.
The age of high valuation with promises on return are gone.
There's always some people walking around dead malls, even if the mall died years ago. Reddit will be around for at least 5-10 more years but it's overall influence will start to decline. It will be slowly at first but I'd bet three years from now reddit will just be seen as a forum site for scammers, bots, incels and alt-right lunatics (more than it is now).
Let’s be real, Joe Public doesn’t care about the changes that caused the protests. They just want somewhere to go to see content, and reddits algorithms serve them content. If they have to scroll past some apps on a less-than-ideal app or the regular website, so be it. Most of the internet is shit anyways, reddits clients aren’t much better or worse in that regard.
It’s introduced a lot of people to the fediverse, which is awesome. And will probably have done a non-zero amount of damage to Reddit. But it’ll survive so long as Joe Public is willing to put up with it to see their cat pictures.
You get used to it. Change is slow and a website like reddit won't die overnight. Much better and productive to focus on building up a new community than tearing down the old.
The goal here shouldn't have been to kill reddit. The goal is to start fostering the next community for the inevitable next meltdown. Start the fire, not set the toen ablaze. Which I feel is a when, not if.
I'm betting before the end of the year they start to make a big hit on sexual content on reddit. THAT is going to make the fire really rise.
"the mods decided to revert the NSFW designation because the community is a helpful resource for veterans experiencing mental health crises. The mod said that if Reddit removed the team, it could put the community at risk."
Bitch fudging please.
Please tell me again how these people are not power tripping their eyes out.
Imagine having no Reddit community to fall back on or having different mods into your community.. The horror!
Can these people;
Stop acting as if they really want change to happen.
Just start to bent over further for Reddit.
Get on with their life.
Admit that they really like their little power trip.
They’ll never have the full Mastodon functionality because they’re Facebook. It’s always going to be a one way proposition where Masto can see them but they can’t see us. It’s honestly kind of like being a creepy Peeping Tom.
Assuming, of course, that your instance doesn’t block Threads. Many (most?) do. Some even block second-degree connections.
I don't trust a bunch of crusty trust fund relics to regulate anything. You have to actually understand the technology to not make an absolute shit show of it, and they don't.
Vote out the crusty relics, promote candidates that actually understand tech or are willing to listen to people who do. Even if you don't believe the crusty relics can be voted out, they cannot live forever. Eventually they must be replaced.
I mean, is Warren now among the crusty relics who don't understand technology? That's the implication here.
If you read the article, it sounds like a bunch of very sound and reasonable first steps being outlined. Seems like this is being torpedoed without a second thought based on pretty flimsy reasoning.
If the concern is they won't go far enough... the counterfactual is doing nothing.
I probably wasn't being fair to Warren by using OP's words (crusty relics). I trust her far more than I trust most politicians, but I don't trust Lindsey Graham at all, or any other Republican for that matter. "Bipartisan" bills like this include the likes of SOPA, PIPA, COPPA, and I've mailed my senator to protest them all.
Around the world, people look at the US parties and don't see "left wing and right wing," they see "right wing and lunacy." Ultimately I want more regulation of big tech, I want to see the busting up of the AAAMM monopolies, but the political environment that would create that kind of effective, authoritative, savvy regulator... well, we don't live in that environment. So until our system and parties resemble the EU's, these kinds of bills are kneecapped by bribery disguised as political donations (a la Citizens United), regulatory capture, and the other Reagan-era failed policies that have brought us to our current position.
Like yeah, this part is great, especially considering Google's WEI proposal:
Specifically, the commission would ban the largest tech companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google from providing favorable treatment to their own products on their platforms to those of their competitors, otherwise called “self-preferencing.” Along with the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department, it would also be allowed to authorize merger proposals and review past ones retroactively.
I'll take what I can get for now, but the US has a very long way to go.
Well yeah, she's a huge advocate for consumer financial protections and crypto has the potential to delete all forms of consumer protections in financial transactions. This isn't a surprising position for her to take and it doesn't imply a lack of understanding of the tech. Just tells you that her politics don't line up well with the Venn diagram of anarchists and libertarians that think there's no downsides to crypto.
@realcaseyrollins I feel as if people are only sticking with the platform because of a few reasons.
They want to go where the majority of people are
The Brands & people they like to interact with haven't jumped ship either
They are unaware of alternatives such as Kbin or Mastodon (as well as any other that I can't think of atm)
They are Elon fans and hate to think otherwise.
They are super right wing and don't want to join a 'Woke' platform
They don't think a Decentralised system would work
There's probably more other reasons and would love to know your thoughts about what I feel is some of the reasons people don't want to leave X or Twitter, What ever you want to call it.
Mastodon also doesn't feed you content from my understanding, you have to curate your feed yourself, and a lot of people don't mind the algorithm of places like TwitterX and Facebook feeding them random stuff.
@JelloBrains Yes you are right, mastodon doesn't have the 'normal' feed they are used to. I like the explanation that it's like a Garden, you have to pick the weeds but the things you grow are much sweeter in the end.
For me the majority isn't even relevant, I'm on Twitter specifically to follow certain people or organisations which are related to my interests. I barely use Twitter these days but most of the accounts I follow are still on Twitter and bascially nobody is active on Mastodon (or any other alternative I can access for that matter).
I love the idea of Mastodon, but it's worthless to me if my timeline is empty. Lemmy and Kbin are different because they're organised around topics instead of people.
@astrionic I did actually make this point in point number 2. The Brands & people they like to interact with haven't jumped ship either.
This is where Threads is a good example of why it needs to federalize as it actually does have a lot of Brands & people on there and if it did, it would be able to interact with Mastodon as well as the rest of the Fediverse. As well as in my point number 1. They want to go where the majority of people are.
Some people are like sheep and go with the flock, if a big company or influencer moved over to Mastodon or any part of the Fediverse they might actually move across themselves, even if they crosspost it's a good start allowing people to move away from TwitterX if they wish to. But yes the Fediverse has fewer people & brands of the moment but in due time people will mostly get fed-up with being toyed around by these centralized platforms.
theverge.com
Hot