Imagine threatening VOLUNTEERS. How does any mod with self respect not just quit?
I turned all the communities I modded private and “basically” quit but I understand not completely quitting without thinking about it for a long time. I only modded for like 30K redditors but some of the communitites have millions and they got there with the unseen moderation. Mods love their communities and it’s really hard to just turn your back on them after you’ve cultivated real friendships and so much information has been shared. I think it’s a little more complicated than, “F reddit, I’m out”. They’ll get there though, it’s just become sooo much harder to actually mod the community you started.
@invno1 I have never moderated a community, but can absolutely see this! They moderated, because they loved the community and understood how to do it well. Maybe there are friends too, who you learn and discuss stuff with over the years. An angry user (like me) can “just” leave without many consequences. But a moderator also feels responsible to its community too. So I can understand those who have a hard time leaving. Maybe there was hope that Reddit will turnaround too.
Little bits of power go to people’s heads. Seriously, that’s the only reason you’d continue to do volunteer work while being threatened for doing so.
Maybe they just don’t want to give up on a community in which they put so much time, effort, and passion to help shape.
I think both of you are right. Some people can’t let go of what they’ve helped build, and some people can’t let go of power.
So would you characterize that as “sunk cost fallacy” or “Stockholm syndrome”? Because Reddit has shown exactly how little it cares for its communities or the “landed gentry” who maintain them and if you were a mod who had been paying any attention at all to what’s going on, you’d be foolish to want to continue to maintain a relationship with it.
Reddit isn’t unique. There are (obviously) other places where communities can exist and grow, without relying on the largesse of libertarian tech-bros who see you as just a means to a cashed-out IPO end.
I think it’s more nuanced than that. For example, I know that some Linux communities still want a presence on Reddit because being able to reach more “mainstream” audiences is still important. It’s not Stockholm syndrome to want to continue to be able to do community outreach as best you can. It isn’t always the best choice to silo yourself into another corner of the Internet at the first sign of trouble.
Besides, we’ve seen a ton of mods simply doing double duty now, maintaining a presence on Reddit while simultaneously creating a new community in the Fediverse and I think that’s okay. Reddit didn’t kill Digg immediately and neither will the Fediverse kill Reddit immediately. All we can do is to show that the Fediverse is a more open and welcoming place than Reddit and I don’t think accusing all mods who aren’t immediately jumping ship of being on a power trip is going to help the cause at all.
Funny, I would have thought that Linux on desktop users would be used to not being mainstream 😄
But you’re right; I may have been too harsh in my judgement. I personally don’t think that putting up with Reddit and spez is worth it given the statements they’ve made and the actions they’ve taken over the past month, but that’s not everyone’s opinion and I should do better.
Haha, we’re used to not being mainstream, but we’re also known to be OS evangelists! So I think not being siloed and isolated is important.
Putting up with Reddit’s bullshit isn’t worth it for me personally either! I have, in fact, just deleted my 12 year old Reddit account in response to those changes. However, I also think that the mods are probably feeling a sense of responsibility to their community too. Like if they just jumped ship, Lord knows what kind of lackey Reddit will replace them with. I am sure watching your community turn to shit under an ineffective mod would just be devastating, and then to have THAT become the first thing a “mainstream” user would see due to the power of Reddit’s branding and Google’s existing search priorities is just the worst.
Hopefully, the Fediverse flourishes and becomes the it place to be and Reddit will slowly fade into obscurity just like Digg. I know I already feel pretty comfortable here!
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Yep, that’s why the phrase “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is propaganda. Any tiny scrap of power will cripple the average person over time. Also you wont be allowed anywhere near absolute power without being approved by the absolutely corrupt first.
I’m not agreeing that that’s the reason why mods on reddit are still there, just my 10 cents on power.
Reddit wouldn’t have anyone to threat if every mod just quit all at once.
There are hundreds of even thousands, newbies would take time to train and they would probably have to hire and pay for replacements to get up and running quick enough
Because they aren’t really volunteers. They love the power they wield and would do anything to keep it.
The real volunteers already quit.
There probably are some that like the “power” but I don’t believe it’s the norm. Just like forum admins back in the day it’s usually just the most active people that also care the most about the community.
Have they not threatened the communities with scabs as well? Like “if you don’t mod this, we will find someone who will”. The whole thing just seems super toxic and I really feel for the mods who genuinely cared and cultivated their subreddits. A lot of time and effort to be put into something for it to be thrown in their face for the sake of money.
Yes, the mods who spent years building a community, who gave up their free time, and care about what they do don’t have any self respect. /s
I really don’t understand this attitude or why people call remaining mods power hungry as if the admins aren’t doing anything wrong.
Because many subreddits are moderated by shills who are getting paid to nudge brand awareness and sentiment for $$$
Reddit as a company is just so full of shit. “We’re so threatened by the fact that we can’t make money off of your subreddit that we’re going to threaten you.” Like?? All of this could have been avoided if they had just had reasonable pricing for their API. They’re just driving themselves into the ground.
Reddit’s entire business model is based on convincing people to do 99% of the community management work for free by telling mods they can run their communities however they want. Then the moment those mods (who, again, are doing valuable work for zero pay) try to actually run their community however they want Reddit says “no, not like that”.
A lot of mods want to hold on to the little bit of power that being a mod gives them. Because if not, and if you could get mods to just stage a massive walkout, Reddit would be well and truly fucked without their slav— unpaired staff.
I know right I don’t get it. Now they don’t even get a lower price income due to a lower price, they get nothing from 3rd party apps. And they are loosing a chunk of their community and traffic base.
Even if reddit reverse all their decisions from last 3 months I’ll still not go back to it.
Yeah. I mean why would someone? This place is growing leaps and bounds.
It’s really impressive how Lemmy/kbin have totally replaced reddit for me pretty painlessly. Any time Ive checked reddit out of FOMO, the content is far worse, and the comments are horrid.
I am dealing with involuntary muscle memory. It’s one thing to remove Apollo, it’s another to fire up Edge and resist the unconscious typing of Reddit.com right away.
Leaving Reddit for other communities sparked an interest in trying other things like (new to me) search engines and web browsers. Having those new icons on my home screen forces me to click in different places and form new muscle memory. Maybe you can reorganize all of your apps on your screen/desktop or use a new web browser to force a little pause before you start typing.
Lol damn. Yeah it’s harder on desktop.
If you want to be fun you could do a little hosts file editing and have it take you to Lemmy when directly typing “reddit.com”.
Or to pornhub.com. Accidentally bringing that up at work a few times should do the trick.
I only opened reddit on desktop when I was writing a longer post and couldn’t be arsed to do it with the mobile keyboard. As soon as RIF was gone, I quit.
The Memmy client on iOS convinced me, essentially same Apollo experience with a nicer and more informed community. Seems like everyone who actually participated on Reddit is moving here
It’s still missing a lot of the more niche communities. Most of the game communities I frequent are still almost entirely on Reddit
Videogame subreddits are the only reason I use Reddit now especially Indiegames and patientgamers, so I used the ReVanced Patcher to patch RiF, so I don’t have to use their shitty app.
There are patientgamer communities on the Threadiverse now, of which the most-active seems to me to be the one on sh.itjust.works.
I’ve been looking into that myself, but also would like to cut Reddit off completely since it’s dedicated to enshittification now. I also have no faith that the workaround will keep working as long as spez is an asshole
I still skip over to Reddit occasionally to check out some of the more niche ones out. But some of them have either really turned bad since they came back from protesting or weren’t that great in the first place and I didn’t realise.
For instance I used to go on r/AndroidGaming a lot to find decent games for my tablet. But it’s a really repetitive sub with virtually the same questions, same answers, same plugs for shitty games every day.
I’ve watched this place explode since Monday, this is just the beginning
Man I hope so, Lemmy is doing better than Mastodon since you need a much smaller critical mass of users to make the place usable but I’m still waiting on several communities before I can actually cut off Reddit completely (though losing 3rd party apps has massively reduced time spent there)
I alternate between Memmy and the web client. Memmy is excellent but the web client is remarkably good on its own. And I agree, the people posting content seem to have moved.
I just deleted my Reddit account today. Don’t plan on ever going back, especially given how well Lemmy’s community has grown.
It wouldnt change anything, anyway. Theyd change it all back as soon as they got closer to the IPO
Spez is out of touch.
He’s forgotten what internet users are.
We are an entire cultural shift away from rule following and shit giving, to a movement of non-compliant Boaty McBoat Faces who will happily bring the whole system down on top of ourselves.
We don’t even need a cause. We would literally bring this down for a meme.
We’d bring this down just because we already dropped 68 others and need one more to complete the set.
I doubt he really cares. this whole thing looks like “maintain a minimum viable product” until IPO.
he just wants to get paid, I cannot imagine he will care if reddit burns to the ground after the check clears.
This is exactly what I think. He doesn’t care if everything goes to shit, he’s not going to give in.
I don’t like spez as much as the next guy but I don’t think this is true, as CEO of a pre IPO start up a significant part of his compensation would be equity/equity options etc so he probably cares a bit more than after the check clears
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Imagine having that much money and refusing to pay attention.
If only that was still true. Internet users used to be a niche counter-culture. Now they’re just normal people.
Normies have ruined our Internet! :(
Yes he’s burning his platform down
Ya that’s why both the moderator teams mentioned in the article quietly relented and removed the NSFW designation and the situation on reddit is more or less back to normal.
This isn’t over by a long stretch, dude. There will be guerrilla shit going on for a long time. Mods who have returned are already half-assing their jobs, people are demanding pay, and the user base is fractured.
Plus, this isn’t the end of Reddit’s bullshit. They’ll keep pumping out more ads and making more unpopular changes. Name the last big company that ever said, “Okay, that’s enough money made. We can go back to good service and a reliable product now.”
Reddit traffic dropped by about 3%
That’s gonna be about the extent of what we’re gonna see. The situation has more or less normalized on reddit and the admins are tying up the largest loose ends - like /r/pics or /r/military
Posting pictures of Jon Oliver reddit couldn’t care less about. Setting the sub to NSFW is what hurts them, and it seems like subs are finally switching back on threat of mod removals.
Will reddit continue going to shit? Absolutely. It’s entered that phase of enshittification and crossed its own Rubicon.
But behemoths take time to die. The redditor userbase has gotten fatigued and until reddit makes their next shitty decision I think things will be more or less back to status quo - minus the users that left.
Reddit traffic dropped by about 3%
That was in June, before the third-party apps stopped working. Numbers for July aren’t in yet.
The 3% figure was just month over month from May to June.
I read that article. It was very misleading. You took the bait.
Are the numbers false? I saw a previous measure on an article that was around 3% as well.
Obviously we don’t know the traffic chance since July 1st but the announcement to kill API was made in May. Presumably there would have been an impact because of the changes that contributed to the 3%.
No just misleading.
First because it’s web traffic, not all traffic. And the big loss for reddit is their 3rd party app users, which are not included in that figure.
Second, Reddit didn’t take a big hit in the window they discussed. The downard spiral began as a warning shot for two days on June 12th.
The real damage Reddit dies to themselves began July 1st.
I’d rather see April vs September numbers. And have it be measuring engagement. How many submissions, comments, etc.
But even then, reddit is losing 3rd party bot detection, and gaining bots. So it’s a lot harder to measure than the article suggests.
Good points. I’m curious to see how the situation develops going forward. Social media websites are quite chaotic at the moment. Reddit is playing with fire, just like Elon with Twitter
The apps didn’t shut down until June 30 or July 1.
Second, 99% of Reddit users don’t post content, and the power users were pretty upset and many left. Reddit May keep chugging along for a bit but content will get stale. It won’t turn into 9gag overnight but over a few weeks you’ll see a change.
I don’t know that they’re false, but they’re misleading. Not only was it traffic for June, but the thing Spez will care about is advertising dollars - and as others have said, the more communities are flagged NSFW, the fewer ad spaces can be sold.
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I removed myself as a moderator and left Reddit.
Good on you.
It was quite depressing seeing how many sub reddits ended their protests as soon as the mods were threatened with being removed from their unpaid positions.
The power and control really does go to some people’s heads.
I think we need some rule or something here that limits the number of communities you can moderate
The only time you can successfully institute anti-corruption tactics is early. After that it’s pretty much impossible.
Not that I disagree with your premise, but the people that want to do it will just create alts.
That’s just a cat and mouse game. IMHO, the admins and developers have better things to do with their life.
Yeah, I stayed on the sub I used to moderate, and then when the community didn’t want to keep up the protest I left them, I wouldn’t really be able to do a good job anyway when the app I used for it when not sitting in front of the PC wouldn’t work anymore, so it wouldn’t make sense anyway, so rewrote and deleted all my comments, before I did the account itself, and my alt account as well.
I didn’t remove myself as a moderator for the two subs I mod, but I haven’t been on Reddit since Apollo shut down. I use my phone a heck of a lot less these days lol
Moderators remaining are already showing signs of exasperation. I was mass wiping all my account comments and received a week suspension for ‘inciting hate’ by an admin for a comment that moderators ignored (it was a comment in a post about an article quoting Putin “claiming the West wanted Russians to all kill each other”). The comment was 10 days old, but apparently editing to replace the original statement with “deleting - because Spez” triggered the admins.
Oh you too? I was wondering why I got a 7 day suspension yesterday out of the blue, I was so confused
Oh well, just stick a fork in reddit because it’s done
And the results are hilarious. https://kotaku.com/reddit-app-news-cyberpunk-2077-protest-nudity-rpg-nsfw-1850611359
“We’re not going to change it back, because this is a sexually explicit game, and also fuck them.”
Lmfao I live for this quote.
Fuck corpos and fuck Reddit.
clears throat BURN CORPO SHIT
Awesome to the max
“We demand the unpaid volunteers that aren’t listening to us to do as we say or we will find new unpaid volunteers who will replace you and spend their free time deleting posts and comments!”
"Also ignore that fact that it’s been two weeks and we still can’t find unpaid volunteers for /r/interestingasfuck "
The fact that some people are actually willing to take that offer is both hilarious and sad.
I get why people do it, I don’t get why people would do it to take over existing large subs in that mess.
Wanting some control over a community you care about makes total sense. You put in the time, and you foster the kind of people and content you are interested in.
Playing whack a mole in the current environment on reddit seems like a nightmare to me.
Let me get this straight. They do the work for free, and are upset you took their tools. You then tell them open the subreddits or we open them for you. So they do that, and change some rules, now you’re upset and telling them how to moderate their subreddits. Like seriously Reddit. Why not just moderate the subreddits yourself?
You have people who have given you FREE WORK for decades, they have increased the value of your site, and they’re justifiably angry, and all you’re doing is shitting on them more.
What a fucking joke. I know this won’t directly affect the IPO but I hope some companies are looking at this and realizing that Reddit admins have made all of this so much worse.
At this point if I were a moderator I would just remove all NSFW tags and allow unmarked NSFW content, like just to fuck with spez, instead of John Oliver we just post NSFW content on every community and the mods do nothing
instead of John Oliver we just post NSFW content
The two are not mutually-exclusive.
Not really, they’re not removing the nsfw tag from the cyberpunk sub, and people are posting nudes to justify the tag
The problem is that’s probably a site wide rule and will get admins to remove the users, (and potentially moderators removed).
But I like how you’re thinking.
If every mod that didn’t agree with Reddit simply quit at the same time, the site would go to hell.
My advice to mods is to create a new community here and tell the community before Reddit nukes the mods. If the people know where to go, it won’t be as hard on the community itself and lemmy gets more content.
I think it’s too early to tell how it will affect the IPO - with valuation already cut drastically by Fidelity earlier and very much ongoing contention from the community (just took a look at r/pics and r/interestingasfuck, wow), they aren’t really going to be entering in the position they could have without these recent poor decisions.
I hope you’re right… I hope it’s true, I hope this hurts them, because this is what they deserve.
But I also know share holders care about the money, so if they can show their decisions have made them more profitable, fuck the outrage, full steam ahead.
And eventually the protests will stop somehow.
I’m sorry, but any mod that gets a message threatening them like that and stays on has zero self respect. It’s a volunteer job for god’s sake!
The problem is if you leave, someone else comes in, takes it over and can’t do anything to annoy the admins.
At this point the mods are just tanking, and finding new ways to become problematic. Which hopefully people will see. The admins had an easy way to make this work and instead they are just struggling to keep up with this bullshit.
The only option I see is for users to overwrite their comments and for mods to delete their subs if they don’t come to an agreement.
I’m still giving them time, but sooner or later I’ll change my comments and delete my subreddits (even they’re just small ones).
You can’t delete subs, only set them private, and then reddit just appoint new mods to open it up again.
It’s not really about self-respect or they would have never started modding. It’s something they felt was important at the time and likely still feel their contributors are worth sticking around for a while. It may take some a little longer to move their community over here but it will happen in the next few months. Reddit is making it very difficult to continue.
Hoping any that are still staging protests are doing it to keep the mess visible to remaining users, current staff & potential investors. Reddit cannot retain any one of those without the other two.
Or else what? Like give them their life back?
Lol poor guys are not even getting paid. I would happily donate if they move to Lemmy and start an instance.
I find it hilarious that the stereotypical reddit power hungry mod turned into the indentured servant hero standing up against a greedy corporation.
Mods might be a bunch of neckbeards, but it’s better than being a bunch of corporate neckbeards.
Reddit mods might be a bunch of power hungry assholes, but at least they are still people, not multimillionaires!
The overwhelming vast majority of mods are not power mods and did it because they liked their communities. They’re good people who worked hard to make a safe, fun place for others.
When awkward turtle got banned, they were happy too.
Most people have no clue what a mod is, so it just becomes whatever people want to imagine.
I find it weird that people fighting for something they built is seen as being power hungry and those trying force them into submission are ignored.
Lol true
Mods of smaller subreddits are generally passionate about a specific hobby. It’s the “power mods” who moderate like 100+ subreddits (especially the popular and default subs) that are clearly power tripping.
We dont want those guys here
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Reddit pulled a tumblr and banned porn and other NSFW content and just made it a site wide policy that nothing can be NSFW.
I’m pretty sure that was the plan all along.
Yep, they can attract more investment if they don’t have “icky” content for prudish investors to worry about. Forgetting that it’s a huge reason the site is popular.
I recall seeing some info coming out about porn and other stuff but after Tumblr and that shit show I figured they would be less likely to go forward with it or have some watered down policy that bans it but some things still get on the site anyways.
I think there was a post saying that nsfw subs now just have some message saying that you need to use the official client to view content.
@BustedPancake always_has_been.jpg
I have a feeling they saw what happened to tumblr. They’re not stupid…
Ok they’re stupid, but they’re not that stupid… yet.
I dont think Spez cares about reddit at this point. He wants to IPO and cash out so he can hand it off to someone else to deal with.
I’m hoping that is the outcome of this, would be very entertaining to watch
They will likely ban NSFW content before they IPO.
It was a fun run but sadly Reddit Admins have the only thing that matters now… power. They will ban everyone in their way and replace them with some puppet or someone who doesn’t care about the api fiasco. Most of them will cave in. They have no choice, because they don’t hold any real power to attempt a coup. You know who should quit? Users. But they obviously don’t care about the cause enough. Imagine if everyone quit for a month …
I care. Charging for high API use wasn’t an unreasonable move in principle, just, the details were bullshit and it got rolled out in a totally donkey brained way. But that wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker for me in and of itself. I stopped using reddit because of the temper tantrum & threats that the admins threw at mods and their coordination efforts.
And anyway it’s death by a thousand cuts. Over time, all these little changes to the platform slowly make it worse for the user. The big social media companies have completely lost touch. They’re more concerned with these abstract concepts like engagement and growth, instead of focusing on nurturing a good place for users to be. Well, what do they think? That the users are hostage? That we can’t leave?
I hope nobody forgets how the CEO of reddit tried to slander Apollo’s creator saying he tried to blackmail them for millions of dollars, and then evidence was brought that showed he is a liar (didn’t realize the call was recorded)
Or that he modded the jailbait subreddit.
Lots of good reasons to bag on Spez, but this isn’t one. That was way back in the day when anyone could be added as a moderator without consent.
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Fair cop.
Yes, but he chose to stay listed as a moderator there. That’s consent.
It’s kind of reflective of the world right now - USA probably. Those in power are happily steamrolling the rights of disenfranchised people for money, while said people simply grumble but only change the channel. As long as there’s streaming, they stay in their lane.
Should be out in the streets!
All these people saying “who cares about Reddit” (or Twitter, or Threads, or whatever else) are also missing the fact that we live in a society and these platforms matter, politically speaking. If we allow them to become (or remain) fiefdoms for rich fucks to spread misinformation, that can have real-word detrimental effects for us no matter how much we try to ignore the platform. Don’t forget that this shit is happening just before the 2024 US presidential election, for example. Do we really want to be tolerating a Reddit-turned-into-Voat right about now?
It isn’t enough just to leave Reddit; it needs to be destroyed, too.
Imagine if everyone used something like https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite to edit, then delete, their comments first?
Then ran it a few more times across a week or so, changing the edit message each time?
Sorry if I’m being dense, but what would be the point of that?
The value of reddit is in the content posted, and discussed, by the users. Help requested and given in the form if user posts/replies.
If you edit and delete your content then reddit losses value. Edit to ensure that the backup doesn’t contain the old content, delete to remove it.
Do it a few times just to make sure.
Realistically, if all of the TPA-users quit, Reddit would not notice such a huge difference. I came from Reddit and used RIF for like 10ish years, and not going back to Reddit now. Most users don’t care about the API change other then that some of their subreddits where down for 2 days. TPA combined had like 15(?) million users (on android) and the official app had like 100++ million users?
Seriously. At this point it’s becoming delusional; the idea that TPA users have any impact on the outcome of the site as a whole is ludicrous.
Be glad Lemmy exists and move the fuck on.
More and more of these communities are going to see the grass is actually greener on the other side once they’ve had enough of Reddits nonsense.
When Apollo lost access I thought “I’ll try out lemmy” and I’ve been so happy with the change of mix of posts that I’m much happier here.
Feels like when I started using Reddit a decade ago, in a good way. Reddit shifted subtly enough that I didn’t even realize how little I was enjoying the content.
I wonder how many other people would have been relatively happy moderating communities, posting content and comments, had Reddit just not been evil.
I agree 100%. I tried Lemmy and Mastodon not very long ago out of curiosity and now I’m in the process of deleting my other social accounts. I didn’t realize how little I actually engaged with Reddit and Twitter until I started doing so here.
Same experience. Jumped when Apollo stopped working and haven’t looked back
I can’t believe it’s taking them this long.
It’s not really, most of the good ones are here already and some are here and finishing up on the other site.
What would happen if all of the NSFW subreddits removed theirs too?
I ended up removing the few mods I had, making the subreddit private and the removing myself. We only had like 30,000 people subscribed but still.
