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From discussions it seems that the problem is that many subreddits will be going private to protest the recent Reddit API costs changes. Some will not come back
by alboaie 3y ago
From discussions it seems that the problem is that many subreddits will be going private to protest the recent Reddit API costs changes. Some will not come back unless the change is reverted. If the change is never reverted, they will be gone forever and this project is trying to save old posts so they can still be seen even though the subreddits are private. Not sure how usefull it will be... but somehow interesting as an example of reaction of policies changes of centralised social networks
- reaperman 3y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/ltsc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ltsc/ Did that quite awhile ago, I forget in response to what. I lost a lot of really great info on how to use Windows 10 LTSC / Server / Enterprise / IoT when r/LTSC went permanently private.
- OJFord 3y agoCouldn't you (request to) join if that's interesting/valuable to you? Or it went private as a sort of pseudo-deletion, and doesn't really exist any more?
- reaperman 3y agoI’ve tried that with multiple alts and haven’t been approved. Again, I forget the story. It was in protest to some Reddit policy.
- pjc50 3y agoReddit were threatening to de-private the subs and replace the mods. When they can do, but will likely kill the community anyway for small communities. Perhaps big ones are anonymous enough for that to work.
- echelon 3y ago> Reddit were threatening to de-private the subs and replace the mods. Is there a link to this? That's crazy!
- 411111111111111 3y agoThey've done it before, shouldn't be a surprise at this point.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoWhy exactly would it be crazy? A few mods taking a community of half a billion hostages is not crazy? If I were spez I would simply disable the ability to make new subreddits private. This protest is not for the greater good, it's harming half a billion users for the benefit (actually, for no benefit since nothing will come out of it) of the 3% that want to not see ads and use the 3rd party apps.
- COGlory 3y agoYou are extremely naive if you think this stops at 3rd party apps.
- imauser 3y agoThe community (not all, I know) is supporting this.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoThe community is a massive majority of lurkers that don't comment, don't upvote and may not even have an account. It's not because a few terminally online Reddit addicts are vocally posing as the resistance that the majority of the community supports it.
- jitl 3y agoLurkers who never post are not participating in the community
- realusername 3y agoThey can do that but that will accelerate the titanic effect of those subs, moderation is already the weakest point of Reddit.
- archerx 3y agoMaybe it could have a good effect ironically, the problem with Reddit's moderation is the actual moderators. They mostly seem to be self righteous narcissists and have been the cancer killing reddit for the past decade. Purging them all and starting over with a clean slate could bring new life and freshness to the septic tank of a community it has become. I don't care about the reddit API but I am enjoying watching the this dumpster fire burn. Popcorn sure does taste good indeed.
- andybak 3y agoMost "bad" moderators I've encountered could easily be explained by potentially being a stressed, overworked volunteer who takes a lot of shit from assholes all the time. I think my explanation is at least as plausible as yours with the added benefit of not denigrating an entire group.
- Amezarak 3y agoIt’s a generalization, but it holds true on Internet communities in general that the most dedicated people who want and obtain mod power start out beforehand with less than ideal mental health, which is often a contributing factor as to why they have the enormous amounts of free time to moderate communities for free in the first place. Obviously there’s exceptions, but it is a really common phenomenon. They found communities or get modded simply because they spend the most time and hang out in the right chats, not because they’re objectively great neutral moderators. They are very frequently people with very strong personalities, and are often in the long-term have a more destructive influence on communities than any short-lived comment troll, especially wrt to the effect on newcomers as they tend to make communities increasingly insular.
- smolder 3y ago
- agilob 3y agoThere are subreddits where mods meet in person a few times per year. Replace that commitment.
- gpm 3y agoEasy if you pay the new ones really.
- csomar 3y agoTheir whole business model is that you have free labor to moderate the subs. They can't afford to pay for all subs and will become centralized in a few subs only.
- reilly3000 3y agoAs the front page of the Internet, I would hope someone there has enough imagination to find a way to pay the people that do the work. If not, do we really have an Internet?
- ghaff 3y agoFront page of the internet? Please. It's not that important.
- oefrha 3y agoGood. I’ve never been an active Redditor, but there are people discussing my open source software on Reddit, so I’ve answered questions there on a good number of occasions. That my informative and completely rule-abiding posts can be made unavailable at the whim of some community mods while the site is still alive feels like a betrayal. These mods don’t own my posts. No complaint if Reddit goes the way of Digg and takes everything with it.
- Macha 3y agoYou think that people Reddit would have to appoint on such short notice with no experience of the prior community will be _less_ likely to go on power trips?
- nkuttler 3y agoThat sounds naive. Your contributions were only needed and possible because of the volunteers that built the community you participated in. These mode don't own your posts, you can publish them anywhere you like after the community is gone. If you rely on an unpaid commercial entity to preserve your content forever I have bad news for you.
- oefrha 3y agoMy contributions were possible because I and a bunch of other non-mods contributed. As I said, I expect the commercial entity to preserve my content until the entity decides not to, not some random third party. My prior experience moderating other forums tells me the contribution of these community moderators are often way exaggerated and usually easily replaceable. Some form personality cults and periodic rotation would actually be a good thing.
- citizenkeen 3y agoThat entity delegated responsibility before you ever posted. That you didn't care back then doesn't matter: it's always been this way.
- that_guy_iain 3y agoI think most subs that are a few hundred thousand won't really notice the difference. The big subs that they would 100% do it on that are a few million plus, you would never really notice. /r/pics, /r/gaming, etc who even pays attention to who the mods are. The mods aren't the community. If Reddit replaces volunteer mods with paid mods we would get a more consistent moderation and almost certainly a more professional experience. People getting banned for disagreeing with a mod would stop for example. You wouldn't have to guess what the mods mean by their rules. For example, on /r/startups replying to people giving them an answer and saying if you have any more questions I'm free is called an unauthorised ask me anything. Which is crazy. There are many subs where it's anyone's guess what the rules are. And it can literally depend on the mood of the moderator. There are some subreddits that automatically ban people who have posted in certain subreddits. Moderation is an important job. It's needed. But I can't think of any other social site that has such a bad rep for moderation.
- SilverBirch 3y agoI'm not so sure, yes the mods are pretty anonymous on the bigger subs, but they do a tonne of work and have a tonne of experience on how to actually moderate the subs. There's a whole host of rules that have grown up around each of these communities that have been learned through bitter experience. So sure, you might not notice tomorrow if /r/pics moderators all got replaced, but I guarantee you over the next 6 months the sub-reddit would change in character significantly. You can employ paid moderators, I don't think it's a terrible idea from a quality of user experience perspective. It's an awful idea from a "We're desperately trying to get this fucking company to IPO".
- l-p 3y ago> If Reddit replaces volunteer mods with paid mods we would get a more > consistent moderation and almost certainly a more professional experience. I can guarantee you the opposite. You'll have a site-wide abusable Scunthorpe-incompatible report-based automated moderation with no proper appeal mechanism in place because half a dozen underpaid interns/offshored employees will be responsible for taking over the work of hundreds of moderators. It's already happening in some cases. There's ways to make reports go directly to the so-called Anti-Evil Operations team who will irrevocably override any moderation decision and enforce abusive reports. It's easy to get people banned, post some hateful content, wait for reports, and then report the reports for report abuse. > But I can't think of any other social site that has such a bad rep for moderation. There are some legitimate cases of poorly moderated subreddits and mod abuse (and the whole powermod issue), but beware, most of the time people complaining about power-tripping mods and "not being able to say anything anymore" have been banned for very good reasons (those reasons being straight-up hate speech most of the time).
- VectorLock 3y agoPeople seem to forget that the subreddits they create or moderate don't actually belong to them, they belong to Reddit Inc.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 3y agoNo. That’s the issue. Without moderators and posters, there’s no subreddits. Without Reddit, Inc., there’s no subreddits. In my experience, when trapped in a causality dilemma, it’s preferable to be thankful for both the chicken and the egg and not ask too many questions.
- jabradoodle 3y agoAnd without active users they are worthless.
- bardfinn 3y agoIf they pick moderators, those moderators are no longer volunteers, but employees & agents of Reddit, Inc. — and because of legal precedents with how moderators were engaged with AOL & LiveJournal, anything those technically-employee-agents of Reddit, Inc do wrong with respect to criminal activity and torts, Reddit Inc is on the hook for. That’s why they use the volunteer mod model, and why they keep us at arm’s-length, and mandate that we cannot receive any compensation of any kind from anyone for moderating. That said — The mod code of conduct gives them avenues for removing mods that violate it; there’s also neutral admin-developed tools that identify users who are already active in helping the community out as potential moderator recruits. So mods that close subreddits maliciously — with an intent to damage Reddit or to demand that they disburse money to a third party — could be removed from mod privileges, and replacements found.
- ipython 3y agoI'm pretty sure that's not what Section 230 says - in fact, the opposite, which is that reddit cannot be held responsible for the content on the site, even if reddit employees are moderating content. Sounds to me more like reddit trying to spin a false narrative (if that in fact is what they've said) to take advantage of free labor.
- subsistence234 3y agothat bike chain logic reminded me of "freeman on the land" lawyering.
- justcool393 3y agoi mean also given that reddit has actually picked moderators on subs that need it in the past (like /r/redditrequest exists), i'm pretty sure this is just made up
- humanistbot 3y agoNo, no, no, no, no. This is one of those Section 230 myths that somehow keeps circulating. It does not matter if moderators are paid or volunteer. Section 230 says nothing about this. AOL won all those lawsuits -- Zeran v AOL (1997), Blumenthal v. Drudge (1998), Doe v AOL (2001), Green V. AOL (2003). Now, reddit may SAY that this is the case as an excuse, but it isn't the truth.
- debacle 3y agoIt's also not uncommon for users to nuke their accounts when they close them, deleting all posts and comments.