4 ms·

As much as I would like to believe that boycotts can work, I'm just too cynical after seeing all those boycotts doing nothing. My old.reddit.com homepage hasn'

by mrtksn 3y ago

As much as I would like to believe that boycotts can work, I'm just too cynical after seeing all those boycotts doing nothing. My old.reddit.com homepage hasn't change much. Missing is r/ProgrammerHumor but r/Programming is there, alongside with r/darksky, r/wallstreetbets etc. All the porn seems to be there too, which might actually move some numbers if gone dark. The only sub which I care and it's gone is r/StableDiffusion Which leads me to believe that the boycott will remove only a subset of reddit users and we are about to see how much reddit cares about that subset. Redesigns on the other hand can kill a site. That's the only thing I've seen many times killing a website.

EdwardDiego 3y ago
Don't forget the international dateline :) The 12th of June is a poorly specified target. But I know that /r/programming has two Reddit administrators as part of the mods, so I'm not surprised they're not going dark.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  > But I know that /r/programming has two Reddit administrators as part of the mods, so I'm not surprised they're not going dark. Is there anything stopping Reddit from making the CEO a mod in every major sub though?
  - BadBadJellyBean 3y ago
    No but they still need mods. Otherwise the quality will quickly go so far downhill that no one wants to see use it anymore.
    - mrtksn 3y ago
      Is finding mods something hard to do?
      - yurishimo 3y ago
        For major subs, absolutely. Take /r/videos for example. What's to stop bots from uploading porn to /r/videos at breakneck pace? You need a small army of moderators to close the floodgates. It might not happen immediately, but eventually, there will be massive spam submitted to default subreddits with new moderators. Moderation takes time and unless Reddit is going to pony up $$$ to pay mods to sweep in on short notice, then I suspect people who casually volunteer will quickly be overwhelmed.
      - SolarNet 3y ago
        Theoretically no, practically yes. You basically need people willing to donate lots of their time to read new on a specific subreddit constantly (there is a reason (in a consequentialist sense) mods tend to enforce their opinion on every post, it's cause they spend hours reading every single one already, and the kind of person willing to do that probably has some (obsessive) opinions). There are some subreddits where you can be a mod and you get pinged and you make decision, and so you can spend your time doing other things and still help, but they are very small. And there are some tools that let you take the "and I get pinged and I make a decision" up to the larger subreddit scale, and tools which make reading new easier to do... these are the tools reddit is going to get rid of / make pay only. So yea, it's going to be even harder to find some poor schmuck with no life willing to donate a bunch of their free time to create high quality subreddits that comply with the admin's rules (which is actually what a lot of "do whatever you want" mods end up spending most of their time dealing with). And the people they do find are going to have even stronger personal influences on subreddits than the current ones do.
      - circo 3y ago
        Yes. Moderating a large sub is a ton of work with no compensation whatsoever. The biggest sub I mod recently grew to ~10k users, it's German speaking, and covers a pretty niche topic. That sub alone is already a surprising amount of work, and 10k is absolutely tiny. Automod alone removes 4-5 posts a day, and there's still quite a lot of bot generated, irrelevant, or spammy posts and comments that manage to bypass the filters. I can't imagine the amount of spam that would flow in at a subreddit hundreds of times larger than that.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  r/Programming just joined the blackout. Now my homepage is mostly porn and politics. Let's see what will happen in few days.
bpye 3y ago
Conversely, most of the active subreddits I am subscribed to have gone dark. My front page is down to a handful of different news/politics subreddits that decided not to take part.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  I hope you are the kind of the user which Reddit wouldn't want to lose and reconsider the changes then.
joshvm 3y ago
A lot of the LLM ML communities have moved to Discord for bleeding edge development, as far as I know.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Are there analogues for the subs? I would love to know these Discord channels, maybe there should be a directory for it to make the move away from reddit smoother?
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Which is a damn shame, because discord is an unsearchable walled garden. I really, really don't hope much of reddit moves to discord, it would be a disaster for the usability of search engines.
  - stereolambda 3y ago
    At this point I'm seeing an accelerationist angle where having only walled gardens, disfunctional search engines (both in-app and Google) and broken apps and APIs everywhere might force people to think about those things a little.
  - lightedman 3y ago
    I'm curious as to what you mean by unsearchable. I have yet to not find what I look for when I go to the search bar. The amount of ways to filter things is generally-enough for me to find what I'm looking for in the first page or two of results.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      Not indexed by search engines. I don't use discord(I'm unable to make one because of their ridiculously broken sign up flow), and I don't have an account on reddit, but I still find relevant stuff on reddit all the time through google. And reddit is super useful to me for that, specifically.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
mirthflat83 3y ago
/u/spez is a mod at /r/programming
- brabel 3y ago
  Then why is /r/programming private right now? Not just me, multiple people reporting that. Personally, I think it just goes to show that if you make a platform which depends on people's generosity to keep content well moderated, you should absolutely consider those generous people as your company's main resources.... and if you piss them off, as your worst enemies.
LodeOfCode 3y ago
The list of participating subreddits[0] includes ~3/4ths of the big subreddits. 7 of the 10 subs with over 30 million members[1], 81% with 20-30 million, 77% with 10-20 million, 80% with 5-10 million, and 71% with 1-5 million I don't think the blackout will be limited by its scope so much as by its duration [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplet... [1]https://www.reddit.com/best/communities/1/ https://www.reddit.com/best/communities/1/
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Yes, the duration is problematic. A few days blackout means no matter what we will be back, so carry on.

by mrtksn 3y ago

EdwardDiego 3y ago

Don't forget the international dateline :) The 12th of June is a poorly specified target. But I know that /r/programming has two Reddit administrators as part of the mods, so I'm not surprised they're not going dark.

mrtksn 3y ago
> But I know that /r/programming has two Reddit administrators as part of the mods, so I'm not surprised they're not going dark. Is there anything stopping Reddit from making the CEO a mod in every major sub though?
- BadBadJellyBean 3y ago
  No but they still need mods. Otherwise the quality will quickly go so far downhill that no one wants to see use it anymore.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    Is finding mods something hard to do?
    - yurishimo 3y ago
      For major subs, absolutely. Take /r/videos for example. What's to stop bots from uploading porn to /r/videos at breakneck pace? You need a small army of moderators to close the floodgates. It might not happen immediately, but eventually, there will be massive spam submitted to default subreddits with new moderators. Moderation takes time and unless Reddit is going to pony up $$$ to pay mods to sweep in on short notice, then I suspect people who casually volunteer will quickly be overwhelmed.
    - SolarNet 3y ago
      Theoretically no, practically yes. You basically need people willing to donate lots of their time to read new on a specific subreddit constantly (there is a reason (in a consequentialist sense) mods tend to enforce their opinion on every post, it's cause they spend hours reading every single one already, and the kind of person willing to do that probably has some (obsessive) opinions). There are some subreddits where you can be a mod and you get pinged and you make decision, and so you can spend your time doing other things and still help, but they are very small. And there are some tools that let you take the "and I get pinged and I make a decision" up to the larger subreddit scale, and tools which make reading new easier to do... these are the tools reddit is going to get rid of / make pay only. So yea, it's going to be even harder to find some poor schmuck with no life willing to donate a bunch of their free time to create high quality subreddits that comply with the admin's rules (which is actually what a lot of "do whatever you want" mods end up spending most of their time dealing with). And the people they do find are going to have even stronger personal influences on subreddits than the current ones do.
    - circo 3y ago
      Yes. Moderating a large sub is a ton of work with no compensation whatsoever. The biggest sub I mod recently grew to ~10k users, it's German speaking, and covers a pretty niche topic. That sub alone is already a surprising amount of work, and 10k is absolutely tiny. Automod alone removes 4-5 posts a day, and there's still quite a lot of bot generated, irrelevant, or spammy posts and comments that manage to bypass the filters. I can't imagine the amount of spam that would flow in at a subreddit hundreds of times larger than that.
mrtksn 3y ago
r/Programming just joined the blackout. Now my homepage is mostly porn and politics. Let's see what will happen in few days.

bpye 3y ago

Conversely, most of the active subreddits I am subscribed to have gone dark. My front page is down to a handful of different news/politics subreddits that decided not to take part.

mrtksn 3y ago
I hope you are the kind of the user which Reddit wouldn't want to lose and reconsider the changes then.

joshvm 3y ago

A lot of the LLM ML communities have moved to Discord for bleeding edge development, as far as I know.

mrtksn 3y ago
Are there analogues for the subs? I would love to know these Discord channels, maybe there should be a directory for it to make the move away from reddit smoother?
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
Which is a damn shame, because discord is an unsearchable walled garden. I really, really don't hope much of reddit moves to discord, it would be a disaster for the usability of search engines.
- stereolambda 3y ago
  At this point I'm seeing an accelerationist angle where having only walled gardens, disfunctional search engines (both in-app and Google) and broken apps and APIs everywhere might force people to think about those things a little.
- lightedman 3y ago
  I'm curious as to what you mean by unsearchable. I have yet to not find what I look for when I go to the search bar. The amount of ways to filter things is generally-enough for me to find what I'm looking for in the first page or two of results.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Not indexed by search engines. I don't use discord(I'm unable to make one because of their ridiculously broken sign up flow), and I don't have an account on reddit, but I still find relevant stuff on reddit all the time through google. And reddit is super useful to me for that, specifically.
- midoridensha 3y ago

mirthflat83 3y ago

/u/spez is a mod at /r/programming

brabel 3y ago
Then why is /r/programming private right now? Not just me, multiple people reporting that. Personally, I think it just goes to show that if you make a platform which depends on people's generosity to keep content well moderated, you should absolutely consider those generous people as your company's main resources.... and if you piss them off, as your worst enemies.

LodeOfCode 3y ago

The list of participating subreddits[0] includes ~3/4ths of the big subreddits. 7 of the 10 subs with over 30 million members[1], 81% with 20-30 million, 77% with 10-20 million, 80% with 5-10 million, and 71% with 1-5 million I don't think the blackout will be limited by its scope so much as by its duration [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplet... [1]https://www.reddit.com/best/communities/1/ https://www.reddit.com/best/communities/1/

mrtksn 3y ago
Yes, the duration is problematic. A few days blackout means no matter what we will be back, so carry on.