7 ms·

How long before they admins swoop in and change ownership of the blacked out subreddits?

falcolas 3y ago
I personally believe they will wait to see which ones remain shuttered. 48 hours is not very long to wait to maintain your free civilian labor. After that, they'll definitely reclaim the shuttered subreddits with new moderators.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  Reddit is odd.... while most communities hate the mods, they hate admins far more. Admins taken over a subreddit would kill it in the eyes of the users.
  - falcolas 3y ago
    I think the admins will care more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users who would notice a moderator replacement. In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      the API thing was that, it is moved beyond that now, and admin action on that level will make the API issue an after thought... If they do that, forget IPO, there will be no more reddit at all. right now they already missed the IPO point years ago, today for a company to have a successful IPO they need more than good MAU numbers, and this API change was never going to get to the profitability numbers they need for a good IPO Their IPO dreams were fucked long before today
      - falcolas 3y ago
        The internet forgets too quickly. And so long as Reddit can present a "everything's awesome" front, their IPO will likely take off. Having /r/Pics down permanently because of a protest would be a problem, but a poorly moderated /r/Pics would not. The quality would just go down, and Reddit would get a good justification for locking it down. "No, /r/Pics wasn't shut down because of the protest, it was shut down because there were too many law-breaking posts. And you know how tough we have to be on those kinds of posts." At least, that's my take on how most investors would look at it. Investors love companies who focus on profitability, regardless of their long term perspective.
        phpisthebest 3y ago
        There seems to be a disconnect to what I am saying... You seem to believe a low quality /r/pics would bring in traffic, even more weirdly you seem to believe the admins shutting down /r/pics because of illegal content, is better for profitability then it being shut down because of a protest, not sure how that works.... Traffic, and users drive profitablity, High Quality User Generated content drives that traffic and attracts users If reddit loses high quality user generated content, there is no traffic, and thus there is nothing to sell to be profitable, no ads, not API, nothing it would not matter if /r/pics was shutdown in protest, or shutdown because of poor moderation, it is still shut down, and thus no profits from it. investors love companies that are profitable, especially right now when the cost of capital is very high. "focusing on profitability" is not the same as delivering profitability. Investors right now want results, not power points about how they project the results being
      - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
        They seem to honestly believe that increasing monetization is an equally existential question for the platform. IPO or no IPO, they can't run off of VC funding forever, and they say they aren't currently profitable.
        Atotalnoob 3y ago
        Because spez 10x their headcount
EA-3167 3y ago
What does that really accomplish? Reddit mods are often bad enough as is, imagine what Reddit scab mods would be like. It would also be a huge invitation for the displaced the rest to make life unbearable for those new mods and the handful of admins overseeing them. Reddit as a community would make for one hell of an intellectual DDOS.
- bitshiftfaced 3y ago
  I seem to remember someone saying something about how a small number of users mod the vast majority of Reddit in terms of the number of users within the subreddits they control. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a black market for mod status. Might not be such a bad thing if the establishment was totally uprooted.
  - duxup 3y ago
    I suspect that still results in a huge amount of moderation work to do … Reddit’s advantage is that people do that for Reddit for free.
  - evan_ 3y ago
    > a small number of users mod the vast majority of Reddit I think it's more like there are a small number of users who are mods on a huge number of subs, but there are other mods that focus more directly on the actual moderation of those subs.
- falcolas 3y ago
  > What does that really accomplish? To borrow from another comment buried below: I think the company cares more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users. In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.
  - EA-3167 3y ago
    I can sort of understand the mentality, but right now Reddit looks like a terrible IPO prospect. It isn't profitable, it's poorly managed, lacks transparency, depends on volunteers to function on a daily basis, and when they make a move to make themselves profitable their user base rebels in a fairly public and humiliating way. All of this in the post-Fed rate hike world where money isn't free. Besides I feel it's important to remember that Reddit has been talking about an IPO for many years, and I doubt it's going to happen now.
duxup 3y ago
That would seem to setup a situation where Reddit has to fill a gap of a huge amount of moderation work that they previously didn’t have to do / people did that for them for free.
Longlius 3y ago
The main reason why reddit works as a platform is because its mods and subreddit regulars do a lot of unpaid work. Where is reddit going to find enough people to work for free on such short notice?
- falcolas 3y ago
  They don't have to be good mods. There's precedent for a handful of mods to moderate a huge swath of subreddits.
  - wmeredith 3y ago
    Not without third-party tools, there isn’t. Lol
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > Where is reddit going to find enough people to work for free on such short notice? Enter: an army of scab accounts ending in _GPT.
  - cryptonector 3y ago
    That's more expensive than free mods.
this_user 3y ago
A long time IMO, because that would just escalate the situation. At this point they are going to wait and see in the hopes that the majority of people lose interest after a few protests. Then they can just push through the changes. If they take over these subs, you just radicalise the users, and you now have to find new moderators for these subs. In a worst case scenario, users actually start migrating to another platform.
graeme 3y ago
Finding new moderators would be a incredible challenge. If someone wants to be a moderators badly, that is usually disqualifying. You get an immense amount of power with very little accountability except to the community. Put that in the wrong hands and you can destroy a community incredibly quickly. Or, put power in the hands of a dilettante, and you get overrun with spam and insults very fast.
- superkuh 3y ago
  Nah, there's plenty of people just waiting to take over even the smallest of niche subs. I saw it firsthand back during the 2nd wave of gentrification in spring 2018 when a bunch of commercially uncomfortable subreddits like r/gundeals and their users (like my 2008 reddit account) were banned. The subreddits I moderated like r/radioastronomy were given to other users to moderate within a month or two. Reddit eventually admitted it was wrong about banning r/gundeals and reinstated the sub but my account was never unbanned. And any sub with serious activity will have power mods submitting applications for take-over so they can commercialize it.
  - graeme 3y ago
    I checked into the history: 1. A reddit request was made in 2018 when you were banned. This was manually approved by the admins: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/8m8cdm/requesting_rradioastronomy_only_moderator_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/8m8cdm/reque... 2. The new mod heavily restricted posts, seemingly for three years. They declined to reply to messages for nine months, until a new Reddit request happened on Jan 3 2021. A comment in that thread said "there hasn't been a new post in ages!", confirming your replacement had locked the place down: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/kpf083/requesting_rradioastronomy_solo_mod_is_offline/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/kpf083/reque... 3. Sometime between Jan 3 and Jan 19th, the request was approved. Likely closer to the 19th, the day the new mod posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/radioastronomy/comments/l0j6qj/new_moderation_and_the_future_of_rradioastronomy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/radioastronomy/comments/l0j6qj/new_... Sub seems alright now, but after a three year long false start with an inactive mod who locked the place down. Further, it took up to 16 days to handle the request. For a very small sub. And I've seen reddit requests take much longer. Now reddit would have to, at a stroke, replace at least 8,000 of their most active subs, all at once, and make sure they don't appoint people who are insane, or draconian, or power hungry, or in it for their own profit, etc. I don't see this working. You may have some knowledge of /r/radioastronomy in those periods which contradicts what I wrote, but the public record suggests the transition wouldn't bode well for mass replacing every single moderator at once. 92% of reddit is down right now.
vkou 3y ago
Oh, that's easy, if they are looking for scabs to mod a million+ sub, I volunteer myself immediately. I've got a lot of great ideas that I'm really eager to try out. The only thing that I'll be able to guarantee is that you'll really not like me as a mod.

I personally believe they will wait to see which ones remain shuttered. 48 hours is not very long to wait to maintain your free civilian labor. After that, they'll definitely reclaim the shuttered subreddits with new moderators.

phpisthebest 3y ago
Reddit is odd.... while most communities hate the mods, they hate admins far more. Admins taken over a subreddit would kill it in the eyes of the users.
- falcolas 3y ago
  I think the admins will care more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users who would notice a moderator replacement. In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    the API thing was that, it is moved beyond that now, and admin action on that level will make the API issue an after thought... If they do that, forget IPO, there will be no more reddit at all. right now they already missed the IPO point years ago, today for a company to have a successful IPO they need more than good MAU numbers, and this API change was never going to get to the profitability numbers they need for a good IPO Their IPO dreams were fucked long before today
    - falcolas 3y ago
      The internet forgets too quickly. And so long as Reddit can present a "everything's awesome" front, their IPO will likely take off. Having /r/Pics down permanently because of a protest would be a problem, but a poorly moderated /r/Pics would not. The quality would just go down, and Reddit would get a good justification for locking it down. "No, /r/Pics wasn't shut down because of the protest, it was shut down because there were too many law-breaking posts. And you know how tough we have to be on those kinds of posts." At least, that's my take on how most investors would look at it. Investors love companies who focus on profitability, regardless of their long term perspective.
      - phpisthebest 3y ago
        There seems to be a disconnect to what I am saying... You seem to believe a low quality /r/pics would bring in traffic, even more weirdly you seem to believe the admins shutting down /r/pics because of illegal content, is better for profitability then it being shut down because of a protest, not sure how that works.... Traffic, and users drive profitablity, High Quality User Generated content drives that traffic and attracts users If reddit loses high quality user generated content, there is no traffic, and thus there is nothing to sell to be profitable, no ads, not API, nothing it would not matter if /r/pics was shutdown in protest, or shutdown because of poor moderation, it is still shut down, and thus no profits from it. investors love companies that are profitable, especially right now when the cost of capital is very high. "focusing on profitability" is not the same as delivering profitability. Investors right now want results, not power points about how they project the results being
    - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
      They seem to honestly believe that increasing monetization is an equally existential question for the platform. IPO or no IPO, they can't run off of VC funding forever, and they say they aren't currently profitable.
      - Atotalnoob 3y ago
        Because spez 10x their headcount

EA-3167 3y ago

What does that really accomplish? Reddit mods are often bad enough as is, imagine what Reddit scab mods would be like. It would also be a huge invitation for the displaced the rest to make life unbearable for those new mods and the handful of admins overseeing them. Reddit as a community would make for one hell of an intellectual DDOS.

bitshiftfaced 3y ago
I seem to remember someone saying something about how a small number of users mod the vast majority of Reddit in terms of the number of users within the subreddits they control. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a black market for mod status. Might not be such a bad thing if the establishment was totally uprooted.
- duxup 3y ago
  I suspect that still results in a huge amount of moderation work to do … Reddit’s advantage is that people do that for Reddit for free.
- evan_ 3y ago
  > a small number of users mod the vast majority of Reddit I think it's more like there are a small number of users who are mods on a huge number of subs, but there are other mods that focus more directly on the actual moderation of those subs.
falcolas 3y ago
> What does that really accomplish? To borrow from another comment buried below: I think the company cares more about the appearance of "business as usual" in the face of an IPO than the opinions of the users. In their eyes, this is all nothing more than a tempest in a teapot; a small pothole on the road to public investor dollars.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  I can sort of understand the mentality, but right now Reddit looks like a terrible IPO prospect. It isn't profitable, it's poorly managed, lacks transparency, depends on volunteers to function on a daily basis, and when they make a move to make themselves profitable their user base rebels in a fairly public and humiliating way. All of this in the post-Fed rate hike world where money isn't free. Besides I feel it's important to remember that Reddit has been talking about an IPO for many years, and I doubt it's going to happen now.

duxup 3y ago

That would seem to setup a situation where Reddit has to fill a gap of a huge amount of moderation work that they previously didn’t have to do / people did that for them for free.

Longlius 3y ago

The main reason why reddit works as a platform is because its mods and subreddit regulars do a lot of unpaid work. Where is reddit going to find enough people to work for free on such short notice?

falcolas 3y ago
They don't have to be good mods. There's precedent for a handful of mods to moderate a huge swath of subreddits.
- wmeredith 3y ago
  Not without third-party tools, there isn’t. Lol
jstarfish 3y ago
> Where is reddit going to find enough people to work for free on such short notice? Enter: an army of scab accounts ending in _GPT.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  That's more expensive than free mods.

this_user 3y ago

A long time IMO, because that would just escalate the situation. At this point they are going to wait and see in the hopes that the majority of people lose interest after a few protests. Then they can just push through the changes. If they take over these subs, you just radicalise the users, and you now have to find new moderators for these subs. In a worst case scenario, users actually start migrating to another platform.

graeme 3y ago

Finding new moderators would be a incredible challenge. If someone wants to be a moderators badly, that is usually disqualifying. You get an immense amount of power with very little accountability except to the community. Put that in the wrong hands and you can destroy a community incredibly quickly. Or, put power in the hands of a dilettante, and you get overrun with spam and insults very fast.

superkuh 3y ago
Nah, there's plenty of people just waiting to take over even the smallest of niche subs. I saw it firsthand back during the 2nd wave of gentrification in spring 2018 when a bunch of commercially uncomfortable subreddits like r/gundeals and their users (like my 2008 reddit account) were banned. The subreddits I moderated like r/radioastronomy were given to other users to moderate within a month or two. Reddit eventually admitted it was wrong about banning r/gundeals and reinstated the sub but my account was never unbanned. And any sub with serious activity will have power mods submitting applications for take-over so they can commercialize it.
- graeme 3y ago
  I checked into the history: 1. A reddit request was made in 2018 when you were banned. This was manually approved by the admins: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/8m8cdm/requesting_rradioastronomy_only_moderator_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/8m8cdm/reque... 2. The new mod heavily restricted posts, seemingly for three years. They declined to reply to messages for nine months, until a new Reddit request happened on Jan 3 2021. A comment in that thread said "there hasn't been a new post in ages!", confirming your replacement had locked the place down: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/kpf083/requesting_rradioastronomy_solo_mod_is_offline/ https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/kpf083/reque... 3. Sometime between Jan 3 and Jan 19th, the request was approved. Likely closer to the 19th, the day the new mod posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/radioastronomy/comments/l0j6qj/new_moderation_and_the_future_of_rradioastronomy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/radioastronomy/comments/l0j6qj/new_... Sub seems alright now, but after a three year long false start with an inactive mod who locked the place down. Further, it took up to 16 days to handle the request. For a very small sub. And I've seen reddit requests take much longer. Now reddit would have to, at a stroke, replace at least 8,000 of their most active subs, all at once, and make sure they don't appoint people who are insane, or draconian, or power hungry, or in it for their own profit, etc. I don't see this working. You may have some knowledge of /r/radioastronomy in those periods which contradicts what I wrote, but the public record suggests the transition wouldn't bode well for mass replacing every single moderator at once. 92% of reddit is down right now.

vkou 3y ago

Oh, that's easy, if they are looking for scabs to mod a million+ sub, I volunteer myself immediately. I've got a lot of great ideas that I'm really eager to try out. The only thing that I'll be able to guarantee is that you'll really not like me as a mod.