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Reddit subs with millions of followers plan to extend the blackout indefinitely

515 points by edsimpson 3y ago

hitpointdrew 3y ago
[flagged]
- _Microft 3y ago
  > I left Reddit back when they decided they don’t care about free speech and banned nonewnormal. What happened to this new normal btw? Everything has reverted to pre-pandemic life here as it seems. Wasn't the expectation that we're going to have to live suppressed for all time?
  - 100011_100001 3y ago
    Shhh.... Conspiracy theorists just move to a new conspiracy, they never go back and evaluate how they got swindled the first time.
    - b59831 3y ago
      The important part is you feel superior.
      - sidfthec 3y ago
        What do you mean? Those who follow absurd conspiracy theories, like the theory that mask mandates would never go away and that it was somehow solely a power play by government leaders, cause massive damage to society. And it's true that most never re-evaluate how their incorrect beliefs came to be before getting sucked into another conspiracy/grift. You seem to be reducing the issue to someone feeling superior to another.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    This would be them saying that they've won the battle. And it's quite possible that some of the left-wing political response to shelter-in-place orders and mask mandates, namely deciding to end them as policy, is because of right-wing (and some left-wing) pushback. I just don't know how much. Though I think it was stupid as hell the way they ended both social distancing and mask mandates back in July of 2021, when infection rates were still higher than when the mandates began.
    - Mindwipe 3y ago
      Said pushback didn't really happen in the UK - polling data in favour of lockdowns was insanely popular. It still broadly stopped both before the US did. These campaigns achieved nothing.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        To be fair you already had a Conservative government during the time.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      It is also possible that their pushback made stronger mandates necessary and thus prolonged the whole thing. Without data it's all speculation.
  - onetokeoverthe 3y ago
    [dead]
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
Does this actually affect subscribers to sub-reddits? If this is extended indefinitely I would expect competing sub-reddits to form.
- _____-___ 3y ago
  Considering spez has shown before he doesn’t really care for Reddit’s rules that are applied to the rable and he can do what he wants (like editing others posts), I fully expect the permanently blacked out subs to have new ownership and become public again before too long.
- activiation 3y ago
  I unsubscrided from a few subs that weren't doing the blackout
  - redmerchant2 3y ago
    I’m happy that 90% of the subs I sub to joined the blackout. But some subs like r/comics are strangely boot licky despite how community engaged the mod team seemed to be. Automatically removing requests about the blackout and not even entertaining the discussion.
  - bastijn 3y ago
    I'm reading new ones that aren't doing the blackout. Need for content didn't change.
    - activiation 3y ago
      I browse new posts on HN instead
    - goatlover 3y ago
      r/news and r/worldnews didn't blackout.
EA-3167 3y ago
That awkward moment when you (Spez) calls a bluff only to realize it was no bluff.
- cookiengineer 3y ago
  That awkward moment when spez removes the downvote functions on his profile. Gotta make that profile shine for VCs!?
  - prox 3y ago
    Spez seems like the latest outed manchild amongst CEOs.
    - bastijn 3y ago
      That awkward moment you realize Reddit is in a better position to win this war because people like us just want to have a digital place to spend time, not fight a war. Truth be told I don't care much about all of this, I just want my subs back or replaced so I can mindlessly scroll them. Wasn't using a third party app, but if I was I'd probably feel unhappy for a week before I simply switch and don't think back.
      - wvenable 3y ago
        I've been actively avoiding Reddit during this protest and I just signed up to a Lemmy instance. The UI isn't great but the communities are already pretty hopping. I need to subscribe to a few more things but it seems to handle the fix for now. I'm never using Reddit's awful app -- it's just not how I like to use Reddit. I'm an old.reddit.com kind of person.
        bastijn 3y ago
        The point is for any that is like you my guess is there are 2 more like me. Or 20, or 200. Never checked how much people use 3rd party apps vs. total users. Honest question, what is so bad about the Reddit app that you would give up browsing the content you like? I experience little ads, and if I would be annoyed by it I would probably find ways to get rid of it (pi-hole style). I'm OK with how the app displays comments, I can fold them etc. Don't need much more.
jprd 3y ago
Good.
kojeovo 3y ago
Guess people will just flock to /r/awww and other clones
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
milkytron 3y ago
This is what is needed to put pressure on Reddit. A two day protest then returning to normal is a blip in the grand scheme of things. But if they do not change their API pricing, stance on third party apps, etc, then a prolonged blackout could lead to an eventual exodus. I hope the communities I used to engage in partake in this prolonged blackout.
- nielsbot 3y ago
  This is explicitly what their CEO said. Many subreddits said they'd return on wednesday. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...
  - donmcronald 3y ago
    Maybe I'm reading it in a biased manner, but that sure has the feel of "if we wait it out the pigs will get hungry and be back at the trough on Wednesday." I don't think they respect their users, he doesn't understand that's a big part of why people are getting so upset, and he just keeps talking. Lol.
    - imchillyb 3y ago
      > ...I don't think they respect their users... What gave you that idea? The fact that spez (the ceo) was head-mod for /r/jailbait? Or was it spez firing the AMA mod that had -massive- community engagement? Or was it spez bullying one of the top reddit-app developers (Christian, Apollo reddit-app developer)? Reddit /obviously/ respects each and every user, the app developers, the subreddit mods, and it shows! /s
      - quickthrowman 3y ago
        Jeez, now he was the head mod of r/jailbait? This game of telephone is ridiculous. There’s no need to slander the guy with false information. Reddit used to allow the moderators of a subreddit to automatically make someone a moderator of that subreddit. Then, as things like people being added as an r/jailbait mod against their wishes became widespread, Reddit changed to an invite system which required a user to accept an invite to be a moderator. Here is a post on Reddit from 10 years ago describing in depth how the ‘new’ mod invite system works and also stating that you could be made a moderator against your wishes: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/117wkp/reddit_change_adding_moderators_now_uses_an/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/117wkp/reddit_ch... Spez was not an actual moderator of r/jailbait, he was added against his wishes. Please don’t spread harmful lies about the guy, there’s enough true things about him to criticize. You forgot ‘stealth edited the posts of other users by editing the database directly’ in his list of crimes, don’t forget that along with the firing of the AMA person and lying about the Apollo dev. Those things are all based in reality.
BoxOfRain 3y ago
To the people who've been in this situation, what would you do in Huffman's shoes? From my fairly naïve perspective it looks like he's doing a pretty poor job managing this crisis but am I overestimating the trouble he's in? At some point he'll either be forced to back down or replace the mods of the big subs with people willing to cross the picket line, I don't see why he doesn't just pull the plaster off now either way rather than drag this out bleeding credibility all the while?
- dybber 3y ago
  I haven’t been in a situation like this. I think they should call it off, and announce that they will go back to the drawing board. Then restart talks with the API users and third party app developers. What if they reduced the price of Reddit premium to $3/month and made API and third party apps only available for Reddit premium subscribers? - Reddit would get many more premium subscribers - App developers would be able to avoid managing subscription fee’s themselves and continue as before - Users of the official Reddit app would not be affected - Users of third party apps would have to pay for Reddit Premium - but maybe at a discount
  - Alupis 3y ago
    I've gotta tell you - in 6-12 months nobody will even care anymore - and Reddit will still be used en masse like before. Talking with regular non-techy people who use reddit regularly - nobody outside our bubble even knows about or cares about the whole API fiasco. Most people I've talked with shrug and say they'll just use the official app if that's what it all means. The others asked if they can just pay and use the same 3rd party app in the future. Reddit has been, and is filled with drama. These public news pieces make the community appear extremely naïve, to a fault. When people hear some of these apps had tens, or hundreds of thousands of users that circumvented ad revenue for reddit - they mostly do not have sympathy for the 3rd party app developers. Just being realistic. I like reddit as much as the next guy, and agree the leadership is terrible (reddit has a long history of terrible leadership).
    - predictabl3 3y ago
autokad 3y ago
I wonder if this will become similar to what happened with digg.com
- activiation 3y ago
  Hope so... Wonder what would be next though.
  - theobromananda 3y ago
    Federated sites like lemmy and mastodon.
- donmcronald 3y ago
  I don't think so. Digg was a vote driven news feed one day and a commercial feed the next. It was like visiting a totally different website in terms of content. Reddit was sitting there with the "old" format, so it wasn't too shocking to see everyone migrate. This isn't a drastic change and there aren't any competitors that are offering anything better (ignoring the benefits of something decentralized).
  - smileysteve 3y ago
    I was getting tired of being pestered with "Install Our App" or the new slower javascript interface, so I started using RedReader It's a whole different interface
kart23 3y ago
They're getting away with this because there really is no serious competitor for reddit. When people actually start migrating away from reddit and post/comment volume is significantly down, you'll see reddit suddenly be a lot more willing to engage with the community.
- pkju62dqmx 3y ago
  You’re right due to the network effects Reddit currently enjoys. Personally, I’ve quite enjoyed using tildes.net lately. I know everyone is jumping on Lemmy and federation, which is great in practice but Tildes feels more accessible to me and for that reason may have more potential to actually capture a user base.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    I'd love an invite. If you have one available, please consider throwing me a tildes.net invite. Thanks m8.
    - DougEiffel 3y ago
      If they send one to you, would you consider sending one to me?
      - satiric 3y ago
        I'll join in on the train. Would you mind sending on to me if you get one?
        adhvaryu 3y ago
        Choo choo
        vintagedave 3y ago
        I checked out the site, and it looks great. May I join the invite request train too please? My email is my username at gmail. Many thanks :)
endisneigh 3y ago
What’s stopping Reddit from enabling all the subs?
- dyingkneepad 3y ago
  Having people do the (absolutely necessary) moderation for free.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat. At some point, Reddit will just force all subs to be open again, and any mods that try to delete the sub or do no moderation will just get banned or whatever. It's pretty hard to fight against the corp using the corp's own platform.
    - katbyte 3y ago
      > If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat. no, because it is actual work to be a mod. work you don't get paid or rewarded for. i'd say no without hesitation.
    - Aaargh20318 3y ago
      Sure, they’d get plenty or people who would want to get moderator rights. How many of those would actually put in the hours ? And how would you know before you hand over the sub? Not only that, it would create a revolt among the moderators who were still left so you’d have to do this for all subs at once. Tens of thousands of people. It would be an absolute disaster for Reddit.
    - notaustinpowers 3y ago
      They absolutely will, but I wouldn't expect those mods to actually be good mods. I've been in multiple subreddits where a new mod would be assigned because the current ones stopped being active and they'd wreck the subreddit. All posts require approval, sub topic changed, any criticism of the changes met with a permanent ban, etc. For a company wanting to go public, having users banned from some of the most popular subs, the same subs that rely on said users to publish content, Reddit may as well have shot itself in the foot. When the corp has relied on the good graces of users and mods to effectively run the site, both by providing the content AND moderating the content, any change to that status quo is going to be met with open hostility from the top 1% contributors.
ThomW 3y ago
... until they just take over the moderation of their largest communities and this whole thing ends. I mean what's so magical about the moderation of something like r/videos other than the mods being free labor for Reddit?
- Eldt 3y ago
  Moderation can make or break a subreddit
  - paulmd 3y ago
    Moderation of the subreddit matters a lot less than sitting on a common keyword. It’s not like r/real_trueToyotaFans2 is going to see a ton of traffic even if it’s the best moderated sub in the world. Domain-squatting on a couple dozen important keywords and brand names in 2005 is the powermod secret to success, not that they’re just that great at their job that they rose to the top on merit. There are quite a few subs that prove this - really, really badly moderated but sitting on super, super valuable real estate. And Reddit doesn’t really have a mechanism for handling this unless the mod is outright posting gore or something - they got their first in 2005, that’s the end of it.
  - faeriechangling 3y ago
    Generally I’d say moderators can break a subreddit far more easily than they can make it, but that’s a danger of a big mod cull.
- tux3 3y ago
  If they do, whatever thrown together group of reddit appointed substitutes get the task of trying to moderate all of reddit at once is likely going to be drowning very badly And you can expect people engaged with the protest to take full advantage of this if it happens, making the problem that much worse If you simply reopen without any of the current mods, the site will be overrun
  - civilitty 3y ago
    I’ve got my entire neighborhood teed up to go and spread rumors that spez likes to do weird things to porcupines the second the moderation walls go down.
activiation 3y ago
[flagged]
mrandish 3y ago
This may prompt Reddit to push ahead on their threat to take over key subs that stay dark by replacing the moderators with their own. Of course, Reddit can't afford to scale that to very many popular subs as modding those is extremely labor intensive. Worse for Reddit, dumping long-time community moderators en masse would be crossing a Rubicon that could tip Reddit into a death spiral of low-effort moderation reducing content quality and engagement which will feed back on itself. The mods going dark for longer may in fact be hoping to goad Reddit into responding with such self-destructive stupidity.
- heyparkerj 3y ago
  Did Reddit actually make that threat or was that just a fearful suspicion from the userbase?
- ranger207 3y ago
  I'm really not sure the big subs would suffer all that much. Many of them are already modded by a clique of mods and are large enough that there's not really any community to be had there anyway. It would be pretty terrible for the small communities that were reddit's most valuable part
  - CryptoBanker 3y ago
    Replacing a few mods that moderate many large communities with paid mods is ripping the door wide open to lawsuits
    - post-it 3y ago
      What damages would who experience?
      - narism 3y ago
        Defamation for starters. See Neibich v. Reddit and Berger v. Reddit. So far section 230 has shielded them from much of these but the law has been targeted over the last couple years. So far the Supreme Court hasn’t addressed questions on the scope of section 230. I’m guessing the thinking goes if section 230 scope is narrowed and moderators are on the company payroll that could move them from a content provider (not liable) to more of a newspaper publishing articles (liable).
mvdtnz 3y ago
Reddit would be infinitely better without any subreddits bigger than about 100k subscribers.
- zucked 3y ago
  That’s been the part of this blackout that has hurt the most, honestly. I’ve been on Reddit for longer than a decade and all but entirely shut out the front page subs like Videos, InterestingAF, etc. I wouldn’t miss those if they disappeared tomorrow. Instead, I’m in far smaller niche and location-relevant subs. I didn’t realize what cutting off my city subreddit would do for my sense of connection to my city. I didn’t realize how shit general search results are for questions about hobbies. It’s really made me question if can allow one entity to serve as such an important conduit to my interests again.
- epmatsw 3y ago
  Sports subreddits are a notable exception imo. While they might get a bit silly, r/cfb, r/nba, etc. are so much better than Twitter or any other public forum that losing them would be pretty awful.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    I only follow motorsports so the only sports subs I'm on are motogp, v8supercars and formula1. The F1 subreddit (over a million subs)is one of the absolute worst places on the internet for any kind of discussion. It's totally dominated by The Hive Mind, dissenting opinions are absolutely unwelcome and the top posts on every single post are low-effort jokes, usually jokes that have been told a thousand times before. It's awful. MotoGP (250k+ subs) is better, but still suffers from similar problems. V8Supercars is quiet, but the discussion is of a far higher quality. "Better than twitter" is a low bar to clear.
    - snuxoll 3y ago
      /r/formula1 is really hit or miss. I wouldn't say it's as horrible as you make it out to be, but the pervasive groupthink of the sport as a whole (whoever is on top needs to be knocked down a peg, Liberty Media sucks, whatever) is certainly strong there.
gumballindie 3y ago
Expect more sealed off content. Thanks to ai scrapers more companies will want to close their apis or charge a fee. Heck even openai, the main leech want to prevent others from “training” their bots against their ai that has been trained on other people’s work, bandwidth and ip. Mods closing subreddits are just a symptom.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tedivm 3y ago
  Removing the APIs, or gatekeeping them, will do absolutely nothing to prevent the publicly exposed data from being collected.
  - Zamiel_Snawley 3y ago
    Agreed, writing a scraper is simply worth the cost to get the training data.
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      Yeah I remember back in the day people stealing credit card data used to claim there is nothing to be done against them. Then warez kids on irc claiming no one can or should stop piracy. Things will eventually balance out, dont worry too much.
      - malermeister 3y ago
        Piracy still hasn't been stopped, fwiw
        CommitSyn 3y ago
        Neither has credit card theft, from beginner to expert.
      - 3y ago
themagician 3y ago
Great opportunity for people to create derivative subreddits without oppressive mods.
- distrill 3y ago
  i feel like mod oppression isn't much an issue outside of the free speech absolutism rhetoric that plagues places like twitter. and tbh most of the people screeching about this aren't spending much time on reddit to begin with.
  - seydor 3y ago
    mostly because they have been banned tbh
- ranger207 3y ago
  There's two problems with this: first, the new mods have a good chance of being just as bad as the old mods. Second, the new subs will not be able to use the good subreddit names and will be harder to find. The latter is core problem: discoverability. If it was possible to just found a new sub and have it show up just as clearly when you search for subs related to a particular topic, then if the mods turn out to be terrible there's not many problems in just starting a new sub. But as long as only one subreddit can have a particular name you can't solve that problem
  - themagician 3y ago
    You’re right about the first part. For the second part—they should free up the names of mods protesting. Fun chaos, unpredictable outcome. I support.
- kibwen 3y ago
  What makes you think that new mods would be any less oppressive than old mods?
  - seydor 3y ago
jleyank 3y ago
How does / will Reddit make money? Selling ads? Harvesting data? Monthly subscriptions? Some combination of all three? I have difficulty imagining why anybody would pay a fee to join a bbs no matter how fancy it is. Might be just me as a cheap old codger. Now, they can use ai to generate posts and dispense with moderators and even posters I guess.
- rgbrenner 3y ago
  They do all of those things plus selling 'coins'.. and generate $500-600m/year from it.
- manishsharan 3y ago
  If some people are willing to pay $8 for Twitter,they will happily pay more for Reddit.
  - Peanuts99 3y ago
    Reddit does have Reddit premium which is a monthly subscription but they won't even allow users who purchase that to use third party apps. That would be a sensible middle ground.
- kokanee 3y ago
  They sell ads, but now they also charge for API requests. Unlike most forums, a significant amount of Reddit interactions happen via the API. They have all the best communities on the internet, but their software is HORRIBLE, so the community has created all kinds of popular 3rd party clients, tools, and bots for engaging the community without having to use the god-awful Reddit software.
- dahwolf 3y ago
  I think this question is far more interesting than the blackout drama. It seems Reddit hasn't made a cent of profit in 15 years. That's absurd even by SV standards. Is it incompetence? Not a priority because the focus was always on growth? Or just difficult/impossible as nobody wants to pay for anything and block ads? I don't know the answer, but the answer matters. Both in this strike and the Stackoverflow strike many people are dropping claims that the company only cares about money. Those claims make little sense to me when the companies is making a loss. You could have very valid reasons to strike, but you're striking against a company in financial trouble, facing an existential AI threat, and an advertiser pullback.
lisasays 3y ago
So is Reddit content being (usefully) archived anywhere, and if so, where? By "useful" I mean in an easily searchable / navigable / quickly rendering form (not via the Wayback Machine).
- redmerchant2 3y ago
  Pushshift but even that is constantly down. It was offline since last month with API changes. Spez claimed they’ll fix it for approved mods only so the casual user is likely out of luck.
  - Prickle 3y ago
    If I remember correctly, Pushshift was actually banned by Reddit. Last I read, they were renegotiating API usage terms. I remember seeing one of the devs asking when it would be reapproved.
- seydor 3y ago
  In ChatGPT's memory
Whatarethese 3y ago
This is what will force Reddits hand to either backtrack or remove those mods and place their own. Which the ladder would no doubt be worse.
- 312c 3y ago
  How is a company that is not profitable according to the CEO going to hire 20,000 people to replace the volunteer moderators?
  - eipie10 3y ago
    Is it hard to find volunteer moderators who wouldn't block off access to sub reddits? I also doubt the number is as high as 20k. As long as the top mod aligns with Reddit, the other moderators can do nothing.
xyst 3y ago
Good. This works out for everybody except the brain dead C-level executives that tried to bully indie app developers. - regular people get a break from their echo chambers - VOLUNTEER mods get a break - journalists get their news article The only loser here is the corporation side. Significant loss of value from decreased user activity. Subsequent loss of revenue. Inability to extract as much value from the users data via comments and posts. I said this in another post but the existing CEO needs to get replaced. Maybe throw in a few other C—level executives to serve as additional blood sacrifices. Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements.
- depereo 3y ago
  I added reddit.com to my ublock filters - it was kind of an automatic click a few times a day and it's been a nice way to break the habit so strongly. I've got friends doing the same, and our microcommunity has formed around another platform already, after collectively losing reddit. It was so clearly a half-assed, badly thought out policy. No mention of mod tools. No mention of accessibility tools. No mention of research. Just 'API priced at ridiculous levels in 4 weeks'. They immediately had to walk a bunch of exemptions for those obvious considerations out. So extraordinarily half-assed. And for such a small sniff of revenue. They must be desperate.
  - OldManRyan 3y ago
    I also added reddit to my ublock filters. Amazing how I never realized how often I go on autopilot and type reddit.com/r/whateversubreddit. If anyone else wants to do it, just add ||reddit.com^$all to your filters in ublock origin.
    - plsbenice34 3y ago
      Thanks, i just did it too since you made it easier to know how
  - LeifCarrotson 3y ago
RivieraKid 3y ago
To make this work, the protest needs one additional ingredient: create a Reddit clone and move the subreddits there while the blackout lasts. This will increase the pressure 10x. By a Reddit clone I mean something pixel-perfect (except the branding) because users hate changes.
- hmsimha 3y ago
  I think it'd be better to create an open-source platform to power one "subreddit" that can be hosted and deployed by the mods. Then the content can be exported from reddit into each of those platforms. The instances could be federated. Reddit users could redeem their account across the federated network by proving they control the same account on reddit (either send a message to a bot on reddit, or by generating a one-time password then posting its hash to reddit)
asciii 3y ago
I deleted Apollo and blocked all reddit in general. It was a nice discovery tool and formula1 subreddit was great (memes and all) but I think spez really screwed it up.
- Hunter_Barrett 3y ago
  I have been a member of r/NASCAR for nearly a decade, and it's been a great place to gather with NASCAR fans outside of the stereotypical Facebook/Twitter crowd. Niche (ish?) sport/hobby/interest subs like that are going to suffer the most from reddit's potential downfall, as there isn't another viable, easily-accessible place for members of those communities to gather online.
miyuru 3y ago
Reddit will be in some trouble when Google traffic begins to drop.
slicktux 3y ago
I’m all for this but what’s to keep Reddit from manning the subreddits themselves??
- meepmorp 3y ago
  The same thing that was stopping them before, that's a lot of work. Plus, it was free before, so they'd need to spend some money doing it themselves.
  - mike741 3y ago
    how were those moderators chosen the first time around? what's to prevent them from repeating that selection process? it might take a bit of work but the circumstances seem to merit at least that much.
    - meepmorp 3y ago
      The person who makes the subreddit is the head mod; they can add others. Some subs do voting, or solicit nominations for new mods.
      - mike741 3y ago
        thanks. is the nomination and voting a built in reddit feature? if so, this sounds like a good time to use it.
        meepmorp 3y ago
        No, it just happens in the sub as a normal thread - the mods make a post saying they're looking for more mods, people respond. Some subs do the voting offsite, sometimes the mods just pick someone to add.
        mike741 3y ago
        oh wow. that seems like the sort of critical feature reddit should have built in.
vbezhenar 3y ago
Is there some alternative reddits? I don’t care about this stupid protest and I’m sure many users as well.
- tester457 3y ago
  None with the same niches that made reddit useful.
- Animats 3y ago
  That's a good question. If you want a discussion group, and you don't need Reddit for discovery, where to go?
- mike741 3y ago
  Aren't you on an alternative right now?
SecurityMinded 3y ago
I am unable to understand this bruhaha about reddit as I am an occasional user of this website and mostly in lurking mode. Was there a promise made to those 3rd party app authors and users that their access would be perpetual, not to be taken away from them, no matter what ? I don't think any for-profit company makes such promises. If you play in someone's walled garden, you should be ready to see them change the rules as they see fit. I am not sure why reddit decided to nix the 3rd party apps but my gut feeling is, this is a financially motivated move. And if it is so, can you blame them? I wish someone could explain me why everyone is in an huge uproar today.
- Hunter_Barrett 3y ago
  The two biggest issues I've heard brought up (other than the fact that apps like Apollo just work better than the official app and don't have ads) is that moderation tools are dependent upon third-party apps, and third-party apps are more accessible for people with disabilities than the official reddit app.
- searine 3y ago
  The deeper issue is the C-suite being unresponsive to users wants and needs. Reddits comments are a goldmine for LLMs, hiking the price on the API is to cash in on data greedy AI. 3rd party apps are just a pawn. Yes it is reddit's site, but the product is the community, and the community knows it. People are mad because instead of being open and honest about their play, reddit tried sneak it it in. They are trying to give Reddit shareholders their win while everyone else loses.
- molave 3y ago
  There's a surface-level and deeper-level answer here. Surface-level: the API price hikes are at a glance meant to force out third-party Reddit interfaces. To speculate, this is aimed to funnel users to Reddit's official application. I can say that because the mobile website is getting crippled over time to "encourage" users to use the app. Deeper-level: it is reflective of Reddit corporate's attitudes towards its users. They are gearing for an IPO, so they want to tell investors that they will be profitable (read: milk its users, monetize everything, remove convenient features if it will mean profits, etc.)
omgmajk 3y ago
Good, who wants to use Reddit without RIF anyways.
- CincinnatiMan 3y ago
  Reddit is perfectly usable on the browser with old.reddit.com
  - omgmajk 3y ago
    Yeah, I do that too but on mobile is what I meant.
Hunter_Barrett 3y ago
This is what the protest should have been from the start. The biggest mistake that any of the participating subs made was setting an end date. u/spez and the rest of the reddit admin need to be sweating, wondering when their site will return to normal.
seydor 3y ago
This will be good for reddit. Maybe they will manage to get rid of that group of moderators, and new subs will replace them. Reddit will find new mods and the renovation will be good for their audience But first they have to make it easy for users to find alternative subreddits. Currently it s not even possible, their search sucks
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
/r/therewasanattempt is still rattling its sword of racism against whites. They can't afford to take time off.
2-718-281-828 3y ago
on a side note: the current ceo steven huffman founded reddit together with aaron swartz ... sad irony.
gsatic 3y ago
All the Freebies on the Internet of the past 20 years be it email, search, chat, news/content, video, streaming, social etc have been funded by Ads. The expectation has been there is no upper bound to what Ads can fund. But thanks to Covid and now Chat GPT et al, we know (or atleast all the freebie providers have learnt) there is an upper bound to the Ad/Attention Economy. Theses changes, what's happening at twitter, the tech layoffs, govt regulations and fines, are all signs using Freebies for Attention Capture are not going to endlessly scale.
- Zamiel_Snawley 3y ago
  Honestly, if they were just screwing developers of third party frontends, people probably wouldn't have cared that much. They are also screwing their moderators who use API-based tools, and people who need accessibility accommodations that reddit does not provide. Not to mention the scummy behavior towards the Apollo developer.
- seydor 3y ago
  mainly because google+FB gobbled up the whole of advertising AFAIK historically the % of GDP spent on advertising was more or less constant so it s not like advertisers bailed
paganel 3y ago
Good, I do hope they remain closed indefinitely. Nothing is stopping people from creating a /nba2 sub-reddit or something in order to get rid of this power-hungry mods. It was hilarious how the /nba users congregated on /denvernuggets/ in order to make a game thread last night.
juujian 3y ago
Reddit already gave their strategy away earlier today when Hoffman wrote: > We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us.[^1] It's encouraging to see that some subreddits are responding to the fact that the company is just planning to ignore users. [^1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...
scohesc 3y ago
Probably a very _very_ controversial and unpopular opinion - though I welcome any insight or opinions from others. Reddit is fully within their rights to seize the subreddits from their unpaid moderators and I would expect them to if they're gearing up for an IPO. They're fully within their rights to change how people access their website, how people interact with it, and limit who has access to the data on the website. When I clicked on a reddit result on Google to find some information, only to find it has been closed down in protest after trying to find something on Google, I was frustrated - not at Reddit, but the unpaid moderators who believe they have some sort of self-ordained right to manipulate a company (granted, I guess they do have some power as Reddit is relying on these unpaid moderators to do Reddits job.) I highly, highly doubt that Reddit will change their tune - they might lower the API costs, they might capitulate in some capacity in some regards to accessibility, but they'll still work towards an IPO and will harm their website as a result. Their CEO is a scumbag and both their paid and unpaid moderators/admins have strong biases in any subreddits that aren't niche hobbies and meant for wider audiences. Great for those who wish to follow the echo chambers, but not so great for others who don't _really_ have alternatives. I'll be happy if Reddit disappears off the planet, but I fear what will replace it will be even more restrictive - the internet needs decentralization of social media and communication.
- redundantly 3y ago
  > Reddit is fully within their rights to seize the subreddits from their unpaid moderators Sure. Technically they are within their rights to do that. Would it be good for them to do so? Probably not. It'll piss off their user base. As others have mentioned, it'll open themselves to lawsuits due to content moderation. It'll cost them a lot to pay people to moderate these communities, which they currently get for free. > I would expect them to [seize the subreddits] if they're gearing up for an IPO See above. This would make them less profitable and most likely negatively affect said IPO. > ... I was frustrated - not at Reddit, but the unpaid moderators who believe they have some sort of self-ordained right to manipulate a company. It's not self-ordained. They're doing what they are allowed to do with these subreddits, at least until Reddit takes away their moderator access.
- tester457 3y ago
mark_l_watson 3y ago
Reddit is free to tweak their monitization any way they like. I am curious how this will turn out, when we look back on this a year from now. This is an opportunity for new moderators to start new subreddits. Conversely Reddit management may back down.
- goatlover 3y ago
  I remember several controversies with Netflix and the New York times which resulted in public outcry and people leaving, or at least proclaiming it in mass on social media. But then it died down and both are still quite popular.
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
Apparently they're demoting head jannies and removing powerjannies from the big subs. I called this in another comment. Spez won't let this continue - and he gets the nice second-order result of not having to deal with people like Merari
koolba 3y ago
Perhaps spez thinks he can replace all the free labor Reddit gets for posts and mods with an AI? The larger subs clearly have a large enough corpus to have a defined voice. The next step after that would be an AI to generate the replies, worn out jokes, and repost complaints.
glonq 3y ago
I've been off of reddit for 2 days now, and am willing to stay off idefinitely. TBH I'm probably happier and more productive without it. I just need to find something to read in the bathroom instead...
- GreenWatermelon 3y ago
  PDF books. I recommend PDF books.
sdfghswe 3y ago
ELI5: Why can't reddit just unblackout whatever subs they want?
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Small subs wouldn't matter, big subs would stink.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  From a technical perspective, there's no reason they couldn't. God help me, part of me wants to see what would happen next if they did. There would certainly be some positive consequences to doing so (more of that sweet, sweet traffic, and establishing once and for all who is the daddy) but also some huge negative ones: for one thing, some already angry moderators would likely quit, and for another it would basically destroy any shred of remaining good will or feeling of community. It would be a slap in the face. They can still walk back their API pricing changes, they can even hope this bad press blows over, but I don't know if they could salvage their reputation if they just exerted autocratic control over their community-based platform. If moderators don't feel like they're in charge of their own subreddits, that they're just fungible, unpaid workers, they'd probably realize they're being used and go away.
mtklein 3y ago
14 or 15 year Reddit user, mostly as a lurker -- I strongly support this. Reddit is a community, and a community is its people.
- mike741 3y ago
  but its people aren't allowed in? doesn't this prove reddit is not its people but rather a small group of moderators?
throwaway106382 3y ago
So this means spez is just gonna suspend and institute his own mods, right? Blackout isn't enough, don't let them scab the VOLUNTEER mods - don't cross the picket line - better yet, delete your account after using a tool to scrub your account's history. Delete isn't enough, you need to replace it with junk. If you're going to lurk, make sure you're blocking first party ads. https://github.com/scullionw/reddit-scrubber https://github.com/scullionw/reddit-scrubber
lost_tourist 3y ago
That's great news. I'm always cheering for the little guy. I love capitalism but I also love people flexing on people that try to abuse their customers.
- jtode 3y ago
  Technically, they're flexing on the unpaid labour they've based their business plans on, which is an order of magnitude or two stupider. Also, is it capitalism you love, or is it free markets and independent business? Cause capitalism is just when someone sits on their ass and collects dividends while other people work.
dijit 3y ago
I bit the bullet yesterday and just called it quits. I was there for a very long time (before it was even “launched” officially). So I do it with a heavy heart, but I don't think there’s any way of going back for them now. Its been a downward trend for literally years at this point. https://imgur.com/gallery/JhsPQnI https://imgur.com/gallery/JhsPQnI
- nl_jaded 3y ago
  Honestly, good on you, enjoy a healthier life :]
- eep_social 3y ago
  I quit in October and don’t miss it much. A few niche subs but nothing that would ever be on the home page. All this drama has me visiting more than I had over the intervening time which is sort of funny, they’re probably seeing a traffic bump right now from all the publicity but I believe the PR dumpster fire will be the end of their IPO ambitions.
- jumpCastle 3y ago
  It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.
  - dijit 3y ago
    Sure, but you can’t argue that there is no sentimentality lost when you delete such an old account with your canonical username. (albeit title cased like I used to do as an early teen). Its extremely unlikely I go back because ultimately I will feel like I have less than I did before. even if its just fake internet points.
- neuronic 3y ago
  I went through multiple accounts since 2009, first one I closed was due to harassment as a result of posting about the Xbox One (which wasn't released back then)... reddit always had extremely cringy but popular sides to it (Unidan, Boston Marathon witch hunt) and since the very beginning the decisions of the leadership have felt immature, off and wrong. Reddit's leadership has always prevented reddit from being a thriving, productive community and their ineptitude has simply reached a boiling point now. For most of the time it felt like sifting through liquid poop to find a gold nugget once a week.
tarkin2 3y ago
Uh. I’m not really following this. But are people moving to other services? If you’re just going dark Reddit will know you’ll eventually cave in. Blackouts feel like you’re saying “we love you so please change”. I’d be happy to see people use other services. I’d appreciate the decentralisation.
- malermeister 3y ago
  Lemmy and kbin seem to be where people are going. They're both federated and are compatible with each other.
mike741 3y ago
can someone explain why Reddit staff doesn't just forcibly reopen these subs and perma-ban their moderators?
dirtyid 3y ago
What's next? Degrading the front page experience like a few years ago over I forgot what drama. I think ultimately this will blow over but I'm curious how far motivated actors can break/cripple the platform, at least in terms of valuation.
user3939382 3y ago
I tried to sign up for lemmy. I quit trying and lost interest at like click/step 7 or 8.
neals 3y ago
Anybody, just give something to read or look at that is not reddit,but had new mildly interesting content often. I'll remove Reddit and never look back...
- thih9 3y ago
  This really depends on what you like. Different people might use instead: HN, imgur, Bored Panda, laughingsquid, fark, tiktok, atlasobscura, or something from yesterday's "reddit alternatives" thread [1]; and I'm sure there are more. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789
borner791 3y ago
I really wonder if it would be better to go the other way. Mods take a break, and just let the bots shit allover the content. It takes like 20mn of un-moderated internet before it's all ads and spam... Reddit is basically reddit because of the carefully curated posts.
- jtode 3y ago
  I once, after four years of acting as sole line of defense against a destructively stupid but politically influential "colleague," I gave warnings then gave notice. I ended up jumping to another department where I watched him bring in an expensive vendor to implement a replacement for a system I had been using, and then watched corrupt files start appearing in the production files. I was there just long enough to hear about his quiet exit from the company. Someone else needs to quietly exit from the company if they hope to get this out of the grease fire. At this point, we'll all see what happens pretty quickly I think, but this looks to me like a ship with a thousand leaks and a drunk captain who won't come out of his cabin because people yell at him about problems that are not his when he does.
johnny99k 3y ago
The mods have virtually no control over the situation. Reddit can change their passwords and just have employee moderators from now on. If I was running Reddit, this is what I would be planning right now.
- az226 3y ago
  This whole thing was about small sums of money. Reddit isn’t profitable. And now it’s going to pay an army of moderators? Yeah, good luck.
throwaway53255 3y ago
[flagged]
bastard_op 3y ago
Reddit showed up for info a lot that after all these years I subscribed as an old bastard op from the 90's. Now I regret it months later with this. Let them migrate I say.
jbigelow76 3y ago
I've never been a big reddit user but I increased my usage as Twitter devolved into what it is now, but now I'm going to have to find something else. I'll most likely start paying for Apple News for general/current event stuff, stick with HN for tech, but I no longer have a "turn off your brain and just decompress with some funny/random crap" outlet. Bummer, I'm sure it was floated, and probably shot down for some stupid non-sensical reason, but I would have insta-paid something in the neighborhood of 20 bucks a year for a personal access token that I could plug into an app like Apollo and continue using Reddit via API.
- d0gbread 3y ago
  They could have required Reddit Premium to use third party apps or something of the sort. Or injected ads into third party apps via the API. Or forced third party apps through a verification process to get an API key not unlike Google's Oauth process and monetize it differently for training use cases, etc.
marcrosoft 3y ago
I deleted my decade old account. Can digg come back?
bennylava 3y ago
[flagged]
paul_funyun 3y ago
Strip current moderation of subreddit ownership if they stay private, easy solution. Most users don't care about moderators or niche API issues.
throw9away6 3y ago
How do I look up product reviews now? It used to be possible to look up product + Reddit. Without Reddit is just the Google swamp
joshcsimmons 3y ago
Why don't they simply ban the mods and reopen the subreddits?
WaffleIronMaker 3y ago
I know it's probably not for everyone, but I started using Mastodon last week in response to this, and I've had a very positive experience with it. I'm never going back to Reddit.
ck2 3y ago
The only really weird to me about doing this is to do it without having an alternative first. I mean it's 2023, it's not like it takes years to make a web service. Quitting twitter was easy. Reddit not so much.
billy_bitchtits 3y ago
Like the death if digg fark etc. people will move on. I hope it’s to a fediverse solution.
donatj 3y ago
While it would be an unpopular move, it would be pretty trivial for Reddit just to force reactive some or even all of these subreddits. I wonder if the average Reddit user would be upset enough over the action to stop using the site?
permo-w 3y ago
the irony of it all is borderline unbelievable. reddit's justification for this is that they don't want to continue providing profit for smaller corporations for free. this from reddit, a website that could not possibly make a profit without the work moderators do for free
mariuolo 3y ago
Won't users simply move to other subreddits or found more?

515 points by edsimpson 3y ago

hitpointdrew 3y ago

[flagged]

_Microft 3y ago
> I left Reddit back when they decided they don’t care about free speech and banned nonewnormal. What happened to this new normal btw? Everything has reverted to pre-pandemic life here as it seems. Wasn't the expectation that we're going to have to live suppressed for all time?
- 100011_100001 3y ago
  Shhh.... Conspiracy theorists just move to a new conspiracy, they never go back and evaluate how they got swindled the first time.
  - b59831 3y ago
    The important part is you feel superior.
    - sidfthec 3y ago
      What do you mean? Those who follow absurd conspiracy theories, like the theory that mask mandates would never go away and that it was somehow solely a power play by government leaders, cause massive damage to society. And it's true that most never re-evaluate how their incorrect beliefs came to be before getting sucked into another conspiracy/grift. You seem to be reducing the issue to someone feeling superior to another.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  This would be them saying that they've won the battle. And it's quite possible that some of the left-wing political response to shelter-in-place orders and mask mandates, namely deciding to end them as policy, is because of right-wing (and some left-wing) pushback. I just don't know how much. Though I think it was stupid as hell the way they ended both social distancing and mask mandates back in July of 2021, when infection rates were still higher than when the mandates began.
  - Mindwipe 3y ago
    Said pushback didn't really happen in the UK - polling data in favour of lockdowns was insanely popular. It still broadly stopped both before the US did. These campaigns achieved nothing.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      To be fair you already had a Conservative government during the time.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    It is also possible that their pushback made stronger mandates necessary and thus prolonged the whole thing. Without data it's all speculation.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago
  [dead]

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

Does this actually affect subscribers to sub-reddits? If this is extended indefinitely I would expect competing sub-reddits to form.

_____-___ 3y ago
Considering spez has shown before he doesn’t really care for Reddit’s rules that are applied to the rable and he can do what he wants (like editing others posts), I fully expect the permanently blacked out subs to have new ownership and become public again before too long.
activiation 3y ago
I unsubscrided from a few subs that weren't doing the blackout
- redmerchant2 3y ago
  I’m happy that 90% of the subs I sub to joined the blackout. But some subs like r/comics are strangely boot licky despite how community engaged the mod team seemed to be. Automatically removing requests about the blackout and not even entertaining the discussion.
- bastijn 3y ago
  I'm reading new ones that aren't doing the blackout. Need for content didn't change.
  - activiation 3y ago
    I browse new posts on HN instead
  - goatlover 3y ago
    r/news and r/worldnews didn't blackout.

EA-3167 3y ago

That awkward moment when you (Spez) calls a bluff only to realize it was no bluff.

cookiengineer 3y ago
That awkward moment when spez removes the downvote functions on his profile. Gotta make that profile shine for VCs!?
- prox 3y ago
  Spez seems like the latest outed manchild amongst CEOs.
  - bastijn 3y ago
    That awkward moment you realize Reddit is in a better position to win this war because people like us just want to have a digital place to spend time, not fight a war. Truth be told I don't care much about all of this, I just want my subs back or replaced so I can mindlessly scroll them. Wasn't using a third party app, but if I was I'd probably feel unhappy for a week before I simply switch and don't think back.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      I've been actively avoiding Reddit during this protest and I just signed up to a Lemmy instance. The UI isn't great but the communities are already pretty hopping. I need to subscribe to a few more things but it seems to handle the fix for now. I'm never using Reddit's awful app -- it's just not how I like to use Reddit. I'm an old.reddit.com kind of person.
      - bastijn 3y ago
        The point is for any that is like you my guess is there are 2 more like me. Or 20, or 200. Never checked how much people use 3rd party apps vs. total users. Honest question, what is so bad about the Reddit app that you would give up browsing the content you like? I experience little ads, and if I would be annoyed by it I would probably find ways to get rid of it (pi-hole style). I'm OK with how the app displays comments, I can fold them etc. Don't need much more.

jprd 3y ago

Good.

kojeovo 3y ago

Guess people will just flock to /r/awww and other clones

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

milkytron 3y ago

This is what is needed to put pressure on Reddit. A two day protest then returning to normal is a blip in the grand scheme of things. But if they do not change their API pricing, stance on third party apps, etc, then a prolonged blackout could lead to an eventual exodus. I hope the communities I used to engage in partake in this prolonged blackout.

nielsbot 3y ago
This is explicitly what their CEO said. Many subreddits said they'd return on wednesday. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...
- donmcronald 3y ago
  Maybe I'm reading it in a biased manner, but that sure has the feel of "if we wait it out the pigs will get hungry and be back at the trough on Wednesday." I don't think they respect their users, he doesn't understand that's a big part of why people are getting so upset, and he just keeps talking. Lol.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    > ...I don't think they respect their users... What gave you that idea? The fact that spez (the ceo) was head-mod for /r/jailbait? Or was it spez firing the AMA mod that had -massive- community engagement? Or was it spez bullying one of the top reddit-app developers (Christian, Apollo reddit-app developer)? Reddit /obviously/ respects each and every user, the app developers, the subreddit mods, and it shows! /s
    - quickthrowman 3y ago
      Jeez, now he was the head mod of r/jailbait? This game of telephone is ridiculous. There’s no need to slander the guy with false information. Reddit used to allow the moderators of a subreddit to automatically make someone a moderator of that subreddit. Then, as things like people being added as an r/jailbait mod against their wishes became widespread, Reddit changed to an invite system which required a user to accept an invite to be a moderator. Here is a post on Reddit from 10 years ago describing in depth how the ‘new’ mod invite system works and also stating that you could be made a moderator against your wishes: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/117wkp/reddit_change_adding_moderators_now_uses_an/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/117wkp/reddit_ch... Spez was not an actual moderator of r/jailbait, he was added against his wishes. Please don’t spread harmful lies about the guy, there’s enough true things about him to criticize. You forgot ‘stealth edited the posts of other users by editing the database directly’ in his list of crimes, don’t forget that along with the firing of the AMA person and lying about the Apollo dev. Those things are all based in reality.

BoxOfRain 3y ago

To the people who've been in this situation, what would you do in Huffman's shoes? From my fairly naïve perspective it looks like he's doing a pretty poor job managing this crisis but am I overestimating the trouble he's in? At some point he'll either be forced to back down or replace the mods of the big subs with people willing to cross the picket line, I don't see why he doesn't just pull the plaster off now either way rather than drag this out bleeding credibility all the while?

dybber 3y ago
I haven’t been in a situation like this. I think they should call it off, and announce that they will go back to the drawing board. Then restart talks with the API users and third party app developers. What if they reduced the price of Reddit premium to $3/month and made API and third party apps only available for Reddit premium subscribers? - Reddit would get many more premium subscribers - App developers would be able to avoid managing subscription fee’s themselves and continue as before - Users of the official Reddit app would not be affected - Users of third party apps would have to pay for Reddit Premium - but maybe at a discount
- Alupis 3y ago
  I've gotta tell you - in 6-12 months nobody will even care anymore - and Reddit will still be used en masse like before. Talking with regular non-techy people who use reddit regularly - nobody outside our bubble even knows about or cares about the whole API fiasco. Most people I've talked with shrug and say they'll just use the official app if that's what it all means. The others asked if they can just pay and use the same 3rd party app in the future. Reddit has been, and is filled with drama. These public news pieces make the community appear extremely naïve, to a fault. When people hear some of these apps had tens, or hundreds of thousands of users that circumvented ad revenue for reddit - they mostly do not have sympathy for the 3rd party app developers. Just being realistic. I like reddit as much as the next guy, and agree the leadership is terrible (reddit has a long history of terrible leadership).
  - predictabl3 3y ago

autokad 3y ago

I wonder if this will become similar to what happened with digg.com

activiation 3y ago
Hope so... Wonder what would be next though.
- theobromananda 3y ago
  Federated sites like lemmy and mastodon.
donmcronald 3y ago
I don't think so. Digg was a vote driven news feed one day and a commercial feed the next. It was like visiting a totally different website in terms of content. Reddit was sitting there with the "old" format, so it wasn't too shocking to see everyone migrate. This isn't a drastic change and there aren't any competitors that are offering anything better (ignoring the benefits of something decentralized).
- smileysteve 3y ago
  I was getting tired of being pestered with "Install Our App" or the new slower javascript interface, so I started using RedReader It's a whole different interface

kart23 3y ago

They're getting away with this because there really is no serious competitor for reddit. When people actually start migrating away from reddit and post/comment volume is significantly down, you'll see reddit suddenly be a lot more willing to engage with the community.

pkju62dqmx 3y ago
You’re right due to the network effects Reddit currently enjoys. Personally, I’ve quite enjoyed using tildes.net lately. I know everyone is jumping on Lemmy and federation, which is great in practice but Tildes feels more accessible to me and for that reason may have more potential to actually capture a user base.
- imchillyb 3y ago
  I'd love an invite. If you have one available, please consider throwing me a tildes.net invite. Thanks m8.
  - DougEiffel 3y ago
    If they send one to you, would you consider sending one to me?
    - satiric 3y ago
      I'll join in on the train. Would you mind sending on to me if you get one?
      - adhvaryu 3y ago
        Choo choo
        vintagedave 3y ago
        I checked out the site, and it looks great. May I join the invite request train too please? My email is my username at gmail. Many thanks :)

endisneigh 3y ago

What’s stopping Reddit from enabling all the subs?

dyingkneepad 3y ago
Having people do the (absolutely necessary) moderation for free.
- Alupis 3y ago
  If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat. At some point, Reddit will just force all subs to be open again, and any mods that try to delete the sub or do no moderation will just get banned or whatever. It's pretty hard to fight against the corp using the corp's own platform.
  - katbyte 3y ago
    > If they asked random sub users who wants to be a mod - they'll get more free moderators within a heartbeat. no, because it is actual work to be a mod. work you don't get paid or rewarded for. i'd say no without hesitation.
  - Aaargh20318 3y ago
    Sure, they’d get plenty or people who would want to get moderator rights. How many of those would actually put in the hours ? And how would you know before you hand over the sub? Not only that, it would create a revolt among the moderators who were still left so you’d have to do this for all subs at once. Tens of thousands of people. It would be an absolute disaster for Reddit.
  - notaustinpowers 3y ago
    They absolutely will, but I wouldn't expect those mods to actually be good mods. I've been in multiple subreddits where a new mod would be assigned because the current ones stopped being active and they'd wreck the subreddit. All posts require approval, sub topic changed, any criticism of the changes met with a permanent ban, etc. For a company wanting to go public, having users banned from some of the most popular subs, the same subs that rely on said users to publish content, Reddit may as well have shot itself in the foot. When the corp has relied on the good graces of users and mods to effectively run the site, both by providing the content AND moderating the content, any change to that status quo is going to be met with open hostility from the top 1% contributors.

ThomW 3y ago

... until they just take over the moderation of their largest communities and this whole thing ends. I mean what's so magical about the moderation of something like r/videos other than the mods being free labor for Reddit?

Eldt 3y ago
Moderation can make or break a subreddit
- paulmd 3y ago
  Moderation of the subreddit matters a lot less than sitting on a common keyword. It’s not like r/real_trueToyotaFans2 is going to see a ton of traffic even if it’s the best moderated sub in the world. Domain-squatting on a couple dozen important keywords and brand names in 2005 is the powermod secret to success, not that they’re just that great at their job that they rose to the top on merit. There are quite a few subs that prove this - really, really badly moderated but sitting on super, super valuable real estate. And Reddit doesn’t really have a mechanism for handling this unless the mod is outright posting gore or something - they got their first in 2005, that’s the end of it.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  Generally I’d say moderators can break a subreddit far more easily than they can make it, but that’s a danger of a big mod cull.
tux3 3y ago
If they do, whatever thrown together group of reddit appointed substitutes get the task of trying to moderate all of reddit at once is likely going to be drowning very badly And you can expect people engaged with the protest to take full advantage of this if it happens, making the problem that much worse If you simply reopen without any of the current mods, the site will be overrun
- civilitty 3y ago
  I’ve got my entire neighborhood teed up to go and spread rumors that spez likes to do weird things to porcupines the second the moderation walls go down.

activiation 3y ago

[flagged]

mrandish 3y ago

This may prompt Reddit to push ahead on their threat to take over key subs that stay dark by replacing the moderators with their own. Of course, Reddit can't afford to scale that to very many popular subs as modding those is extremely labor intensive. Worse for Reddit, dumping long-time community moderators en masse would be crossing a Rubicon that could tip Reddit into a death spiral of low-effort moderation reducing content quality and engagement which will feed back on itself. The mods going dark for longer may in fact be hoping to goad Reddit into responding with such self-destructive stupidity.

heyparkerj 3y ago
Did Reddit actually make that threat or was that just a fearful suspicion from the userbase?
ranger207 3y ago
I'm really not sure the big subs would suffer all that much. Many of them are already modded by a clique of mods and are large enough that there's not really any community to be had there anyway. It would be pretty terrible for the small communities that were reddit's most valuable part
- CryptoBanker 3y ago
  Replacing a few mods that moderate many large communities with paid mods is ripping the door wide open to lawsuits
  - post-it 3y ago
    What damages would who experience?
    - narism 3y ago
      Defamation for starters. See Neibich v. Reddit and Berger v. Reddit. So far section 230 has shielded them from much of these but the law has been targeted over the last couple years. So far the Supreme Court hasn’t addressed questions on the scope of section 230. I’m guessing the thinking goes if section 230 scope is narrowed and moderators are on the company payroll that could move them from a content provider (not liable) to more of a newspaper publishing articles (liable).

mvdtnz 3y ago

Reddit would be infinitely better without any subreddits bigger than about 100k subscribers.

zucked 3y ago
That’s been the part of this blackout that has hurt the most, honestly. I’ve been on Reddit for longer than a decade and all but entirely shut out the front page subs like Videos, InterestingAF, etc. I wouldn’t miss those if they disappeared tomorrow. Instead, I’m in far smaller niche and location-relevant subs. I didn’t realize what cutting off my city subreddit would do for my sense of connection to my city. I didn’t realize how shit general search results are for questions about hobbies. It’s really made me question if can allow one entity to serve as such an important conduit to my interests again.
epmatsw 3y ago
Sports subreddits are a notable exception imo. While they might get a bit silly, r/cfb, r/nba, etc. are so much better than Twitter or any other public forum that losing them would be pretty awful.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  I only follow motorsports so the only sports subs I'm on are motogp, v8supercars and formula1. The F1 subreddit (over a million subs)is one of the absolute worst places on the internet for any kind of discussion. It's totally dominated by The Hive Mind, dissenting opinions are absolutely unwelcome and the top posts on every single post are low-effort jokes, usually jokes that have been told a thousand times before. It's awful. MotoGP (250k+ subs) is better, but still suffers from similar problems. V8Supercars is quiet, but the discussion is of a far higher quality. "Better than twitter" is a low bar to clear.
  - snuxoll 3y ago
    /r/formula1 is really hit or miss. I wouldn't say it's as horrible as you make it out to be, but the pervasive groupthink of the sport as a whole (whoever is on top needs to be knocked down a peg, Liberty Media sucks, whatever) is certainly strong there.

gumballindie 3y ago

Expect more sealed off content. Thanks to ai scrapers more companies will want to close their apis or charge a fee. Heck even openai, the main leech want to prevent others from “training” their bots against their ai that has been trained on other people’s work, bandwidth and ip. Mods closing subreddits are just a symptom.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tedivm 3y ago
Removing the APIs, or gatekeeping them, will do absolutely nothing to prevent the publicly exposed data from being collected.
- Zamiel_Snawley 3y ago
  Agreed, writing a scraper is simply worth the cost to get the training data.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Yeah I remember back in the day people stealing credit card data used to claim there is nothing to be done against them. Then warez kids on irc claiming no one can or should stop piracy. Things will eventually balance out, dont worry too much.
    - malermeister 3y ago
      Piracy still hasn't been stopped, fwiw
      - CommitSyn 3y ago
        Neither has credit card theft, from beginner to expert.
    - 3y ago

themagician 3y ago

Great opportunity for people to create derivative subreddits without oppressive mods.

distrill 3y ago
i feel like mod oppression isn't much an issue outside of the free speech absolutism rhetoric that plagues places like twitter. and tbh most of the people screeching about this aren't spending much time on reddit to begin with.
- seydor 3y ago
  mostly because they have been banned tbh
ranger207 3y ago
There's two problems with this: first, the new mods have a good chance of being just as bad as the old mods. Second, the new subs will not be able to use the good subreddit names and will be harder to find. The latter is core problem: discoverability. If it was possible to just found a new sub and have it show up just as clearly when you search for subs related to a particular topic, then if the mods turn out to be terrible there's not many problems in just starting a new sub. But as long as only one subreddit can have a particular name you can't solve that problem
- themagician 3y ago
  You’re right about the first part. For the second part—they should free up the names of mods protesting. Fun chaos, unpredictable outcome. I support.
kibwen 3y ago
What makes you think that new mods would be any less oppressive than old mods?
- seydor 3y ago

jleyank 3y ago

How does / will Reddit make money? Selling ads? Harvesting data? Monthly subscriptions? Some combination of all three? I have difficulty imagining why anybody would pay a fee to join a bbs no matter how fancy it is. Might be just me as a cheap old codger. Now, they can use ai to generate posts and dispense with moderators and even posters I guess.

rgbrenner 3y ago
They do all of those things plus selling 'coins'.. and generate $500-600m/year from it.
manishsharan 3y ago
If some people are willing to pay $8 for Twitter,they will happily pay more for Reddit.
- Peanuts99 3y ago
  Reddit does have Reddit premium which is a monthly subscription but they won't even allow users who purchase that to use third party apps. That would be a sensible middle ground.
kokanee 3y ago
They sell ads, but now they also charge for API requests. Unlike most forums, a significant amount of Reddit interactions happen via the API. They have all the best communities on the internet, but their software is HORRIBLE, so the community has created all kinds of popular 3rd party clients, tools, and bots for engaging the community without having to use the god-awful Reddit software.
dahwolf 3y ago
I think this question is far more interesting than the blackout drama. It seems Reddit hasn't made a cent of profit in 15 years. That's absurd even by SV standards. Is it incompetence? Not a priority because the focus was always on growth? Or just difficult/impossible as nobody wants to pay for anything and block ads? I don't know the answer, but the answer matters. Both in this strike and the Stackoverflow strike many people are dropping claims that the company only cares about money. Those claims make little sense to me when the companies is making a loss. You could have very valid reasons to strike, but you're striking against a company in financial trouble, facing an existential AI threat, and an advertiser pullback.

lisasays 3y ago

So is Reddit content being (usefully) archived anywhere, and if so, where? By "useful" I mean in an easily searchable / navigable / quickly rendering form (not via the Wayback Machine).

redmerchant2 3y ago
Pushshift but even that is constantly down. It was offline since last month with API changes. Spez claimed they’ll fix it for approved mods only so the casual user is likely out of luck.
- Prickle 3y ago
  If I remember correctly, Pushshift was actually banned by Reddit. Last I read, they were renegotiating API usage terms. I remember seeing one of the devs asking when it would be reapproved.
seydor 3y ago
In ChatGPT's memory

Whatarethese 3y ago

This is what will force Reddits hand to either backtrack or remove those mods and place their own. Which the ladder would no doubt be worse.

312c 3y ago
How is a company that is not profitable according to the CEO going to hire 20,000 people to replace the volunteer moderators?
- eipie10 3y ago
  Is it hard to find volunteer moderators who wouldn't block off access to sub reddits? I also doubt the number is as high as 20k. As long as the top mod aligns with Reddit, the other moderators can do nothing.

xyst 3y ago

Good. This works out for everybody except the brain dead C-level executives that tried to bully indie app developers. - regular people get a break from their echo chambers - VOLUNTEER mods get a break - journalists get their news article The only loser here is the corporation side. Significant loss of value from decreased user activity. Subsequent loss of revenue. Inability to extract as much value from the users data via comments and posts. I said this in another post but the existing CEO needs to get replaced. Maybe throw in a few other C—level executives to serve as additional blood sacrifices. Although I do foresee Reddit “super mods” forcibly removing the blackout through their backend, removing mod status from the “rebels” and inserting their own friendly mods until they can find replacements.

depereo 3y ago
I added reddit.com to my ublock filters - it was kind of an automatic click a few times a day and it's been a nice way to break the habit so strongly. I've got friends doing the same, and our microcommunity has formed around another platform already, after collectively losing reddit. It was so clearly a half-assed, badly thought out policy. No mention of mod tools. No mention of accessibility tools. No mention of research. Just 'API priced at ridiculous levels in 4 weeks'. They immediately had to walk a bunch of exemptions for those obvious considerations out. So extraordinarily half-assed. And for such a small sniff of revenue. They must be desperate.
- OldManRyan 3y ago
  I also added reddit to my ublock filters. Amazing how I never realized how often I go on autopilot and type reddit.com/r/whateversubreddit. If anyone else wants to do it, just add ||reddit.com^$all to your filters in ublock origin.
  - plsbenice34 3y ago
    Thanks, i just did it too since you made it easier to know how
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago

RivieraKid 3y ago

To make this work, the protest needs one additional ingredient: create a Reddit clone and move the subreddits there while the blackout lasts. This will increase the pressure 10x. By a Reddit clone I mean something pixel-perfect (except the branding) because users hate changes.

hmsimha 3y ago
I think it'd be better to create an open-source platform to power one "subreddit" that can be hosted and deployed by the mods. Then the content can be exported from reddit into each of those platforms. The instances could be federated. Reddit users could redeem their account across the federated network by proving they control the same account on reddit (either send a message to a bot on reddit, or by generating a one-time password then posting its hash to reddit)

asciii 3y ago

I deleted Apollo and blocked all reddit in general. It was a nice discovery tool and formula1 subreddit was great (memes and all) but I think spez really screwed it up.

Hunter_Barrett 3y ago
I have been a member of r/NASCAR for nearly a decade, and it's been a great place to gather with NASCAR fans outside of the stereotypical Facebook/Twitter crowd. Niche (ish?) sport/hobby/interest subs like that are going to suffer the most from reddit's potential downfall, as there isn't another viable, easily-accessible place for members of those communities to gather online.

miyuru 3y ago

Reddit will be in some trouble when Google traffic begins to drop.

slicktux 3y ago

I’m all for this but what’s to keep Reddit from manning the subreddits themselves??

meepmorp 3y ago
The same thing that was stopping them before, that's a lot of work. Plus, it was free before, so they'd need to spend some money doing it themselves.
- mike741 3y ago
  how were those moderators chosen the first time around? what's to prevent them from repeating that selection process? it might take a bit of work but the circumstances seem to merit at least that much.
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    The person who makes the subreddit is the head mod; they can add others. Some subs do voting, or solicit nominations for new mods.
    - mike741 3y ago
      thanks. is the nomination and voting a built in reddit feature? if so, this sounds like a good time to use it.
      - meepmorp 3y ago
        No, it just happens in the sub as a normal thread - the mods make a post saying they're looking for more mods, people respond. Some subs do the voting offsite, sometimes the mods just pick someone to add.
        mike741 3y ago
        oh wow. that seems like the sort of critical feature reddit should have built in.

vbezhenar 3y ago

Is there some alternative reddits? I don’t care about this stupid protest and I’m sure many users as well.

tester457 3y ago
None with the same niches that made reddit useful.
Animats 3y ago
That's a good question. If you want a discussion group, and you don't need Reddit for discovery, where to go?
mike741 3y ago
Aren't you on an alternative right now?

SecurityMinded 3y ago

I am unable to understand this bruhaha about reddit as I am an occasional user of this website and mostly in lurking mode. Was there a promise made to those 3rd party app authors and users that their access would be perpetual, not to be taken away from them, no matter what ? I don't think any for-profit company makes such promises. If you play in someone's walled garden, you should be ready to see them change the rules as they see fit. I am not sure why reddit decided to nix the 3rd party apps but my gut feeling is, this is a financially motivated move. And if it is so, can you blame them? I wish someone could explain me why everyone is in an huge uproar today.

Hunter_Barrett 3y ago
The two biggest issues I've heard brought up (other than the fact that apps like Apollo just work better than the official app and don't have ads) is that moderation tools are dependent upon third-party apps, and third-party apps are more accessible for people with disabilities than the official reddit app.
searine 3y ago
The deeper issue is the C-suite being unresponsive to users wants and needs. Reddits comments are a goldmine for LLMs, hiking the price on the API is to cash in on data greedy AI. 3rd party apps are just a pawn. Yes it is reddit's site, but the product is the community, and the community knows it. People are mad because instead of being open and honest about their play, reddit tried sneak it it in. They are trying to give Reddit shareholders their win while everyone else loses.
molave 3y ago
There's a surface-level and deeper-level answer here. Surface-level: the API price hikes are at a glance meant to force out third-party Reddit interfaces. To speculate, this is aimed to funnel users to Reddit's official application. I can say that because the mobile website is getting crippled over time to "encourage" users to use the app. Deeper-level: it is reflective of Reddit corporate's attitudes towards its users. They are gearing for an IPO, so they want to tell investors that they will be profitable (read: milk its users, monetize everything, remove convenient features if it will mean profits, etc.)

omgmajk 3y ago

Good, who wants to use Reddit without RIF anyways.

CincinnatiMan 3y ago
Reddit is perfectly usable on the browser with old.reddit.com
- omgmajk 3y ago
  Yeah, I do that too but on mobile is what I meant.

Hunter_Barrett 3y ago

This is what the protest should have been from the start. The biggest mistake that any of the participating subs made was setting an end date. u/spez and the rest of the reddit admin need to be sweating, wondering when their site will return to normal.

seydor 3y ago

This will be good for reddit. Maybe they will manage to get rid of that group of moderators, and new subs will replace them. Reddit will find new mods and the renovation will be good for their audience But first they have to make it easy for users to find alternative subreddits. Currently it s not even possible, their search sucks

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

/r/therewasanattempt is still rattling its sword of racism against whites. They can't afford to take time off.

2-718-281-828 3y ago

on a side note: the current ceo steven huffman founded reddit together with aaron swartz ... sad irony.

gsatic 3y ago

All the Freebies on the Internet of the past 20 years be it email, search, chat, news/content, video, streaming, social etc have been funded by Ads. The expectation has been there is no upper bound to what Ads can fund. But thanks to Covid and now Chat GPT et al, we know (or atleast all the freebie providers have learnt) there is an upper bound to the Ad/Attention Economy. Theses changes, what's happening at twitter, the tech layoffs, govt regulations and fines, are all signs using Freebies for Attention Capture are not going to endlessly scale.

Zamiel_Snawley 3y ago
Honestly, if they were just screwing developers of third party frontends, people probably wouldn't have cared that much. They are also screwing their moderators who use API-based tools, and people who need accessibility accommodations that reddit does not provide. Not to mention the scummy behavior towards the Apollo developer.
seydor 3y ago
mainly because google+FB gobbled up the whole of advertising AFAIK historically the % of GDP spent on advertising was more or less constant so it s not like advertisers bailed

paganel 3y ago

Good, I do hope they remain closed indefinitely. Nothing is stopping people from creating a /nba2 sub-reddit or something in order to get rid of this power-hungry mods. It was hilarious how the /nba users congregated on /denvernuggets/ in order to make a game thread last night.

juujian 3y ago

Reddit already gave their strategy away earlier today when Hoffman wrote: > We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us.[^1] It's encouraging to see that some subreddits are responding to the fact that the company is just planning to ignore users. [^1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...

scohesc 3y ago

Probably a very _very_ controversial and unpopular opinion - though I welcome any insight or opinions from others. Reddit is fully within their rights to seize the subreddits from their unpaid moderators and I would expect them to if they're gearing up for an IPO. They're fully within their rights to change how people access their website, how people interact with it, and limit who has access to the data on the website. When I clicked on a reddit result on Google to find some information, only to find it has been closed down in protest after trying to find something on Google, I was frustrated - not at Reddit, but the unpaid moderators who believe they have some sort of self-ordained right to manipulate a company (granted, I guess they do have some power as Reddit is relying on these unpaid moderators to do Reddits job.) I highly, highly doubt that Reddit will change their tune - they might lower the API costs, they might capitulate in some capacity in some regards to accessibility, but they'll still work towards an IPO and will harm their website as a result. Their CEO is a scumbag and both their paid and unpaid moderators/admins have strong biases in any subreddits that aren't niche hobbies and meant for wider audiences. Great for those who wish to follow the echo chambers, but not so great for others who don't _really_ have alternatives. I'll be happy if Reddit disappears off the planet, but I fear what will replace it will be even more restrictive - the internet needs decentralization of social media and communication.

redundantly 3y ago
> Reddit is fully within their rights to seize the subreddits from their unpaid moderators Sure. Technically they are within their rights to do that. Would it be good for them to do so? Probably not. It'll piss off their user base. As others have mentioned, it'll open themselves to lawsuits due to content moderation. It'll cost them a lot to pay people to moderate these communities, which they currently get for free. > I would expect them to [seize the subreddits] if they're gearing up for an IPO See above. This would make them less profitable and most likely negatively affect said IPO. > ... I was frustrated - not at Reddit, but the unpaid moderators who believe they have some sort of self-ordained right to manipulate a company. It's not self-ordained. They're doing what they are allowed to do with these subreddits, at least until Reddit takes away their moderator access.
tester457 3y ago

mark_l_watson 3y ago

Reddit is free to tweak their monitization any way they like. I am curious how this will turn out, when we look back on this a year from now. This is an opportunity for new moderators to start new subreddits. Conversely Reddit management may back down.

goatlover 3y ago
I remember several controversies with Netflix and the New York times which resulted in public outcry and people leaving, or at least proclaiming it in mass on social media. But then it died down and both are still quite popular.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago

Apparently they're demoting head jannies and removing powerjannies from the big subs. I called this in another comment. Spez won't let this continue - and he gets the nice second-order result of not having to deal with people like Merari

koolba 3y ago

Perhaps spez thinks he can replace all the free labor Reddit gets for posts and mods with an AI? The larger subs clearly have a large enough corpus to have a defined voice. The next step after that would be an AI to generate the replies, worn out jokes, and repost complaints.

glonq 3y ago

I've been off of reddit for 2 days now, and am willing to stay off idefinitely. TBH I'm probably happier and more productive without it. I just need to find something to read in the bathroom instead...

GreenWatermelon 3y ago
PDF books. I recommend PDF books.

sdfghswe 3y ago

ELI5: Why can't reddit just unblackout whatever subs they want?

justsomehnguy 3y ago
Small subs wouldn't matter, big subs would stink.
karaterobot 3y ago
From a technical perspective, there's no reason they couldn't. God help me, part of me wants to see what would happen next if they did. There would certainly be some positive consequences to doing so (more of that sweet, sweet traffic, and establishing once and for all who is the daddy) but also some huge negative ones: for one thing, some already angry moderators would likely quit, and for another it would basically destroy any shred of remaining good will or feeling of community. It would be a slap in the face. They can still walk back their API pricing changes, they can even hope this bad press blows over, but I don't know if they could salvage their reputation if they just exerted autocratic control over their community-based platform. If moderators don't feel like they're in charge of their own subreddits, that they're just fungible, unpaid workers, they'd probably realize they're being used and go away.

mtklein 3y ago

14 or 15 year Reddit user, mostly as a lurker -- I strongly support this. Reddit is a community, and a community is its people.

mike741 3y ago
but its people aren't allowed in? doesn't this prove reddit is not its people but rather a small group of moderators?

throwaway106382 3y ago

So this means spez is just gonna suspend and institute his own mods, right? Blackout isn't enough, don't let them scab the VOLUNTEER mods - don't cross the picket line - better yet, delete your account after using a tool to scrub your account's history. Delete isn't enough, you need to replace it with junk. If you're going to lurk, make sure you're blocking first party ads. https://github.com/scullionw/reddit-scrubber https://github.com/scullionw/reddit-scrubber

lost_tourist 3y ago

That's great news. I'm always cheering for the little guy. I love capitalism but I also love people flexing on people that try to abuse their customers.

jtode 3y ago
Technically, they're flexing on the unpaid labour they've based their business plans on, which is an order of magnitude or two stupider. Also, is it capitalism you love, or is it free markets and independent business? Cause capitalism is just when someone sits on their ass and collects dividends while other people work.

dijit 3y ago

I bit the bullet yesterday and just called it quits. I was there for a very long time (before it was even “launched” officially). So I do it with a heavy heart, but I don't think there’s any way of going back for them now. Its been a downward trend for literally years at this point. https://imgur.com/gallery/JhsPQnI https://imgur.com/gallery/JhsPQnI

nl_jaded 3y ago
Honestly, good on you, enjoy a healthier life :]
eep_social 3y ago
I quit in October and don’t miss it much. A few niche subs but nothing that would ever be on the home page. All this drama has me visiting more than I had over the intervening time which is sort of funny, they’re probably seeing a traffic bump right now from all the publicity but I believe the PR dumpster fire will be the end of their IPO ambitions.
jumpCastle 3y ago
It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.
- dijit 3y ago
  Sure, but you can’t argue that there is no sentimentality lost when you delete such an old account with your canonical username. (albeit title cased like I used to do as an early teen). Its extremely unlikely I go back because ultimately I will feel like I have less than I did before. even if its just fake internet points.
neuronic 3y ago
I went through multiple accounts since 2009, first one I closed was due to harassment as a result of posting about the Xbox One (which wasn't released back then)... reddit always had extremely cringy but popular sides to it (Unidan, Boston Marathon witch hunt) and since the very beginning the decisions of the leadership have felt immature, off and wrong. Reddit's leadership has always prevented reddit from being a thriving, productive community and their ineptitude has simply reached a boiling point now. For most of the time it felt like sifting through liquid poop to find a gold nugget once a week.

tarkin2 3y ago

Uh. I’m not really following this. But are people moving to other services? If you’re just going dark Reddit will know you’ll eventually cave in. Blackouts feel like you’re saying “we love you so please change”. I’d be happy to see people use other services. I’d appreciate the decentralisation.

malermeister 3y ago
Lemmy and kbin seem to be where people are going. They're both federated and are compatible with each other.

mike741 3y ago

can someone explain why Reddit staff doesn't just forcibly reopen these subs and perma-ban their moderators?

dirtyid 3y ago

What's next? Degrading the front page experience like a few years ago over I forgot what drama. I think ultimately this will blow over but I'm curious how far motivated actors can break/cripple the platform, at least in terms of valuation.

user3939382 3y ago

I tried to sign up for lemmy. I quit trying and lost interest at like click/step 7 or 8.

neals 3y ago

Anybody, just give something to read or look at that is not reddit,but had new mildly interesting content often. I'll remove Reddit and never look back...

thih9 3y ago
This really depends on what you like. Different people might use instead: HN, imgur, Bored Panda, laughingsquid, fark, tiktok, atlasobscura, or something from yesterday's "reddit alternatives" thread [1]; and I'm sure there are more. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789

borner791 3y ago

I really wonder if it would be better to go the other way. Mods take a break, and just let the bots shit allover the content. It takes like 20mn of un-moderated internet before it's all ads and spam... Reddit is basically reddit because of the carefully curated posts.

jtode 3y ago
I once, after four years of acting as sole line of defense against a destructively stupid but politically influential "colleague," I gave warnings then gave notice. I ended up jumping to another department where I watched him bring in an expensive vendor to implement a replacement for a system I had been using, and then watched corrupt files start appearing in the production files. I was there just long enough to hear about his quiet exit from the company. Someone else needs to quietly exit from the company if they hope to get this out of the grease fire. At this point, we'll all see what happens pretty quickly I think, but this looks to me like a ship with a thousand leaks and a drunk captain who won't come out of his cabin because people yell at him about problems that are not his when he does.

johnny99k 3y ago

The mods have virtually no control over the situation. Reddit can change their passwords and just have employee moderators from now on. If I was running Reddit, this is what I would be planning right now.

az226 3y ago
This whole thing was about small sums of money. Reddit isn’t profitable. And now it’s going to pay an army of moderators? Yeah, good luck.

throwaway53255 3y ago

[flagged]

bastard_op 3y ago

Reddit showed up for info a lot that after all these years I subscribed as an old bastard op from the 90's. Now I regret it months later with this. Let them migrate I say.

jbigelow76 3y ago

I've never been a big reddit user but I increased my usage as Twitter devolved into what it is now, but now I'm going to have to find something else. I'll most likely start paying for Apple News for general/current event stuff, stick with HN for tech, but I no longer have a "turn off your brain and just decompress with some funny/random crap" outlet. Bummer, I'm sure it was floated, and probably shot down for some stupid non-sensical reason, but I would have insta-paid something in the neighborhood of 20 bucks a year for a personal access token that I could plug into an app like Apollo and continue using Reddit via API.

d0gbread 3y ago
They could have required Reddit Premium to use third party apps or something of the sort. Or injected ads into third party apps via the API. Or forced third party apps through a verification process to get an API key not unlike Google's Oauth process and monetize it differently for training use cases, etc.

marcrosoft 3y ago

I deleted my decade old account. Can digg come back?

bennylava 3y ago

[flagged]

paul_funyun 3y ago

Strip current moderation of subreddit ownership if they stay private, easy solution. Most users don't care about moderators or niche API issues.

throw9away6 3y ago

How do I look up product reviews now? It used to be possible to look up product + Reddit. Without Reddit is just the Google swamp

joshcsimmons 3y ago

Why don't they simply ban the mods and reopen the subreddits?

WaffleIronMaker 3y ago

I know it's probably not for everyone, but I started using Mastodon last week in response to this, and I've had a very positive experience with it. I'm never going back to Reddit.

ck2 3y ago

The only really weird to me about doing this is to do it without having an alternative first. I mean it's 2023, it's not like it takes years to make a web service. Quitting twitter was easy. Reddit not so much.

billy_bitchtits 3y ago

Like the death if digg fark etc. people will move on. I hope it’s to a fediverse solution.

donatj 3y ago

While it would be an unpopular move, it would be pretty trivial for Reddit just to force reactive some or even all of these subreddits. I wonder if the average Reddit user would be upset enough over the action to stop using the site?

permo-w 3y ago

the irony of it all is borderline unbelievable. reddit's justification for this is that they don't want to continue providing profit for smaller corporations for free. this from reddit, a website that could not possibly make a profit without the work moderators do for free

mariuolo 3y ago

Won't users simply move to other subreddits or found more?