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They are done, 100%, this is the turning point and it's all downhill from here. They depend fundamentally on volunteer labor and every decision they've made si

They are done, 100%, this is the turning point and it's all downhill from here. They depend fundamentally on volunteer labor and every decision they've made since announcing the API change has alienated that labor. The morale of every mod I know is in the tank. The solution for this was incredibly simple. Reddit you want to charge for the API? Go right ahead, we all want you to make money. But when the volunteer labor you need in order to function started complaining because this is going to kill the modding tools they need - you should have immediately, like next day, apologized for the oversight and promised free API credits to them until you sort this out. This whole conflict could have been nipped in the bud, people would have grumbled a bit, but as long as Reddit got their act together in terms of tooling eventually, life would have gone on, and Reddit would have had their payday too (I doubt milking mods for spare change is the master plan here). Instead Reddit decided to escalate. Declare war on the people who make their service possible. It was the dumbest possible move they could make for their business. The decision makers behind this must operate in one hell of an echo chamber. This is the end, it's all downhill from here, I doubt they can recover. Needless to say I'll avoid their IPO like the plague and so will many others. 10 years from now something else will have come along and replaced them and we'll all look back at this moment.

hef19898 3y ago
Whatever the outcome of this si, an I never used Reddit, it seems to have been an incredibly dumb idea to do all of that before the IPO...
kitd 3y ago
The threshold for free API usage for modding tools is being increased from 60 to 100 queries per minute https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309 https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309 There are a very small minority that exceed that even now apparently. Seems not unreasonable to me.
- faeyanpiraat 3y ago
  Why is this downvoted? According to the linked article, even the bots which exceed the usage were manually whitelisted to stay free.
  - drumhead 3y ago
    They made their intentions clear with the pricing change, they want third party apps dead. Why carry on making or supporting them with the shadow of the noose falling on you?
  - Panzer04 3y ago
    Reddit destroyed any trust they had, so I'd guess it doesn't matter that much what they say in response at this point. It's too little, too late to say you'll keep API free for some people at this point. I think there's still a remote opportunity they claw trust back, but it's getting smaller the longer they have their CEO out there telling people to get stuffed.
  - jimmydorry 3y ago
    They are probably downvoted because the majority of developers of said moderator tools have pulled the pin and are shutting them down... seeing as the writing is already on the wall. Why spend any more effort maintaing the tools created when Reddit has said they will kill them off as soon as they have finished their own version? And anyone following what Reddit has been doing in the leadup to this stand-off, would be rightfully suspicious of whether Reddit even intends to uphold their pinky promise here and not just revoke API access as soon as this quietens down.
    - themoonisachees 3y ago
      This is not even accounting for the fact that outside of business practices, they have completely alienated developers, by showing them they will take their words out of context, adversarially try to pit users against them and give them 30 days to comply or else. Why would anyone want to enter in a business agreement with a company that does this, before even looking at price? Also: reddit pinky promises to implement mod tools they've been pinky promising for more than 5 years. Back when overwatch 1 came out, I became a mod for /r/overwatch_memes (now dead, the subreddit without an underscore ultimately was better) and even modding this subset of a subset of a gaming community would have been impossible without the API. Several moderation features that I ended up developing a bot for (using the API), reddit had been promising to implement for some time, and none of them are currently implemented. If you've been a mod all this time, you know that reddit promises to mods are completely empty. It's been fine until now because you could rely on other tools but modding anything with regular users without these tools is impossible without significantly restricting rules on allowed content.
- TheDong 3y ago
  The threshold is being increased from 60 to 100 for bots which didn't delegate auth, but not for any tools that used specific user-ids. It's misleading. To quote from reddit's docs: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16160319875092-Reddit-Data-API-Wiki https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16160319875... > Important note: Historically, our rate limit response headers indicated counts by client id/user id combination. These headers will update to reflect this new policy based on client id only on July 1, 2023. Historically, reddit rate limited by user-id, so if for example, both of us logged in using a reddit app, each of us had a rate limit of 60/min free queries. Each app only gets one client-id, regardless of the number of users it has. Now, the rate limit of 100 is per app, not per user-id, which obviously doesn't work for any tooling that acts on behalf of the user. Reddit can only make those claims by ignoring "moderator tool" which used user-ids. In a very real sense, reddit apps like "reddit is fun" and "apollo" were moderator tools, and those are the biggest losers in this change. You can see someone on reddit complaining about this too: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk26x7/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... I'm not saying that what they're saying is necessarily wrong, but their communication around these changes makes it hard to take them in good faith.
  - kitd 3y ago
    Thanks for the detailed reply. Other than being able to maintain your own list of users, are there downsides to using Oauth?
  - Spoom 3y ago
    Yup. I mod with RIF very frequently and will likely be done when it's gone.
baq 3y ago
Some people here laughed at me when I said their financial projections are garbage, obviously have false assumptions given they’re actually implementing the plan. It’s a sad thing to watch.
- b112 3y ago
  Some people here laughed at me when I said their financial projections are garbage You fool! Their projections are only garbage, because they haven't IPO'd yet! Sure, they're not profitable now, but once they IPO, they'll have the money to, uh... I mean, to become profitable! That's it! Stop confusing the issue!
  - Ringz 3y ago
    Modern finance in a nutshell.
- rwmj 3y ago
  Likely the only thing management care about is getting the IPO over the line so they can cash out and retire.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Kiro 3y ago
  What makes you so sure that you were right? The world is way more irrational than you think and their financial projections may still be accurate.
  - themoonisachees 3y ago
    Facebook was in a much better place when they went for IPO and they stock still fell by more than 50% on the first day. I can't see anyone that has google "reddit" since the last few days look at an IPO and go "ah yes, the website that went down from users leaving it, perfect".
sanderjd 3y ago
Yep, forget them, they're done.
decremental 3y ago
[dead]
mlatu 3y ago
i PRAY for them not to recover. the trouble is, the point with giving subs to IP owners, is extremely likely. though as likely is that reddit will be just bought whole by some ass or another... i realize this sounds very harsh, but at this point: anything that drives people into federated services is a godsend
andrewinardeer 3y ago
I disagree with your doomsday scenario. There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. No doubt some have already contacted Reddit management saying that if they de-mod x subreddit they will jump in and guarantee the subreddit's operation. I don't understand the argument about the lack of free labour drying up. It won't. There are people who thrive on having power over others even though in this case, subreddit moderation, it is perceived power. And Reddit management knows this. For years they have seen how moderators relish and also abuse power. That's why there are moderator guidelines. In fact, I think it can be argued that Reddit is leveraging this moment to flush out long standing and troublesome moderators which I think is clearly being what the end game is. And Huffman's goal. It may be silly of me to say, however, I don't think people are giving Huffman enough credit. He knew that there would be significant blowback. He has been involved with Reddit longer and probably far more in depth than any other employee or user. I wouldn't put it past him that he knows Reddit moderation is due for a shake up and is probably keen on getting rid of a subset. And by doing so he can not only pick and choose which users he wants in on what subreddits but more importantly can dictate the culture he wants. This whole episode if far from over. He has clearly said that the new API changes are going nowhere and I'm willing to bet that he gets what he wants (which includes a mod clean out) with the outcome being a few people quitting the site and people talking about him from now until eternity. EDIT: Spelling
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. (...) There are people who thrive on having power over others even though in this case, subreddit moderation, it is perceived power. Yes. Those are the very people who should be never ever allowed to become mods, or to be anywhere near any position of power. This is how people seeking status and power self-identify, and if they're given mod power, you can count on their subreddits going to shit rather quickly, and/or them eventually getting bored and quitting, once they realize that being a mod is a hard and thankless job, with people who need you the most hating you the most. Now sure, the current set of moderators isn't made of saints and purely selfless people either. But it's stable. The worst moderators long ago dropped out, or rode their subreddits down to ground. Reddit ecosystem reached an equilibrium. Now the corporate is shaking everything up, and the platform will have to re-equilibrize again. I expect to watch good subreddits go to shit, some getting forked off, and maybe those forks thriving if there's still enough selfless enough volunteers left after this debacle.
rdevsrex 3y ago
Exactly. I canceled my monthly subscription and logged out. I mostly loved Reddit for long for pieces anyway, so I'm going to pay more attention to Substack and see how that emerges.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pndy 3y ago
  I'm curious, why you even get subscription in the first place?
  - snovv_crash 3y ago
    No ads the 'proper' way, I guess?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ALittleLight 3y ago
      reddit had ads?
      - incone123 3y ago
        'promoted posts'. Not too intrusive so I never looked for a way to block them.
vpeters25 3y ago
They were done the minute mods broke their habit of moderating their subreddits. Some dedicated mods might come back, but it is really hard to return to a lost habits so the damage is done already.
pmoriarty 3y ago
"The solution for this was incredibly simple. Reddit you want to charge for the API? Go right ahead, we all want you to make money. But when the volunteer labor you need in order to function started complaining because this is going to kill the modding tools they need - you should have immediately, like next day, apologized for the oversight and promised free API credits to them until you sort this out." From the AMA by Reddit's CEO 6 days ago[1]: Mod Tools We know many communities rely on tools like RES, ContextMod, Toolbox, etc., and these tools will continue to have free access to the Data API. [1] - https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...
- b112 3y ago
  This entire thing started, as far as I recall, because the above was NOT being done. You're reading misinformation / misdirection.
  - cornholio 3y ago
    And once it had gained momentum, it exploded into a power struggle with the owners of the site. It's now a pure tribal war: the mod tribe will not accept any compromise short of full rollback of the proposed changes, and Reddit cannot do that because - just like all major platforms - it cannot support adblocking alternate clients that are profitable while free riding on their infrastructure. It's also very predictable who will win the war: whomever has the root keys of the servers and web domains. Major reddits like r/funny are providing very limited value in the grand scheme of things, the vast majority of the content is viral, not locally produced. So if a user is a r/funny subscriber and that goes dark, just present him with content from r/humor for a few months, they will get to see the same viral memes and 95% of the users will never notice anything went wrong. Mods vastly overestimate their power here and underestimate the number of lurkers that form the backbone of Reddit viewership and are indifferent to this issue.
    - YawningAngel 3y ago
      The price reddit is charging for API access seems much higher than the value to Reddit of the ads that are being blocked by the client using that API.
thesaintlives 3y ago
The same echo chamber some of those very mods operate in. Pot, kettle, black. Suck it up. You think the hot air from those servers comes by magic? Plenty of them need replacing. The king is dead. Long live the king!
brazzy 3y ago
> Instead Reddit decided to escalate. Declare war on the people who make their service possible. It was the dumbest possible move they could make for their business. The decision makers behind this must operate in one hell of an echo chamber. There is absolutely no way they are not aware of this. No, they've made a conscious decision that completely alienating and driving away the parts of the communities which care about all of this stuff is a price they're willing to pay. It seems pretty clear that they believe the people who will leave are not crucial enough (in function and number) to make the overall communities collapse, and that the result they want to achieve is worth the losses.
- themoonisachees 3y ago
  The mistake is that reddit thinks moderators use the API for convenience and not by necessity. Previous protests against reddit didn't last long, because they were against things that fundamentally didn't matter outside of ethics, while this is, especially for moderators, a significant ask for their already unpaid labor. Moderators, emboldened by user support, are on strike because this affects them personally in a big way. The interpersonal bullshit spez in particular has been pulling was just the nail in the coffin for users who weren't quite sure who to support.
  - xaqfox 3y ago
    I am one of those users who doesn't quite know who to support. I absolutely support the end users generating and consuming the content. There are seemingly regular examples of both, admin and mods abusing these users. What kind of mod tools do the apps allow that Reddit does not? I do not know if these are mod tools I would agree are necessary (e.g. bans for repeated spam) or are these tools that I would agree allow mods to abuse their power (e.g. ban users are who mere followers of other subreddits). Frankly, I fear unofficial mod tools could lead to much worse problems if at least portions of the API are not carefully rate limited. Here I include pricing as a type of rate limiting and this could be Reddit's attempt at reeling in this abuse (even if only for IPO reasons). A particular egregious example of such an abuse would be to download all new users' history of posts to make a race determination and ban a new user because of that. Sure, a mod could do this manually using Reddit's UI, but it would remain more difficult to automate this on a large-scale.
zpeti 3y ago
Well, if I was Huffman, the question I would be asking is can I bring revenue up so much from api and other things that I can now employ a lot of mods? He might have made that call already, and it might be possible. Facebook works with paid mods after all.
notyourday 3y ago
> But when the volunteer labor you need in order to function started complaining because this is going to kill the modding tools they need - you should have immediately, like next day, apologized for the oversight and promised free API credits to them until you sort this out. Nope. The value of being a reddit mod is clout. Clout does not matter to me hence I would not want to skip $$$$ for a clout of one. It matters to them hence they do it for $0.00. As they do not want to do the work, they get no clout. I applaud reddit for nuking them.
btbuildem 3y ago
Classic corporate leader mentality, thinking they have absolute control over everything, just because their employees must do as they're told.

hef19898 3y ago

Whatever the outcome of this si, an I never used Reddit, it seems to have been an incredibly dumb idea to do all of that before the IPO...

kitd 3y ago

The threshold for free API usage for modding tools is being increased from 60 to 100 queries per minute https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309 https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16693988535309 There are a very small minority that exceed that even now apparently. Seems not unreasonable to me.

faeyanpiraat 3y ago
Why is this downvoted? According to the linked article, even the bots which exceed the usage were manually whitelisted to stay free.
- drumhead 3y ago
  They made their intentions clear with the pricing change, they want third party apps dead. Why carry on making or supporting them with the shadow of the noose falling on you?
- Panzer04 3y ago
  Reddit destroyed any trust they had, so I'd guess it doesn't matter that much what they say in response at this point. It's too little, too late to say you'll keep API free for some people at this point. I think there's still a remote opportunity they claw trust back, but it's getting smaller the longer they have their CEO out there telling people to get stuffed.
- jimmydorry 3y ago
  They are probably downvoted because the majority of developers of said moderator tools have pulled the pin and are shutting them down... seeing as the writing is already on the wall. Why spend any more effort maintaing the tools created when Reddit has said they will kill them off as soon as they have finished their own version? And anyone following what Reddit has been doing in the leadup to this stand-off, would be rightfully suspicious of whether Reddit even intends to uphold their pinky promise here and not just revoke API access as soon as this quietens down.
  - themoonisachees 3y ago
    This is not even accounting for the fact that outside of business practices, they have completely alienated developers, by showing them they will take their words out of context, adversarially try to pit users against them and give them 30 days to comply or else. Why would anyone want to enter in a business agreement with a company that does this, before even looking at price? Also: reddit pinky promises to implement mod tools they've been pinky promising for more than 5 years. Back when overwatch 1 came out, I became a mod for /r/overwatch_memes (now dead, the subreddit without an underscore ultimately was better) and even modding this subset of a subset of a gaming community would have been impossible without the API. Several moderation features that I ended up developing a bot for (using the API), reddit had been promising to implement for some time, and none of them are currently implemented. If you've been a mod all this time, you know that reddit promises to mods are completely empty. It's been fine until now because you could rely on other tools but modding anything with regular users without these tools is impossible without significantly restricting rules on allowed content.
TheDong 3y ago
The threshold is being increased from 60 to 100 for bots which didn't delegate auth, but not for any tools that used specific user-ids. It's misleading. To quote from reddit's docs: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16160319875092-Reddit-Data-API-Wiki https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/16160319875... > Important note: Historically, our rate limit response headers indicated counts by client id/user id combination. These headers will update to reflect this new policy based on client id only on July 1, 2023. Historically, reddit rate limited by user-id, so if for example, both of us logged in using a reddit app, each of us had a rate limit of 60/min free queries. Each app only gets one client-id, regardless of the number of users it has. Now, the rate limit of 100 is per app, not per user-id, which obviously doesn't work for any tooling that acts on behalf of the user. Reddit can only make those claims by ignoring "moderator tool" which used user-ids. In a very real sense, reddit apps like "reddit is fun" and "apollo" were moderator tools, and those are the biggest losers in this change. You can see someone on reddit complaining about this too: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/jnk26x7/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_... I'm not saying that what they're saying is necessarily wrong, but their communication around these changes makes it hard to take them in good faith.
- kitd 3y ago
  Thanks for the detailed reply. Other than being able to maintain your own list of users, are there downsides to using Oauth?
- Spoom 3y ago
  Yup. I mod with RIF very frequently and will likely be done when it's gone.

baq 3y ago

Some people here laughed at me when I said their financial projections are garbage, obviously have false assumptions given they’re actually implementing the plan. It’s a sad thing to watch.

b112 3y ago
Some people here laughed at me when I said their financial projections are garbage You fool! Their projections are only garbage, because they haven't IPO'd yet! Sure, they're not profitable now, but once they IPO, they'll have the money to, uh... I mean, to become profitable! That's it! Stop confusing the issue!
- Ringz 3y ago
  Modern finance in a nutshell.
rwmj 3y ago
Likely the only thing management care about is getting the IPO over the line so they can cash out and retire.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Kiro 3y ago
What makes you so sure that you were right? The world is way more irrational than you think and their financial projections may still be accurate.
- themoonisachees 3y ago
  Facebook was in a much better place when they went for IPO and they stock still fell by more than 50% on the first day. I can't see anyone that has google "reddit" since the last few days look at an IPO and go "ah yes, the website that went down from users leaving it, perfect".

sanderjd 3y ago

Yep, forget them, they're done.

decremental 3y ago

[dead]

mlatu 3y ago

i PRAY for them not to recover. the trouble is, the point with giving subs to IP owners, is extremely likely. though as likely is that reddit will be just bought whole by some ass or another... i realize this sounds very harsh, but at this point: anything that drives people into federated services is a godsend

andrewinardeer 3y ago

I disagree with your doomsday scenario. There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. No doubt some have already contacted Reddit management saying that if they de-mod x subreddit they will jump in and guarantee the subreddit's operation. I don't understand the argument about the lack of free labour drying up. It won't. There are people who thrive on having power over others even though in this case, subreddit moderation, it is perceived power. And Reddit management knows this. For years they have seen how moderators relish and also abuse power. That's why there are moderator guidelines. In fact, I think it can be argued that Reddit is leveraging this moment to flush out long standing and troublesome moderators which I think is clearly being what the end game is. And Huffman's goal. It may be silly of me to say, however, I don't think people are giving Huffman enough credit. He knew that there would be significant blowback. He has been involved with Reddit longer and probably far more in depth than any other employee or user. I wouldn't put it past him that he knows Reddit moderation is due for a shake up and is probably keen on getting rid of a subset. And by doing so he can not only pick and choose which users he wants in on what subreddits but more importantly can dictate the culture he wants. This whole episode if far from over. He has clearly said that the new API changes are going nowhere and I'm willing to bet that he gets what he wants (which includes a mod clean out) with the outcome being a few people quitting the site and people talking about him from now until eternity. EDIT: Spelling

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> There are Reddit users waiting in the wings, wringing their hands ready to jump at the 'oppurtunity' to moderate established subreddits and will happily devote their time to custodial duties. (...) There are people who thrive on having power over others even though in this case, subreddit moderation, it is perceived power. Yes. Those are the very people who should be never ever allowed to become mods, or to be anywhere near any position of power. This is how people seeking status and power self-identify, and if they're given mod power, you can count on their subreddits going to shit rather quickly, and/or them eventually getting bored and quitting, once they realize that being a mod is a hard and thankless job, with people who need you the most hating you the most. Now sure, the current set of moderators isn't made of saints and purely selfless people either. But it's stable. The worst moderators long ago dropped out, or rode their subreddits down to ground. Reddit ecosystem reached an equilibrium. Now the corporate is shaking everything up, and the platform will have to re-equilibrize again. I expect to watch good subreddits go to shit, some getting forked off, and maybe those forks thriving if there's still enough selfless enough volunteers left after this debacle.

rdevsrex 3y ago

Exactly. I canceled my monthly subscription and logged out. I mostly loved Reddit for long for pieces anyway, so I'm going to pay more attention to Substack and see how that emerges.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pndy 3y ago
I'm curious, why you even get subscription in the first place?
- snovv_crash 3y ago
  No ads the 'proper' way, I guess?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ALittleLight 3y ago
    reddit had ads?
    - incone123 3y ago
      'promoted posts'. Not too intrusive so I never looked for a way to block them.

vpeters25 3y ago

They were done the minute mods broke their habit of moderating their subreddits. Some dedicated mods might come back, but it is really hard to return to a lost habits so the damage is done already.

pmoriarty 3y ago

"The solution for this was incredibly simple. Reddit you want to charge for the API? Go right ahead, we all want you to make money. But when the volunteer labor you need in order to function started complaining because this is going to kill the modding tools they need - you should have immediately, like next day, apologized for the oversight and promised free API credits to them until you sort this out." From the AMA by Reddit's CEO 6 days ago[1]: Mod Tools We know many communities rely on tools like RES, ContextMod, Toolbox, etc., and these tools will continue to have free access to the Data API. [1] - https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

b112 3y ago
This entire thing started, as far as I recall, because the above was NOT being done. You're reading misinformation / misdirection.
- cornholio 3y ago
  And once it had gained momentum, it exploded into a power struggle with the owners of the site. It's now a pure tribal war: the mod tribe will not accept any compromise short of full rollback of the proposed changes, and Reddit cannot do that because - just like all major platforms - it cannot support adblocking alternate clients that are profitable while free riding on their infrastructure. It's also very predictable who will win the war: whomever has the root keys of the servers and web domains. Major reddits like r/funny are providing very limited value in the grand scheme of things, the vast majority of the content is viral, not locally produced. So if a user is a r/funny subscriber and that goes dark, just present him with content from r/humor for a few months, they will get to see the same viral memes and 95% of the users will never notice anything went wrong. Mods vastly overestimate their power here and underestimate the number of lurkers that form the backbone of Reddit viewership and are indifferent to this issue.
  - YawningAngel 3y ago
    The price reddit is charging for API access seems much higher than the value to Reddit of the ads that are being blocked by the client using that API.

thesaintlives 3y ago

The same echo chamber some of those very mods operate in. Pot, kettle, black. Suck it up. You think the hot air from those servers comes by magic? Plenty of them need replacing. The king is dead. Long live the king!

brazzy 3y ago

> Instead Reddit decided to escalate. Declare war on the people who make their service possible. It was the dumbest possible move they could make for their business. The decision makers behind this must operate in one hell of an echo chamber. There is absolutely no way they are not aware of this. No, they've made a conscious decision that completely alienating and driving away the parts of the communities which care about all of this stuff is a price they're willing to pay. It seems pretty clear that they believe the people who will leave are not crucial enough (in function and number) to make the overall communities collapse, and that the result they want to achieve is worth the losses.

themoonisachees 3y ago
The mistake is that reddit thinks moderators use the API for convenience and not by necessity. Previous protests against reddit didn't last long, because they were against things that fundamentally didn't matter outside of ethics, while this is, especially for moderators, a significant ask for their already unpaid labor. Moderators, emboldened by user support, are on strike because this affects them personally in a big way. The interpersonal bullshit spez in particular has been pulling was just the nail in the coffin for users who weren't quite sure who to support.
- xaqfox 3y ago
  I am one of those users who doesn't quite know who to support. I absolutely support the end users generating and consuming the content. There are seemingly regular examples of both, admin and mods abusing these users. What kind of mod tools do the apps allow that Reddit does not? I do not know if these are mod tools I would agree are necessary (e.g. bans for repeated spam) or are these tools that I would agree allow mods to abuse their power (e.g. ban users are who mere followers of other subreddits). Frankly, I fear unofficial mod tools could lead to much worse problems if at least portions of the API are not carefully rate limited. Here I include pricing as a type of rate limiting and this could be Reddit's attempt at reeling in this abuse (even if only for IPO reasons). A particular egregious example of such an abuse would be to download all new users' history of posts to make a race determination and ban a new user because of that. Sure, a mod could do this manually using Reddit's UI, but it would remain more difficult to automate this on a large-scale.

zpeti 3y ago

Well, if I was Huffman, the question I would be asking is can I bring revenue up so much from api and other things that I can now employ a lot of mods? He might have made that call already, and it might be possible. Facebook works with paid mods after all.

notyourday 3y ago

> But when the volunteer labor you need in order to function started complaining because this is going to kill the modding tools they need - you should have immediately, like next day, apologized for the oversight and promised free API credits to them until you sort this out. Nope. The value of being a reddit mod is clout. Clout does not matter to me hence I would not want to skip $$$$ for a clout of one. It matters to them hence they do it for $0.00. As they do not want to do the work, they get no clout. I applaud reddit for nuking them.

btbuildem 3y ago

Classic corporate leader mentality, thinking they have absolute control over everything, just because their employees must do as they're told.