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Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent. 'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!' It was met with una

Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent. 'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!' It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

aaomidi 3y ago
They can easily use shit like ChatGPT to astroturf tbh.
- conradfr 3y ago
  I can't find it but there was a screenshot the other day of a pro-reddit post which started with "I'm sorry, but I cannot fulfill that request."
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361247
sarasasa28 3y ago
Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you) Reddit is/was my first source of real human information for a lot of stuff (since google is unusable now). And this blackout was really a pain in the ass
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  And just like a good old protest, it got it's point across with legal disruption. At least you're aware of the issues now, no?
- Y-bar 3y ago
  I do care about the third party apps because they assist moderators in doing their job (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit). And more personally, they provide accessibility support lacking both in the Reddit website and app. I am not a mod, and will literally no longer be able to use Reddit as well as I have had over the last years. The third-party developers have provided Reddit with tremendous value which is now lost.
  - bogantech 3y ago
    > (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit). Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power. I couldn't care less about the API or the will of capricious mods - I hope Reddit will hand the subs over to other people
    - super256 3y ago
      If they would only moderate for feeling power, they wouldn’t risk their mod position by going against the only party who can kick them. Honestly, I also think that public forums such as reddit shouldn’t build up a walled garden like this and the information should be free to anyone, regardless whether they use it commercially or for research.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      And those new mods are suddenly not going to need better modding tools? They'll just be happy with whatever Reddit has? It's just the current mods who get off on their power, the new ones won't? Stop for a second and consider: why do these problems exist, and why should they stop?
      - bogantech 3y ago
        You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too
        3y ago
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It is pretty much impossible to protest without annoying anybody, and it isn’t as if they are out there blocking ambulances or something.
- cm2012 3y ago
  100%. I've definitely been one of the people complaining on Reddit.
- Twirrim 3y ago
  > Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you) Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators that try valiantly to diver the tide of pure excrement of content that floods in to the various subreddits. That content you want to be able to see would be buried and gone, or never put there in the first place if it wasn't for third party apps that are crucial to moderators doing their work. Reddit has consistently done an awful job on quality moderation tooling. They really don't seem to give a shit, and just do the absolute bare minimum. The only reason it has managed to survive in the state it is is because others have voluntarily picked up the slack and built the tooling Reddit hasn't bothered to build. Just because you don't see it or use it doesn't mean it's not central to what you get to experience. Think bigger, beyond your direct experience and consider how that directly impacts you.
  - arbitrage 3y ago
    > Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. 3rd party mod tools are not critical. Mods who claim this is so are really misrepresenting the issue. Power tools for mods are nice to have for some. I make use of automod extensively. The tools reddit provides are adequate to perform moderation tasks. Also, since I guess it needs to be said, I'm not a shill for spez. I don't like the dude, but I'm not a sock puppet. This is all winding up looking like an epic toddler tantrum from a small proportion of the higher-power mod contingent.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      > This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. How big subs ? Number of subs you moderate is entirely irrelevant to the topic
      - lelanthran 3y ago
        Is there any good reason that a single moderator should be allowed to moderate multiple subs? I'd take that as an I dictator of a power hungry mod, not a mod passionate about the topic at hand.
- cirgue 3y ago
  It is effectively not possible to be a mod of a subreddit without third party apps. I don’t think people fully understand just how awful the native mod suite is for Reddit, and this is what the blackout is really about: the fact that Reddit seems to want to absolutely refuse to support the unpaid labor that makes the site a source of real human knowledge as opposed to a wasteland of bots and trolls.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    Except: 1) Reddit says mod tools will remain free on the API (as well as disability tools) 2) Other moderators in this hacker news thread say the 3rd party stuff isn't necessary anyway.
  - toddmorey 3y ago
    This is really well said. It feels like a new Apple CEO who views investments in design as frivolous. There are valid points that Reddit needs to improve and adjust to be a healthy business but recent changes have all the hallmark of a company making a dangerous waiver that visitors will stay because, really, where else are they going to go?
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > It is effectively not possible to be a mod of a subreddit without third party apps. Nonsense. I mod large subs just fine using toolbox and old reddit. toolbox doesn't counter at as third party app. It seems most mods want to mod from their phones and will no longer be able to do so.
- toddmorey 3y ago
  I don't have a third party app, either, but I do care that a business values its customers and partners... And I'm really getting signs that Reddit feels its only customers / partners are the advertisers. They've made their own website unusable because it demands you use the app instead. And the official reddit app just isn't a good app or an enjoyable app—it feels like a play for them to maximize ads & tracking. They don't have great native tools for moderators—essentially their own pool of free labor. I know these things almost always blow over, eventually, but this has been just another part of the spiral. If you think your only relationship is with your advertisers... someday the advertisers will be the last ones you have left before they too take their business elsewhere.
- wesapien 3y ago
  Can you give me an example of what you search so I can see what unusable you're talking about?
  - sarasasa28 3y ago
    Next time you have a problem with any device you have, or any doubt in general, google and try to get real human feedback instead of having to navigate through dozens of web pages with shitty answers that don't work
    - wesapien 3y ago
      Electronics and gadgets are the easiest to search. As I said on another post, the forums I used to visit back in 2000s-2010s are still around. Reddit is just SEO optimized but not the be all and all for answers for that. Google is still pretty good when I try to use it especially because I have learned some of their search functions and operators. I haven't done vanilla search since I learned them. Bard is nice but not for everything. It always gave me the wrong answer about dates and events for the next NBA game.
- isaacremuant 3y ago
  Fun fact, those humans who put the info in and make up the communities do care. It's not "evil undemocratic mods", the communities in many subs voted in favor of the protest. I love how many people who seem to complain about the blackout are like "stop whining and go back to produce the content for me". Time will tell if the deterioration of the relationship will make that content you value less likely to exist, of less quality or more inaccesible.
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  [dead]
llm_nerd 3y ago
It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one. Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just leave Reddit. Delete your accounts, delete your comments, resign as mods. Let the rest of reddit just move on.
- BeefWellington 3y ago
  > delete your comments Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.[1] I agree with the sentiment though; if people en masse migrated away from Reddit the way they did with Digg, that would be the only really impactful long-term gesture. Edit: Regarding the sockpuppet thing, I mean, we've literally seen that happen a number of times. When you see an account created in 2023 with no comment activity at all post, sure, that could be a lurker deciding to comment on this one very contentious issue. When you see a dozen in a sub that has 100k subscribers, that's odd but probably not unreasonable. When you see thousands, maybe something is going on. [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14av2z3/reports_of_reddit_restoring_deleted_commentsposts/ https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14av2z3/reports_of...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - marktangotango 3y ago
    I've been exploring the fediverse options like kbin and lemmy and I just don't see it. Maybe someone can explain. If one lemmy instance has a really popular community, say "Memes" how can that scale? There could be millions of posts and terabytes of data. Then if multiple lemmy instances have their own "Memes" communities, that's balkanized and a user would have to subscribe to each instances "Memes" community? Or are communities federated also? Like all instances "Memes" communities get pulled together? Examining [1] that appears to not be the case. [1] https://lemmy.world/c/android https://lemmy.world/c/android
buildbot 3y ago
Yeah before I deleted my accounts yesterday, the rate of weird pro-reddit admin comments was getting pretty high. It would not surprise me at all if they are trying to game the numbers more before their IPO, so they can claim they made the right decision. Investors: do you due diligence! Reddit has used fake accounts in the past! :)
- chihuahua 3y ago
  Obviously, anyone who disagrees with me must be an astroturfer bot.
  - workethics 3y ago
    They (or someone at least) are definitely using bots: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg
  - flir 3y ago
    Sounds like something a bot would say /s
  - notahacker 3y ago
    It's reddit, I'm sure there are people that have spent the last decade on the site posting cat pics, dodgy stock tips and intimate details of their life being accused of being bots for criticising mods. But if a bunch of new, dormant or unused accounts start promoting the exact party line of an entity which is known to generate accounts on their service to seed stuff, in a battle they're determined to win, the probability of them all being unconnected individual people popping up to express their support for Reddit's management is pretty near zero...
- hinkley 3y ago
  Spez has been caught editing comments from real users. He should have been fired for that
lazystar 3y ago
There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored over the course of their tantrum. I've commented more in the past few days than i have in the past few months, because it's obvious the mods have completely lost perspective of the average user experience.
- mrpopo 3y ago
  Lurkers should also realize that their experience is shaped by mods decisions. For the better or for the worst, that's a good question, I guess we will soon find out. But given what FB groups look like, I have my own opinion.
  - kitsunesoba 3y ago
    Also, lurkers would have nothing to lurk around if it weren't for heavier posters, many of whom use third party apps to paper over the various papercuts of posting with the official site/client.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      What do you think it would cost to buy a non insignificant amount Reddit accounts from power users to own their comments and remove them from Reddit? And if Reddit restores them, file DMCA takedowns? Should be cheap, right? With the value of Reddit users being so low? If that is where the value is being generated, that is Reddit's value lynch pin.
      - jcranmer 3y ago
        > And if Reddit restores them, file DMCA takedowns? Almost certainly, Reddit's terms of service means you grant them a irrevocable perpetual license to your posts, so a DMCA takedown would be in bad faith.
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        There are no material repercussions for bad faith DMCA takedowns, as the evidence has shown [1]. The legal burden still falls on Reddit to triage and action them. With that said, you would want to own the Reddit accounts as IP in an LLC that holds no financial assets to shield you from any liability (not legal advice, we're just having fun talking hypotheticals). You'd own the copyright to the content, let Reddit try to argue in court the requests were bad faith. You didn't agree to the terms when the account changed hands, and you're now the owner. You wouldn't have to do it forever, only long enough to materially impact Reddit's valuation pre-IPO. This is simply flipping the "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" model of Silicon Valley on its head. Or is that only okay when you're trying to get obnoxiously wealthy off the backs of everyone else? [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=bad%20faith%20dmca&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
kitsunesoba 3y ago
During this whole debacle, there's been quite a few posts across various parts of the internet that register to me as astroturfing, including a handful on HN. It's not about the opinions presented, nothing wrong with dissent, but the way these posts express those opinions just feels wrong somehow — I've seen 20 years worth of impassioned people posting on the internet, and these posts come off as poor imitations of that.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  I agree. The posts here on HN about how all the mods are terrible human beings... that just read as an oddity.
  - Kiro 3y ago
    How so? People generally hate reddit mods, for good and bad reasons. The belief that reddit mods are power hungry abusers is ingrained in internet culture so I don't find it strange that this common sentiment is leaking to HN. If anything I find it very surprising that people praise them as heroes now which would have been completely unheard of just a few weeks ago.
    - Y-bar 3y ago
      There are many mods I actively dislike, for example one on r/confusingperspective who gave me a warning because I tagged another user in a comment because I wanted to highlight something for them. But I still support the mods here. And I also support the third-party developers as well. Ultimately Reddit depends on moderators being able to do their job, if Spez chooses to pull the rug out from under their feet so that they cannot do their job (which they do without cost for Reddit) effectively, why should I not cheer them on? Especially since they are pretty much the only ones able to coordinate any form of protest after Spez lied (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247130) about what the Apollo dev said?
  - pseudo0 3y ago
    It really isn't that odd. Most reddit users hardly interact with the admins. When it comes to mods though, the question is not whether they have had bad interactions, but how many. A job that offers no pay, no benefits, but the dopamine hit of having petty power over random strangers tends to attract poor candidates.
rootusrootus 3y ago
Not everyone that disagrees with you is doing so in bad faith. Not everything is brigading, etc. Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community. It is a very one-sided argument, as if the moderators are the reason the community exists. No. Moderators are unnecessary without users. It's a symbiosis.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  Yeah I don’t give a shit about the blackouts and have been commenting on Reddit how dumb it is. I have been seeing the polls in the subreddits I frequent and it’s like 65/35 to keep them open. Pretty solid majority.
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    It’s certainly _not_ dumb to those who are participating in the blackout. Phrasing their position in that light will cause your argument to fall on deaf ears.
    - Zetice 3y ago
      Calling it dumb is a signal that you don't care if the argument falls on deaf ears.
      - nullindividual 3y ago
        It's clear that one cares when they inject themselves into the thread/conversation. If one did not care, one wouldn't be in this thread.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  They will probably have no problem replacing them either. You might have to take a quality dip, at least in theory; In reality it's hard to imagine the mods getting worse. They have a really terrible attitude. It's not just about community relations either, they really, really suck at enforcing rules, so it's not like we're gonna lose quality there. The only reason reddit continues to play nice is to prevent a mass exudus from disgruntled users. They don't WANT the mods to leave, and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods. That said, they're quite replaceable, it seems.
0xDEF 3y ago
Americans (and terminally online Europeans) have a hard time understanding that people outside their social bubbles can disagree with them without being sockpuppet accounts or bots.
- fullshark 3y ago
  I think it's just redditors and twitter users, basically people who spend their time online in a filter bubble designed to keep them addicted to confirmation bias.
- George83728 3y ago
  > Americans (and terminally online Europeans) I think this is characteristic not of Americans and not even of terminally online Europeans, but rather of reddit users specifically (and heavy users of other systems that operate similar to reddit, or which had very biased moderation for a long time but no longer do, such as twitter.) Reddit is all about forming the illusion of overwhelming consensus; an opinion shared by 49% of users can be ruthlessly suppressed by the 51%, downvoted below zero and hidden from view. The fundamental nature of reddit's comment system encourages this warped perception of people who disagree with you being unreal.
bheadmaster 3y ago
[flagged]
- ilyt 3y ago
  Mods are shit. admins are shit. Both can be true at the same time
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  Not at all. Just a regular user who wasn't particularly inconvenienced by the blackout. Were you seriously inconvenienced by the blackout in some way? I really don't get the overly impassioned 'rise up against the mods' posts I've been seeing.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > Were you seriously inconvenienced by the blackout in some way? You phrased that in the past tense, but I assure you that a number of major subreddits are still private at this moment. With each passing day, my sympathy for the moderators diminishes and I become more receptive to the notion that Reddit should reopen the subreddit, remove all the existing mods, and hold elections for new ones. With a subreddit that has 1M+ users I guarantee there are at least a few dedicated souls that will jump at the opportunity. Only current moderators think they are a rare, irreplaceable asset.
    - jfdbcv 3y ago
      This is the desired result. Personally I'd love to see Reddit forcefully remove mods from top subs and have to find replacements. 1) it's a big pain, and probably takes away from their timeline of delivering worsening UX and monitization features 2) the new mods will probably be even bigger power trippers than the old ones.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    yes, my favorite sub is still private, and I can't access all valuable information users posted there.
AmVess 3y ago
Mods seem to think they own the subs they moderate. They do not; the subs belong to the community. Mods do have too much power at the moment. The easiest way to resolve this is to perma ban all the mods of closed subs, then remove the ability for subs to be closed.
- km3r 3y ago
  Yet every sub poll I've seen after the blackout has been >50% support to continue it. The community wants the blackout.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
PurpleRamen 3y ago
It's not that weird if you reflect a moment about the whole situation. Mods are important for reddit, but so are the users who create the content. But what power have they in this whole power? Did anyone ask them what they want and support? Probably not really, because with the subs closed, how can the mods still reach the majority of their users? Some may have found their way to other places, but the majority will remain on Reddit, knowing barely anything about the whole battlefields. So it's natural that they now will also voice their opinions, using new accounts to not suffer under the hate of those how might still have power in the future.
PragmaticPulp 3y ago
> It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. “Go outside” is an ironic comment, given that the subreddit blackout doesn’t appear to be all that popular among casual Reddit users. It’s popular among the chronically online people who use Reddit so much that they’re intimately involved in every detail of the site, but 98-99% of users don’t use 3rd party clients. > I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again. It’s getting weird that Redditors are turning into conspiracy theorists, believing that anyone who disagrees with the popular narrative must be a shill, a plant, or the CEO himself speaking to them. No, the CEO of Reddit isn’t spending all day coming to your niche subreddit, creating new accounts, and sockpuppeting opinions to the handful of people there.
ITB 3y ago
There’s nothing new here. Socialism vs Capitalism. The revolutionaries will lose, and they should. If they want to fight Reddit, they should start their own enterprise and compete in the market. I’m in full support of owners getting rid of problem employees or even volunteers. Reddit is a private enterprise and their owners have the right to do what they please.
jimbokun 3y ago
The more obvious answer is that many to most Reddit users do not care about how Reddit treats developers using its API. They just want their memes or discuss sports or their hobbies or whatever.
Kiro 3y ago
I don't know. Have people forgotten that reddit mods were almost universally hated before this? It didn't matter if you were a good mod. People would consider you the enemy regardless, so I don't find it strange at all that users take this opportunity to hate on mods.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  I think there's some group who's always disliked mods, but I don't think that dislike is necessarily universal. Speaking personally I've had maybe one or two bad experiences of mods in the ~11 years I've used Reddit, and that time wasn't exactly spent lurking, with my account having accrued ~35k karma.
raverbashing 3y ago
The correct answer back is something that might betray their GPT nature ;)
14 3y ago
Long time reddit user and I don’t think the blackout is an outrage but do think the mods need power stripped from them. They are a bunch of power trippers and if you disagree with what they believe expect to be banned. As long as discussion is polite we should be able to voice whatever we want and currently you can not do that on reddit.
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
This is how reddit was started. If they had tools for mass posting with auto-generated accounts then why would they stop? Remember - the top subs were being modded by epstein’s gang. If that kind of absurdity is happening then imagine when a political party offers them 10m to rig an election.
CodeWriter23 3y ago
Well, Reddit was built on sock puppets.

aaomidi 3y ago

They can easily use shit like ChatGPT to astroturf tbh.

conradfr 3y ago
I can't find it but there was a screenshot the other day of a pro-reddit post which started with "I'm sorry, but I cannot fulfill that request."
- aaomidi 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361247

sarasasa28 3y ago

Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you) Reddit is/was my first source of real human information for a lot of stuff (since google is unusable now). And this blackout was really a pain in the ass

agentgumshoe 3y ago
And just like a good old protest, it got it's point across with legal disruption. At least you're aware of the issues now, no?
Y-bar 3y ago
I do care about the third party apps because they assist moderators in doing their job (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit). And more personally, they provide accessibility support lacking both in the Reddit website and app. I am not a mod, and will literally no longer be able to use Reddit as well as I have had over the last years. The third-party developers have provided Reddit with tremendous value which is now lost.
- bogantech 3y ago
  > (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit). Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power. I couldn't care less about the API or the will of capricious mods - I hope Reddit will hand the subs over to other people
  - super256 3y ago
    If they would only moderate for feeling power, they wouldn’t risk their mod position by going against the only party who can kick them. Honestly, I also think that public forums such as reddit shouldn’t build up a walled garden like this and the information should be free to anyone, regardless whether they use it commercially or for research.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    And those new mods are suddenly not going to need better modding tools? They'll just be happy with whatever Reddit has? It's just the current mods who get off on their power, the new ones won't? Stop for a second and consider: why do these problems exist, and why should they stop?
    - bogantech 3y ago
      You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too
      - 3y ago
bee_rider 3y ago
It is pretty much impossible to protest without annoying anybody, and it isn’t as if they are out there blocking ambulances or something.
cm2012 3y ago
100%. I've definitely been one of the people complaining on Reddit.
Twirrim 3y ago
> Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you) Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators that try valiantly to diver the tide of pure excrement of content that floods in to the various subreddits. That content you want to be able to see would be buried and gone, or never put there in the first place if it wasn't for third party apps that are crucial to moderators doing their work. Reddit has consistently done an awful job on quality moderation tooling. They really don't seem to give a shit, and just do the absolute bare minimum. The only reason it has managed to survive in the state it is is because others have voluntarily picked up the slack and built the tooling Reddit hasn't bothered to build. Just because you don't see it or use it doesn't mean it's not central to what you get to experience. Think bigger, beyond your direct experience and consider how that directly impacts you.
- arbitrage 3y ago
  > Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. 3rd party mod tools are not critical. Mods who claim this is so are really misrepresenting the issue. Power tools for mods are nice to have for some. I make use of automod extensively. The tools reddit provides are adequate to perform moderation tasks. Also, since I guess it needs to be said, I'm not a shill for spez. I don't like the dude, but I'm not a sock puppet. This is all winding up looking like an epic toddler tantrum from a small proportion of the higher-power mod contingent.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    > This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. How big subs ? Number of subs you moderate is entirely irrelevant to the topic
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      Is there any good reason that a single moderator should be allowed to moderate multiple subs? I'd take that as an I dictator of a power hungry mod, not a mod passionate about the topic at hand.
cirgue 3y ago
It is effectively not possible to be a mod of a subreddit without third party apps. I don’t think people fully understand just how awful the native mod suite is for Reddit, and this is what the blackout is really about: the fact that Reddit seems to want to absolutely refuse to support the unpaid labor that makes the site a source of real human knowledge as opposed to a wasteland of bots and trolls.
- cm2012 3y ago
  Except: 1) Reddit says mod tools will remain free on the API (as well as disability tools) 2) Other moderators in this hacker news thread say the 3rd party stuff isn't necessary anyway.
- toddmorey 3y ago
  This is really well said. It feels like a new Apple CEO who views investments in design as frivolous. There are valid points that Reddit needs to improve and adjust to be a healthy business but recent changes have all the hallmark of a company making a dangerous waiver that visitors will stay because, really, where else are they going to go?
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > It is effectively not possible to be a mod of a subreddit without third party apps. Nonsense. I mod large subs just fine using toolbox and old reddit. toolbox doesn't counter at as third party app. It seems most mods want to mod from their phones and will no longer be able to do so.
toddmorey 3y ago
I don't have a third party app, either, but I do care that a business values its customers and partners... And I'm really getting signs that Reddit feels its only customers / partners are the advertisers. They've made their own website unusable because it demands you use the app instead. And the official reddit app just isn't a good app or an enjoyable app—it feels like a play for them to maximize ads & tracking. They don't have great native tools for moderators—essentially their own pool of free labor. I know these things almost always blow over, eventually, but this has been just another part of the spiral. If you think your only relationship is with your advertisers... someday the advertisers will be the last ones you have left before they too take their business elsewhere.
wesapien 3y ago
Can you give me an example of what you search so I can see what unusable you're talking about?
- sarasasa28 3y ago
  Next time you have a problem with any device you have, or any doubt in general, google and try to get real human feedback instead of having to navigate through dozens of web pages with shitty answers that don't work
  - wesapien 3y ago
    Electronics and gadgets are the easiest to search. As I said on another post, the forums I used to visit back in 2000s-2010s are still around. Reddit is just SEO optimized but not the be all and all for answers for that. Google is still pretty good when I try to use it especially because I have learned some of their search functions and operators. I haven't done vanilla search since I learned them. Bard is nice but not for everything. It always gave me the wrong answer about dates and events for the next NBA game.
isaacremuant 3y ago
Fun fact, those humans who put the info in and make up the communities do care. It's not "evil undemocratic mods", the communities in many subs voted in favor of the protest. I love how many people who seem to complain about the blackout are like "stop whining and go back to produce the content for me". Time will tell if the deterioration of the relationship will make that content you value less likely to exist, of less quality or more inaccesible.
dumpsterlid 3y ago
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llm_nerd 3y ago

It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one. Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just leave Reddit. Delete your accounts, delete your comments, resign as mods. Let the rest of reddit just move on.

BeefWellington 3y ago
> delete your comments Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.[1] I agree with the sentiment though; if people en masse migrated away from Reddit the way they did with Digg, that would be the only really impactful long-term gesture. Edit: Regarding the sockpuppet thing, I mean, we've literally seen that happen a number of times. When you see an account created in 2023 with no comment activity at all post, sure, that could be a lurker deciding to comment on this one very contentious issue. When you see a dozen in a sub that has 100k subscribers, that's odd but probably not unreasonable. When you see thousands, maybe something is going on. [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14av2z3/reports_of_reddit_restoring_deleted_commentsposts/ https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14av2z3/reports_of...
- deleted 3y ago
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- marktangotango 3y ago
  I've been exploring the fediverse options like kbin and lemmy and I just don't see it. Maybe someone can explain. If one lemmy instance has a really popular community, say "Memes" how can that scale? There could be millions of posts and terabytes of data. Then if multiple lemmy instances have their own "Memes" communities, that's balkanized and a user would have to subscribe to each instances "Memes" community? Or are communities federated also? Like all instances "Memes" communities get pulled together? Examining [1] that appears to not be the case. [1] https://lemmy.world/c/android https://lemmy.world/c/android

buildbot 3y ago

Yeah before I deleted my accounts yesterday, the rate of weird pro-reddit admin comments was getting pretty high. It would not surprise me at all if they are trying to game the numbers more before their IPO, so they can claim they made the right decision. Investors: do you due diligence! Reddit has used fake accounts in the past! :)

chihuahua 3y ago
Obviously, anyone who disagrees with me must be an astroturfer bot.
- workethics 3y ago
  They (or someone at least) are definitely using bots: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg
- flir 3y ago
  Sounds like something a bot would say /s
- notahacker 3y ago
  It's reddit, I'm sure there are people that have spent the last decade on the site posting cat pics, dodgy stock tips and intimate details of their life being accused of being bots for criticising mods. But if a bunch of new, dormant or unused accounts start promoting the exact party line of an entity which is known to generate accounts on their service to seed stuff, in a battle they're determined to win, the probability of them all being unconnected individual people popping up to express their support for Reddit's management is pretty near zero...
hinkley 3y ago
Spez has been caught editing comments from real users. He should have been fired for that

lazystar 3y ago

There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored over the course of their tantrum. I've commented more in the past few days than i have in the past few months, because it's obvious the mods have completely lost perspective of the average user experience.

mrpopo 3y ago
Lurkers should also realize that their experience is shaped by mods decisions. For the better or for the worst, that's a good question, I guess we will soon find out. But given what FB groups look like, I have my own opinion.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  Also, lurkers would have nothing to lurk around if it weren't for heavier posters, many of whom use third party apps to paper over the various papercuts of posting with the official site/client.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    What do you think it would cost to buy a non insignificant amount Reddit accounts from power users to own their comments and remove them from Reddit? And if Reddit restores them, file DMCA takedowns? Should be cheap, right? With the value of Reddit users being so low? If that is where the value is being generated, that is Reddit's value lynch pin.
    - jcranmer 3y ago
      > And if Reddit restores them, file DMCA takedowns? Almost certainly, Reddit's terms of service means you grant them a irrevocable perpetual license to your posts, so a DMCA takedown would be in bad faith.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        There are no material repercussions for bad faith DMCA takedowns, as the evidence has shown [1]. The legal burden still falls on Reddit to triage and action them. With that said, you would want to own the Reddit accounts as IP in an LLC that holds no financial assets to shield you from any liability (not legal advice, we're just having fun talking hypotheticals). You'd own the copyright to the content, let Reddit try to argue in court the requests were bad faith. You didn't agree to the terms when the account changed hands, and you're now the owner. You wouldn't have to do it forever, only long enough to materially impact Reddit's valuation pre-IPO. This is simply flipping the "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" model of Silicon Valley on its head. Or is that only okay when you're trying to get obnoxiously wealthy off the backs of everyone else? [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=bad%20faith%20dmca&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

kitsunesoba 3y ago

During this whole debacle, there's been quite a few posts across various parts of the internet that register to me as astroturfing, including a handful on HN. It's not about the opinions presented, nothing wrong with dissent, but the way these posts express those opinions just feels wrong somehow — I've seen 20 years worth of impassioned people posting on the internet, and these posts come off as poor imitations of that.

slowmovintarget 3y ago
I agree. The posts here on HN about how all the mods are terrible human beings... that just read as an oddity.
- Kiro 3y ago
  How so? People generally hate reddit mods, for good and bad reasons. The belief that reddit mods are power hungry abusers is ingrained in internet culture so I don't find it strange that this common sentiment is leaking to HN. If anything I find it very surprising that people praise them as heroes now which would have been completely unheard of just a few weeks ago.
  - Y-bar 3y ago
    There are many mods I actively dislike, for example one on r/confusingperspective who gave me a warning because I tagged another user in a comment because I wanted to highlight something for them. But I still support the mods here. And I also support the third-party developers as well. Ultimately Reddit depends on moderators being able to do their job, if Spez chooses to pull the rug out from under their feet so that they cannot do their job (which they do without cost for Reddit) effectively, why should I not cheer them on? Especially since they are pretty much the only ones able to coordinate any form of protest after Spez lied (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247130) about what the Apollo dev said?
- pseudo0 3y ago
  It really isn't that odd. Most reddit users hardly interact with the admins. When it comes to mods though, the question is not whether they have had bad interactions, but how many. A job that offers no pay, no benefits, but the dopamine hit of having petty power over random strangers tends to attract poor candidates.

rootusrootus 3y ago

Not everyone that disagrees with you is doing so in bad faith. Not everything is brigading, etc. Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community. It is a very one-sided argument, as if the moderators are the reason the community exists. No. Moderators are unnecessary without users. It's a symbiosis.

monero-xmr 3y ago
Yeah I don’t give a shit about the blackouts and have been commenting on Reddit how dumb it is. I have been seeing the polls in the subreddits I frequent and it’s like 65/35 to keep them open. Pretty solid majority.
- nullindividual 3y ago
  It’s certainly _not_ dumb to those who are participating in the blackout. Phrasing their position in that light will cause your argument to fall on deaf ears.
  - Zetice 3y ago
    Calling it dumb is a signal that you don't care if the argument falls on deaf ears.
    - nullindividual 3y ago
      It's clear that one cares when they inject themselves into the thread/conversation. If one did not care, one wouldn't be in this thread.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
They will probably have no problem replacing them either. You might have to take a quality dip, at least in theory; In reality it's hard to imagine the mods getting worse. They have a really terrible attitude. It's not just about community relations either, they really, really suck at enforcing rules, so it's not like we're gonna lose quality there. The only reason reddit continues to play nice is to prevent a mass exudus from disgruntled users. They don't WANT the mods to leave, and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods. That said, they're quite replaceable, it seems.

0xDEF 3y ago

Americans (and terminally online Europeans) have a hard time understanding that people outside their social bubbles can disagree with them without being sockpuppet accounts or bots.

fullshark 3y ago
I think it's just redditors and twitter users, basically people who spend their time online in a filter bubble designed to keep them addicted to confirmation bias.
George83728 3y ago
> Americans (and terminally online Europeans) I think this is characteristic not of Americans and not even of terminally online Europeans, but rather of reddit users specifically (and heavy users of other systems that operate similar to reddit, or which had very biased moderation for a long time but no longer do, such as twitter.) Reddit is all about forming the illusion of overwhelming consensus; an opinion shared by 49% of users can be ruthlessly suppressed by the 51%, downvoted below zero and hidden from view. The fundamental nature of reddit's comment system encourages this warped perception of people who disagree with you being unreal.

bheadmaster 3y ago

[flagged]

ilyt 3y ago
Mods are shit. admins are shit. Both can be true at the same time
AnotherGoodName 3y ago
Not at all. Just a regular user who wasn't particularly inconvenienced by the blackout. Were you seriously inconvenienced by the blackout in some way? I really don't get the overly impassioned 'rise up against the mods' posts I've been seeing.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > Were you seriously inconvenienced by the blackout in some way? You phrased that in the past tense, but I assure you that a number of major subreddits are still private at this moment. With each passing day, my sympathy for the moderators diminishes and I become more receptive to the notion that Reddit should reopen the subreddit, remove all the existing mods, and hold elections for new ones. With a subreddit that has 1M+ users I guarantee there are at least a few dedicated souls that will jump at the opportunity. Only current moderators think they are a rare, irreplaceable asset.
  - jfdbcv 3y ago
    This is the desired result. Personally I'd love to see Reddit forcefully remove mods from top subs and have to find replacements. 1) it's a big pain, and probably takes away from their timeline of delivering worsening UX and monitization features 2) the new mods will probably be even bigger power trippers than the old ones.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  yes, my favorite sub is still private, and I can't access all valuable information users posted there.

AmVess 3y ago

Mods seem to think they own the subs they moderate. They do not; the subs belong to the community. Mods do have too much power at the moment. The easiest way to resolve this is to perma ban all the mods of closed subs, then remove the ability for subs to be closed.

km3r 3y ago
Yet every sub poll I've seen after the blackout has been >50% support to continue it. The community wants the blackout.
- deleted 3y ago
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PurpleRamen 3y ago

It's not that weird if you reflect a moment about the whole situation. Mods are important for reddit, but so are the users who create the content. But what power have they in this whole power? Did anyone ask them what they want and support? Probably not really, because with the subs closed, how can the mods still reach the majority of their users? Some may have found their way to other places, but the majority will remain on Reddit, knowing barely anything about the whole battlefields. So it's natural that they now will also voice their opinions, using new accounts to not suffer under the hate of those how might still have power in the future.

PragmaticPulp 3y ago

> It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. “Go outside” is an ironic comment, given that the subreddit blackout doesn’t appear to be all that popular among casual Reddit users. It’s popular among the chronically online people who use Reddit so much that they’re intimately involved in every detail of the site, but 98-99% of users don’t use 3rd party clients. > I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again. It’s getting weird that Redditors are turning into conspiracy theorists, believing that anyone who disagrees with the popular narrative must be a shill, a plant, or the CEO himself speaking to them. No, the CEO of Reddit isn’t spending all day coming to your niche subreddit, creating new accounts, and sockpuppeting opinions to the handful of people there.

ITB 3y ago

There’s nothing new here. Socialism vs Capitalism. The revolutionaries will lose, and they should. If they want to fight Reddit, they should start their own enterprise and compete in the market. I’m in full support of owners getting rid of problem employees or even volunteers. Reddit is a private enterprise and their owners have the right to do what they please.

jimbokun 3y ago

The more obvious answer is that many to most Reddit users do not care about how Reddit treats developers using its API. They just want their memes or discuss sports or their hobbies or whatever.

Kiro 3y ago

I don't know. Have people forgotten that reddit mods were almost universally hated before this? It didn't matter if you were a good mod. People would consider you the enemy regardless, so I don't find it strange at all that users take this opportunity to hate on mods.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
I think there's some group who's always disliked mods, but I don't think that dislike is necessarily universal. Speaking personally I've had maybe one or two bad experiences of mods in the ~11 years I've used Reddit, and that time wasn't exactly spent lurking, with my account having accrued ~35k karma.

raverbashing 3y ago

The correct answer back is something that might betray their GPT nature ;)

14 3y ago

Long time reddit user and I don’t think the blackout is an outrage but do think the mods need power stripped from them. They are a bunch of power trippers and if you disagree with what they believe expect to be banned. As long as discussion is polite we should be able to voice whatever we want and currently you can not do that on reddit.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

This is how reddit was started. If they had tools for mass posting with auto-generated accounts then why would they stop? Remember - the top subs were being modded by epstein’s gang. If that kind of absurdity is happening then imagine when a political party offers them 10m to rig an election.

CodeWriter23 3y ago

Well, Reddit was built on sock puppets.