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So we have Reddit, a for profit company controlled by a media corporation, asking other smaller for profit companies making millions out of Reddit's API to pay

So we have Reddit, a for profit company controlled by a media corporation, asking other smaller for profit companies making millions out of Reddit's API to pay for access, then somehow moderators go on strike? This makes no sense to me. Like what will prevent these subreddits to be back online with new moderators? Do the majority of Reddit's user base even care about what's going on?

denvrede 3y ago
At this point, if you want to be part of the discussion, please do your own research on the topic and try to understand the situation. It's explained multiple times in every news that comes up regarding Reddit (also in this one).
- coding123 3y ago
  what I saw was an app writer that said his monthly cost per user would be $3, and gave no explanation for why instead of shutting down he wouldn't just charge each user $3 per month (plus a fee)
  - OnlyLys 3y ago
    The developer of Apollo explains it in detail here: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-private-apollo-christian-selig-subreddit https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-p...
gremlinsinc 3y ago
the mods and power users must fed up with Reddit probably contribute 80 percent of the content, even if they are a minority. Without content what exactly is Reddit? nobody will fill this void because of the nature of a lot of these subs. I mean you really gotta be obsessive a little to continuously moderate weird niche subs like birds aren't real. A lot of subs will probably switch to bare minimum policing, which is to say only site wide rules which basically turns every sub into a free for all like /r/worldpolitics. You think it's easy to replace 4 to 10 moderators across 8000 subreddits? I sure you, it most definitely is not.
- Wissenschafter 3y ago
  Honestly pretty funny how the mods are throwing a fit. The changes where the community can vote out mods is great.
  - detuur 3y ago
    Be careful what you wish for. SomethingAwful voted out its mods and it went to shit _very_ quickly after. It's very hard to find mods who actually care about a community. Many of the very best communities on Reddit are very strictly moderated because the sad reality is that the vast majority of contributions are shit. If you end up in SA's situation, where strict moderation lead to many users having had at least one negative experience with mods, users might get the idea they know better than the mods how to run their community and any mod who actually curates the contributions runs the risk of getting votekicked. That being said, treating mods as some kind of tenured position has lead to plenty of abuse as well. Altogether it's going to be a thin line for everyone involved to tread in order to keep these communities intact through all of this.
    - coding123 3y ago
      Something Awful was purchased by someone, it went to shit because of that.
  - jerf 3y ago
    A major problem Reddit has is that if they go down that route, a "community" will become "the set of people who clicked 'join'". That isn't a very strong definition of "community" to build things like voting mods in and out on. Right now the mods are the only source of continuity within a community. Let people vote and you get mod vote brigades, and a realistic chance that every major sub on the site becomes /r/politics, regardless of what letters follow the /r/ in the URL, because everyone will vote out anyone who tries to prevent it. The other thing too is that the entire purpose of a mod is basically to make enemies. The angry people, the unpleasant people, the very people you want them to tone down or ban are also the ones who will vote with maximum vigor. And bot nets, slander campaigns, personal threats, these are the people who have no lines. As a moderator myself, who does it for my own reasons, if I had to "defend" my moderation powers against a community slander campaign I wouldn't so much as lift a finger. I may well just make the ringleader a mod on my way out. I have no motivation to fight that fight. And if that's kind of what you want to hear from your moderator, rather than having a moderator who actually will engage in a community reputational deathmatch to keep their powers, you probably shouldn't encourage a structure that will even further reify needing to spend a ton of energy in politics just to keep their janitorial position. I think Reddit could survive simply removing the mods & replacing them. I won't guarantee thriving, and it may not economically survive, but some number of users would still keep going. I think making it so communities can vote out mods (and probably by a simple majority vote of those who bother to vote, as is the American Way) actually would kill them, because of the second- and higher order effects of that change. The end result of the Mod Wars of 2023 would be the metaphorical equivalent of the Sahara Desert I referred to in an earlier post [1]. The only people who would persist in such an environment are exactly the ones that you want moderators to remove. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36360696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36360696

denvrede 3y ago

At this point, if you want to be part of the discussion, please do your own research on the topic and try to understand the situation. It's explained multiple times in every news that comes up regarding Reddit (also in this one).

coding123 3y ago
what I saw was an app writer that said his monthly cost per user would be $3, and gave no explanation for why instead of shutting down he wouldn't just charge each user $3 per month (plus a fee)
- OnlyLys 3y ago
  The developer of Apollo explains it in detail here: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-private-apollo-christian-selig-subreddit https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-p...

gremlinsinc 3y ago

the mods and power users must fed up with Reddit probably contribute 80 percent of the content, even if they are a minority. Without content what exactly is Reddit? nobody will fill this void because of the nature of a lot of these subs. I mean you really gotta be obsessive a little to continuously moderate weird niche subs like birds aren't real. A lot of subs will probably switch to bare minimum policing, which is to say only site wide rules which basically turns every sub into a free for all like /r/worldpolitics. You think it's easy to replace 4 to 10 moderators across 8000 subreddits? I sure you, it most definitely is not.

Wissenschafter 3y ago
Honestly pretty funny how the mods are throwing a fit. The changes where the community can vote out mods is great.
- detuur 3y ago
  Be careful what you wish for. SomethingAwful voted out its mods and it went to shit _very_ quickly after. It's very hard to find mods who actually care about a community. Many of the very best communities on Reddit are very strictly moderated because the sad reality is that the vast majority of contributions are shit. If you end up in SA's situation, where strict moderation lead to many users having had at least one negative experience with mods, users might get the idea they know better than the mods how to run their community and any mod who actually curates the contributions runs the risk of getting votekicked. That being said, treating mods as some kind of tenured position has lead to plenty of abuse as well. Altogether it's going to be a thin line for everyone involved to tread in order to keep these communities intact through all of this.
  - coding123 3y ago
    Something Awful was purchased by someone, it went to shit because of that.
- jerf 3y ago
  A major problem Reddit has is that if they go down that route, a "community" will become "the set of people who clicked 'join'". That isn't a very strong definition of "community" to build things like voting mods in and out on. Right now the mods are the only source of continuity within a community. Let people vote and you get mod vote brigades, and a realistic chance that every major sub on the site becomes /r/politics, regardless of what letters follow the /r/ in the URL, because everyone will vote out anyone who tries to prevent it. The other thing too is that the entire purpose of a mod is basically to make enemies. The angry people, the unpleasant people, the very people you want them to tone down or ban are also the ones who will vote with maximum vigor. And bot nets, slander campaigns, personal threats, these are the people who have no lines. As a moderator myself, who does it for my own reasons, if I had to "defend" my moderation powers against a community slander campaign I wouldn't so much as lift a finger. I may well just make the ringleader a mod on my way out. I have no motivation to fight that fight. And if that's kind of what you want to hear from your moderator, rather than having a moderator who actually will engage in a community reputational deathmatch to keep their powers, you probably shouldn't encourage a structure that will even further reify needing to spend a ton of energy in politics just to keep their janitorial position. I think Reddit could survive simply removing the mods & replacing them. I won't guarantee thriving, and it may not economically survive, but some number of users would still keep going. I think making it so communities can vote out mods (and probably by a simple majority vote of those who bother to vote, as is the American Way) actually would kill them, because of the second- and higher order effects of that change. The end result of the Mod Wars of 2023 would be the metaphorical equivalent of the Sahara Desert I referred to in an earlier post [1]. The only people who would persist in such an environment are exactly the ones that you want moderators to remove. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36360696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36360696