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Tell HN: Reddit Removes Multiple Moderator Teams of Large Subreddits
Reddit has removed the entire moderator teams for several communities, includes:
* /r/InterestingAsFuck (11.5 million subs)
* /r/MildlyInteresting (22.3 million subs)
* /r/TIHI (1.7 million subs)
Plus many others.
These were subreddits that held a community vote with tens of thousands of votes to decide what type of content to allow.
NSFW content won, with the implication that NSFW subreddits cannot be monetized.
These subreddits are now restricted and unmoderated, available for request to new moderators through /r/redditrequest.
- ChildOfChaos 3y agoThis is good to see, a lot of moderators are power hungry, egotistical jerks. I am glad these subreddits have been returned back to the community, perhaps the Reddit staff can moderate for now.
- rjbwork 3y ago>I am glad these subreddits have been returned back to the community The community voted on the changes. You can go look up the polls that were held for yourself. >perhaps the Reddit staff can moderate for now Lol. Not a viable business model for reddit. Their entire revenue is less than what facebook spends on just moderation.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>perhaps the Reddit staff can moderate for now. I hope so. Put their money where their mouth is if they want the rules they refuse to put in the TOS. But from your POV, we both know that won't happen. They just recruite more power hungry, egotistical jerks because it's cheap. And you'll continue to hate them.
- seydor 3y agoDoes anybody know what s happening with r/MachineLearning? Are the moderators dead?
- dredmorbius 3y agoAs I've posted to HN elsewhere, my four-digit-membership ten-year-old personal bloggish-subreddit to which Reddit admins had previously pledged would not be reassigned to another moderator ... has received a ModCodeOfConduct notice. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434885 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434885>
- sershe 3y agoI'm going to offer a perhaps contrarian opinion - I am with reddit here, and I think removing community mods is a great idea, especially the vocal mods. I think vast majority of online mods that are active - i.e. if you don't consider those that care minimally and just remove outright spam and bad conduct, and by definition would not be part of the "protest", are the worst of their communities and should be removed even in normal times. In Russian there's a saying that can be translated as "doorman (or consiege/bouncer) syndrome", where an otherwise pitiful person (a doorman controlling access to some venue, more common in Soviet union even for e.g. dorms) has a little bit of local power and discretion and uses it in at best arbitrary, and at worst actively malicious and power-trippy way, because they can. That's your average /vocal/ internet moderator. A good example from Reddit is recent /r/comicbooks case where any mention of Rippaverse comics were being removed and users banned because one of the mods disagrees with the author's right-libertarian politics. It's even worse in Facebook groups where I've seen mods remove users for no reason, including someone who happened to create/join the mod team on the first major city-wide board-gaming group banning a bunch of people explicitly over politics (not discussing politics in the group, just having wrong politics at all), because "it's muh group!" (pretty much an actual quote) Why would reddit stand for losers on a power trip controlling a community for a popular topic on their property, just because they were "there first"? It makes no sense. I totally buy an argument that most users just want to participate, and they only need mods to maintain the manners and clean up spam. Reddit should just kick all the mods out from the major/general-purpose/large-geographical-entity subreddits, and have paid mods to do the above.
- SheepHerdr 3y agoReddit's explanation (from an admin account, /u/ModCodeofConduct) is that 'encouraging the submission of sexually explicit (18+) content in previously safe-for-work spaces' counts as 'engaging in malicious conduct' that breaks the Moderator Code of Conduct. https://twitter.com/aaronp613/status/1671298446974656514 https://twitter.com/aaronp613/status/1671298446974656514 To me it doesn't seem like they actually violated any Reddit policy or code of conduct, particularly because the NSFW content was properly labeled. https://www.redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct https://www.redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy The same admin account was also caught quietly flipping the NSFW subs back to SFW status. So this is clearly just about getting back that monetization. https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14ebl7k/umodcodeofconduct_admin_account_caught_quietly/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14ebl7k/umodcodeo...
- riku_iki 3y ago> So this is clearly just about getting back that monetization. and back that normal experience of millions of readers of those subreddits.
- evandale 3y agoexcept the community voted for a new normal...
- riku_iki 3y agocould you give a link?
- predictabl3 3y agoNo, no. If you purport to know what redditors supposedly want, you can read the OP and simply go to the listed subreddits and see the top posts for the votes/announcements. edit: I mean let's be real, you've been panning for reddit for two weeks. You're concern trolling asking for links.
- oidar 3y agoSubmissions are disabled as well... I can't remember what digg did wrong, but it wasn't worse than this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HWR_14 3y agoIIRC, they changed the UX to version 4. It was unpopular.
- xqcgrek2 3y ago[flagged]
- BoxFour 3y agoWhat methods will be employed to assess the suitability of individuals serving as moderators in good faith? It often seems that those who would eagerly seize such opportunities might precisely be the individuals ill-suited for the task.
- aintgonnatakeit 3y agoPerhaps said individuals could show their suitability by purchasing an $8/month subscription. It should come with some kind of mark so people know you’re extra trustworthy.
- ihuman 3y agoSlight nit-pic: Reddit got rid of "default subreddits" in 2017 https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/65x4a7/testing_a_new_sign_up_experience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/65x4a7/testing_a...
- 8note 3y agoThe only real end to this is reddit taking ownership over moderation, and hiring paid moderators for all the subreddits, turning off user created subreddits. Maybe it'll also mean turning off user generated content too, and only have admin made posts, the same as Digg did. They could hire the power-users to keep making the relevant posts. People you don't have on contract are a liability
- lrae 3y ago> The only real end to this is reddit taking ownership over moderation, and hiring paid moderators for all the subreddits, turning off user created subreddits. how so? there are more than enough moderators left who have no issue with reddit's current behaviour and will continue modding for free.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agothere are more than enough sex offenders willing to step up and replace daycare employees, that doesn't mean it's a good idea
- qzx_pierri 3y ago[flagged]
- wojciii 3y agoI found it hilarious. Reddit is a burning ship and no one can put out the fire now no matter what they do when they piss off their user base like this. I plan to leave the platform in some spectacular way in a short time.
- everforward 3y agoThere probably are, but given the level of malicious compliance the user base has been exhibiting, how many of those mod applicants do you think intend to make another "pictures of John Oliver" rule? How do you separate the legit mods from people who just want to carry on the protest? I guess they could audit submission history, but there's a chance of that blowing up as users decide the mods are shills. I've rarely seen Reddit as mad as when they decide someone is a shill, and the vitriol is likely to make the new mods' lives hard. Especially so if they're new mods, and aren't as used to people hurling insults and maybe death threats at them (I don't know how likely death threats are, but it seems like everyone with any online visibility gets them these days). I'm sure they could eventually find mods, but I think there will be chaos in that process. I guess the question is whether they're willing to extend the current chaos to keep free moderation, or if they'd rather pony up some money to end it now. Edit: added "free" in the last paragraph, last sentence between "keep" and "moderation"
- mhoad 3y agoSeems like this thread is getting suppressed. We have front page submissions that have been around for an hour and have just 7 votes while this one is 45 minutes old and has 35. Weird and non transparent moderation decision.
- sethammons 3y agoHn has some automatic dampening settings to prevent charged threads / topics from spiraling. Too many points too fast with too many comments can get pushed down. Dang can remove the guard when called for. Source: just my memory of a comment dang wrote once
- dang 3y agoI added an automatic penalty for Reddit stories a while ago because of https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Reddit%20comments%3E50&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Once this tsunami dies down, we'll put it back the way it was before. In the meantime, when there's significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), we can take the penalty off. The trouble is that it's not exactly easy to tell significant new information apart from significant new drama. Plus I was offline for part of the day yesterday. As you can see from the above HN Search link, it's not like HN has been lacking for Reddit discussion—the problem is all the other way.
- dredmorbius 3y agoHow long ago is "a while ago"? Why change the weighting given stories on a given topic without notice? And how do you reconcile this change with HN's long-standing policy that "We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are the story", which is "literally the first rule of HN moderation"? <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34320816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34320816> Reiterated within the past week: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36366909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36366909>
- refurb 3y agoIn 10 years we'll be talking about Reddit like we talk about MySpace today.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoActually it feels more like Tumblr. * Tumblr was living from NSFW content and when they banned NSFW content Tumblr basically ceased to exist. * Reddit is living from free moderation and when they banned 3rd party tools for moderation, because Reddit ones sucks, they might be going in same direction as Tumblr.
- solardev 3y agoUm... maybe this proves your point... but what is Tumblr? Is it some sort of image hosting site like Flickr or Imgur?
- nucleative 3y agoPretty much. With blackjack and hookers...
- ryanbrunner 3y agoAn alternate universe twitter is probably a better comparison. Content largely tends to be images or video but can be text posts as well. It started off much less "federated" where you were running your own "blog" on Tumblr that had it's own styling, but it's become increasingly centralized. "Reblogs" are a bigger feature on Tumblr than twitter generally and the reply / threading structure is pretty unique, which has a tendency to create a lot of blogs that are essentially 100% reblogging other content.
- freediverx 3y agoMake that two years.
- ivraatiems 3y agoUpdate: At least for some subreddits, the mod teams have been reinstated (also with no communication or warning). See https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14eq8ip/the_entire_rmildlyinteresting_mod_team_has_just/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14eq8ip/the_entir...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- no1groyp 3y ago[dead]
- Anon_Forever 3y ago[flagged]
- Maxion 3y agoI find these types of comments interesting, have you moderated a subreddit yourself? The majority of subreddits on Reddit are moderated by moderators who only mod one or maybe a related subreddit. Quite a bit of work goes into it, especially on the more active ones. Is there anything specifically you don’t like about reddits current moderator system?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Anon_Forever 3y ago>I find these types of comments interesting, have you moderated a subreddit yourself? What if I have? What if I haven't? To answer your question, yes I have, including medium sized ones. >The majority of subreddits on Reddit are moderated by moderators who only mod one or maybe a related subreddit. Possibly, but all of those combined probably have less users than a single median sized subreddit. Their impact, userbase, views, etc. are miniscule. >Quite a bit of work goes into it, especially on the more active ones. It's a tough job hammering out all dissent, shaping the narrative, and dictatorially destroying communities! >Is there anything specifically you don’t like about reddits current moderator system? Almost everything? How about automatically being banned from subs for posting or following wrongthink subs? How about mods arbitrarily banning and removing anything and everything because they feel like it and there's no recourse for the community, and everything is kept in the dark. A cursory look at /r/watchredditdie provides more than enough specifics about what's to dislike.
- guax 3y agoThe most important aspect of reddit is variety of moderation. It allows rules to be tried, ideas to be experimented. Allowing communities to self regulate by having their own mods is what makes it so unique. Mods get crazy, people create a new subreddit and things move along. Doesn't work for the huge subs for stolen content or quick bait but it works wonders for smaller communities. Spez decided to reject that and focus on reddit as a mainstream platform, and as such, disallow and get back the power from the communities and their mods. It'll lower the weird good quality the site has and they will never compete with tiktok for mass attention. You're right that reddit owns the website, but they don't own the communities. And right now, they're loosing peoples goodwill as well.
- seydor 3y agoat this point they weren't moderators, they were squatters and vandals
- frr149 3y ago[flagged]
- flixing 3y agothey have every right to do so and it's well needed. Few teenager thinking they are playing games just by being a mod of a commercial platform. bunch of kids.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoThen the platform should have professional paid mods instead. But that would not be economically viable for Reddit. So those teenagers are subsidizing Reddit by their free time.
- sethammons 3y agoHelp me understand your position. Why was it well needed? Why is it not a game being a mod and how does being commercialized play into that? Why does their age matter? I feel you think the answers are obvious. They are not to me.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoyes, replace your teenager mods with... more teenager mods for a future meltdown. Great strategy.
- ChildOfChaos 3y agoCouldn’t Reddit just fix this by providing good mod tools before they make the api switch?
- freediverx 3y agoReddit couldn’t design a decent piece of software if their life depended on it.
- wozer 3y agoThey could have. But by now they have probably irrecoverably destroyed their relationship to the existing community. Maybe they can build a new community.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoThat means working on features that don't have short terms profitability. Can't have that, Huffman has an IPO to cash out on. But yes. This isn't just some freak accident explosion from mods. This has been bubbling up for at least 7 years and is partially a result of Reddit refusing to help their free labor continue to give free labor. Which is sad because it WORKED. Mods just made their own tools or used the tools of other. But now Reddit is taking those tools away instead of promising better native support.
- unstatusthequo 3y agoWould be great if the new mods sandbagged the mod approval process and then took it private again. That would be enormously amusing.
- irthomasthomas 3y agoWeird that r/programming is still down, when it's run by reddit staff.[0] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230612074029/https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230612074029/https://old.reddi...