1y ago

the API changes occur tomorrow, gentlemen, it's been an honor (inb4 Lemmy completely crashes)

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I think a lot of moderators are just going to back down and return to business-as-usual from tomorrow. Reddit will suffer as a business but this isn't going to downright kill the site. Unlike say... Tumblr or OnlyFans, Reddit has a far more diverse clientele and many of them couldn't give a shit about third-party apps.
These half-arsed protests staged after the 14th June have told me that most of Reddit's mods are fucking cowards who are more afraid of losing their status as internet janitors than all the third-party apps.
Reddit's moderators could have easily brought the site to its knees if they just collectively stopped enforcing rules (including site-wide ones), removed Automoderator, unbanned everybody, then told the community to just go nuts.
The mods of /r/interestingasfuck had the right idea by encouraging users to post NSFW content, since this would have chased away advertisers in droves.
I mean the whole "sexy pics of John Oliver" protest that /r/pics had isn't going to chase away advertisers and was something that Spez could easily ignore, but having your content displayed alongside a flood of explicit pornographic images definitely will.
- I'd argue it will become like Facebook, with the younger and more intelligent crowd leaving the site.
  
  Excuse me! I'm older and more intelligent, thank you very much.
  
  I'm on the older side, can't comment anything about the intelligent part.
  Visiting Reddit now just feels like watching teenagers raging against bots. Like YouTube on steroids. You can't convince me anyone there is older than, being generous, 25.
  Older-than-me-people (50+) are still playing Candy Crutch on Facebook.
  
  I'd argue that you're right, and that it has already happened. If the bootlicking crowd on Reddit is actually organic users hearing a call to action to start commenting after months and years of inactivity, that is. Reddit is known to operate large networks of sock puppet accounts for fake engagement and narrative control (per Venture Beat's reporting, which quotes an admission from Huffman).
  
  Speaking of bootlickers, the last couple of days I've seen endless posts from "users" saying no one actually cares, protests failed, protesters are just trying to defend the profits of third party apps etc. Smells of copypasta and astroturfing.
  
  Plausible. With only a fraction of Reddit's supposed size, Lenny+kbin are already nearing parity in quality of discourse.
  
  Yep, this is the difference, on Reddit, you would get a response from bots and trolls all the time. Sure there were some subreddits where heavy moderation fixed it, but in over a decade at Reddit, I only found 3 communities like that.
  The upshot of that was I stopped posting on Reddit, but here it feels different and more welcoming. I know it won't always be like this, but just now it feels like something new, untainted, and more importantly, wants to improve the experience for its users..unlike that bellend spez.
  
  It was actually the olds that left first, the ones who remember what the internet was like before corporations came in and dominated everything.
  
  Medium old. Actual old people make Facebook what it is.
  
  Yeah, older Millenials and Gen Xers, not Boomers.
- The front page has gotten worse and worse over the last few weeks. Posts are just filled with Top Level spam comments with no replies. There has to be some kind of coordinated effort by the admins to make it look like the site is still doing fine.
  The protest wasn't successful, but it's made enough people think twice about their reddit usage that it did something. I think a lot of the mods thought thought that reddit would cave, and now they haven't they're facing the destruction of what many of them have built from next to nothing (Mostly mid size subreddits) they're not prepared to nuke it all.
  
  Why would they continue work on a site where in reality they have zero control.
  Up until now, they probably thought they had, but now it's clear they don't.
  It now turns out, that mods can be overruled and even excluded from the community they started.
- I agree the mods could and should have done a lot more to protest more effectively as you said. Reddit will be around for a long time to come I suspect, but in a steadily decreasing manner, with its effectiveness and relevance as an (often good) information source fading away.
- The mods would need to have some actual conviction instead of being selfish losers for this to happen.
  All they care about is their own modding, tools, power, etc
  As soon as it looked like they might lose their mod powers they caved.
  
  that's pretty embarrassing. they should've opened the flood gates and walked away. i modded a /r/technology for a minute and there was just so much backroom bickering about moderation philosophy applied to every borderline spam case. idk why anyone would want to engage in that constantly.
  
  You’re obviously too good of a person to have continued to be a mod
  It would be nice if mods where the type of people who didn’t want to be mods.
  
  i wouldn't go that far, but i think it is like policing and government where the people who would be best suited for the job are usually the type who wouldn't really want to do it.
  
  I’ve modded various places over the years, my outlook has always been that keeping the conversation going is important.
  Content of the conversation really doesn’t matter so much, as long as it’s not just wildly inappropriate. Users need to have thick skin to participate, there is no ‘agenda’ to something like a ‘general’ forum of discussion and there are no right or wrong opinions.
  You can argue opinion as a user, but not action opinion as a moderator, or you’re becoming a curator. A lot of moderation on reddit is curative, imo
  Creates toxic echo chambers
  Sorry I’m rambling
  
  That's because they fully understand the burden of properly doing said job. This is the very reason I've turned down many job offers and/or doing something for free. Cuz I know that that will be just another thing on my schedule, which I would ralter not cramp up all the way. Got a family, would like to spend some time with them as well. Helping people and doing stuff for free or for a small fee is fun and I enjoy it, but it doesn't put food on the table and it doesn't compensate for lost time with my loved ones.

494 comments