1y ago

Reddit says new accessibility tools for moderators are coming. Mods are skeptical

www.npr.org /2023/07/01/1184258201/reddit-api-accessibility-mods

64 comments

One of the worst side effects of the protest is that it has changed the whole conversation into a "Reddit versus mods thing"
This wasn't just about moderation tools, and it's shitty how so many headlines have claimed it is.
What about us regular users? We who supported the protests because we like the 3rd party apps and didn't want to lose them. Why is that not reason enough? Why does this have to be about accessibility or moderation tools?
Why do mods get concessions but not the users? How about us that don't want to use your trash official app, huh? Where are your vapid promises to us?
- Proof is in the pudding. There's a reason we're talking about this here instead of on Reddit.
  The mods are getting concessions (if they get anything--it's yet to be seen whether anything actually comes of any new promises) because the Reddit admins realize that they need the free labor. They don't need users, because they believe--rightly or wrongly--that nobody else can get enough market share fast enough to actually matter. People will give up on projects like Lemmy and begrudgingly eat whatever ad-friendly shit Huffman feeds them. The users are the product Reddit has to sell to its advertises, and they think they can always make more of those. Mods, on the other hand--those are part of the infrastructure, and they don't make money. They cost money. So Reddit really, really wants those mods to stay/come back and keep working for imaginary internet clout (and the occasional corporate bribe), and they'll pitch whatever lies they can think of to make that happen.
  The worst future for Reddit is the one in which subreddits have to be moderated by actual paid employees--employees who do things like adopt statements of end users and expose Reddit to potential liability.
  
  Can't wait to see Reddit Corporate deciding whether or not a particular post is really gonewildgrannies material!
- For me it was also about the principle. Sure Reddit can make monkey and be a healthy business. But don't pretend people are leeching of your data, because all the content is created by the users, not Reddit, even the mods are volunteers.
  I really hate the attitude where they expect free stuff but don't want to give anything back.
  
  Exactly! There is absolutely nothing wrong for both third-party developers using Reddit and Reddit itself to be profitable. However, Reddit's leadership has decided this absolutely cannot fly.
  There's general broad agreement that if Reddit wants to charge for API access, that's fine, but the prices and timelines are absolutely not practical for any third-party developer. All existing third-party applications today get by because of an exemption (signed under NDA). The fact that Narwhal's developer has not divulged the specifics of the agreement and has generally pussy-footed around it when asked speaks volumes about Reddit's "transparency".
  There were so many ways to monetize this out of the users directly instead of going after third-party developers; instead Reddit decided that the third-party developers were a direct enemy and competitor, rather than a value-added component of their platform. It's absolutely stupid.
- Reddit tried to control the narrative by dividing and conquering users. They inflamed some valid criticism about bad mods but ended up ostracizing a lot of "internet janitors" who were blissfully doing the job for free. The mods thing also became an issue because mods keep subreddits clean so ultimately the impact to the mods impacts the users, regardless of the user's app of choice.
- Mods are unpaid "workers" that make it possible for Reddit to be appealing to advertisers and be potentially viable to go public. Framing the story around them gives outsiders a reason to think that admins are doing something that will make their unpaid jobs harder (which is true) and gives them someone to feel bad for.
  Otherwise the story is a bunch of non-paying users of Reddit are upset that a company wants to regain control over the ad revenue 3rd party app creators take instead, either through ads on their own platforms or premium memberships. Which I do think there is more nuance because Reddit is only as powerful as their user base so maybe they deserve some concessions, but the average news reader who isn't on Reddit won't understand that.
  Just to clarify, I'm annoyed as well and not saying we shouldn't take our contributors and lurkers elsewhere. I moved over to Lemmy as a RIF user and refuse to use the app. Just giving the likely answer to the question!
- As someone who modded, it’s because we did immense amounts of volunteer labor for them that they couldn’t function without. We had to be appeased because we were able to organize and shut everything down. But also I didn’t leave because of mod issues. I left because as a user apollo was so much better than the official app that I wouldn’t settle for it
- I don't even use third party apps, but it's fundamentally bad for the internet for big websites to do shit like this to try to lock off their APIs to only paid users even though it's a free website populated entirely by user generated content.

Considering that r/Blind is apparently having issues getting Reddit to listen to them when it comes to accessible tools, I’m not sure I believe Reddit on this.

Reddit literally made up their own definition of "Accessibility" in order to justify only giving a couple of particularly unpopular 3rd party apps exceptions. No shade on RedReader but we all know it wasn't nearly as popular as RiF or Apollo
- Elaborate
  
  The only apps that are getting accessibility exemptions are apps that are only about accessibility, not apps that happen to have good accessibility and also do other things.

What was stopping them from bringing the tools first, let mods migrate and be comfortable with them and then apply the new pricing on the API? Greed and ego are having a field day it seems.
- They never had any intentions of building new tools.
- This whole API thing seems just so short sighted… there would have been much better ways to implement this, nobody had problem with the monetisation aspect/inclusion of ads to the API…
  But it is what it is… and without this fiasco I wouldn’t have switched to lemmy/kbin! :)
- What’s stopping them? Money and the prospect of making more
- This is the question I’ve been wondering. The way they’ve gone about this makes absolutely no sense so something must have been going on behind the scenes to force it like this
  
  I strongly believe they are just inept. They didn’t understand what value third party apps actually brought. None of the decision makers actually mod anywhere so they probably aren’t aware that reddits official tools are lacking.
  
  There have been speculations that they wanted to throttle the API asap because of the AI revolution that has started. Reddit data is absolute GOLD for training large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. OpenAI definitely used data from both Reddit and Twitter in some capacity and for free and are making a ton of money. Tons of startups are now doing the same, training or fine tuning LLMs and for that data scraping is again required. Like Elon keeps complaining about increase in scraping attempts and doing idiotic things to handle that, Huffman just followed in his shoes.

After the shut down of 3rd party apps, the latest update to the official app broke accessibility for mod tools, so /r/blind mods now say it's impossible for blind moderators to moderate their own sub.

If they come, it’s only because they we bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.

People still use reddit?
- Reddit? Never even heard of it

They've been saying they were going to add/fix things for the last 6 years while actively ignoring mods lmao, I doubt they're gonna change that.

Hello fellow Lemmings! It is I, thefloatingpoint from the future. I have traveled back in time to tell you the tales from Reddit.
The tools came 3 month after this announcement.
They didn’t work at all.
As of 2025 they still don’t.
Also Spez died in self strangulation while masturbating to a picture of Elon Musk. Who in turn died in a ball of fire after his latest patch for Twitter went online.
Goodbye Lemmings.

Even if they are coming, I don‘t think any of us which are already here will switch back. They should‘ve thought of this before they broke their platform.

Considering that r/Blind is apparently having issues getting Reddit to listen to them when it comes to accessible tools, I’m not sure I believe Reddit on this.

Lemmy really needs good moderation tools soon, they're decent but lacking.

I feel like reddit has been saying this for years and yet... they implement useless shit like subreddit chats.
- RPAN…

If they come, it’s only because they weee bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.

They promise this each and every time there is a conflict between Reddit and the userbase.
For as long as the platform has existed.
Them neglecting to actually implement anything is the very reason so many external applications came to be.
And the very few times they actually did start releasing some accessibility or moderation tools, as soon as any conflict died down, they stopped developing those features and left them in a half finished state or removed them down the line.
Or they do ridiculous shit like trying to market their "new" reddit user interface and app as being accessible and having tools, while in reality, even fully able users can't work with that pile of shit.
- even fully able users can't work with that pile of shit.
  It's not discriminatory if no one can use the shit.

If they come, it’s only because they we bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.

Why should anyone trust Reddit anymore?

Reddit: PANIC

If they come, it’s only because they we bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.

don't fuckin believe them. They're trying to stave off users leaving

I do most of my moderation on mobile and in new reddit you can't access the sidebar in the mobile view they give. I have to use old reddit therefore. The sidebar has the mod tools linked to it as well as rules and a bucnh of other useful things... that are all not visible in mobile. Their UI standards are very low.
- But also they had ample time to fix these things before killing 3rd party apps. It's easy to say "we'll do it later"
  
  Reddit has been making promises and punting the action down the line for years.
  So much of their work is half baked and incomplete, or just not fully featured, and usually only sufficient to be a minimally viable product
  Anyone who sincerely trusts Reddit in this way is just asking for trouble.

Okay but why didn't they have a usable option before killing off the stuff people use? This stupid-ass tradition of companies timing things in ways that make no sense outside their own corrupted minds... Did they surprise themselves with this timing? Is there literally some hidden authority running the world but it's actually one guy from 4chan who just out of nowhere declared "Enshittify NOW!! Trolololololol" and they had to do it?
Baffling that they couldn't have set a time that worked to make something or made something that worked before starting this crap. People even begged them to simply delay the switch, which obviously would've given their code-slaves more time to solve this mess for them but noooope. What good is kicking your userbase in the pants whilst lighting your company aflame if you're not gonna laugh at the fire and the fleeing?
- Okay but why didn't they have a usable option before killing off the stuff people use?
  They didn't fucking think about it. It literally never occurred to them to consider all the third-party work that went into being able to make their site actually usable. They just assumed that, obviously, the official app is fine, and people would just "adjust".
  The conversation they had with the mods of r/blind was a complete joke. It just never once occurred to anyone that people with accessibility needs use Reddit at all.
  The following is a dramatization
  "Who in your company has accessibility certifications, and which ones?"
  "..... uh....... well, of course we do...[texting their boss what the fuck is an accessibility certification???] I just.... [ding! A what? TF is that?].... am not allowed to answer that..... ... right now..."
  "When was the last time you had a third-party accessibility audit, and who performed it?"
  ".....oh, we.... totally... had an accessibility audit, just... like... you know, just recently! And it was performed by.... uh.... [texting Who the fuck does accessibility audits???]... uh, you know, that big company, from Canada... you've probably never met them... [ding! What audits? The fuck are those? I don't fucking know!] I'm just... not allowed to say right now."
- Did they surprise themselves with this timing?
  Communication between different departments in most functional large companies is almost always a crapshoot so, yeah, they almost definitely did.

@L4s What moderators?

Give us a date or shut up, Huffman and Ratboy.

What was stopping them from bringing the tools first, let mods migrate and be comfortable with them and then apply the new pricing on the API? Greed and ego are having a field day it seems.

Considering that they didn't introduce the CSS tools they promised for New Reddit way back when, consider me skeptical.

If they come, it’s only because they weee bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.

Lmfao haven't they been saying this for like 15 years?

That is a moot point at this stage. Reddit is a like dead plane right in that moment of weightlessness before it plunges into death spiral.

This story is big enough that NPR cares to talk about it?

It said the changes will be rolled out starting Saturday.
According to Google, it looks as if Reddit did roll out mod tools to help replace the 3rd party apps they've been using. I wonder how effective they are so far.
- Broken.
  
  Link works in kbin.social. Since this is a lemmy instance, it might be a url formatting issue on lemmy's end. I just tried the link through Firefox on kbin.social and it works...I'm currently on Chrome.

If they come, it’s only because they weee bullied into it and they will be half baked. They had years to add this on their own and they didn’t. So it will be rushed out because of the protest and even with all those thousands of paid devs will still somehow (spez) manage to be inferior to the third party tools they took away.

I don't care now.

64 comments