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Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts

As some subreddits continue blackouts to protest Reddit's plans to charge high prices for its API, Reddit has informed the moderators of those subreddits that it has plans to replace resistant moderation teams to keep spaces "open and accessible to users."

Edit, there seems to be conflicting reporting on this issue:

While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout

42 comments

  • the idea that a cabal of mods were going to take things in a good direction was always unsound

    • Notoriously mature and level headed mods that spend all day on the internet putting an excessive amount of emotional energy into something most people barely care about... Who could have predicted this?

  • The least they could do is make it less obvious who they will replace the mods with. I expect this kind of blatant takeover attitude from a place with less legal department. Like twitter.

  • Hahaha you know before this many people didn't think of reddit as corporate corporate. They scewed themselves and ruined their goodwill

    • I have to admit, it has changed the way I think of reddit, both as an entity and as a source of information.

  • Glad I left Reddit tbh, so far Lemmy/the Fediverse seems to be way better.

    • I'm tempted to say it's better, but, unfortunately, in many ways it's not.

      What Reddit had, most of the time, was semi-canonical communities. There was /r/python, /r/linux, /r/privacy, etc. The diaspora of Lemmy is a shadow of all of that. Surely, there are a dozen or so (at least) /c/python communities on Lemmy, but is there a single one that's anywhere near as active as the Reddit one? No. Not so far, at least.

      And unfortunately, I can say as an instance admin, the lemmy moderation tools are just flat bad. We had to turn off open registration and enable email verification, not because we would otherwise need it, but the Lemmy moderation tools are 100% reactive and only operate on a 1-by-1 basis. If a spambot signs up 100 fake accounts, I have to go and individually ban each and every one of them. There's no shift+select, ban.

      Don't get me wrong. I'm glad to be here, and Lemmy's great, and there's far less toxicity (so far). All I'm saying is, (1) there's work to do, (2) don't gloat.

  • I swear Reddit is not only not learning from history but purposely trying to repeat it again thinking oh the previous guys were just too weak....

  • Simply replacing all the mods sound like a good way to kill a subreddit, Reddit probably has no way to pick good mods... Mods will need some connection with the topic, and you don't want to pick random users with no experience for large subreddits.

    • get ready for sudden and radical rule changes, non enforcement of rules, nsfw, bots, spam, all kinds of fun crazy shit in the subs with mods removed. I'm sure a percentage of subs would stay the same, but I don't think that percentage is very high.

      • I can already hear the CPA/affiliate marketing bots spinning up lol.

42 comments