1y ago

Don't feel bad for the Moderators of Reddit

I should begin by mentioning that I am (was) a moderator of three subreddits: one large subreddit, one NSFW subreddit and a medical-related subreddit. After u/spez's calamitous AMA, I joined Lemmy and haven't looked back. I am really enjoying the Lemmy/KBin vibe. It is very much an alpha (almost beta) product and the ad free, corporate free, decentralized nature of the fediverse has a thrill of its own.

Over the past couple of months, Reddit has done everything it can to show its moderators that they are low-value and easily replaceable. They've done this by removing technical tools, killing off third party applications, crippling API changes and jaw-droppingly bad public relations. Heavily used products like /r/toolbox are no longer being actively developed. When Reddit API implements a breaking, non-backwards compatible change, that tool will also die.

Yet the moderators of Reddit continue to moderate. They stay and help Reddit build Reddit. They continue to work for free; to allow Reddit to make money off of their work despite being abused. When I see things like the comment section on this post, I no longer feel sorry for the Reddit moderators still on the site. I see them as a sad, sorry group who cling to the false hope of a corporate turnaround. They could leave Reddit. They should leave Reddit.

These moderators are in an abusive relationship with Reddit, Inc. I might understand the argument, "we built this community, we can't just abandon it". But would you give the same advice to someone else in an abusive relationship? I get that the analogy between the mods and the corp is an imperfect one, yet it is similar enough to be valid, in my opinion.

Moderating is really hard. It is hard and thankless and never-ending. Finding good moderators who can handle the marathon nature of the gig is incredibly difficult. If Reddit moderators were to delete their moderating bots, downgrade their automod "code" and dial back their modding efforts to 5 min/week or less, it would materially hurt Reddit as a product.

The sunk-cost fallacy is a real thing. If the Reddit mods understood this, they'd take their talents elsewhere. But as long as they continue to help Reddit build Reddit, one shouldn't feel sorry for them.

They could leave. I did and I've never been happier.

216 comments

The abusive relationship is with Reddit, not the community they moderate. A more accurate analogy is tolerating the abusive person because you don't want to completely lost contact with many other people you care about just because of that one guy who they're still friend with. The answer then become less clear cut than just cut off the toxic person. It becomes a question of when the abusive person becomes toxic enough that even the prospect of keeping in touch with other people you care about isn't worth it any more. That is going to be different for everyone and there's no right answer as it completely depends on the person. It is still possible that someone misjudge and they'd be better off leaving earlier, but what that earlier point is still has to be decided first according to their own circumstances.
To illustrate my point. Some people believe it's the right thing to do to leave Reddit much earlier than this year, such as when they let /r/thedonald operated freely. In this case here because you decided to stay until 1-2 months ago, you are also part of the problem that "stayed and helped Reddit build Reddit".
I think this post simplified the situation in a way that misrepresented the motivation of some moderators.
- It’s like the mods are divorcing parents who has to deal with the toxic ex to take care of their children.
- A more accurate analogy is tolerating the abusive person because you don’t want to completely lost contact with many other people you care about
  Thing is: Communities also can leave. If the community cares about its mods in the same way the mods care about the community, a move toward an alterantive medium is not a problem.
  Of course that's not how it is. The communities at large to a good part don't give a shit about the people who moderate. The relationship is often entirely one sided. A community which cares, leaves with the mods. A community which doesn't give a fuck, stays.
- The other people can also join Lemmy with very limited efforts compared to a real life situation that may be highly complex (housing, job).

You want to hear something fucked up? After nearly 10 years in Reddit, one day I suddenly started receiving daily death threats and HEAVY bot spamming on this tiny little sub I was moderating. So naturally I reached out to the mod support sub for help. Then this bot/spammer started flooding my post on their sub which actually felt great—they were getting a taste of what I had been dealing with. The post ended up with well over 500 comments from this piece of shit. So instead of help me out, you know what they did? They banned me from the mod support subreddit.
I had a conversation with one of the admins who basically told me they don't care about death threats. Furthermore, this spammer had also admitted to murdering people. Again the admin didn't care. Till the day I left they were unable to stop this one person from creating hundreds, maybe even thousands of accounts and spamming tons of people including myself. A billion dollar company can't even control their own product. The bots literally own Reddit. Lol. Fuck them, all of them who stayed.
Here some proof: https://imgur.com/Hofqdh8 https://imgur.com/gallery/vJhZlwX
- They don't even require email validation. I made dozens of burner accounts with the same email over the years. It's wild. They are like actively against controlling the bots. It's like Twitter, the bots inflate the numbers so they don't want to go after them.
  
  I want revenge.
- There was this guy, I think he called himself "killallwomen" with changing numbers. I received a death threat followed up by pictures of animal porn and gore. I actually didn't care that much. I understand your concerns and nobody should have to deal with this kind of shit. But I got so many death threats on Reddit over the years. Death threats from nazis, death threats from conspiracy theorists, death threats from CCP slaves, death threats from russian bots, death threats from trumpian cultists, death threats from a guy who thought I want to punch him for some reason, death threats from incels, OH THE INCELS! There are so many of them on Reddit.
  I couldn't care even if I wanted. But not everyone feels the same and things I might find almost funny, could disturb others. So this killallwomen guy kept doing what he was doing and the counter got higher and higher. To the point he almost became a meme in some communities.
  Did the admins care? Did they do anything to stop this behavior on their site? Of course they didn't.
- I wonder how many of the people on lemmy that removeded about getting banned on reddit, how its an an echo-chamber and how you're not allowed to have a different opinion there, are believers in "alternate facts," or spread misinformation, or are otherwise culpable for bad behavior. I once got banned from /r/TwoXChromosomes because I got insultingly personal in criticizing someone for their rabid misandry. But you know what? Even if that other redditor was in the wrong, so was I for a lack of civility. I messaged the mods, explained specifically what happened, what rule I broke, my intention to refrain from doing that in the future, etc. And I was unbanned. One person's "echo chamber" is 10,000 people's enjoyable space.
  In the last month or two before the Great Migration, I started noticing a hard right shift all over reddit that seemed extremely suspicious. Comments expressing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments and other so-called "social conservative"/regressive comments getting tons of upvotes. On a scale I had never seen before with brigading etc. They'd eventually get downvoted into oblivion but what the hell was going on, I have no idea.
  
  Elections are coming up. I remember the time around 2016. Nothing new under the sun.

I shut down the my subreddit for old memes on Reddit and moved it to Lemmy. Then it blew up on Lemmy and the old ass memes spread to the other meme subreddits. (Sorry)
This is home now.
!antiquememesroadshow@lemmy.world is better than ever over here. Although it’s still full of stale ass memes.
- YOU. You're the reason I had to endure that unending two day borefest! /jk
  
  If it makes you feel any better, my wife also moved over to Lemmy and she was chewing me out for several days because of it.
  She was so annoyed that her feed was full of advice animals and dancing babies.
- This does raise an interesting point - subreddits that were not so popular in the old world could take advantage of the communities goldrush - ie, many users looking for communities they're interested in, on lemmy instances.
  When there are a lot fewer communities, with a lot less content, even niche communities have a pretty good chance of people subbing to them, if not for anything else, just to populate currently sparse selection of content.
  
  Might also have something to do with Lemmy’s early adopters being a lot of Millennial and late Gen X folks. People seemed to enjoy the nostalgia.
  But yeah, it’s a lot easier to gain traction with a new community on Lemmy. All you need is a silly idea, content, and the motivation to let people know it exists.

Same here.
After the infamous AMA, I made a post in my subreddit basically saying "peace out, I'm off to Lemmy. Good luck, everyone." Lucky for them, I'd set up a pretty robust automoderator over the years so that's still taking care of the majority of the moderating tasks I'd imagine.
I visited that post today and saw over 500 comments, each one by a mod and each one of them angry. Why they're still there, I have no idea.
- Most won’t even consider changing their browsing habits due to the trouble involved in acclimating to anything new. There’s inertia.
  
  I look at Reddit from time to time to check on the state etc but I deleted my account / comments etc … must say It is hard to break year long habits

This is just the start. Once Reddit IPOs and we hear how many tens of millions spez made off the backs of mods and power users, more will start to question why they are doing unpaid labor just to make spez rich. There is a fundamental problem with trying to make bank on volunteer labor, and we're just starting to see it begin.
- This is precisely why I quit. I'm still on reddit because the conversation volume on Lemmy is not yet high enough to keep me on top of a few select subjects I follow.
  I only moderated one (significant) community - about 30k. All I really do is maintain the bot to control spam. But, I quit. I'm still there, I just refuse to do anything to make the experience any better than it is, and it will slowly degrade over time from my inaction.
  Capitalism is great in that it creates great things. Capitalism sucks because it ultimately, inevitably destroys every great thing it creates.
- Spez will have his millions then and not care one jot about those who, post his big payday, "question why they are doing unpaid labor just to make spez rich".
  For him there will literally not have been any "fundamental problem with trying to make bank on volunteer labor" as he will have pulled it of and come out of it filthy rich. For any sucker that buys Reddit stock at the public IPO price, that will be different, but Spez himself wil have won.
  So the only way to actually punish him for his actions and deter other sociopaths from doing the same thing in the future is to damage the brand well before any IPO.
  
  He'll still have plenty of stock and CEOs get paid in stock options. But anyway, spez doesn't have to care, my point was that Reddit mods will question and many will.

Except for the veteran sub where I got perma banned for literally saying I don't like fascism, I never had many paths cross with mods.
Where I lost respect for them is when Reddit started telling them to open up or get replaced and most of them complied. I'd have some more empathy if it was at work where getting canned meant scrambling to pay bills - but we're talking about Reddit. They claim to stand for something but the second they're asked to give up anything for that belief they cave.
Psuedo interwebs powers just trump morals and values these days.
- I was a mod that walked away. The fact that so few mods had the balls to call Reddit on their bluff is disappointing but totally expected to me.
  
  I'm not terribly surprised but I was excited at the potential of everyone going "fuck it replace me then" and Reddit trying to limp through an IPO with a whole army of noob mods with zero moderation tools 😂
- Well, for what it's worth I was a mod there -- admittedly, of an extremely tiny sub that to the nearest decimal point, no one cares about. I walked away due to all the BS happening at reddit. Not just the API scandal, or throwing the Apollo dev under the bus, but also the general enshittification of the entire experience as well. For instance, I do enjoy a good internet argument now and again, but some of the stuff users in specific subs insisted on arguing with me about just tooth and nail devolved into being absolutely ridiculous. The place is a cesspit of its own making, and not just the administration but also the mods and some cross section of its user base. (I'm not going to speculate on how broad of said cross section. I don't know; I don't care.)
  At the end of the day, you are correct. It's just an internet forum that ultimately doesn't matter. If someone's only validation in life is wielding a small amount of petty authority over anonymous internet people, well. I don't know what to tell you. I have no need for such a thing. I was only a mod of my sub because I enjoyed the topic, but I'm not turning it into a job and frankly, I don't care to be A) lumped in by association with the "power mods" and capitulators/collaborators involved with this whole clusterfuck, and B) if reddit is also implicitly handing me a "fuck you" along with all the rest of the mods, then fuck 'em right back. I'm on the internet to look at cat pictures and talk about motorcycles. On that front, reddit is nowhere special.
  Things come and things go. I guess it was nice while it lasted. (And if you want to talk about things going, I used to be a moderator on the Temple of the Screaming Electron forums. Now there's some nostalgia for you. I'm not even sure that place qualified as The Web 1.0. That turned into a shitshow eventually, too, although for different reasons. It's almost like history repeats, or something.)
  
  I think I recall hearing about TOTSE. Wasn't it BBS?
  
  I was only a mod of my sub because I enjoyed the topic,
  These were the mods that I generally respected.
- Part of it is the sunk cost fallacy. They are/were heavily invested in the community and it's hard to walk away from something that has been important to you. I don't necessarily disagree with you as I walked away from Reddit and only recently logged in to give away all my coins but I do empathize some with those who haven't yet.

Communities can be rebuilt, as we've seen. There really is no excuse at this point for those mods to not leave and start rebuilding somewhere like Lemmy.
Reddit will never reverse course. Maybe their goal used to be aligned with ours, but now they're just a massive corporation chasing an ever growing profit.
- Reddit will never reverse course.
  Not only that, but now they know that they can do basically whatever they want with absolutely no consequences no matter how bad it is for the users, because 99% of the users just won't care. They'll continue using the official app and the horrible new website like they always have.
- Reddits surrender to capital reminds Matrix with agent Smith becoming everything and everyone despite Neo.
- There really is no excuse at this point for those mods to not leave and start rebuilding somewhere like Lemmy.
  Oh they are. And they are just as toxic and controlling.
  
  Start your own instance, with hookers and blackjack.
- This whole ordeal reminds me of Thor Ragnarok.

Honestly I stopped feeling bad for mods as soon as I saw a majority of them fold like a soggy napkin upon the first threat from the admins saying they'd remove mods who keep their subs private.
If I were a mod I would have kept it private until Reddit removed me. If all mods actually did that, Reddit would have been in big trouble since they'd effectively have to find new mods all at once for the entire site. Instead, most mods basically did Reddit a favor and lessened the impact substantially. Thanks mods!
I also don't feel bad for most Reddit users. Way too many of them were too ignorant to even understand what the protests were about. And a majority of them were yelling at mods to reopen and saying the protest was stupid just because they were okay with using the official mobile app
Unbelievable all around honestly. The entire thing was fucking embarrassing. We had one actual chance to win and everyone blew it.
- I know it sounds pretentious as hell, but the majority of people are just idiots that can't be bothered to learn and educate themselves on anything....
  Again, sounding pretentious and the ones smart enough to see the reddit bullshit and figure out lemmy are here now!
  I sound like a prick, but it do!
  
  You're not a prick or pretentious or doing anything wrong. Part of the propaganda matrix is to shame people into not checking or calling each other out for not having basic knowledge they should have. It's how they keep people uneducated
- One of the things that clinched it for me to leave reddit for good was when one of my favorite subs' (r/entwives) mods caved after "protesting" (going private) for the standard 48 hours, then laid down like pathetic losers after said "protest" and stating they'd remain open like normal instead of permanently staying "private." It was fucking deplorable, and these sad sack mods' reasoning for it was "well if we stay private, someone will create a duplicate of this sub and it won't be the same welcoming environment as this one 🥺🥺🥺🥺" man, that made me see red...it was blatant that they were desperate to hold onto the pathetically small amount of power they had, ultimately terrified of losing their user base.
  
  it was blatant that they were desperate to hold onto the pathetically small amount of power they had, ultimately terrified of losing their user base.
  This is unfortunately the majority of mods on there, especially the shitty ones that are ban happy and censorship happy. They love being able to silence whoever they want and hold power over people. Losing that "power" is not an option for them.
  
  As soon as I saw that the so called "protest" was only supposed to last a pathetic 48 fucking hours, I knew it was going to fail. The goal should have been to go dark for as long as it took. The entire thing was set up to fail. Absolutely fucking useless.
- Top mods of subs can delete them iirc, they should have just done that upon being threatened with replacement- delete all the css, unban anyone banned or alternatively ban as many people as possible and all the known admins, remove all the rules and spam filters, then delete it- so if they do resurrect it from the bin it'll be as messed up as possible as the biggest F u to the admins you possibly can.
  
  That would do nothing, they can just restore from a backup that is likely happening daily.
- People don't have courage, integrity or principles anymore and it shows.

I haven't felt sorry for mods since the mods of a sub I'll not mention decided to stop the protest after some of them got banned, because "we don't want the sub to fall into the hands of randoms".
Spineless behavior. Just move and rebuild the community elsewhere. It has been more than a month and the ship has sailed. Even if Reddit decides to backpedal for now, they'll try again in the future.
- Totally they could just say “we are moving to X” and continue the work there. How hard is it? It’s time consuming but as a team it’s doable
- .

This maybe a controversial opinion here but many of those moderators also suffer from a big problem of powertripping. They just don't want to leave that position.
- i'm on the Board of Directors of a nonprofit in a realm that has a lot of drama. I fucking hate it. The reason I stay is because leaving means the drama fucks won, to the detriment of all. Not saying my situation is identical to mods on reddit, just that people often have reasons for staying in leadership other than power.
  
  Why not start your own competing non-profit, leave the terrible one and take the good people with you?
- Well, some of those mods are here already, so good for them - they can powertrip here as much as they want! Though I prefer they stay there.
- May they stay where they are then, so the rest of us can move on from them and be happy.

For me it was mostly about accessibility, because reddit essentially told disabled people they aren't welcome. So ... bye
But also the attempt at monetizing FUCKING EVERYTHING is pissing me off. I miss the internet where most things were free. I am not going to pay a subscription to read an aggregation of links. If I have to pay I am going to choose something more fun over social media.

Im so glad I left as soon as I recognised how much they don’t care about mods. I was a mod at several subs and fuck that. I’m happier here. Remember. Spez made it clear that so long it doesn’t hurt their revenue, he will do whatever he cares to do without listening to the clients.

Jumped ship when Spez wasn't caving to the protests. I was mostly a lurker on Reddit and posted a little but now with the state of our social media it's better to get out and have a voice. And this place is nice

I’ve never modded but have been on Reddit 15yrs 11mo as of the Apollo shutdown. At this point I’m in the 16yr club. It’s wild how badly they are acting toward mods.
Frankly I’m not a mod lover or hater, with the exception of AskHistory. It was so clear how the mods there truly made the community. Haters will say they had a heavy hand, but it kept the quality remarkably high.
I’m middle age so I’ve seen a full decade of forum shitposting and flamwars before Reddit even existed. The fact that Reddit can’t see the value of the community that build “their platform” is beyond tonedeaf, it’s just straight up arrogant.
I’m sure Reddit will stay far bigger than lemmy for a long time, but that’s fine. Maybe better. The old forums were microscopic by modern social media standards but in hindsight the conversations with active users were more real and not just some random username that might as well have been anon.

Y'know, I read that entire thread, and it really doesn't come across as you're representing it.
The mods are spitting rage over there. They're outright insulting every aspect of reddit. I feel like focusing on the idea that because they made a post there they must still be active users is a stretch and unfair.
Of course, we know too many people still use the site. But it's hard for me to get on board with a blanket "fuck the mods" based on that thread alone.
- Yeah, mods don't like Reddit either.

I really, really wanted all the mods to quit in protest. I think the site would go up in flames within a day of people finding out it was open season. Like, not able to recover, up in flames.

I was moderating, this whole thing started, and I moved over to lemmy, I don't get why people are still continuing to do loads of work on a site that hates them with an even more toxic environment than before, not really for me.

Every other day, I get over how mad I was about the whole spez thing, and just focus on bettering our community and Lemmy in general.
But then they do something again that immediately remind me how much of an asshole he is. Last week, it was them taking out the coins and awards. Now this week, it's introducing r/Places like nothing happened and we're all friends again. Fuck him.
- I've been on Reddit quite some years, but don't understand what the fuss about r/places is about. Would you mind explaining it to me?
  
  It's just a way to get a whole subreddit involved in an activity and compete against other subreddits in a goodhearted way that doesn't involve brigading or anything. In theory, it's fine. Doing it right now is absolutely tone-deaf.

Your argument is strange, since I definitely feel bad for people in abusive relationships and have understanding for how difficult it might be to leave one.
- Come on, we are stretching the analogy here. Reddit isn't beating them. Reddit isn't isolating them. Reddit isn't going to explode in anger if they find out you're flirting with another social media website.
  It's a website. I was on there for 15 years and I left with a snap of a finger. It's not that serious.
  
  It’s a website. I was on there for 15 years and I left with a snap of a finger. It’s not that serious.
  That's why it's a bad analogy.
  
  Some people are sentimental, and that's okay.
  
  And everyone is exactly like you? Some people feel attached to it for any kind of reasons and when someone sunk countless hours in something, I have no troubles understanding why it might be difficult to leave. Especially since for some communities there are no alternatives. Why not be a bit more emphatic?

The thing that is different is that they really CAN leave. Reddit has nothing over them. Reddit doesn't have their important documents, control of their finances. Reddit isn't physically present, so they aren't physically endangered. And yet they are STILL reacting exactly how an abuse victim.
This ought to be a lesson for all of us that ANY of us can fall into that pattern and not judge people who are.

The majority of the "good" mods like yourself have already bailed, I'd wager. Only the bad ones, who use moderation to feel a sense of power and control over others to replace their own lack of power and control, will remain after a couple more months, at which point you'll see Reddit truely begin to falter. Those are the ones clinging to hope and power, even though they lose more of it by the second.
Welcome to Lemmy. It's fun here.
- That assumes most mods aren't there for the power trip. I believe they are the majority.
  
  In terms of total subreddits, they're not, as most smaller subs are often run by their original creators who have a vested interest in the continuation of the community. but in terms of the larger subs whose mod teams are quite large.... yeah. it's a special kind of mind that actively wants to spend multiple hours a day sifting through the Internet's sewage, and it's not often the stable, well-adjusted kind.

what i dont get are those members that demand opening of subreddit and claimed that some of the moderators are power hungry, forgetting that they are moderating for free, and failed to understand that it will become harder without the APIs.
Truthfully i wish bots will demolish their favorite subreddit

I moderated a top-15 subreddit for over 5 years. reddit got so corporate so long ago that the 80% of the mods left are just on some kind of power trip. So no, I won't ever feel bad for them.

Very true

So many reddit mods were angry power-hungry assholes. I don't feel sorry for them just as much as I don't feel sorry for reddit's hopeventual collapse. I can't count how many times I had BS moderation enacted, then when I was perfectly civil, usually just asking for basic clarification as to why something was removed, was instantly silenced from further communication with the mods with threats of potential removal from participation in the sub or reddit entirely. I am not alone in this experience.
I run a discord server and freely explain to user that they are welcome to disagree with me, openly and freely, as while I run this unofficial community server about an event I don't own/operate,
The same is for a reddit mod, especially for broad topics and localities.
Unfortunately I do see the potential for similar behavior here in the fediverse. I can't say I know how to address it entirely, but I know I can act the way that's fair to the community of which I am only an administrator, not a ruler nor creator.
- Agree 100%. Reddit mods want an echo chamber and if you had a differing opinion they silenced you. I was banned from subs I never knew about because I belonged to a certain wrong think sub. Fuck the mods as far as I'm concerned 90%of them just got exactly what they deserved.
  
  Bro I was banned once from world news and then was banned from basically all leftists leaning subreddits the next day.
- You can move to an instance where the operator has a low tolerance for abusive curators.
- Literally had my account banned for Calling out power hungry mods.
  One mod was on rspiders and a recounted a take about my gfs friend being bitten by a spider. Perma banned and because I had 3 strikes I was permanently banned from reddit.
  Just fucking stupid. Fuck em all.
  Basically the bouncers of the internet

I sort of understand that they are a necessary evil but I really get tired of seeing stuff like this
- Your account has been permanently suspended for breaking the rules.
  Your accounts are now permanently suspended due to multiple, repeated violations of Reddit's content policy.
  This is an automated message; responses will not be received by the Reddit admins.
  
  Another thing to annoy you.

Moderators should just stop working for free on platform that doesn't value them.

Im a moderator of subreddits, and i can say i agree.
the moderator of r/onlyfans is a good example, it was repurposed to be about fans, but in order to "protest" he decided to allow porn back in, and despite the users constantly being extreamly angry about this for over a month, he had refused to dissalow porn, while he did tighten the rules on it slightly recently, they appear to go totally uninforced with porn bots slowly taking over the community.

Oh I don't, don't you worry.
The admin are trash over on reddit. The CEO is trash. Lots of the mods in the big subs are trash too though.
Any of the mods that complained and protested but are still on the site are gutless and just don't want to lose their mod power.
- Right? As somebody else said, the protest was supposed to be a warning shot. Any subreddit that went dark, but then stayed compliant when the API changes went through is chock-full-o spineless mods.

comment removed by moderator

One of the gaming subs mods were acting like they couldn't even be part of the strike because they were "providing an important service" and another one pcgaming I think offered what was basically token resistance.

I agree, well said. Shame on Reddit for what it did, but shame on them for putting up with it.
I loved Reddit but it was slowly getting worse, then suddenly way worse. My time with Reddit died with Apollo.
Lemmy isn’t Reddit, but it definitely itches that scratch for me. Like fuck if I ever give Reddit any traffic myself anymore. Bridge burned, I have no problem walking away.

I used to mod about 3 dozen big/medium Subreddits too. It was worth it though, because through it I somehow found my girlfriend of 1 year. Drama was a real headache in those places.
- Mods get all the girls 😔

Moderating for free is a mental illness.
- I don't do it for free thank you very much! I pay to do it :P

Spez's comment on moderators showed the world he's not a tiny bit better than Marck "They trust me, dumbfucks!" Zuckerberg.
Yet so many people willingfully trust him with their most personal sensitive information until it's too late.
https://www.insider.com/nebraska-teen-sentenced-jail-abortion-police-facebook-2023-7
Even with that, you still don't see FB users running away from the private data collection and resell platform.
It will be very hard for some moderators to leave because they put so much work in reddit, and leaving would force them to admit they were used by someone who despised them the whole time, and there is no hope he would ever change.
It's similar to women who can't leave their violent companion: they want to believe in something that does not exist, and will stretch their perception of reality to avoid admitting they're wrong.
I do not despise the moderators who won't leave. I pity them.
With all that said, this remind me I wanted to permanently delete my reddit's account. I won't contribute to a BS "users" numbers...
- With all that said, this remind me I wanted to permanently delete my reddit’s account. I won’t contribute to a BS “users” numbers…
  If you are ok with going scorched earth, download one of those programs that lets you replace the content of all of your comments with either gibberish or a pre-defined message saying why you did it and left first. I only deleted mine and I wish I did that but too late now.
  
  Ah, too late! I deleted it right after writing my comment. I missed that opportunity.
  Part of me hopes the raw number of users will drop at least a bit, that would be terrible for the valuation of the company...
  But the other part of me has already moved on. Lemmy is fine, I don't really need to look back.
- It’s similar to women who can’t leave their violent companion: they want to believe in something that does not exist, and will stretch their perception of reality to avoid admitting they’re wrong.
  This analysis really fucking sucks lmao. Abuse also includes controlling access to structures of dependency (housing, food, money, social webs, children), so a lot of time in the immediate term and often long term it is a MUCH better value proposition to stay with abusers in the hope that they change.
  Idk this is so victim blamey and misunderstanding.
  
  Well, we're talking about 2 different things here:
  1.Does the victim in an abusive reationship ackowledge it is abusive. You'd be surprised how many victims don't. And that does not make them a tiny bit "less" victims.
  2.Once the victim acknowledges the abusive situation, how much support is offered to help the victim, and yes, very often, the answer is close to peanuts, and that's quite a shame. But that's a whole different issue.

Eh, so a couple of things:
These moderators are in an abusive relationship with Reddit, Inc.
The sunk-cost fallacy is a real thing. If the Reddit mods understood this, they’d take their talents elsewhere. But as long as they continue to help Reddit build Reddit, one shouldn’t feel sorry for them.
They could leave. I did...
That's not at all how abusive relationships work. I get what you're saying, and the comparison isn't that far off, but your conclusions are wildly off base.
I was a mod of some big subs too, and I have a friend who's staying at one of the very large "Ask(Insert Specific Thing Here)" subs. He genuinely cares about the integrity of the thing people ask about and doesn't want it to devolve into conspiracy theory nonsense. I get it, and yeah we know he is physically capable of leaving, but I admire that about him and I do feel sorry for him. For all of them, for being so disrespected in the first place. And yes, he does understand all of the points you just made - we've discussed it ad nauseam.
It's Reddit's fault, not theirs or ours. Fuck spez.

I was the sole mod of of a decent sized sub (12k users) until spez made it clear how unappreciated my work to combat spam & scams actually is.
I deleted my 12 year old main account, the other coming soon.

Which medical subreddit if you dont mind sharing? Would be great to have askdocs type community on lemmy.
The most valuable resources of reddit imo was the ones like askdocs and askalawyer because it gave so many people who cant really afford to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars for quick questions especially if they aren’t sure they need a professionals help.
So many young people also got to use those subreddits for advice they couldn’t otherwise get

I think attacking the mods like this is similar to attacking a person in an abusive relationship. It's more complicated than that when they feel so attached to the product of what is in some cases thousands of hours of work put into their communities that they've built for over a decade.
Don't attack the victims. Attack the abuser. I'm glad that it was easy for you to leave the abusive relationship but it's not easy for everyone. The same psychology is at play.
- Totally agree and what's worse here is that the abuser has impacted others as well, so they do want to keep making the point. Let's just move on and in the end it won't matter
  
  Breaking through this and getting moderators to migrate is key to killing reddit and booming lemmy. The act of having the mods create communities on lemmy then sticky comment/post their new lemmy communities for the userbase will bring over tens of thousands of new users. Far more than currently exist here.
  Hostility to them won't help, it's more likely to make them reluctant to move over. I mod several communities, some for 12 years, and I've had a bad time trying to engage with the instance admins here and came up against complete pigheadedness from one instance we reached out to, we've had other modteams give us similar stories in the mod backrooms too. These experiences risk alienating the people with the highest amount of power to make migrating off reddit a success, having the userbase here doing it too on top of that will just guarantee that the hesitant steps some are making will end up stopping entirely.

I might understand the argument, “we built this community, we can’t just abandon it”.
Odin: "~~Asgard~~ Reddit is not a place. It's a people."
~~Spiss~~ Thanos: "Fine. I'll do it myself."

Hey, I'm here now, at least. I vented my frustrations, exposed their shit over here, and signed up for lemmy.

Moderators are not a vital part of Reddit, mods are Reddit.

Mods on Reddit are power hungry basement dwellers. I'm glad you got out. They do nothing but stifle conversations and turn the cesspool that is reddit into more and more of an echo chamber. I've had so many accounts banned for simply trying to have a conversation that didn't fit the "narrative". It's shocking how much so little power goes to people's heads.
- You can state a verifiable fact on Reddit and get banned because of some twisted interpretation. Fuck I hate mods.
  
  On antiwork a while back a Guy asked for a song to play at a mandatory company picnic because they were forced to pick a song to play at it... I recommended Trevor Moore time for guillotines. Boom permaban. Apparently guillotines is a no no word of reddit. Fuck that place.
  
  You can state scientifically accurate facts. You can state quotes from places mods seem to revere, but if they contradict "The Narrative" (tm), you'll get banned. It's the worst.
- I once got banned from some random sub for commenting in r/conservative. I responded to the mods like "tf? I'm a leftist, I'm debating with the conservatives" and got a response from the mod saying "yeah whatever you're wasting your time and you sound like an idiot. Bye."
  
  I got banned from r/news for "homophobia" because I said kindergarteners needed to know where adults should not be touching them. I'm still baffled by that one.
- They do significantly more than that, but absolutes are more fun and better server your narrative.
  
  Do people really think Lemmy won't have the same problems with mods in the future? Ha. It's probably happening already in a few places. I have no idea why anyone would think differently. And the solution is identical to what it is on reddit - start your own competing community.
  
  right. gotcha. an apologist. i see.

well put, I have also found a home here in the fediverse and I actually enjoy it more than reddit, I wish more mods would have done the same thing

I'm a mod of a small subreddit, which I have attempted to move to Lemmy, but as I'm not the only mod, the sub is still up and far more active.
- That's okay though. It takes time and if you can get your community to really take off then maybe the other mods will come over. Every subreddit had to start somewhere and wasn't huge overnight. Honestly, Lemmy is not a replacement for Reddit and shouldn't be treated as such. It's just different.

I never did in the first place.

Thanks for being a good mod

There's also another option for folks willing to put up with it. We've been doing a bare minimum so we can keep a link up on /r/android and /r/Xiaomi to !android@lemdro.id and !xiaomi@lemdro.id respectively.

You'll be amazed how good regular people are at opening their asses.

We should change what we've been told many times: "Delete Reddit, Lawyer Up, Hit the Gym."

Here here. No sympathy for those who'd rather endure abuse for the sake of retaining their false sense of power. I am still technically a mod in a few subs, for now, and I just laughed to myself reading that post. I couldn't believe the audacity of that exec, acting as if the relationship was just a tad rocky. I likewise couldn't believe the audacity of the mods thinking their comments weren't landing on deaf ears.
The only recourse at this point, in my opinion, is to abandon their posts, let the chaos and anarchy be sowed, so that there is no easy resolution by the time admins step in to fight the fires. Let the subs implode.

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