Reddit Takes Over Popular Subreddit Amid Moderator Protest

Lemmys been a great alternative, hope it starts to take off
- Starts? My sibling in Christ, it's happening already.
  
  My lemmitard in christ it hasnt happened yet. We are only a small .1% of crossovers and the whole fediverse is still less populated than r/malefashion advice.
  
  Showed Lemmy to a few friends and my significant other. Hopefully it keeps gaining critical mass with all the negative attention Reddit’s been having.
- I think once threads is federated that should become the club to the knees of Reddit. I hate Meta but I enjoy threads.

Props to the mods for sticking to their guns.
- Who knew the strongest wills were in the male fashion industry.
  
  But why male models?
  
  Fashion is not for sissies
  -Michael Kors
  
  Once they learn patriarchy and PHDs, they could be kings of the real world.
- Definitely. The mods that pretended to give a damn and then punking out were extremely disappointing.
  It's fine enough to disagree with the protests over 3rd party apps. And at the end of the day it is such a small issue. But if you're going to do something, be about it.

The Reddit debacle continues as it replaces the r/malefashionadvice subreddit moderators following their refusal to reopen to the public.
Reddit followed through on its threat to take over subreddits if they did not reopen to the public with its takeover of r/malefashionadvice on Thursday. Prior to closing down in protest of Reddit’s API price changes. The subreddit was one of the biggest on the platform that was still engaged in the protest, boasting more than five million subscribers.
Reddit reached out to moderators telling them if they didn’t reopen their subreddits they would be in violation of the company’s moderator code and could be replaced. “We more or less have been expecting the removal for the past few days,” one former moderator of r/malefashionadvice, who asked to go by “Walker,” told The Verge.
A Reddit administrator warned r/malefashionadvice it would be replaced if it didn’t reopen and a month later, it stayed true to its word and took over the platform. The subreddit originally had three moderators but was replaced on Thursday with just one, ModCodeofConduct. Reddit users can once again browse the content on r/malefashionadvice, but it will be in a restricted mode that prohibits all but certain users from making new posts.
Although ModCodeofConduct has taken over the subreddit, the mod posted a call for people to volunteer to become a moderator for the page on Friday, telling people to comment on the post to volunteer.
ModCodeofConduct has also taken over other subreddits including r/ShittyLifeProTips, r/AccidentalRenaissance, r/oldbabies, r/fordtransit, and others.
Major Reddit moderators went dark last month in protest of the company’s announcement that it would be raising its API prices, saying it was necessary because Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Google are using its data to train AI models. The site’s API allows other companies to use data from Reddit to bolster their own products and services, but the change would mean a large surcharge for premium access.
Nearly 9,000 subreddits temporarily shut down on June 12 in protest, but in a group statement, moderators said, “Others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app,” The Guardian reported. It continued, “This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.”
- Thank you.
  There's an ad in the end if you want to trim it.
  
  Done 😀

And now i am here. Fuck them. I will never go back.
- Welcome!
  
  now let’s create our own r/place here. how can I help?

That article has some spin loaded in there.
“Major Reddit moderators went dark last month in protest of the company’s announcement that it would be raising its API prices, saying it was necessary because…”
Bullshit bwana! They instituted OSFA pricing, when prior it was free.
Get the fucking facts straight before publishing, ya gits.
- They instituted OSFA pricing, when prior it was free.
  Even that, while technically true doesn't paint the full picture. Let me try:
  They cut off the API to everyone: 3rd-party apps, disabled users, mods who use tools to moderate (that don't exist on Reddit). Then, they priced access to the that API so high that basically no 3rd-party could afford it.
  This is cutting off the API to practically everyone (in practice, if not in action) ahead of their planned IPO. And because they want to charge for the LLM AI's that use Reddit content for training...
  
  It wasn't just that, they followed with other changes that alienated mods and users. The API thing was just the beginning of a campaign. It's not even something new, this kind of downfall has happened before when social media sites prioritize profit above community. They had a good run and outlasted those that preceded them, but evidently the cycle is doomed to repeat.
  
  And you sir, are absolutely correct. I am guilty of the TL;DR version.

The comments on the post the mods made yesterday about discord are awful. “Get over yourselves,” “Spez owned you guys,” “Why would we go to Didcord, we chose Reddit.” They’re all from accounts that are 8+ years old that have never interacted on MFA or didn’t start commenting until Rexxit started.
- Did you coin "Rexxit"? Because, it's a thing of beauty.
  
  Sadly I didn’t, it came about pretty early on.
  
  It's both current and prophetic... ;)
- They're half right. Discord is a horrible platform. It's idiotic most of these mods are suggesting it.
  
  Oh yeah no, I don’t disagree that going to discord of all places is a horrible idea. I hate discord and I hate that people are trying to use it as community alternatives, but the real issue is the Reddit apologism.
  
  Discord is good for live chat, but horrible for aggregation and public discussion. I mean that's why most of us are here, because the platform works well for our needs. Supposedly Discord has a forum, but I've never seen a link to it on the regular site and from what I understand it doesn't get much traffic. It's simply not in a position to be an alternative to Reddit.
  
  Discord is the best chat app ever created. (but I agree, it's not a good reddit/forum replacement)
- They probably manually created those users directly in the database.

Do you think spez or anyone else making these decisions have woken up at night to realize they messed up yet? I'm voting nah.
- Spez is just trying to make Reddit as profitable as possible before jumping ship. He doesn’t care what happens to Reddit, just what it can get him.
  
  He pissed off a block of his free workforce that then left or were kicked out, that's not great for the bottom line, yeah?
- How did he mess up? He's cashing out and burning the place down behind him. This is all standard practice in capitalism. It happens every day, but you don't see or care because most of the companies it happens to aren't centered around a social platform you spend all your free time on.
  
  He's not cashing out with the best possible circumstances is how he messed up. That's like saying Elon bought Twitter at a highly inflated price and then crashing and burning all the advertising is doing a great job. Twitter is sinking into the abyss very slowly. It'll still be around in a year or so but right now Twitter is only worth 1/4 of what Elon paid. Spez already lost like 20% of Reddit's value after all of his sweet changes. These guys are idiots.
- Most idiots don’t recognize the fact that they are idiots.

I see this as a good thing. Now Reddit has to bear the cost. Even if they find replacement volunteers, some employee still has to make that happen. Likely several. It’s costing them. And that’s what the goal was. To weigh them down.
I was hoping every mod would walk away. All at once. Like you say you can run it all, there you go.
- The subreddit originally had three moderators but was replaced on Thursday with just one, ModCodeofConduct.
  I’m guessing u/Modcodeofconduct is a bot.
  
  Or a sellout
- The only reason I go back to reddit is to copy/paste a modmail I wrote to those asking to get in. I end it with listing asking them to think about some Reddit alternatives and link the sites too. (I list: Lemmy.world, kbin.social, tildes.net and squabbles.io in that order)

I love the bias in the article, like the 3rd party apps were basically just stealing revenue. And understating exactly how insane the api prices were too

Man I hope people volunteer and then immediately take the subreddit private again

Get selected as a mod and private the community again, it’ll make for hilarious headlines and look wonderful for their IPO.

MFA was one of my fave subs so I decided to check out what happened since this forced reopening. The pinned thread asking for mod volunteers is being trolled right now. I love it.
- That first comment has thrown me for a loop. The replies accuse if of being ChatGPT, and it extremely looks like ChatGPT, but I think it might be a human imitating ChatGPT? Bang-on imitation if so.

If any I'm glad the mods got their life back

What a useless headline. They could write it hundreds more times for the hundreds of other subs still in revolt.
- But not every such sub has 5 million members - this one is big.

Didnt another fashion subreddit open in lieu of this sub going down? Its been a few weeks since ive gone to reddit so i dont know

Is there a replacement community?