3mo ago

Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

www.theverge.com Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

It’s going to be a lot harder to pull off massive protests.

It's not like they couldn't put a stop to blackouts before, as seen with the third-party app fiasco, but Reddit has now made that tactic entirely impossible. Mods will now need to get permission from Reddit admins before they can make a sub private. Makes me wonder if they're about to do something controversial again soon.

Reddit @lemmy.world

Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

www.theverge.com /2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests

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Technology @lemmy.world

Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

www.theverge.com /2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests

1249 444

43 comments

We have a responsibility to protect Reddit and ensure its long-term health, and we cannot allow actions that deliberately cause harm.
Truly, a harm for the platform when the moderators of /r/assesgonewild take their subreddit private for a week in protest. So far up their asses.
Read: "Our users got so pissed at us that it jeopardized our IPO. Now it could actually effect something like our stock price, so fuck 'em". Seriously people, just leave

my guess would be old.reddit disappearing.
- I went back after the original purge since some niche communities are dead here but... OMG if they do this I will finally be free of them.
  
  old.reddit is the only usable version.
- This is very likely. They're preparing for the fallout

Funny, me being here can be considered a protest against Reddit for the last year, and it's still working fine.

Reddit makes an anti-user change. In other news, grass is green.
I haven't been on the site in over a year and nothing since then has convinced me to go back. Maybe I'm lucky that I'm not in any Reddit-only communities, but it could also just be that I treat those communities as though they don't exist and never had a reason to join one as a result.
- In other news, grass is green.
  I didn't saw this news. My news only tell me that the rice bag fall over. It happens over and over again. Predictable, like Reddit.

What’s Reddit?
- I think it was part of Twitter.
  
  Is that for bird watching?
- Sounds like Digg
- It’s like Lemmy, but very broken.
  
  Nobody knows about Mbin yet?

If all Mods simply stopped moderating, Reddit would be dead next week
- In every community, there is always another power-hungry asshole ready to jump on the opportunity to have a tiny bit of control over somebody else.
  Mods not modding is nothing new to reddit. The only impact they would feel is if users stopped posting. I don't see that happening though.
- It won't. Most people are not lemmy users, not aware of the issues, they just consume content. Others will take up the reigns and the place will be noticably worse for those of us who care about community. Those who care about consuming content will not.
- It would become Twitter.
- That's what we tried during fuck spez protests. Spez kicked the mods off and enacted new ones. Which makes mods shitty or kicks good mods out and enact shitty mods.

You could still automatically delete all new posts and comments or something like that I suppose
- They reinstated a lot of them last time.
- Yah there have to be other ways a mod could protest still.

You know what? I don't care and I stopped reading this article after one paragraph because I found that I couldn't be bothered to go on. During the reddit exodus I was pissed off about how they would ruin something good, but I've long since lost interest in what happens on that site. Honestly I was a tiny bit surprised that it still exists. Like who the heck goes there still?

What remains as methods of protest after this? I wonder what would happen to a subreddit if it's moderators would simply stop moderating all together...
But I guess admins could always make someone a moderator, there's always someone willing to have a power trip.
- What remains as methods of protest after this?
  Deleting your account and leaving the site. Reddit clearly doesn't care about the users, and hasn't for a very, very long time. Remaining there justifies their actions.
  
  I remember a couple of people on Reddit smugly saying I'd be back soon after I talked about leaving during the third party app shitshow.
  I've never went back, so eat a bag of dicks random Reddit users!
- If I'm recalling correctly, a couple of the larger subs had mods stop completely, and reddit just replaced them with power mods
  
  That wasn't just larger subs. They changed the rules for requesting a takeover of a sub, and there are hundreds of subs it affected. There are even cases of it being really dangerous, there's a shroom hunting sub that is poorly moderated and has had life-threatening advice left up.

Sounds like Spaz is about to have another Numbnuts Moment.
- Someone here said old.reddit.com is likely to be culled soon and this is the only likely reason they're gearing up for this

I truly don’t understand how anyone does the free work for a corporation to moderate a subreddit. Steps like this seem to treat them like employees and they’ll largely just chug along with it for… what? Notoriety?
- I remember wanting to be a forum mod when I was like 15 and thought that it would make me cool on the forum. As a grown adult... no way. I am so busy between work, grad school, and my personal life, I have no time for such silliness. I have a lot of respect for mods that donate their own time to run communities.
  
  I appreciate anyone working on an actual community but doing the service of not just giving free content but free curation to a corporation seems unreal. Plus, I’m a grown adult. I don’t have the time to do all that much lol

Reddit is giving its staff a lot more power over the communities on its platform. Starting today, Reddit moderators will not be able to change if their subreddit is public or private without first submitting a request to a Reddit admin.
~~More power by having less power. I stopped reading here. Yeah, The Verge never disappoints.~~ Edit: My bad. The Verge was correct this time. Guess if I read the article then I would understand.
- Community mods are not the same thing as reddit staff (admin)... I mean probably sometimes they can be the same person, but not normally.
  
  I see. Well then my bad for misunderstanding this. To me moderators are Reddit staff working for free. But I see that the word "staff" was used literally.
  See you in the oblivion. xD
- Welp, I guess this means something bad is gonna happen and Spez is trying to get in front of the inevitable protests.
  I wonder what it could be....

And the stock went up…

Oh so its now completely impossible to stop a brigade by shuttering a subreddit for a day or two without begging some pea brain Reddit stooge. That won't lead to anything putrid happening to small and medium subreddits on a regular basis I hope.

43 comments