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

  • Saturdaycat@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

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

    • livus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

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

  • GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Yes, I got the “message” from the Reddit CEO, and decided to pre-empt that, and I spent a few hours today manually deleting each and every post I made in my subreddit. The content is already anyway on my blog, on The Internet Archive, and on the Fediverse. So my subreddit now looks like this (he is welcome to let someone else take it now):

  • Kittywifclaws@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • bouncing@partizle.com
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Good luck with that! I’m excited to see the fireworks as their brand-new mod teams use their brand-new mod tools right as they go public. Should be quite a show.

    • fouc@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      There are enough power hungry people ready to jump in the first opportunity they get to moderate

  • firecat@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    They already removed some mods, it’s not a threat it’s Spaz being a jerk and awful person.

  • /JJ@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

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

    • Toribor@corndog.uk
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      1 year ago

      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?

  • Arystique@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    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…

  • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    So much for moderators being “free to run their communities as they choose” as this article outlines

    https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204533859-What-s-a-moderator-

    It’s pretty obvious they’re given free reign until they happen to disagree with admins and then it’s “they’re holding subreddits hostage”, “they’re just Stewarts” etc

    Reddit admins will legitimately say and do anything to frame this as not their own fuck up

  • brie@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    As of now, more than 80% of our top 5,000 communities (by DAU) are open

    I’m a bit paranoid that this could be a technical truth because the communities still closed have dropped in DAU.

    Edit: Checked the blackout tracker, of the ones listed 205 are still closed or restricted, so it’s probably an accurate claim, though it seems about half of the participating subreddits are still closed.

  • Thief@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Everyone needs to realise it doesnt matter. Enough people already came to lemmy for us to carry on without reddit. Now we just do the normal long haul work - help users who need help so people start searching lemmy for tech solutions, post our normal content here so there is a reason to stay, upvote and comment others work so there is engagement. The rest will follow as this grows and grows. We have already won. Lemmy is no longer a fringe interest.

  • Muddybulldog@mylemmy.win
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    1 year ago

    Funny how he repeatedly uses phrases such as “the extent that they were profiting off of our API” but has never used the phrase “the extent that we rely on freely provided content and freely provided moderation. If it weren’t for the tens of millions of people who are giving us free stuff we wouldn’t even exist.”

    • kinyutaka@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I have yet to profit a single dime off of Reddit. After over ten years (11th Cake Day is coming up), and nothing to show for it but piles of worthless Karma.

      • AndrewZabar@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        He was referring to app developers who charged for license or for premium features. Those people “profited” or at least, took in revenue.

  • FrostBolt@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    They can’t keep their story straight. First the protest is “noise” that will “blow over”. Now they’re forcing subs to re-open.

    Look, even if the protest “fails”, they stick to the API pricing, and forcefully re-open subs, some things will be obvious and for everyone to see that weren’t before:

    • spez is lying and isn’t trustworthy
    • reddit cares more about IPO positioning and money than the health of the community
    • people are willing to explore alternatives like this fediverse
    • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Their handling of this situation has been piss poor. It feels like every step along the way, from the initial announcement about API pricing to his awful Reddit AMA where he replied 12 times and then fled, it’s been a terrible look.

      I’m hoping more people see alternates like kbin and give them a go.

  • Pekka@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      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.