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
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— u/spez to potential investors. Maybe. Probably. Might be slightly paraphrased.
This is too emotionally intelligent to be u/spez
I mean… did you even ask his permission before just ripping his words verbatim for your own post?
😎
Its probably going to end up like facebook.
A big lumbering thing, still heavily populated but ad choked and overrun by bots and bad actors, indoctrinating unsuspecting users. Even if it stays big, hopefully its reputation will suffer enough to keep most new users away.
I would argue that the default subs already suffer from a lot of those problems. What’s kept me around in Reddit is definitely the more specialist subs.
Have you checked out the official app? Last I looked, it defaults to about 1 post visible at a time. You can adjust it to about 4 posts visible. Last I check, 1 of those posts was an ad and another was a recommended post.
It already feels like Facebook.
Getting into fediverse platforms has been a godsend. Talking to real people and not dealing with the high percentage of bots is incredible.
I literally forgot what it was like to browse content without sponsored ads strangling my feed.
Steve Huffman should resign.
CEO is beholden to shareholders. He would be replaced with someone tasked with doing the same thing.
Capitalism
Would still be poetic justice. Remember when they threw Ellen Pao under the bus? They forgot to hire a scapegoat for this round of unpopular decisions.
How many people think any such “election” Reddit holds will be a sham?
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):
https://gdpr.eu/right-to-erasure-request-form/ <3
Glad I left Reddit tbh, so far Lemmy/the Fediverse seems to be way better.
Alright! Time to Boaty McBoatface this thing.
I hate to sail on that old hellsite
Leave her Johnny leave her
The algo’s fucked and the app is shite
And it’s time for us to leave her
How?
Either vote in our own orrrr vote in people who will just destroy the sub.
From NBC News interview :
Eat sand /u/spez.
business owners are accountable???
well they pay accountants to write-off all their mistakes
These definitely sound like the actions of a company that is in no way threatened at all not even a little bit.
/s
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…
If you put people in charge who don’t know / care about particular communities in charge, there could be huge trouble.
You know… like the legal advice subr×ddit being moderated by cops. Which it is.
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?
Hey everyone we’re trying to keep the reddit threads centralized in technology in beehaw. I’m not locking this one because there’s a lot of discussion, but consider moving the chat over to https://beehaw.org/post/576904
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.
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.
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.
Well, removing the abusive, ban-prone mods of /r/Firefox wouldn’t be a bad idea.
They already removed some mods, it’s not a threat it’s Spaz being a jerk and awful person.
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
Lol stewards.
OK, third time trying to post this comment after my previous two never went through 🥲
I’ve seen a lot of people predict that this would be their next move if the blackouts continued. It’s sad to see them actually begin with the threats though :/
I’m wondering if this is a sort of desperation move because of advertisers looking at removing spending from reddit if things continue - starting to put the screws on the mods. :( Particularly since they say advertisers would start thinking about moving away if things stayed dark for a couple of weeks.
I don’t know, I’m heading to bed, rewritten this three times and I’m not a good speaker, so apologies for it not being very coherent! 😅
Anyway, still many shames on reddit. I hope the blackouts continue so that advertisers leave. Booooo reddit booooo.
Reddit is already dead. Old.reddit will be removed soon.
Spez claimed that there are no plans to shut old.reddit down. We’ll see.
the fuckening just doesnt stop. u/Spez lost complete touch with the platform itself.
But hey, they own the joint. they can make their own decisions.
Yeah and we own this joint! I’m going to open my own instance, with blackjack and hookers
He has not lost touch, he doesn’t care. He’s bought and paid for. If shit does go south, he’s the fall guy.
Can’t wait to watch the most entertaining stage of enshittification…
What’s endlessly fascinating to me is how quickly Reddit (spez) dug this hole for itself. I’m (or was) an Apollo user, but didn’t pay close attention to the finer technical points of app use, and was only half paying attention when the API changes were announced. In a matter of about two weeks, I went from not having particularly strong feelings (like a shrug personified) to be vehemently anti-Reddit and Steve Huffman. And it has literally all been based on the things Reddit (spez and his mouthpieces) have said and done. In other words, there hasn’t been any “persuasive propaganda” that swayed me. Just them, in all their idiocy, taking me from neutral to bury them in an incredibly short period of time. The level of incompetence is truly impressive.
The thing that really disappointed me was that they pretended that he tried to blackmail them.
They clearly were not expecting that Christian would have recorded the call and that it was not going to be “he said, I said”.
Very proud of him.
When r/WorkReform sprang up overnight and proposed to elect moderators, Reddit’s admins threatened to ban the subreddit for that
Fuck Spez. Fuck Reddit. Build kbin.
I like Lemmy more than Kbin, personally, but we can federate together and build up the fediverse 😄
I like the fact Lemmy seems to have a ton more instances, but I like the look of Kbin.
I’m the opposite haha, I think Kbin has some cool communities and stuff but I way prefer the look of Lemmy. To each their own! Beauty of the fediverse is that we can choose our own platform but still interact 😄
Any mobile web apps for kbin I can use for iPhone? Like wefwef for Lemmy?
Idk maybe, I implied I don’t use Kbin with that comment from 25 days ago. Not sure why you’d ask me tbh.
I think Lemmy looks a bit more manageable but the people running it seem slightly concerning. I don’t want to get attached to a place just to leave again.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of them either so that’s why I joined different instances. Beehaw has been a really good one but I was enjoying lemmy.world before this account too.
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:
Yeah - obviously Reddit isn’t going to go down in a fiery blaze, wiped from the internet, but it’s entering a long, slow, spiral, imo, after having made a series of terrible decisions and bad PR moves that are likely significantly reducing its value as a company and casting doubt on its longevity as the power house its historically been. As far as I’m concerned, the protests were a success because it’s forced Reddit to show its hand in a very public way (after all MSM picked up the story).
To investors it also portrays utter ineptitude and an open hostility to the adminsitration of the site by a large portion of the users, and that Reddit is utterly reliant on said users to generate its value. Lord knows I wouldn’t dare want to take any stock in this company, social media in general makes little profit and Spez has admitted, before a fucking IPO, that Reddit is not profitable. What fool would buy stock in this?
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.
yes and only responded to questions that vaguely related to the prepared answers they had. It was more a press briefing than an AMA.
Rampart
Spez also completely contradicts what the macrumors link is referring to: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/reddit-says-it-won-t-overrule-mods-and-force-subreddits-back-open/ar-AA1cBvUP
He’s like the dictator with the secret police who “disappear” people but who outwardly makes grand statements about protecting democracy and protest. Bad vibes all around.
Also “97% of users doesn’t use a 3rd party app” but also “the opportunity cost” is very high. Which one is it?
They’re probably just upset that /all is a graveyard of “Reddit is killing third party apps”. That’s gotta look embarrassing for them
I’m pretty happy with how many subreddits are continuing to go dark, or the ones who are actively helping their users transition to other platforms.
Can people just start moving to kbin or tildes now that we know the protests won’t change anything
What makes you think nothing is changing? Reddit is being forced to tear many of its own communities apart
deleted by creator
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.”
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.
He was referring to app developers who charged for license or for premium features. Those people “profited” or at least, took in revenue.
I’m treating the blackout like a strike, and I don’t cross picket lines, and neither should anyone else. No scabs. No one should be agreeing to moderate a sub that has lost all of its moderators to forcible removal.
I agree, but at the same time, the people who are willing to cross the picket lines are facists. They are desperate to take over any spaces they’re able to and turn those places into hellholes. A bunch of subs are about to be destroyed by right wing nutjobs forcing their way into the top slots. A former T_D mod has already set his sights on aww, which would be the death of a wholesome sub like that.
Well the more fucked it gets, the quicker it burns. After what they’ve done I’ll be glad to see it go. Spez poured the accelerant, he struck the matches and tossed them around. All the while being pled with and warned at the same time, that what he was doing was wrong. Burn, baby, burn.
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.
There are enough power hungry people ready to jump in the first opportunity they get to moderate
Sure, but let’s keep in mind eagerness does not equal competence.