Concerns of Redditor safety, jeopardized research amid new mods and API rules.

Concerns of Redditor safety, jeopardized research amid new mods and API rules.

Did you know that improper food canning can lead to death? Botulism—the result of bacteria growing inside improperly treated canned goods—is rare, but people can die from it. In any case, they’ll certainly get very ill.

The dangers of food canning were explained to me clearly, succinctly, and with cited sources by Brad Barclay and someone going by Dromio05 on Reddit (who asked to withhold their real name for privacy reasons). Both were recently moderators on the r/canning subreddit and hold science-related master’s degrees.

Yet Reddit removed both moderators from their positions this summer because Reddit said they violated its Moderator Code of Conduct. Mods had refused to end r/canning’s protest against Reddit and its new API fees; the protest had made the entire subreddit “read only.” Now, the ousted mods fear that r/canning could become subject to unsafe advice that goes unnoticed by new moderators. “My biggest fear with all this is that someone will follow an unsafe recipe posted on the sub and get badly sick or killed by it,” Dromio05 told me.

Reddit’s infamous API changes have ushered in a new era for the site, and there are still questions about what this next chapter will look like. Ars Technica spoke with several former mods that Reddit booted—and one who was recently appointed by Reddit—about concerns that relying on replacement mods with limited subject matter expertise could result in the spread of dangerous misinformation.

  • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml
    326·
    1 year ago

    I mean, what were they expecting to happen? Reddit made it very clear they would remove moderators who kept subreddits closed.

    • Yaztromo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      78·
      1 year ago

      Hey — one of the mods mentioned in the article here.

      The idea was that if enough subreddits banded together and shut down, we could have brought Reddit to the negotiating table and helped to save the 3rd party apps so many of us relied upon for our daily Reddit experience.

      Unfortunately, it seems that way too many mods preferred the sense of control they had over their communities rather than what was right or just. All those subs that went public again after 48 hours, and all the other ones that went public again but with protest content killed all momentum the protest had, and doomed it.

      The part all too many people miss is that Reddit is like an iceberg on the ocean — while frequent visitors see the new content at the top, it’s the huge mass of old content that brings Reddit the bulk of its revenue. It’s all that old content that is indexed by Google and which shows up towards the top of Google search results — and during the shutdown, all of those links were broken. Google even took note during the protest that a significant number of search results were leading to broken links.

      This look was terrible for Reddit, and hit them directly in the pocketbook. But then some mods decided they didn’t mind being bent over a barrel by Reddit so long as they could put “moderator” on their resume and reopened too soon. The subs that went with John Oliver content were droll, but also reopened the huge mass of content that lies beneath the waves and which Google indexes into. Reddit didn’t lose anything from those subs.

      I was fully expecting to be turfed. I pretty openly dared Reddit to do it. After the shit they pulled I wasn’t going to go back and do free work for them on their terms. I forced them to be the bad guy. We had to show people how Reddit was treating its volunteer moderators, and in the end they didn’t disappoint.

      In the end, for me, I chalk this one up as a win.

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
        10·
        1 year ago

        Good for you! I was mod of a tiny gaming sub, and 99% of its members did not care the least tiny bit about Reddit. They will when it comes for old-Reddit, but the “first they came for…” argument did not manage to penetrate their shells, especially as they were involved in multiple subs and those all stayed behind intact as well. So like 4 of us started a new community here… where we have maybe 1 post a week instead of 1 per hour. Even that much is inordinately complicated by all the bugs on Kbin/Lemmy, where ~80% of the time when you want to upvote or boost it asks you to re-login (actually it’s ~100% after a certain threshold of time is reached, or 0% if you instantly do it without taking time to read or write anything first, but that is not normal behavior!), and my notifications have been permanently busted for weeks now due to a bug where if you comment on a post that a mod later removes, the notification of someone responding to you has no way to ever be removed or even seen, ever again. So what I am saying is… I really cannot even so much recommend that they come here, just yet? I am a techie person and can patiently deal with these things, but most of them are not, and won’t.

        But you cannot control them. You can only control yourself. Which you did? Thus, good for you! YOU at least did the right thing. Maybe others will follow your lead, especially as the software gets better (Kbin in particular is more in its infancy than Lemmy - like iirc it even has zero moderation tools right now!?), or maybe they will not, but that again is on them. You at least showed them the way.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml
        3·
        1 year ago

        Fair enough. Although, I remember seeing stats on how much their traffic was down in those 48 hours, and it wasn’t much, I don’t think they even broke 10%.

        At this point, the only way to truly hurt Reddit is to move the community to another platform.

        • OpenStars@kbin.social
          8·
          1 year ago

          Traffic stats actually went UP during those 2 days and in the next month or two after that time! Much of that was likely from the bots used to shred all the data whilst removing it, but they still counted as “traffic”.

          As you say, the only way forward would be to move. But to where? 99% of people in my small gaming sub refused to come here, and with all the bugs now (I’m on Kbin, there seem many more here than on Lemmy tho), I can hardly blame them: this place is not ready for them.

          Anyway, the point was not to hurt Reddit, the point was to be okay. In part by getting Huffman to either back down, or getting the board members behind him to ask him to step down or forcibly remove him, neither of which happened, so now… we move, b/c that is all that is left to us to do. Even if 99% of the community remains behind. :-(

          • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml
            4·
            1 year ago

            The best way to make people move, in my view, is for the content creators to move. The consumers will follow.

            • OpenStars@kbin.social
              3·
              1 year ago

              Absolutely. I am not really one of those, although I tried to do my part, and yet there needs to be a minimum amount to really be self-sustaining.

              Also, the software is REALLY buggy. I am on Kbin, and 100% of the time when you want to upvote or boost some comment or thread, it asks you to re-login if you do that after spending a minute reading and/or typing - i.e. it only remembers who you are for a few seconds. Also my Notifications have been busted for WEEKS now, b/c anytime you comment on a post that is later removed by a mod from elsewhere on the Federiverse, the notification will be poisoned and can literally never go away, nor even be visited, nor can you visit any other notifications (update that I just found out yesterday: that are on the same page), so basically you will forever receive continually-new notifications that you cannot visit, i.e. it is the entire Notifications system that becomes unusable, not just that single one. Oh yeah, and afaik, moderation tools are literally non-existent on Kbin.

              Lemmy is much more advanced, even having several mobile apps (which iirc Kbin has none yet nor will it ever in the future until it opens up its API publicly) but either way I can really empathize why people, especially non-technically minded ones, would (even should?) STRONGLY hesitate to come here. Like for one thing, I already would like to move my account from Kbin to Lemmy, but account migration isn’t a thing. I am not going to go around and ask every person that DMs me to now shift over to use a new account, after having just done that for Reddit. And then do it again, if I don’t like the new instance? And again, and again, and again, and again?

              Fuck spez yes but… now what? This place isn’t ready for the masses just yet. Especially Kbin. Though people are starting to work on it, and that will change, soon(-ish).

              Right now, Lemmy/Kbin is good to replace doom-scrolling with meme-scrolling. And for communities where enough people were willing to migrate, it may even be a full replacement for a niche sub-Reddit, but I understand why 99% of people are remaining behind. Can we really blame them? I mean yes, obviously, but also, can we, really? It is ultimately their choice what to do with their lives.

    • sylver_dragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      26·
      1 year ago

      They were hoping Reddit would blink first. Unfortunately, it’s easy to find people who don’t know or don’t care about the changes. So, Reddit cans any mods who don’t play ball. Maybe it will have a long term effect, maybe not.

      • TheRealKuni@lemmy.worldEnglish
        35·
        1 year ago

        So, Reddit cans any mods who don’t play ball.

        Well I certainly hope they do so safely, or they could end up with botulism.

        • BlueLineBae@midwest.socialEnglish
          8·
          1 year ago

          The only safe way to can mods is by using a pressure cooker which will allow the jars to reach a high enough temperature for safe canning. Do not attempt to water bath can a mod.

          • AnalogyAddict@lemmy.world
            4·
            1 year ago

            I preserve all my mods via dehydration and vacuum sealing. I never can them. That was their first mistake. They should have just put up AI bots trained on previous mod data.

            (I really hope they don’t see this and think it’s a real suggestion.)

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    171·
    1 year ago

    Sure, but users dying don’t impact Reddit’s valuation in a direct fashion, or the payout /u/spez is gonna get, so long as they can sandbag any potential legal issues long enough that they become the new owner’s problem. And money’s all they care about.

  • cabron_offsets@lemmy.world
    174·
    1 year ago

    I still browse Reddit whenever I feel like I hate myself and need to repent by subjecting myself to endless OF thirst traps, bots, anime porn, and fucking lame-ass, trite-ass jokes. Which is to say, fuck Reddit, I haven’t been there since they killed Apollo. Oh, and I have it on good authority that spez fellates his mom on the regular.

  • Destraight@lemm.ee
    153·
    1 year ago

    I block a Reddit like community, because I don’t care about Reddit. Now I’m seeing the same news article here. Don’t you guys have anything better to post than reddit?

  • OpenStars@kbin.social
    5·
    1 year ago

    When asked for comment, Reddit’s director of corporate, policy, and safety communications, Gina Antonini, said via email:

    Sounds like none of my problem, tho it sure would suck to be you, bi!ches! (essentially)

    “Reddit” is dead. It remains to be seen what, if anything, will replace it. e.g. where did those exact mods go, who were mentioned in the article? A Fediverse location, if they can stand all the bugs here? Or nowhere, if they were too shaken to want to devote their time to some other place? Or will they go back even, seeing >95% of their communities refusing to leave Reddit (until it literally kills them of botulism ofc)? Only time will tell…

  • spider@lemmy.nz
    4·
    1 year ago

    “My biggest fear with all this is that someone will follow an unsafe recipe posted on the sub and get badly sick or killed by it,” Dromio05 told me.

    But u/spez’s cash and prizes are more important than this.

    • ArugulaZ@kbin.social
      5·
      1 year ago

      They don’t care about the collateral damage, whether it’s Elon Musk or Trump or the lemur boy.

  • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
    1·
    10 months ago

    I can proudly state that I have not logged on to Reddit since their API shenanigans. I am better off due to that.

    If I need any info from the site, I just use RSS. Plus the censorship on reddit that created crazy echo chambers in many subs was suffocating.

  • Willer@lemmy.world
    17·
    1 year ago

    “My biggest fear with all this is that someone will follow an unsafe recipe posted on the sub and get badly sick or killed by it take the internet seriously and hurt themselves in the process,” I think that is beyond your power.

  • Squiddles@kbin.social
    413·
    1 year ago

    I mean, Reddit deserves to be punished, and there are many reasons to be upset (I personally shredded all my contributions and deleted my account in protest), but I kinda feel like the canning safety issue might be overblown. Nothing is stopping them from staying and calling out unsafe recipes with comments/in association with the new moderators. Sure, they have to go through the new mods to fully remove things, and their removal in the first place raises significant ethical questions, but calling this a safety issue because “someone else could get it wrong” seems like they’re reaching.

    • Yaztromo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      29·
      1 year ago

      Hey — one of the former mods of r/Canning here.

      I don’t want to see people get sick, and I don’t want to see people die from what usually amounts to less than $5 worth of home canned food.

      But that doesn’t mean I’m now bound for eternity to Reddit to help ensure they don’t hurt anybody. That only helps Reddit. After what they put us through I’ve stopped any and all contributions to their ungrateful website.

      Nor does it mean I have to stop criticizing Reddit for choosing questionable mods to replace us.

      • Squiddles@kbin.social
        3·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for taking the time to respond, even though I was critical! Sure, I have no disagreement with anything you said in your reply. I’m also involved in hobbies where bad information can hurt people (including canning and foraging for mushrooms), and I’m obviously against knowledgeable people being removed from positions of authority in these communities. This post bolds the text about being worried that new mods may miss something that the old mods wouldn’t, which could lead to someone getting hurt. I saw that, and that a couple of early comments latched onto it as a focus. I had broccoli in a wok that I needed to get back to and just fired off a quick comment as a bit of infernal advocacy that the replacement of mod powers probably isn’t as dire as the quote makes it sound.

    • OpenStars@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      It is not. The mere fact that someone is likely to get some info wrong is not a fact that is in question, only the likelihood of its occurrence is, and quite frankly neither you nor I are qualified to know how often such posts were submitted and rejected, but I have a hunch that the former mods of those exact subs just might?

      It reminds me of the story where a guy was fired b/c he refused to lie and state that the train wheels were okay when in fact they were overheating (this was in the USA but probably similar stories happen in most countries, so really is much more broadly applicable). This was back in February of this year iirc. Now we know that many people have died as a result of derailments since then - and potentially worse yet, some will suffer illnesses for an entire lifetime and extremely possibly (even likely, even certain if I am not mistaken) for another generation or few from now, as a result of the carcinogens released into those areas.

      Again, for emphasis: NOW we know that, but even back THEN, it still would have been a true fact that “train derailments are more likely than they were in the past, b/c of the reduction in safety controls”. We did not need to wait for people to die to be able to believe that, it was always true, and imagine a wonderful world where nobody at all had to die, b/c having seen the reduction in safety controls, someone acted and placed new controls in place that prevented it.

      The fact here is that info obtained from Reddit is less “safe” than it used to be. Hopefully nobody has to die to prove that conclusively. Ofc all info on the internet should be subjected to scrutiny, but not everyone is so cautious, and moreover, “transitions” especially can be harsh, i.e. from a resource (e.g. a particular sub) that had developed an EARNED reputation for providing only safe info, to now where the sub has the same name, but has a totally different internal structure, with fewer to no safety controls inside.

      That is my two cents anyway, fwiw.