Reddit’s CEO said he expects this blowup will pass eventually.
This was precisely the wrong thing for him to say if he wanted that to happen
Seriously. Talk about poking the bear, he got me pissed all over again. Never going back to reddit now.
That’s because spazzy spez didn’t think his internal memo would leak.
Nah I think it’s clear he wanted it to leak. He’s just an egomaniac who thinks he’s actually a good leader. That section of the memo was for investor confidence. (It’ll pass, no revenue effect so far, etc.) The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.
Obvious tactic, paint the other side as violent and you’ll get sympathy. Won’t someone please think of the corporation.
Make no mistake, spez would love to see someone in a reddit tshirt beat up on the street. He’d be able to plaster that everywhere he could showing how sad his side is
A false flag is a typical right wing move. I can picture spez doing it. He should pick some kid name Aaron just to make it that much more spiteful.
I dislike u/spez as much as the next guy, but man, that’s dark.
I mean there is a lot of money riding on this. I’ve seen people getting killed for 3 grand.
The other part about warning employees not to wear Reddit gear in public for fear of violence was meant for the press and for the uninformed, to try to garner sympathy and paint the protestors as bad actors.
Glad people aren’t blind to this obvious ploy. When LGBT violence is at an all time high I don’t think you need to be worried about wearing a reddit shirt.
He expects so because he’s going to have his admin staff de-mod all the rebels, open the subs back up, and ruthlessly ban anyone who says a word about the controversy. The user population that remains will eventually go back to sleep, and all will be well in Reddit-land.
Lol good luck finding new mods that will be any good after pulling a stunt like that. They certainly aren’t going to pay for any either.
The News and Worldnews subreddits prove there are people still willing to lick Spez’s boots.
They never shut down, along with a few other biggies. TiL just reopened.
This. There will always be people attracted to power, even power as ultimately meaningless as being a reddit mod. Spez will enlist a new squad of wanna-be petty tyrants.
They could easily do that by:
- Threatening to site-wide ban moderators who keep their subreddits dark (on the basis that they’re disrupting the regular function of the website.)
- Actually banning them if they follow through on another blackout.
- Doing a bit of overtime to moderate /r/redditrequest, on the condition that people don’t request subs that already have more than two million subscribers.
I mean, the charitable read is the CEO of the company reassuring the entire company that they’ll be OK. That’s his entire job. Yes, it’s a pretty crappy thing to say but we all weren’t the intended audience. He’s there to rally the troops and keep morale up.
That said, fuck u/spez and I’m way happier over here than there.
Every person counts
Apparently the head mod of /r/Tumblr has already been forcibly demodded. A bit weird that Tumblr of all places has been the starting point.
The real question I think is will Reddit retaliate back and forcibly recover communities and install new mods?
If they tried to hire enough mods to do a quality job of it they’d be bankrupt by the end of the year. I don’t know if they’ll have enough capable volunteers for a significant fraction of the subreddits.
True, although the way things are going, some instances don’t have the mod capacity right now. Lemmy needs more moderators and moderation tools as people move to the service. https://beehaw.org/post/567170
I predicted this but kind of surprised that it happened so fast. I’m guessing this mod won’t allow anything critical of spez.
I predicted forcible demods…
But like, I feel like the one thing that would work is the one thing no one has been talking about.
A mod strike!
Maybe it has been suppressed because it would seem too radical but like, if the communities are going to die anyways might as well go out with a bang. Mods should all go on strike and spammers can run free and burn the site to the ground. That’s basically what happened with Twitter, right? Has Spez seen what has happened to the valuation of Twitter this past year or what?
I went on Reddit during the blackout and on the front page there were shitty tattoos of bdsm furries with their dick and balls out… If the front page could all turn into that and the enforcement of NSFW tags was lost due to lack of mods, I can’t imagine that the shareholders would be happy about what the site has become.
Mod + user direct action - everyone should post spacedicks/porn and mods should refuse to enforce the rules. Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO. Plus, the internet can get VERY active when it comes to participating in mischief instead of watching things slowly fall apart. I’d upvote spacedicks for the cause.
I have no idea why no one is talking about this unless posts/comments like that are being suppressed. Since it seems like most 3rd party apps have the best mod tools and most mods won’t keep up their work if they don’t have the right tools, the end result will be the same anyways.
Edit: they literally cannot afford to pay enough people to take over all mod duties so this could work. Spez should get a preview of what he’s looking at BEFORE the IPO in my opinion.
Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO
To be fair… reddit was originally designed to be self-moderated by the users… and it use to work really well. It would be a miracle if they moved back to that model and I would no doubt switch back to them from lemmy if they did. Those were the hey days of reddit and the internet as a whole.
Do you have any source or details? Would love to read about it.
Reddit declined to comment
I am guessing their comment would be something like, “FUCK!!!”
Well now they have to take over the subs and get new moderators. They won’t just sit there and watch Reddit burn further.
For the 2 days private protest, their comment that it will be over soon was appropriate. As giving an exact time frame allows to know the exact end of it. They could just sit there and wait it out.
Now with the indefinite protest, they have to act. And to get to content onto Reddit again, they will probably be looking for new unpaid
strike breakersmods for those subs, so they don’t have to actually hire and pay people to moderate content on their soon publicly traded company website.Have subs continued to stay blacked out? I have not checked it out since the first day of it.
Yes. For instance, at this time, /r/nba is still blacked out even though the NBA season ended recently, and this week would’ve been its prime time.
No, it would’ve been something along the lines of “A: We are evaluating it at this time for the best approach moving forward”
Imagine how differently this would have played out if Reddit CEO Steve Huffman had taken a collaborative approach with app developers and stake holders. A few months ago, he could have called them up and humbly asked them for ideas and assistance in making Reddit profitable. Reddit would be on path to financial success by now.
I don’t think it’s wrong for Spez to charge for API access, but the rates he’s vowing to charge are excessive and clearly designed to nuke third-party apps from their ecosystem.
As for how I’d make money from Reddit in his shoes, I’d:
- Add more features for Reddit Premium, like being able to view more than 1,000 items on the front page, video uploads in comments, or enhanced search functionality.
- Add OnlyFans-style subscriptions or revenue sharing for partnered subreddits/users, with a 90% to 10% cut between content creators and Reddit.
- Bring back RPAN as a full time streaming platform to compete with the likes of Twitch/Kick.
Twitch is hardly a profit center, streaming isn’t where you’d go to boost profits.
It’s a corporate us vs them mentality. I don’t think Steve would even ask his own employees for help - the people who are on the ground running the company. The internal memo strongly indicates that Reddit doesn’t have a two-way communication channel with leadership.
It’s a shame, because refusing to take feedback is what ends up sinking most companies.
It was truly unexpected to see how large social networks find new and innovative ways to ride and accelerate their downfall.
From my perspective:
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Facebook --> Cambridge Analytica fiasco
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Twitter --> Elon was bluffing but Twitters Legal team forced him to proceed otherwise the SEC was already looking for blood and an excuse to make his life very difficult for all his previous shenanigans
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Reddit --> already downhill since just before Ellen Pao nonetheless may I speculate that perhaps one or more of the larger shareholders/investors forced the current situation but Huffman underestimated and did not realize that the power users and pro bono moderators were entirely dependent on third-party apps.
Moreover, I exclusively used reddit through old.reddit.com I have no idea how current Reddit actually looks like nor do I care as it was unusable.
Sad to see great things go but life continues onward.
I have no idea how current Reddit actually looks like nor do I care as it was unusable.
Just for fun, I opened reddit in a fresh browser, without my settings and extensions etc. It was… shit. No other way to put it. 1/3 of the screen was used for content, the rest was some form of trying to feed you crypto stuff, advertisement or “hey you should rather watch this video than read text, you loser!”.
For now, I can, thanks to some plugins, bring new reddit to something that is close enough to old reddit to be usable. But if this is the way reddit is heading, I’m out, alternative site or not.
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Lemmy is growing but we need to work to make easy to allow reddit mods to setup instances and fund them
I am a Reddit mod. Gimme the step-by-step tutorial!
Be mildly competent at computers… or know someone who is and willing to help you.
Either setup your own instance, or find an instance that’s already setup that you like and the owner will let you add stuff to the database…
Start a community…
Read here… https://github.com/rileynull/RedditLemmyImporter
Success! now you’ve migrated your subreddit to lemmy!
(This is a little sarcastic. I’m not good at legit guides. But it is possible!)
Edit: tweaked phrasing… doing this to general public servers would be unlikely.
Maybe pick an existing one and help it get off the ground:
- !lifeprotips@lemmy.world (direct link) this one seems like it’s newly set up by a community squatter, but you might have luck approaching them
- !lifeprotips@lemmy.ml (direct link) - this one is older but was inactive for a long time before the recent migration so idk if the mod is active
If you’re interested, I’d recommend posting in the older one, then requesting it on !community_requests@lemmy.ml
Well, on Beehaw you cannot create new communities, but you certainly can be made a mod of one even from another instance. Find the ones you want and ask the current mods of it.
Why can’t we create communities on here? Do the Beehaw admins specifically restrict this? Thanks, by the way.
I haven’t found many moderator features on Lemmy so far. The community that I created does not seem to have any way of blocking posts.
Good. I really hope this causes a snowball effect. After spez (fuck spez) basically told all the moderators “fuck you” today, I’d say there is enough momentum to get at least a good half of the participating subs on board with an indefinite blackout. And with more moderators checking their inboxes and feeds tomorrow, “after the blackout,” I anticipate seeing a second wave starting tomorrow and throughout the next week, as these mods return to reddit temporarily to coordinate.
KEEP IT GOING!!!
Stuff’s already starting to go back to public, I expect nothing to change for the better.
I mean it seems like only a couple thousand went public, the site is still very much noticeably short on content.
As much as I do hope this helps, I’m afraid it won’t change a thing: Like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well." -Spez. Seem they will ride out this storm. This have to be permanent to make any changes at Reddit.
But not for me. I’m forever gone.
And if there are enough power users (lots of comments, posts) like me who feel the same, it will have an impact.
There’s a HUGE middle ground between “nothing changes” and “reddit goes out of business.” As we see with Twitter, you can have a zombie platform that persists but slowly loses inertia month after month.
It’s not that Reddit dies abruptly. It’s that the platform is wounded now and, without attention, will bleed out slowly over many years.
At a communications conference last week, a Bloomberg reporter told the attendees that most tier 1 journalists are looking for stories on LinkedIn now instead of Twitter. It’s gone from vital to junk in just a few months. Without its moderators, Reddit faces the same fate: lots of activity, but most of it junk.
Its not the loss of moderators, its the loss of content. If reddit hadn’t changed their original self moderation model this couldn’t happen. Or at least, not like this.
Moderators are not responsible for making content, they just moderate a sub where others create content. Originally users moderated content on their own.
Pretty funny how reddit’s move to authoritarianism has worked against them this time.
Maybe Spez is right (obligatory fuck /u/spez comment), but this blowout also brought Lemmy and other similar sites to the limelight. We’re on the stage where we early adopters are testing the waters, it’s just a matter of time until a new competitor stands above the others and Spez’s Reddit irónico s going to have to eat those words.
a lot of people back on Reddit could not give less of a shit about the issues and just want their content; they even see this as just mods powertripping again
it’s kind of annoying to see that, tbh, even if I sort of get it
A look at their comment histories might be interesting, to see if they’re the ones contributing content worth reading.
I suspect I can guess the answer.
they could easily have their cake and eat it too by signing up to lemmy. There are a lot of instances out there and they could make their own if none fit.
but that’s not immediate and requires some work and effort (to figure out how federation works, to figure out how Lemmy works, to learn how to create an instance and to make one, to start over with an entirely new community); many on Reddit want the easiest path to get their content
which again, understandable, but still annoying to see
it’s kind of annoying to see that
Why would that be annoying? It means the strike is working, it does exactly what it is meant to do. If the consumers don’t find content, they will ultimately move elsewhere
Damn, the apathy is strong but I do get it. After all, Reddit was mostly a place for me to deflate and relax or just read things during downtime.
Problem is it will work lul. Just read some comments in some subs that are restricted like the Star Wars one. Kinda sad to see people bend over so easily only because they cannot post in their sub for a few days. Like, geez doesn’t matter at all what % of people use 3rd party apps. A little bit of inconvenience doesn’t kill anyone and it’s good to stand up for stuff like this as well.
Keep in mind that Reddit is running a propaganda campaign to try to squash the blackout. Notice most of the comments are almost exactly the same. As we saw with Trump, all it takes is a few well placed comments to stir up dissent and get people to parrot dumb talking points. Reddit can easily manipulate votes and comments to make it look like most people don’t care, but obviously they do, because there was the biggest blackout I’ve seen on a social media platform ever.
I’m sure they do but I have no doubt a ton of people also simply are in the typical “I don’t care, it doesn’t affect me directly but the subs going dark does so it’s bad” mode as many are with lots of things these days sadly.
a lot of people back on Reddit could not give less of a shit about the issues and just want their content; they even see this as just mods powertripping again
it’s kind of annoying to see that, tbh, even if I sort of get it
I haven’t seen that. Everyone seems to be rather upset about Apollo, RIF, Relay, etc. The only person I’ve seen suggesting power tripping mods is u/spez.
Cool, well the reason I’m here instead of on reddit is because of this. Last time I did this was when I found reddit after digg.
Can I get an eli5 on digg? It seems to have happened years and years before I joined reddit
Digg was a site that was a lot like reddit, it was incredibly popular until they did a site redesign that many users hated and they were unable to roll back, engagement went way down, users looked for alternatives, and reddit got most of the refugees. I haven’t been back on digg for many years.
I thought reddit learned its lesson from digg given they kept legacy old.reddit.com running even after their own redesign, but they failed to remember that 3rd party interfaces to their API is almost the same thing; users like interfacing with their social media using the UI/UX design they chose and grew accustomed to. If they take that away, it risks alienating users and driving them to alternatives.
If reddit was smart they’d make it so that people with reddit gold can keep using API access instead of locking them out entirely.
What reddit doesn’t seem to get that for many people old.reddit (or a 3rd party app) is reddit for them. If they take that away they’re forcing them to learn a new UI or to get a new app. It’s naive to think that everyone is just going to switch to the official ones. Might aswell find an alternative to reddit and learn to use that.
It’s not just about learning the new interfaces…I’ve used the new site design and have heard the official app is just as bad about shoving ads down our throats. Baconreader made ads at least fairly unobtrusive, but with all the drama I’ve decided: fuck it. I appreciate Lemmy and other decentralized options for being user-funded rather than reliant on corporations
Thanks for the explanation
Well, despite the difficulties translating to Federated platforms, I will certainly be working on alternative social platforms.
I no longer use Quora or Facebook…
I unsubscribed my ‘YouTube’ channels and added them as RSS feeds, so there’s no need for me to be signed in there to consume content from creators I follow.
I hope that a month or two with the Fediverse will allow me to understand it better. I’m sure that many Fediverse users will also remain on Reddit and be able to advise folks on what to do.
If anyone on, for example, r/firefox announced activity over here, I’d follow them here. So whatever the ‘bots’ say, I know what’s occurring in my corner.
Was Quora ever good?
Whomever said there are no stupid questions, has never visited Quora.
Post closed, marked as duplicate.
Was that Quora as well? I thought that’s only StackOverflow :c
But yes, I very much hope that the ethos of beehaw makes for “programming question” communities that are as useful as StackOverflow while not being so rude.
wait, I’ve never used quora. whats bad about it
@soiling @BendyLemmy the quality of answers is low, you’re not missing out
Other than blocking you from browsing their site unless you join (or clear your cookies) you mean?
Can you elaborate further on the YouTube - RSS feeds? Seems like something I’d like to use too
I realised after a while that Quora is full of dumb question askers and question answerers wanting to sound smart. I earnt $5 from it though so can’t complain
And reddit still don’t give a shit. Just shows how much they care about the community.
Cool that sites are reporting on it. Maybe that’ll add pressure.
I suspect we’re about to see a lot of mods lose their permissions. Reddit will allow some protest but not at the expense of investors getting spooked.
You’re exactly right. It’s not that I don’t want it to work, I would love for it to. But what you’re suggesting isn’t new. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again.
Mods need to follow the path of the star trek community. Pick a new home server migrate folks out of reddit. Just going dark is not enough
Also there alot of bots going around Reddit saying the protest is not working and all the subreddit mods are going to be easily replaced, with who I don’t know.
Well if only bots are talking, mods can be bots too. /r/SubredditSimulator will just take over the whole Reddit
Pretty much already there on some subs.
