hey everyone. if you want to post links or discuss the Reddit blackout, its aftermath, and what’s happening going forward, please localize it to this thread in order to keep things tidy! thanks! we’ll see if we need to cycle the thread again before the end of this week, but i don’t know that we’ll need to

  • PelicanPersuader@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Troubling update from the Reddit admins. They are planning to remove mods from any subs that decide to stay private and hand them over to scabs. This goes back on their previous statements that subs had a right to protest and go private. Mods of one large community have already been contacted by the admins and told that “if you decide to close your community going forward, our Code of Conduct team will reach out with next steps”. Which is a fresh take on “nice kneecaps, shame if something happened to them”.

    • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgOPM
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      1 year ago

      privately, i’ve kind of wondered whether Reddit does even care if all of its subreddits are moderated horribly, and if it doesn’t whether that renders anything short of taking your ball and going home moot

      • PelicanPersuader@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        They’re shooting themselves in the foot with this stance. Handing over some very popular subreddits to the most aggressive, dissenting voices in a community who have no experience running that particular subreddit is a recipe for disaster. A hostile takeover is not going to set the new mods in a good light from the get-go, alienating them from the groups they’re supposed to be running and creating an adversarial relationship. This will not turn out the way they’re hoping.

        • darkmugglet@lemm.ee
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          r/subredditdrama would be trending ever day. Any controversial subreddit would be subject to astroturfing campaigns. Could you imagine if a political party decided to over throw mods of r/politics or r/news just before an election?

          The whole point of a Reddit it is a community that is fostered by the moderators and the voting system. Hostile take overs of a subreddit will result in toxicity and encourage heavy handed moderation, restricted membership and make the popular subreddit echo chambers.

          The CEO is changing too much, too fast, and with reckless abandon. You can’t change your pricing model, your business model and your value prop in one go. The best analogy I can come up with that it’s like he’s remodeling the kitchen and decided that a wrecking ball through the front of the house is a good idea.

    • jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev
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      1 year ago

      The thing that doesn’t make sense in that is if third party app users are such a small portion of Reddit overall, why even go after them in the first place? I could understand wanted to monetize groups taking advantage of the reddit API to train their AI models, but people making things to enhance the reddit experience?

  • mizmoose@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Redditinc.com’s fact(oid)s about the API changes.

    Includes such BS as

    100,000+ active communities

    Technically true. But it’s estimated that between 1/3 and 1/2 are NSFW. That is, the subs they don’t want shown at their (mythical) IPO.

    Supporting these apps is not free for Reddit; they incur both infrastructure and significant opportunity costs.

    Technically true. But so does the official app, and web browsers. API calls are not some sort of special magic that causes extra wear on the systems. If the users never had the third party apps they’d be using something else, causing the same traffic and usage - or using nothing at all.

    Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use from our API.

    Again, third party apps are no more of a drain on data use than anything else. It’s been proven, but Spez keeps pushing this lie.

    Many other platforms have chosen to stop supporting apps like these altogether.

    Objection! Facts not in evidence.

    more than 98% of apps do not pay and will continue to access the Data API for free so long as apps are not monetized […].

    Emphasis mine. This is the real story.

    Our pricing is based on usage levels comparable to our own costs

    Either this is an outright lie or Spez is admitting that the official Reddit app is an inefficient, data monching, piece of garbage.

    We’re working to improve the mobile mod experience

    Spez has been promising rainbows for years but all we ever get is poop. Or just the smell of poop. That the mobile apps were released without proper moderator tools tells you what he thinks of moderators.

    We have a unique system of checks and balances, and we respect the communities right to protest.

    Clearly a lie, given that Spez is going to change the rules to force out moderators who choose to follow their sub’s wishes to protest.

    r/nottheonion is asking users to vote, including a fun option that encourages people to take Tuesdays off

    The “fun option” is an official means of joining the protest. Can he stop lying for 10 seconds?

    We conducted an accessibility audit with an external consultant and have been working on improving accessibility on the site and in our apps.

    Yes, much smarter than actually TALKING TO YOUR OWN USERS AND SEEING WHAT THEY WANT. Oh, they want what you refuse to do? Gee, what a surprise!

    Nothing says ableism more than telling people with disabilities that they have no agency in how or if they get accommodations. (Sadly, the ADA does not apply to Reddit as a website.)

    In summary, Spez needs to be fired. Preferably out of a cannon, into the sun.

    • reric88🧩@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Yes, but if you fire a spez from a canon into the sun, but no one can see him enter the sun, then does he actually get harmed? No one knows, especially if he never returns!

    • open_share1739@beehaw.org
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      Could you elaborate on how and why the ADA doesn’t apply to Reddit as a website? I’ve been wondering about this ever since Spez admitted the official app isn’t accessible and they seemingly have no plans to make it so.

    • cykablyatbot@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      undefined> Technically true. But it’s estimated that between 1/3 and 1/2 are NSFW. That is, the subs they don’t want shown at their (mythical) IPO.

      I’m pretty sure r/clipclop is considered respectable and mainstream now.

  • PelicanPersuader@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    According to a screenshot shared in the modcoord discord, there’s already a facist trying to take over /r/aww. The user is a former T_D mod, a sub which was actively involved in the January 6 riots and known for its misconduct across Reddit. These are the people that spez wants to empower.

    • talik@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      that was my worry as well. Reddit is going to shit incredibly fast. Boot the mods and this is what we will get—a new, sitewide alt-right pipeline.

      Let’s see the outcome.

  • Helium@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Just wondering how long it takes til Reddit strips mods and forcibly reopens certain protesting subs

    • nyankas@feddit.de
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      I would honestly love to see that. It would make their situation so much worse. They rely on people moderating subs voluntarily. They don’t have the manpower to do it themselves. The subs would probably get flooded with spam and NSFW content. And if there’s one thing advertisers hate more than the current blackout, it’s their ads being displayed between questionable porn.

      So if reddit really did this, I wouldn’t count it as a loss for the protesters. Instead, I would go get some popcorn.

      • 00@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Absolutely. And even if people stepped up, theres a ton of institutional knowledge that they would loose. This might even lead to some of the people that stepped up quitting, making the situation even worse.

      • Osayidan@social.vmdk.ca
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        That’s what the protest should have been, disabling automod rules, and the human mods going on vacation. Maybe announce a “no rules until further notice” to entice additional chaos from regular users.

        • pm_me_weird_thoughts@lemm.ee
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          damn! now i want to see that happen. it would be so much fun to see the reddit without free mod’s labour reddit admins would probably want to die if that happens lol

        • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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          This is actually against their TOS so if this happened they could just seize the subs as “abandoned” or “unmoderated”. I agree it would be effective but it would also give reddit an easier out when dealing with the situation.

    • WillOfTheWest@beehaw.org
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      All according to plan, I fear. They’d ideally have all subreddits under the management of their cadre of “power mods”

      • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
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        The subreddits won’t be unmoderated, they’ll just have pro-reddit mods installed by the admins.

  • sourcerer@fosstodon.org
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    1 year ago

    I stopped using reddit, don’t want to participate in this crime. There’s high possibility that reddit will not change direction, it’s better give a chance to alternatives and learn something new.

    • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.ml
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      The people who refuse to learn something new and stay on reddit, like the people who jumped ship from Twitter to BlueSky instead of Mastodon, are exactly the kind of dim-bulbs the corporate suite want. They’re more concerned with usability than freedom from corporate influence. They’re more than happy to lose general autonomy and have corporations dictating how they interact with the world because, and let me emphasize this, they are too fucking lazy and pathetic to learn to do anything on their own. They are god damned babies looking for someone to hold their hand through life.

      Boo Boo Bear speaking truth to power.

      I do believe corporations rob us of our dignity and independence.

      • terath@kbin.social
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        One could say that the people supporting mastodon with rhetoric like yours are too fucking lazy and pathetic to bother building a system with good UX. The choice is not in fact, “freedom” or “usability.” It’s very easy to have both, but mastodon supporters don’t seem to care. You are not owed anything, and no most people will not bother with some janky software.

        If you want to change the world on a lager scale, do better, don’t blame others.

        • Uniquitous@lemmy.one
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          Nah. There’s an old maxim that states if you make something idiot-proof, they’ll just come out with a dumber idiot. The hell with them. Let’s build something smart. If they want in, they can smarten up.

        • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.ml
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          too fucking lazy and pathetic to bother building a system with good UX

          do better, don’t blame others.

          You are not owed anything.

          Make up your mind. You’re not owed a “good UX” from people who do this for you for free. Sorry you need hand holding to figure this shit out.

          • terath@kbin.social
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            The opposite of “not interested in your jank software” is not “thinking they are owed improved software.” It’s called using alternatives, or even not using anything at all. Honestly aggressive insulting attitudes like yours are one of the big reasons I personally have no interest in mastodon.

            I sure hope kbin/lemmy is not overrun with the arrogant tech bro vibe. It’s gross.

            • Hot Saucerman@lemmy.ml
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              No, really, I want to know how lost you are here.

              1. I’m posting from Lemmy to a Beehaw thread, that just happened to mention Mastodon… This thread isn’t directly on Mastodon. People leaving for BlueSky over Mastodon is just a reference point.

              2. Making the choice that “usability matters” means you’re willing to shack up with Jack Dorsey and his horrible politics over a community.

              3. You don’t even know what a fucking techbro is. Steve Huffman, the goober who ran half us off of reddit, is a techbro. Someone who only got into tech for money. I’m not sure if you’ve been paying attention but the people who are producing Free Open Source Software like Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon aren’t in it to make money and are in it to create communities.

              4. How is it insulting to say that the people who, once again are creating the place you are posting as a free service and not seeing remuneration, don’t owe it to anyone to spend their lives on usability when they are primarily a programmer and not user interface specialist? Like you yourself said, they don’t actually owe you that.

              5. Further, how is it insulting to say that people who don’t want to learn something because it isn’t immediately easy to use are lazy or unwilling to learn? Do you have any idea how many corporate pieces of shitty software with bad UI and usability I have been forced to and learned to use in my lifetime? Way too fucking many, and these are pieces of software private companies pay a fucking mint for.

              I really think you need to lower your expectations from admins programming a free piece of software in their spare time and paying for server costs with donations. Also, seriously, figure out what a “techbro” is, it’s not the people giving you free shit with no ads who have decided not to enshittify their services to get more money while fucking over users.

              Find a map, because you’re lost.

      • Edgerunner Alexis@dataterm.digital
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        Yup, that’s honestly the history of the world — people giving their autonomy and independence and concern for what’s really going on in the world away to authorities for ease, comfort, convenience and just out of habit, then being surprised when those authorities turn around and begin taking advantage of them. It’s the eternal struggle against apathy.

      • Hyperi0n@lemm.ee
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        Well said. Bravo! I could not have said that better myself. I’m sorry to say you just described my mom. She’s a google addict who always tells me that she’d rather have usability over privacy. She actually told me once that “she doesn’t need privacy because she’s got nothing to hide.”

        She signs up to hundreds of services with the same gmail and decades old password, I try to get her to use Tutanota or Proton or any number of password managers out there but she’s technologically illiterate and says it’s too complicated. I looked her up on Have I Been Pwned? and she had 17 data breaches on her account and 23 on an old one.

        It’s so frustrating, she was willing to put her entire digital identity into the hands of corporations that time after time abuse and sell that data or in her case leak info in data breaches all because she’s to lazy to learn to randomize handles and use a password manager. I understand what you’re talking about man because I live with one and it frustrates me.

      • pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev
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        1 year ago

        Yes, it checks the url is old reddit, if not make it old reddit.

        if (!url.match(/^(http(s)?:\/\/)old\.reddit\.com/)) {
            url = "old.reddit.com" + url.split("reddit.com")[1];
          }
        
        • elauso@feddit.de
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          Very nice! I’m currently on chromium so I can’t use it – but it’s one more reason to switch back to Firefox :)

    • SmugBedBug@lemmy.iswhereits.at
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      I can only imagine that 5his wasn’t a recent interview, but I know it’s not the case. He’s completely lost it. Very out of touch with what made Reddit Reddit.

  • DarkWasp@beehaw.org
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    Something I’ve seen pointed out is that if Reddit ultimately does shift to a more “democratic” model of voting mods in and out, that could easily be abused by bot farms or for nefarious purposes. Everything about the future direction the site is heading sounds bleak and barely what it once was.

    • tangentism@beehaw.org
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      Like with a lot about Reddit, things have been implemented that sounds good on paper but little thought has been given to the consequences.

      As for the electing mods/vox populi…[barf]

  • Leigh@beehaw.orgM
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    If they want their subs back so badly, let them take them. They can deal with moderation (or finding any decent mods at all) on their own.

    Good luck with that, Reddit admins. lol.

  • Briongloid@aussie.zone
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    Reddit users continue their blackout protest against the platform’s new pricing plan, which will force several popular third-party apps to shut down or pay up starting July 1. While some subreddits have reopened, moderators of r/aww, r/videos, and r/music have kept their forums closed, holding out for more movement from Reddit’s executives.

    Over 300 other subreddits are still private, and moderators are polling their users to gauge interest before joining the indefinite shutdowns. CEO Steve Huffman’s leaked memo, which warned employees not to sport a Reddit logo in public, has been criticized for “trivializing” the concerns of moderators and volunteers who maintain much of the platform.

    source: tldrdaily.news

      • toastio@beehaw.org
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        Here ya go…

        The basic idea of most websites is to create content, attract an audience, and then sell advertising that targets your audience. If your website attracts a large enough audience, you can make a good business out of selling advertising.

        Of course, if you build a website where your audience volunteers to create the content for free, and you still get to show them ads, that sounds like a really good business. That’s basically all social media websites, though some of them (Facebook) are much better than others (Twitter).

        Reddit is an interesting case because not only do the people who use the website create all of the content, but they also do almost all of the heavy lifting of managing and moderating the site. That sounds like a really good gig, except Reddit hasn’t ever really managed to make money. Yes, it gets all the content for free and sells ads, but not nearly to an extent that makes a profit.

        There’s another problem, which is that if you give people a lot of control over your website, you’ll build a thriving community–which seems like a good thing–but if you want to make changes that affect your community, they might get upset. They might even decide to protest. Considering the amount of control you gave them over your website, it doesn’t seem ideal to have them angry or protesting.

        That’s Reddit.

        On Monday, more than 7,000 Subreddits, the name for individual communities within the site, went private, effectively taking those parts of the website down. At some point, Reddit–in its entirety–went down.

        The protest comes in response to Reddit’s decision to start charging for its API access. That API is used for things like scooping up Reddit’s content to train large language models (LLMs) used by A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT. It’s also used for creating third-party apps like Apollo, whose developer, Christian Selig, said last week that it should be shutting down because of the fact Reddit’s API fees would cost him more than $20 million a year. For context, Selig says Apollo makes about $500,000 a year.

        Ostensibly, that’s exactly what Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, wants. During an AMA last week, Huffman didn’t hide his disdain for third-party apps that make a profit, even while Reddit does not. The thing is, if that’s the case, he should have just said, “Hey, we’re cutting off third-party access to our API for creating client apps since we don’t make any money off of them.”

        Instead, Huffman said he’s happy to work with third-party apps, but it’s obvious that’s just a thing you say when you know none of them have the money to keep going. Reddit is under pressure to become profitable as it reportedly prepares for an IPO, and as investors have stopped putting in new money.

        This brings me to Elon Musk and Twitter. Earlier this year, Twitter pulled the plug on third-party developers. The difference is that the company was pretty clear that it just no longer wanted them to exist. If you’re going to use Twitter, the company wants you to use its website or its own app. Again, the reason isn’t hard to understand–Twitter doesn’t make any money from anyone using a third-party app because they don’t see Twitter’s ads.

        If you’re going to kill off your partners–who do bring value to your platform, even if you can’t see it on the bottom line–you should just be honest about it. You should just say, “Hey, it’s been a nice ride, but we’re doing this differently from now on.” That isn’t to say that it isn’t going to ruin some small businesses, but if that’s your goal, you should own it.

        Sure, Musk took heat for killing off popular apps like Twitterific and Tweetbot. I’m sure plenty of people would disagree with this decision. It’s not like Musk’s Twitter hasn’t been one chaotic move after another. At least, in this case, no one was pretending it was about anything other than getting everyone on the official platforms.

        On the other hand, Huffman wants to pretend this is all about LLMs or something else. This is purely about trying to find any way to increase revenue per user (which, again, is zero if you’re using a third-party app) ahead of going public.

        Huffman even doubled down in a note to employees that was first reported by The Verge:

        There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward.
        

        Calling your users “noise” is maybe not the best way to win over your most important stakeholders. Instead, you just end up alienating the people you’re going to need to make your business successful.

        That’s the worst thing you can do in any business, but especially when if you built it on the goodwill of your users and partners. Alienating them is bad enough–not being honest about it is even worse.

        Edit: formatting

    • cykablyatbot@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      Weird. I thought having the top selling car in the world this year so far and founding the most advanced space program in the world made Elon look like a strategic genius. But he hasn’t made the company he bought and turned private 6 months ago profitable? What a loser.

  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.one
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    Judging by the newsprint from today; it feels like spez is still lost in his own delusion.

    Right now he’s at the bargaining stage; trying to find out if he can weasel his way out of this shit. Fuck him. He dug his own career’s grave there. I’ve already established a community here on lemmy.

    • darkmugglet@lemm.ee
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      He’s lost control of the narrative. He tried to take Reddit hostage and failed to understand the unique dynamic between users, moderators, the third party ecosystem system and Reddit. It’s clear that he doesn’t see users or moderators, but data and money.

      He would do well to simply shut up and hire a PR firm. In all reality, he’s shown his hand and he might as well just do what he’s threatened.