Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible
Submitted 1 year ago by KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
Comments
AtomicHotSauce@lemmy.world 1 year ago
latenightnoir@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Heresy? Is that Roblox Burlyman? It’s heresy, right?
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I mean it’s safe to say it was probably the last opportunity to do a protest on that scale even before these changes. Maybe they can still do “remove any post on wellthatsucks that isn’t a vacuum” type of change.
Probably old Reddit imploding will bring a few more this way, but safe to say that most people who left Reddit because it’s changed for the worse since 5-15 years ago have already left. Still, I have seen a few new users join Lemmy after TechLinked mentioned the site and a continuous trickle would be welcome.
On another note, hearing the “council of Reddit moderators” makes me imagine a cringeworthy meetup in someone’s basement.
saigot@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I think this will cause as many problems as it solves (from Reddit’s POV), going private has always been a panic button for mods when shit hits the fan. Now those controversies will have much longer to build and have news stories written about it first. Short sighted.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 year ago
Go_JasonWaterfalls on the platform, writes in a post on r/modnews. “We have a responsibility to protect Reddit and ensure its long-term health, and we cannot allow actions that deliberately cause harm.”
You mean like killing all third-party apps and selling user-data to AI companies? That kind of harm? Oh no, you meant “harm” to your personal finance.
borth@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Harm? That is what would happen to their company if they explained what they meant by “harm”
Natanael@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
Because certainly they don’t think brigades harm communities if they won’t trust mods to set subreddits as private
Album@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Reddit is already dead, the corporate AI shell is all that remains amongst some folk who dont realize everyone is a bot or an idiot.
/r/android used to be one of the hottest subs - it’s literally just posts from the same 2 OPs linking to their professional news articles.
aniki@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Before the API change I was looking into making an extension for RES that would automatically block any user account above a configurable ratio of posts to comments. It was BANANAS how much content was from bots on the front page even on smaller subs.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That would have been a lot like how I remember message boards being back in the day, (late 90’s early 2000’s) and honestly I don’t think I like it. People like me (with both low number of comments and posts) wouldn’t be able to reach that bar to entry. I get the bots wouldn’t either, but that still eliminates human users as well and I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
ogeist@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just like digg back then after they switched the format.
Reddit keeps forgetting they depend on the users, including the mods.
tonytins@pawb.social 1 year ago
Basically, “you can do whatever you want as long as it benefits us.” I hate for-profit social networks.
Bonesince1997@lemmy.world 1 year ago
At least here you don’t see a single ad.
SatyrSack@feddit.org 1 year ago
Yet
Instance owners could potentially insert ads to help cover server costs. Users would likely just migrate to a different instance, but I could definitely imagine one of the bigger instances doing that eventually.
Corgana@startrek.website 1 year ago
(Copied from the thread on /c/Quark’s)
I quit as the top mod of /r/StarTrek in 2021 in protest against Reddit’s platforming of vaccine disinformation subreddits. Then in 2023 during the API protest, myself and several of the remaining mods (including mods from /r/Risa and /r/DaystromInstitute) started StarTrek.website.
The consensus I’ve seen on Lemmy has been largely “we don’t need to spread the word about our open platforms because Reddit will do something stupid again and there will be another protest and Lemmy will be promoted there”. So I hope we can take this as a lesson that we can’t rely on platforms being shitty in order to switch society over to open standards. We need to Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed good as well as known.
spyd3r@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
What you guys did to the alternate Star Trek subs (ie: the ones that allowed criticism of NuTrek) is inexcusable and will never be forgiven.
btaf45@lemmy.world 1 year ago
started StarTrek.website.
I don’t use that because you are (or someone is) modding it wrong. You don’t allow people to talk about which parts of Star Trek they don’t like and others might want to avoid. Fuck that. All parts of Star Trek are not equally good.
JanewaysDoggie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
oh yea i got banned on r/startrek for expressing mild dislike of the discovery show, wasnt even rude or anything. Tried to appeal the ban by asking why i was banned got instantly mod muted and perma banned.
Corgana@startrek.website 1 year ago
index@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I quit as the top mod of /r/StarTrek in 2021 in protest against Reddit’s platforming of vaccine disinformation subreddits.
You quit reddit because they didn’t ban subreddits you don’t like?
Corgana@startrek.website 1 year ago
I quit because contributing my labor made me complicit in the harm they were causing.
Alpha71@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Fuck that Subreddit. I called someone an idiot there and they banned me. I don’t know if this changed but at the time ALL the moderators were privated. I found out one moderators and called them them all cowards and losers. It was THAT exchange that got be banned from reddit entirely.
I came here and never looked back.
RagnarokOnline@programming.dev 1 year ago
Thanks for sharing this perspective. Complacency won’t grow the userbase here.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
To be fair, a lot of users don’t seem to want the user base here to grow at all. I don’t feel that way but I’ve had enough discussions here to know that this is literally not the case for everyone and it kind of sucks because stagnation is how social networks die.
OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That is due to the fact that Reddit - and I can’t stress this next part enough - sucks.
ThePantser@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I fear Reddit might be going the way of Twitter and Facebook, too many users which makes them too big to fail or their failure is sooo slow that by the time they do fail they will have cemented their footholds in our politics they will puppet our politicians more than now.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 year ago
May I be blunt? I don’t think that anyone still moderating Reddit has a shred of dignity, decency, or concern about their userbase. As such this shit will pass and nobody there will care.
schema@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I agree. Especially with how some moderators talk down to users, they sure licked those boots stomping on them to not lose their “powers”.
Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 1 year ago
So long as we’re being blunt, this criticism can be levied at Lemmy too. There is less accountability here and your only option is to ‘find a similar federated community’ because nobody seems to want any kind of accountability or standards in the mods. Well, you have basically 2 major communities and both of them are equally stupid but in opposite directions. Viable option indeed.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 year ago
We’re talking about two different problems.
The one that I’m talking about is Reddit admins being clearly hostile towards the community, including mods, and the mods still being willing to lick the admins’ boots, instead of migrating their comms to another site. Even at the expense of the userbases of the subreddits that they moderate.
Here in Lemmy this shit does not roll - both because it’s easier to migrate comms across instances, and because the userbase is mostly composed of people with low tolerance towards admin abuse.
Now, regarding the problem that you’ve spotted: yes, it is a problem here that boils down to
- Lack of transparency: plenty mods and admins here have a nasty tendency to enforce hidden rules - because actually writing those rules down would piss off the userbase.
- Excessive polarisation and oversimplification of some topics, mostly dealing with recent events. (Such as the one that we both were talking about not too long ago.)
I am really not sure on how to compare the extent of both issues in Lemmy vs. Reddit, nor how to address them here, and thus to get rid of the problem that you’re noticing.
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
That was clear from the article as well, where they said they took the opinion of 150
bootlickersmoderatorsdriving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 1 year ago
The guy who admin my lemmy instance is also the mod of r/Brasil and he and the Brazilian mod team worked a lot to avoid the subreddit to become an alt-right shithole like the rest of country subreddits (the losers from the alt-right national subreddit even had to pay for reddit ads to try to funnel user there).
lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 year ago
That’s hilarious. And surprisingly uplifting if the alt-right sub in question is r/brasillivre, since that shithole is still empty.
Bonesince1997@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Roll it up
crawancon@lemm.ee 1 year ago
who cares what that shit show, bad example, internet stain is doing at any given moment. fuck spez.
shani66@ani.social 1 year ago
You’d think this would drive away what mods are left, i imagine they are mostly there for the illusion of power they get at this point and this will be a step towards removing that.
But then, the entire corporatization should be enough to drive people away on it’s own but it doesn’t seem to be.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 year ago
You also have some newer mods who are controlling the narrative for profit.
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Most mods are corporate stooges anyways
Boozilla@lemmy.world 1 year ago
[deleted]akvgergo@lemmy.ml 1 year ago
So that’s what happened?! I rarely come here, but last weekend was so bad that I started updating my subscribed communities here.
I thought I interacted with too many downvoted posts, and screwed up what reddit thought were my main interests. Guess I was expecting too much from reddit…
vahtos@programming.dev 1 year ago
This isn’t limited to the Reddit app. You can see it on the desktop and mobile website too.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have to imagine that when some c-level suit saw that term in his moth-eaten copy of “Social Media for Dummies,” I don’t think it was intended to be taken quite so flagrantly visibly literally…
zoostation@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s sad how many docile idiots remained on Reddit and Twitter after last year.
HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Those still on are a bunch of bootlickers IMO
P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br 1 year ago
I believe you missed the point. There’s people there because they know that their content won’t be found elsewhere.
johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There are a lot of subreddits for which there is no real replacement. Sometimes the strength in a community is the people. Doesn’t matter if reddit sucks if the people are there.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t know, I feel during that exodus we got the best of the best. I miss some of the niche communities, But there’s so many fewer assholes over here.
reddig33@lemmy.world 1 year ago
A lot of it is just propaganda bots at this point.
teft@lemmy.world 1 year ago
People still use AOL internet. I expect Reddit and twitter to die sometime in the 2050s.
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Digg still exists. Death of websites is rarely a complete shutter, but usually more of a steady decline into obscurity
PunnyName@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not just AOL Internet, but also the email service. Same for Hotmail. I used to work at iHeart, and the number of those email services (from prize winners) was not insignificant.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I missed the part where Aol. was promoting toxicity and hate while attempting a short-term grift on its users like Reddit and X have.
That fact that Aol. is still alive is amazing by itself. It’s just another sleazy, beleaguered company that used to be meaningful. You leave because other companies have better products, not because they offend your sense of morality.
(Or maybe they do.)
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
There’s still one protest possible.
LEAVE REDDIT!!! GET THE FUCK OFF OF IT! LET IT DIE. MAKE IT DIE!
Same with twitter.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The hold outs for these sites are so fucking dumb. They act like social media is somehow an important part of their existence when just 10, 20 years ago it was an emerging technology. These early iterations of social media are toxic as fuck. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They don’t deserve your patronage and are taking your goodwill and turning it into social disorder.
10-20 years and you people can’t give it up for something better. There is no argument. You don’t owe them loyalty. They aren’t innovating. They have contributed to the rise of authoritarianism.
Yeesh.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 year ago
If you’re still posting on Reddit or Twitter, and it’s not for a niche community, please don’t come here.
GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
No, because then they’ll all flood here. Then I’ll have to consult with 9,006 different rules between each sub, while subsequently making sure I’m bending to each power-mods weird and unwritten agenda.
No I’m good with reddit. I encourage reddit. And I encourage all the weirdos to use reddit!
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Nope.
If you encourage it, it will continue to fester and rot, and the entire internet will lower their expectations.
We need to destroy these companies. We need to smash them to pieces, and hey guess what - it’s going to hurt a bit! We need to be prepared to stand up against evil, corrupt, racist, bigoted robber barons. We need to make some sacrifices to fix the internet.
Burn the fuckers to the ground, and let spez rot in a hole.
jaybone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Like what the hell are they even protesting about now? What is left to protest about? And why? Just go.
PunchingWood@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Lmao now even the moderators get cancelled by Reddit.
The platform can’t die quick enough, it turned into such a fucking cesspool of powertripping mods and circlejerks. And it’s impossible to ever get in contact with admins because they replaced them all by bots. There are also so many bot posters that at some point it’ll just be bots moderating bots, moderated by admin bots.
shani66@ani.social 1 year ago
I think that’s what most as execs want, sadly