There’s an irony seeing Redditors creating threads and complaining about it as if they did anything during the API-gate saga
Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible
Submitted 8 months ago by KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
Comments
macattack@lemmy.world 8 months ago
kinkles@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I soft quit Reddit last year and deleted all my profile’s comments and posts. I only kept it around because I had heard Reddit was restoring deleted posts and I wanted to make sure mine were gone for good. After several months I stopped checking.
This article made me finally pull the trigger and go in to delete my account. Surprise surprise, two pages of old comments had been restored.
johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It seems like the new account deleter scripts replace all comments with random text rather than actually delete them, which I’m sure makes it harder for reddit to undelete.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They’re about to make another wildly unpopular move. Get your popcorn ready.
TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Let’s be honest with ourselves - no, it won’t be wildly unpopular. This change affects very few people and the people still using Reddit at this point likely won’t care much.
Because think about this - who is actively complaining and gnashing their teeth about the continued downward spiral and still scrolling, posting, moderating there at this point? I’d love to believe more people would jump ship - but if it ever happened it would take a far larger-scope fuckup than this.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You know they’re going to keep escalating.
Corgana@startrek.website 8 months ago
And unlike last time there won’t be an easy way for mods to point users towards Lemmy.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Glad I’m not the only one pessimating that.
100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 8 months ago
The same day Nestler and I talked, for example, she said that she had spoken about the changes with Reddit’s mod council, which has about 160 moderators.
Wow. So many power-hungry people in one room.
Freefall@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Reddit mods are the blue sludge in the porta potty tank, not a “council”.
100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 8 months ago
They are traitors of the userbase’s interests
2pt_perversion@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Mods could just make a filter to remove everything new anyway. The concept of mods being unpaid volunteers means they get to fuck with reddit if they really want. They already had that issue with some subs just starting to allow porn during the first api protest. Sure reddit can just churn through to newer friendlier mods like the first time but they’re not going to be able to crush all the dissent and drama from moves like that.
But actually I think reddit has a bigger problem than protests. They tweaked their algorithm recently and it is going the way of facebook now, I’ve been getting 0 upvote day-old posts shown to me. They’re probably getting more engagement but I don’t think redditors are going to put up with that level of enshittification as easily as other social media where people are locked in by friends and followers.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
If you can’t meaningfully curate your feed then Reddit has lost all value.
AtomicHotSauce@lemmy.world 8 months ago
latenightnoir@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Heresy? Is that Roblox Burlyman? It’s heresy, right?
Clbull@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m thinking the API protests would have been more effective if y’all just stopped moderating entirely instead of locking down subreddits.
Let the site turn into an absolute cesspool.
Voltage@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Subs which did that had their mods replaced by reddit admins
punkcoder@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The real question you have to ask yourself is how long they can do that before it starts to affect their bottom line.
gorgori@lemmy.world 8 months ago
In the next protest mods should allow content like porn as another way of protest.
tiny@midwest.social 8 months ago
I believe mods tried this and reddit purged the mods when subreddits only allowed John Oliver images.
RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
“This sub is now entirely dedicated to u/Spez’s involvement in moderating jailbait subreddits”
o0oradaro0o@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They address this. “The policy applies to adjusting all community types, meaning moderators will have to request to make a switch from safe for work to not safe for work, too.”
djsoren19@yiffit.net 8 months ago
I’ll bet $50 this is because they plan on pulling the plug on old reddit soon, and don’t want to allow the inevitable protests.
the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Few enough people use it i doubt they’ll do that. The og reddit api (is that the term?) that came before old.reddit still works too (can’t remember what it is off the top)
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Few enough people use it i doubt they’ll do that.
I was going to suggest otherwise, but after checking the viewing stats on r/linuxhardware, out of 193k unique views in July, 7,300 were from old.reddit, which accounts for 2.8%, which kinda blows my mind. Just a couple years ago the numbers were much higher.
VonReposti@feddit.dk 8 months ago
They killed i.reddit.com after the APIcalypse, so I wouldn’t be so sure.
OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That is due to the fact that Reddit - and I can’t stress this next part enough - sucks.
IceHouse@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
I ran a subreddit for my discord server that we would sometimes post pictures to and find new members and after we stopped using reddit about 7 months later bots started reposting my own pictures and random bot accounts were reposting old comments. It was really weird for my ~2000 people sub that was under the radar and never reall popular.
chaogomu@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Bots building post history in an abandoned looking sub. Usually done to get access to some other sub.
With the right looking post history you can scam your way onto a surprising large number of moderation teams.
interurbain1er@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Lack of imagination.
Mods can still dump 10k trash messages in a sub making it unusable. (Or smart messages in the case of most subreddit who are trash anyway).
Set-up automoderator with rules reventing anyone below 5 billions karma to participate.
Ban everyone.
I’m sure there are a lot of other options.
sandbox@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If your subreddit is big enough and you do anything disruptive they’ll just take your mod powers away and give them to someone else who won’t disrupt it.
The best thing to do is either over or under moderate the subreddit in a way that seems legitimate but leads to the usefulness of the community dying off while also migrating the most useful content off the subreddit.
uis@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Mod-to-rule
Stern@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Banning everyone takes a bot, which is rate limited. Same with a trash flood.
Automod though, you can easily set to do things like remove all new comments and submissions, remove stuff on one report (which lets you use the argument no one really believes that you’re letting the users have more control.), allow new submissions but lock every comment section, or allow only select users to post, whether based on karma, username, flair, etc.
Possibilities are endless really.
r3df0x@7.62x54r.ru 8 months ago
They’d get banned for spam.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
They could just not moderate it tho. Reddit is a toxic workpplace (for free) for mods.
secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
I don’t get why people don’t just leave
pyre@lemmy.world 8 months ago
because other people haven’t left yet
secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
ah the old catch 22
that is the right use of that term right?
Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
This was the last straw for me, running Redact right now.
bitchkat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I had to laugh when I got banned from a sub because I used redact.
FruitLips@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Fuck Spez, & long live Lemmy.
nutsack@lemmy.world 8 months ago
if i post on reddit, anything at all, my account will be suspended immediately. i think there is a black list on my ISP or maybe my entire country. i can appeal the suspension every day but nobody will read it. i literally can’t use reddit.
SnotBubble@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
What country is that? I’m curious if they’re also racists.
Tja@programming.dev 8 months ago
This is a dumb argument. If they banned Finland it’s OK but if they banned Congo they’re racists?
nutsack@lemmy.world 8 months ago
it’s obviously not racism. don’t be a clown.
it’s laziness and incompetence. it’s a huge problem for many smaller countries outside the western world. you are blocked constantly. they want to filter malicious traffic, and they don’t have many users from your country, so they blocked the entire ASN.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
I recently wanted to ask something reddit after 2 years away, because a certain mod dev is there. Got a message it got deleted because i don’t have the karma to post there. Thanks for the effort, never again. That’s why i don’t write on Stack Overflow.
creamy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Most self destructive design choice I’ve ever seen on a site
How the fuck are you supposed to get new users if nobody can even post!?
yetAnotherUser@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I loved that the VP of Content added that mods will still be able to protest when Reddit is literally is getting rid of major tools for mods to do an effective protest. Like, I get that Reddit is a company, and that it’s a platform they own, and that they lose profit whenever a big subreddits get privated, but they keep giving mods middle finger after middle finger.
sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 8 months ago
writes Nestler. “We want to hear from you when you think Reddit is making decisions that are not in your communities’ best interests. But if a protest crosses the line into harming redditors and Reddit, we’ll step in.”
Translation: We don’t really give a shit what you think. Now shut up and generate that content for us to sell to AI companies.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
If can protest in a way that drives engagement makes are numbers better it’s allowed. Lmao what clowns.
Its like the king says you can send him extra grain as a protest for this years unfair taxes
Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
What they don’t seem to understand is that Reddit employees don’t create value, the users create value. And mods are users. The more they make things shitty for users, the more quickly the company will go bankrupt. I distinctly remember stories about killing golden geese and milking cows to death but the MBA crowd must not have been told those growing up.
manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
I just checked and theyve banned my private subreddit for lack of moderation
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I wonder how much longer it will be before Reddit has to start paying people to moderate the subreddits since no one will want to do it for free anymore.
Who am I kidding, there are so many people that are already taking their payment in the HOA like authority being a mod gives them that will never happen.
PunchingWood@lemmy.world 8 months 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 8 months ago
I think that’s what most as execs want, sadly
tonytins@pawb.social 8 months ago
Basically, “you can do whatever you want as long as it benefits us.” I hate for-profit social networks.
Bonesince1997@lemmy.world 8 months ago
At least here you don’t see a single ad.
SatyrSack@feddit.org 8 months 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.
crawancon@lemm.ee 8 months ago
who cares what that shit show, bad example, internet stain is doing at any given moment. fuck spez.
TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 8 months ago
So rather than allow subs to remain preserved while the replace the mods in place they will push subs to shit on themselves in this latest bout of enshittification.
socsa@piefed.social 8 months ago
Heil piss baby Spez
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I came here to banish reddit but this thing wont leave my feed. I guess I’m going to have to take the time to filter the word.
goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Reddit worked with mods ahead of announcing this change, Nestler tells me in an interview. The same day Nestler and I talked, for example, she said that she had spoken about the changes with Reddit’s mod council, which has about 160 moderators.
Didn’t they boot out everyone that wasn’t a suck up?
Revan343@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
160 mods representing all subreddits? Yeah that’s entirely power mods who would tow the line
SatyrSack@feddit.org 8 months ago
More than a year after the protests, Reddit is essentially back to normal.
[citation needed]
lvxferre@mander.xyz 8 months ago
For a casual observer, who was never engaged with that platform, it might actually look like Reddit is back to normal, based on a casual glance at the activity.
You only notice the cracks leaking water when you actually look closer, and you remember that the stone dam didn’t have so many of them. The surge on bot activity, the lower level of discourse in the comments, the further concentration of activity into larger subs, the content feeling more and more repetitive…
Rentlar@lemmy.ca 8 months 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.
Album@lemmy.ca 8 months 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 8 months 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 8 months 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 8 months ago
Just like digg back then after they switched the format.
Reddit keeps forgetting they depend on the users, including the mods.