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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

Not everyone that disagrees with you is doing so in bad faith. Not everything is brigading, etc. Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community. It is a very one-sided argument, as if the moderators are the reason the community exists. No. Moderators are unnecessary without users. It's a symbiosis.

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Yeah I don’t give a shit about the blackouts and have been commenting on Reddit how dumb it is. I have been seeing the polls in the subreddits I frequent and it’s like 65/35 to keep them open. Pretty solid majority.

It’s certainly _not_ dumb to those who are participating in the blackout. Phrasing their position in that light will cause your argument to fall on deaf ears.

Calling it dumb is a signal that you don't care if the argument falls on deaf ears.

It's clear that one cares when they inject themselves into the thread/conversation. If one did not care, one wouldn't be in this thread.

> Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community.

I've yet to seen a single coherent argument that supports this statement. Please enlighten me.

I use Reddit to talk about local stuff, ultralight gear. The larger world of mods and “power users” and whatnot - not super relevant. I understand how ya’ll feel, but is blocking people from using r/tempe really useful?

“I’m gonna make Reddit completely unusable so Reddit doesn’t become shitty”

In a couple weeks, the main way many people use Reddit is going to literally be blocked forever. The alternatives are not palatable to many, so the users are basically being unilaterally banished from Reddit. And that's just the opening salvo to monetize reddit.

Give it another year, and your little sub will have 3 ad posts per "actual" post and modded by the Tempe Chamber of Commerce.

> In a couple weeks, the main way many people use Reddit is going to literally be blocked forever.

This is false. Stats showed 3rd party app users were an extreme minority of users.

It's more like mods are a disproportionate number of 3rd party users due to wanting to mod from their phones, and are making the blackout decision for everybody.

> This is false. Stats showed 3rd party app users were an extreme minority of users.

We don't seem to agree on the definition of "many".

Apollo had 1.5 million users. RIF about the same. That's just two of the biggest 3rd party shutting down basically overnight.

That's 3+ million users. I'm fairly certain that 3+ million people counts as "many".

Percentage wise, it's less than 10%.

So sure, it's many, it's also a very insignificant number.

That's about 5% of Reddit's DAU

Isn't the whole point of making communities private to make Reddit more unusable and therefore try to decrease engagement?

You could use this as an argument against any sort of protest that inconveniences bystanders.

Looks like a tantrum to me, with moderators trying to add others who don't feel the same way to their movement.

Example of a subreddit I was in: Moderator opens a poll on whether the blackout should continue. Lays out why it should continue. Doesn't allow discussion about the vote.

A lot of talk about "unpaid labor" of mods while they pay little mind to the "unpaid labor" of the people actually creating the posts.

I'm really not worried about this not because I'm a fan of reddit because there is really nothing stopping a subreddit from coalescing somewhere else. The arguments against this really start to show the value of Reddit, though.

You can read through this thread to find many coherent reasons. They won't necessarily be reasons you personally find persuasive, but that isn't what coherent means. People have different value systems and priorities and therefore they can legitimately conclude different things about the same information. People with whom you cannot find yourself agreeing probably don't share many values and perspectives with you, but that doesn't mean they're being incoherrent. Assuming that anybody who disagrees with you is mentally disabled or a bot is a pernicious redditism.

I have read through this thread and I have not found a single coherent reason, hence my question.

All of the arguments I see here on the other side are assumptions backed by nothing, i.e. "the majority users of subs didn't agree with the mods decision," which is patently false. Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support.

Even if it wasn't trivially easy to prove these arguments wrong, they don't even provide any actual evidence for their claims.

I don't think you quite understand what the word coherent means. Just because somebody has a different perspective on what reality is, doesn't mean they're being incoherent. In this thread and related discussions on HN there have been many posts by people explaining that they don't believe blackouts have the user consensus in many subreddits which have been locked. It is claimed that many of those subreddits never had polls at all. There are some who allege those polls were botted and received several times more votes than there are active users of that subreddit. In other subreddits, the votes are a tiny fraction of active users (including lurking readers.) Others (myself included) have pointed out that if user consensus is actually aligned with the blackout then the blackouts are unnecessary because those users can simply choose not to use reddit even if the subreddits are reopened; from this perspective the purpose of the blackouts is to lock out those users who would choose to keep using reddit.

I do not intent to persuade you that these viewpoints are compelling and truthful, because that's beyond the point. I'm not arguing that the above arguments are subjectively correct, only that they are coherent. Whether or not you find these arguments persuasive, they are coherent. Whether or not you think they have the basic facts of the situation correct, they are still coherent. Maybe you think lurking readers shouldn't count; that's a legitimate value which others may legitimately disagree with, and depending on what your values are you come to different conclusions. That doesn't mean people who think lurkers should count are being incoherent. Coherence does not mean subjectively correct.

One of us doesn't, that's for sure.

> Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support.

What sticky thread? I get a note saying the subreddit is private, and a link to a news article. They certainly aren't asking for my opinion.

They will probably have no problem replacing them either. You might have to take a quality dip, at least in theory; In reality it's hard to imagine the mods getting worse. They have a really terrible attitude. It's not just about community relations either, they really, really suck at enforcing rules, so it's not like we're gonna lose quality there.

The only reason reddit continues to play nice is to prevent a mass exudus from disgruntled users. They don't WANT the mods to leave, and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods.

That said, they're quite replaceable, it seems.

You're painting mods with a really broad brush, here. There are as many different moderator styles as there are subreddits.

> They don't WANT the mods to leave, and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods.

I'm not convinced. I think they want the _current_ crop of mods of big subreddits to leave, to be replaced by users who would never dream of protesting Reddit's decisions.

> That said, they're quite replaceable, it seems.

In terms of popping some users out, and granting others mod access, that's true. In terms of the quality of the subreddit as a result - that would remain to be seen. I've browsed under-moderated subreddits that are relevant to my interests, and it's not a good experience.

Are they actually going to get replaced by shill mods? It seems more like they will suffer some form of loss for some time, and that they're trying to prevent this.

I agree that poor moderation is a problem. However, it seems that moderation on reddit is quite poor to begin with.

> and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods

How about all the Apollo and RiF users? I'm sympathetic and supportive of the mods but I'm angry because at the end of the month the app I've been using for more than a decade will be no longer functional due to choices Reddit is making.

I wonder if Apollo could return as Apollo Premium, with only paid accounts. What fraction of old Apollo users would be willing to subscribe to keep that functionality?

All third party apps are doomed to deliver a second class experience due to the exclusion of "NSFW" (however that will be defined) content.

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