Reddit is trying to sow division in mod teams because the protest is working
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The "malicious" compliance of /r/pics seems like the way to go. The subreddit is nominally available, the users are involved and showing support of the protest, a clear symbol has been chosen that shows the issue is not going to go away, and the subreddit is not operating with business as usual.
An alternative approach for something like /r/firefox might be choosing a style sheet that was uncomfortable to read, maybe black text on black background, bright green text on pink background, or something like that. This would have the bonus effect of nudging users into using third party apps for accessibility's sake. They could even sticky a link to a third party app at the top of the subreddit, one that doesn't bow down to the API nonsense but rather functions through adversarial interoperability.
I know it could easily be justified that it was “dead” years ago and the quality has only degraded over the years… but this really anchors things to the summer of 2023 being when things objectively changed in a big way.
To be sure, Reddit itself will go on but only as a husk of its former self.
I think this will actually not change much for the users themselves. They'll continue using Reddit as normal, and move on. Mod teams will be shuffled, and some of the people using third-party apps (like myself) will just... not use Reddit as much (or at all).
I also don't know how a multi-hundred-million-user platform can be justified as already "dead". It might be dead in some elitist sense, as in "oh, all the smart people like me aren't using it anymore", but...
> Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha, and you must be invited to be able to register. Most of the existing users have the ability to invite others
I do not yet have invite abilities, but I’m sure you can find someone here that does.
But they had the UI and stuff all perfect. Much better than lemmy
I don't tend to keep up with online discourse... but what has happened with linux?
The value is in the users, the people who create content. And to that end the freest, fairest, and most democratic choice is the individual's private decision to participate. Closing subs to protest takes that choice out of the hands of the user. Make organic posts to the site to raise awareness of any particular issue or cause you like, and let those get viewed and voted as they will. But using moderator powers to make these statements is an abuse of power and abuse of the user base, and it's exactly what I would expect from the archetype reddit moderator. I wouldn't be too upset to see a few get their comeuppance for it.
I say this as someone who dislikes the reddit organization, the CEO, their lies and underhandedness, has been proudly perma banned from there, and would get some petty satisfaction from reading about them crashing and burning. But if people like it and want to use it and continue to participate in their communities they are a part of there, they should be permitted to.
People unhappy with moderator choices can do what they always did, make the community that matches what they want.
> if people like it and want to use it and continue to participate
... Except the blind of course, or anyone else with accessibility needs. They'll be required to pay extra for access
For your first point, the moderators don’t own the subreddits they moderate, so the users should not have to attempt to recreate a community every time they encounter a power-tripping moderator. The moderators are stewards that are supposed to reflect the desires of the community, not owners who get to control the ability to use that community based on their whims.
Reddit picked two accessibility apps seemingly at random and ignored the requests of /r/Blind for example.
How does this dubious and unsourced claim address anything I wrote even if it were true?
> People unhappy with moderator choices can do what they always did, make the community that matches what they want.
You can't on one hand protest that people should "do the right thing" and on the other hand do the "well akshually the rules..." thing. Going by the rules and what has always been done, reddit's owners can remove moderators and set API pricing how they like.
> ... Except the blind of course, or anyone else with accessibility needs. They'll be required to pay extra for access
People who "have accessibility needs" can interact with computers and web pages. And it doesn't even present a coherent argument to what I wrote anyway, it's just an appeal to emotion. Users can not be trusted with the decision to participate in communities they built because doing so would be an attack on blind people? That dog won't hunt.
Context for others: There are powermods who "moderate" hundreds of subreddits. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds. At least one has/had thousands.
When questioned, they invariably say that they "just watch the incoming queue" or something, and the other mods "do all the work". While likely true in the literal sense (again, hundreds), such answers of course completely evade the question.
Remember, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People" <https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_...>. This also applies to powermods, assuming they're not being paid on the side to push some ideology.
Basically, losers who crave ruling a petty fiefdom because it's the only thing they can exercise agency over in their lives. And/or are mentally ill.
>and for each moderator there are 100 sycophants and narcissists lined up to take their place
Correct.
Most mods know this, which is why so many surrendered and reopened their subreddits the moment admins told them that otherwise they would be replaced. /r/formula1's mods forthrightly said as much; those of /r/nba claimed that negotiations had progressed far enough to justify reopening, which the thousands of replies show that the userbase 100% disbelieves.
>Closing subs to protest takes that choice out of the hands of the user. Make organic posts to the site to raise awareness of any particular issue or cause you like, and let those get viewed and voted as they will.
Even worse, a) /r/nba's top mod made more than 150 comments to six other NBA teams' subreddits during the blackout. b) /r/nba mods posted secret threads—including the Game 5 discussion that they denied from their own users—and made comments during the blackout. When users discovered the threads the mods of course scrubbed the comments, but there is no way for mods to actually delete (as opposed to hiding) posts, so evidence of their hypocritical behavior will live on forever.
>I wouldn't be too upset to see a few get their comeuppance for it.
We may yet see more than a few indeed get what they deserve, given the number of still-closed subreddits. I hope that when it happens it will be a ban on both accounts and IPs, so that as mods desperately log into alts each one get flagged and banned too.
Bonus: Speaking of getting what they deserve, the classic post in which a mod thinks what he does is worth $175K a year <https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_peo...>. Be sure to read to the end, where he explains how he "saves lives".
That will bode well for the health of the platform. /s
Then again, maybe such platforms were never “healthy” to begin with. Instead of healthy open discussion, the karma system creates a scenario no different from the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”.
The altruistic mods left when it became clear they aren’t building a community, they are doing unpaid janny work for a corporation that hates them.
Paid staff would indeed be a huge, huge improvement over ideologically driven no-lifes.
What tipped me over to Reddit's side regarding the API change is the possibility that it will end the practice of mods sharing automated block lists (if you post in a wrongthink subreddit, many other subreddits will preemptively ban you regardless of your actual activity in them, if any). If so, and if there are fewer handfuls of powermods that control dozens/hundreds/thousands of subreddits, I'm all for the change.
This is not to say that I condone what /u/spez did regarding editing /r/The_Donald comments, or misrepresenting what happened on the call with Apollo's owner. Paid staff can and do unduly push their own ideological bents. But when there is a name and a face attached to a company employee, there is some hope of holding people to account. The Challenor mess should never have happened, but at least the person was fired by Reddit. I have never, ever seen any evidence in more than a decade on Reddit of any level of accountability from faceless, nameless mods when they misbehave.
It’s easy for paid mods to remove abuse and illegal content. But it will be much harder for them to filter out off topic or low effort posts.
Can you provide links to such mods? Just 2 or 3 will do. I'm a bit skeptical.
https://www.reddit.com/user/merari01/
A special case is https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill/, who is mod of /r/worldnews, one of the largest subreddits, and is widely believed to be Ghislaine Maxwell. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29838084>
r/adviceanimals was the first major subreddit to be retaliated against in this way, where an inactive mod used the opportunity to appeal to admins and remove the others.
Is it bloated egos from having had "infinite" authority (as long as they obeyed Redditwide rules) over hundreds of thousands or millions of other people during their visits to the mods' fiefdom of a subreddit? Or mental illness? My answer: `whynotboth.gif`
That will leave just the power hungry loons.
* Reddit probably suffers from the same sort of delusion that Twitter does in that its True Believers believe that the whole world is participating in their platform when it’s only a small fraction of the human population.
Same with /r/gifs
/r/steam was forced open and they'll most likely pivot to posting pictures of actual steam.
I find it hilarious but at the same time I’m not sure how long it will be sustainable. I’m pretty sure I’m leaving Reddit after 10+ years at the end of the month when my client dies so I don’t care but the people staying are going to get tired of that after a while. Not to mention I don’t know if Reddit really cares as long as it drives traffic.
What are you on about, here?
Well then, he's acting responsibly by not letting every other AI company have the data for free. I'm not impugning all mods. I appreciate their work. But some let the power go to their heads
The recorded phone calls from the Apollo developer have reddit agreeing with the dev’s suggestion that it is about the opportunity cost of having users using apps which are not easily monetised by reddit. Which is obvious to everyone so I don’t see why you’re pretending otherwise.
I don't see a lot of difference between reddit apps and AI companies.
Why do you pretend that apps should make money off reddit data without paying for it? Just because they did in the past doesn't mean they have to keep doing it now that everyone has realized it's a valuable commodity.
The 3rd party developers were very clear they were willing to figure out a way to pay for API access, it's just impossible to do it when you have 30 days notice to start being liable for a US$ 20m/year bill...
As a platform you can monetise that, turning it into wealth, the value is already there. These users prefer the experience of the platform provided by someone else than Reddit. In my mind, if principles of capitalism were in play here, and Reddit is well managed, they would find an efficient way to make money out of value that's already being delivered. Forcing apps to shutdown won't be doing that.
The current move is just a dick move with the potential to make Reddit less valuable than before, I do not understand what principle of capitalism states that this specific brutality is efficient at creating wealth.
You're making it personal, when it's business, not personal.
> users prefer the experience of the platform provided by someone else
Maybe reddit will buy the app that people like so they can monetize it
> Forcing apps to shutdown won't be doing that
Reddit is not forcing apps to shutdown. They are asking them to pay market value for the data
> I do not understand what principle of capitalism states that this specific brutality is efficient at creating wealth.
Reddit data is a commodity whose price is set by buyers and sellers. If your business depends on the price of a commodity being under a certain price and that price goes up and your business fails, that sounds like capitalism to me. Reddit has discovered that the value of their data has gone up with the arrival of AI and are asking people to pay accordingly. If you go out of business then you are among the first casualties of AI, , with many to follow. It's time to rethink your business model.
Spez made it personal, saying that Apollo's developer was extorting Reddit while it was absolutely untrue. This is not business, this is being a dick. It became personal when slander comes into play from the CEO...
> Maybe reddit will buy the app that people like so they can monetize it
Reddit did that with Alien Blue and... Killed the app, simple as that, they bought it with the promise they would integrate the experience that made people prefer Alien Blue to their official app and it didn't happen, Reddit simply killed it. Why do you think they would purchase yet-another-client? You're entering baseless speculation territory.
> Reddit is not forcing apps to shutdown. They are asking them to pay market value for the data
If Reddit wasn't forcing apps to shutdown they would give more than 30 days notice for a massive API change, I know that, I work with public APIs at my employer, serving 10s to 100s of millions of MAU through our API. If there is any change about pricing, formats, anything that would affect our 3rd party integrations we need to prepare with ample time to allow them to migrate.
If Reddit was really trying to monetise their API they'd discuss with the current large users of this API what the path forward looks like, enter into negotiations, Reddit wouldn't want to lose this value that already exists there. What they did is nothing like that, they gave 3rd party developers 30 days notice and after that you can be on the hook for US$ 20 million/year if you are a large enough app... This is not capitalism, this is killing apps because they don't know how to monetise it (or they know and it will take very long for this to show up in their IPO metrics and they want these metrics right now). There are a gazillion ideas on how to actually make those apps become another revenue stream, none of the good ideas include "30 days notice and after that you're on the hook for a massive usage bill".
> Reddit data is a commodity whose price is set by buyers and sellers. If your business depends on the price of a commodity being under a certain price and that price goes up and your business fails, that sounds like capitalism to me. Reddit has discovered that the value of their data has gone up with the arrival of AI and are asking people to pay accordingly. If you go out of business then you are among the first casualties of AI, , with many to follow. It's time to rethink your business model.
This is only true if AI is getting data through APIs, AI is getting data from the public web, from scraping, there are multiple datasources of scraped websites, you can even create your own scraper and go your merry way collecting Reddit's data. It does not explain the pay-to-play move, if I want Reddit's data I don't need their API, it's a website open to the public...
And I'm telling you that because I'm involved with initiatives around that at my employer, the only way that API limiting works against AI is if your data is not available generally in the web (like Facebook's).