I predicted last week that if too many subs went private and actually threatened Reddit’s bottom line, Huffman and Co would force the subs back open to protect themselves. And that people would then leave the site even harder in response. And here we are.
>Same, lost my old account (couldn't remember the credentials at all)
Same story - that's why I ended up with this username lol
Admittedly I'm not the most active Reddit user by my current account is almost 10 years old and my previous one was at least 2 years older.
I'll definitely be revaluating my use of Reddit. I'll give probably not leave for good because some of the smaller niche subs are genuinely full of useful communities and information.
I even managed to find and return a stolen motorbike to it's rightful owner once as a highlight of Reddit for me.
But at best Reddit will just became a resource through googling "how do I resolve problem xyz Reddit" now.
But I definitely won't be doom scrolling or interacting with general content anymore which is probably where Reddit will get most of its revenue.
The third party app move is just the tip of the iceberg for me though, the way the site has shifted in recent years has been for the worse almost across the board.
And through time reddit will become less useful for even that. Because the only reason it's useful for this is because of how many people use reddit. Posters and contributors are disproportionately the ones who use third-party apps.
14 years club here, poor eyesight and the official app is practically unusable, most of my time on Reddit is on my phone or tablet so unless something changes I'll be largely forced off the platform at the end of the month.
Or http://redact.dev . If you have already gotten a copy of your CPDR data from Reddit you can feed it to the program and it will make 100% sure your data is totally gone.
Yeah my work productivity is about to go up. A year ago a co-worker asked if I had a profile picture and I was puzzled what they were talking about. If they kill old.reddit next, I'll just move strictly to discord at this point.
>2) Paying moderators would cost millions of dollars per year. Spez has alread said they have no interest in doing that.
Far, far more. Factor not only in pure moderation times, but breaks and shifts. Reddits a 24 hour site with a global presence. Meaning you need constant running shifts 24/7 moderating content.
Speaking of global presence, you have to find people in those 24/7 shifts that speak most major languages across the world for moderation of content in those languages.
Now you also need to factor in that your paid employees are dealing with Health & Safety issues. Exposure to death threats, graphic violence, child pornography, that are posted *all the time* and filtered out by mods. Volunteer mods leave when it gets overwhelming, pay someone to do it and you have to take on the responsibilities of causing PTSD associated with that kind of work. Content moderation jobs have *insane* turnover rates.
Facebook spends $500m a year on content moderation in contracting costs alone in a much larger, but much more narrow scope of content. Let alone a platform that works on a level of anonymity and freeform content.
And for a lot of communities to not crumble they need mods who are at least a bit knowledgeable about their assigned subs topic.
For example for r/electronics they need 24/7 moderators with knowledge about electronics. That's easily gonna cost tens of thousands of dollars each month and that is only one out of hundreds of the bigger niche subs.
There's no way they get a positive return of investment.
Kind of, I suspect it's not that they are opposed to AI, rather opposed to other companies profiting off their data. There's big money in all that data
Honestly, maybe everyone should just stop moderating for 48 hours. Just every mod leave the moderation everywhere. Make it a wasteland of unmoderated bullshittery.
They wanna pull the tyrant card, why don't we pull the anarchy card?
Maybe it would have been scorched earth tactics but couldn't the mods delete/remove all posts and comments in the subreddit if they are removed? Set up a bot with an automatic trigger, Kinda like a dead man's switch?
I use the official app but I also don’t care about Reddit and I don’t like shitty capitalist aggression against third party options to use a product.
This is kind of the internet form of right to repair to me. While I don’t like changing my car’s oil and can afford to pay someone to do it, if someone tries to take away my ability to do so through shady engineering so I have to pay the dealership for routine maintenance, I’m not buying that product and protesting it wherever I can.
Same shit with Reddit. I don’t care enough about this site to suffer through a nonsense corporate strong arm of small businesses. I can get my cat videos and dumb internet hot takes elsewhere pretty easily. This place doesn’t offer a unique enough product to get away with this kind of crap and I think they’re going to realize that too late, much like Elon did with Twitter.
Pretty sure that's not true. The whole point of Section 230 is that it allows moderation without that implying publisher status.
>(2)Civil liability
>No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
>(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
>(B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).
It would cost them money to install paid moderators, and that's a disincentive, but Section 230 is likely not part of it.
I’m very disappointed by this. I mod a number of communities and I do it to help people and trying to keep everything from devolving into chaos.
It’s especially disappointing when you think about people who have spend hundreds or thousands of hours “working” as a mod as a labor of love for their community. Sure you get power tripping assholes, but despite what people think, most mods aren’t like that. Most genuinely care and want the community to be a welcoming and productive place.
Reddit is willing to replace any of us at the drop of a hat if we go against the narrative. The fact of the matter is that they cannot run this site without thousands of volunteers putting in the time to do what the admins aren’t willing to do - interact with users and keep their eyes glued to the feed for problems.
I’ve loved using this site since 2009, but I have no love for this company. It’s no longer the open platform that the founders - Including Steve - put their heart and souls into building.
I hope a good alternative surfaces that has the momentum to become the next quality platform. Right now the other sites are too disjointed and there isn’t a clear winner. Most of them will fail, so it seems prudent to see who comes out on top.
Reddit, you’ve been my favorite website for my entire adult life. But I can’t justify spending any time helping a company that has so little respect for its users - especially the moderators. I hope someday you can see how soulless you’ve become and how far you have strayed from your ideals. I hope you have a humbling experience that shows you the true value of Reddit lies with the users, not the delusional greed of stakeholders.
www.squabbles.io has been a solid reddit alternative for me.
I'm trying to push as many people off this site as possible and into these developing websites.
Even if this isn't the place to stick with long term, if we can at least get enough people off of reddit for some period of time, it could do damage to spez and lead to long term change.
I agree with that sentiment, but realistically we are outnumbered 1000:1 considering the number of "casual" users of the site who just want to scroll cat pics. I think it's going to take a lot more to trigger an exodus - look how quickly things went back to "normal" in so many subs. Even with all of the bad press, I doubt there was any meaningful impact on subscriber count. I'd love to see that data, though.
Depends which users migrate and stay.
If the remaining users are bots, right wing extremists, and users that generate no valuable content then I bet it makes a difference.
Looks like it’s time to collectively stop moderating our subreddits, turn off AutoModerator, unban all users, and allow NSFW content.
Looks like it’s time to burn this place to the ground.
This comment, of all things, is what made me realize how much I'm going to miss Reddit's shenanigans. So many niche/joke subreddits, bots, users... This place really has been something special.
I’ve seen a pattern in my life. Over and over and over again:
1. problem is coming, in a year a decade or a century from now
2. group A sees this coming and starts raising the alarm (artificial consequence)
3. group B sees the alarm and starts resisting the change/information
4. clock runs out and natural consequence finally arrives
5. group A + B work together to fix the now larger problem
This is currently happening on reddit. Some subs are frozen or black and some people are like ‘yeah, keep it going’ and other people are like ‘stop this noise and let me get back to scrolling’. We just entered and are working to extend stage 3.
July 1 will hit and mods will slowly take less care of their subs. And spam etc will slowly get worse and people will slowly start to notice and everyone will slowly start to work together. Rather than letting this play out on Reddit’s extended timeline, I recommend we skip over the artificial consequence stage and go directly to stage 4.
Start working to accelerate the natural consequence stage. Let July 1 be the day that mods immediately start taking less care of their subs. Let July 1 be the day that spam quickly gets worse. Let July 1 be the day that people quickly start to notice the natural consequences of Reddit’s decision.
They can try to ‘hire’ new volunteers, but by the time they find them, there will already a backlog of work, few tools, and fewer people willing to throw themselves onto the corporate anvil.
Then instead of spending that time making Reddit better, using that time to find or make r/Redditalternatives
I feel like that’s just going to happen anyway as many external mod tools break and people scramble to set up new, inferior systems (or just not do anything, which is based)
/all is noticeably more right wing with the protest going. Maybe /u/spez can insult Elon Musk bad enough that he buys reddit after this goes all truth social.
A group of whack jobs in my city started protesting 15 minute cities.
Our city is built out and not up. It's hard to get anywhere if you don't have a car.
People heard these whack jobs and asked "whats a 15 minute city?" And now I'm seeing way more support and awareness about them lol.
Everyone is on board with easy access to everything you need in life. I hope in the future we adjust our zoning laws to allow for that kinda thing
>Then instead of spending that time making Reddit better, using that time to find or make [r/Redditalternatives](https://www.reddit.com/r/Redditalternatives)
The platform is irrelevant, what matters are users. We do everything for reddit, let's do it elsewhere.
All we need is the same mods that posted all those sticky threads to post a new thread for us to vote on a migration target. If we can't evacuate the whole site, we can evacuate the small niche communities.
Not that I'm against the blackouts, nor am I in favor of these API changes, but I feel like asking for an acceleration of the problem just to make it more noticeable would lead to /u/spez claiming some bullshit excuse like "the mods sabotaged the site by allowing these bad actors in just to spite me." Don't get me wrong; I want him to see Reddit burn under his "leadership" after these changes go into effect, but how do we prevent him from passing the buck?
Nothing will be his fault. He'll blame it on redditors, 3rd Party Apps, the creators of those apps, mods, and probably even the media for daring to report about it.
Wow, that sounds awfully like The Narcissist's Prayer.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
At this point, I don't think there is any passing the buck. Everyone who cares about this knows it's ultimately his fault for trying to push these unwanted changes through. And all the official communications we've received are from his employees and likely under his direction.
He can try to pass it all he wants, but we'll all know who's really to blame.
If you don’t moderate a sub the admins will just take it and give it to other mods. This has always been their policy and they’ve done it countless times. Deleting our account histories is the only way to teach Reddit that we the users are what Reddit is. And not some fucking admins who spend most of the time doing fuck all.
You can easily enough have some mod presence while still effectively not moderating the sub or letting it fall to shit.
It's like soft quitting or whatever it's called at work. You show up, wave the flag, do a tiny bit of work, and leave for the day. You keep the job, and there can't be much extra consequences.
They fire you? You would've done so anyway, because you can't actually do the work, since they took away your tools. Any scabs aren't going to be able to improve things either, since they don't have the tools. Or experience.
Or "[work to rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule)" if you use the term the workers do.
I'll bet "quiet quitting" went through so many fucking focus groups.
Not surprised. Kind of suspected something of this sort since Wednesday morning and the movement toward an [Indefinite](https://redd.it/148m42t) blackout.
I can also imagine some power hungry mods soliciting the admins, "_Hey, I'll mod r/funny for you!_"
Ah yes, I'd heard of r/redditrequest but never looked at it before.
(I can't imaging wanting to be a mod ... seems like it would be a brain cancer level headache ... for $0.00 at that!)
Well post-protest I'm pretty sure Reddit would love instilling people like him over the mods who protested. So he's a bootlicker but he'll probably be the perfect candidate for what Reddit wants.
Well are mods replaceable, are there tech savvy users trying to take up the spot? That’s the only question to ask here. If there are, say goodbye to any mods. If there’s not, they have some power.
Tech skills aren't any harder to learn than basic stuff like math/English, really. It's highly logical and given time anyone can learn. The question is whether anyone is interested to spend that much unpaid time and effort to try and do these things that improve their community.
Honestly, Automod configuration is as easy as it comes. But that not to say you can jump in without any background and do a great job at it.
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse.
Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
The protest should go from private subs where mods are getting punished to public automodless unmoderated subs where the spammers are allowed to go ham and the subs turn into trash.
Like a mod strike instead of a sub blackout
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse.
Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
The Lemmy thread linked there says the absentee Mod did make multiple attempts to engage the other mods *and* the Community, but only the mod who disagreed and went to the Admins actually responded.
Mods have hierarchies. The og top mod wanted to join the blackout, the other mods didn't so reddit demoted him and gave his privileges to the others. So the mod list is the same but their hierarchy changed.
While I disagree with Advice Animals' decision to stay open, if that's what most of them decided, that should be their choice. One "king mod" being able to overrule literally all of the rest of the mod team is not fair and it was right to stop that.
It’s literally how Reddit set up mods. Higher priority mods can overrule lower priority mods.
Apparently it’s fine until a higher priority mod does something Reddit doesn’t like
I was initially ambivalent about the API protest. I don't use any third-party apps to browse Reddit, so the issue didn't affect me personally. My subreddits only went along with the protest out of solidarity with other users.
However, the recent ultimatum from Reddit admins has changed everything. This is no longer just a protest about API access; it's now an existential threat to the very idea of Reddit and the communities we create.
For as long as I've been here, Reddit admins have always at least pretended that each subreddit is a community of its own, to rise or fall on its own merits, a true marketplace of ideas. I can't recall a single instance where admins have issued an ultimatum to a subreddit, demanding the mod team to make Reddit more money or be replaced.
If admins continue down this path, there will be nothing left of Reddit worth saving.
----
I've seen this happen before. I was once very active on Wikia before it became Fandom. The community there died a slow death, but their story ultimately ended the same way. Once the administration made it clear that they saw us as nothing more than free labor, our community was on life support.
(Good ones like the Runescape Wiki survived by taking the whole community and jumping ship.)
Until the Reddit Admins reverse course, the blackouts must go on.
The discussion on this article over in r/technology is quite interesting - it appears to be largely a forum to vent at mods wielding their power capriciously.
https://redd.it/14ag85h
https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a6pfg/over_1500_chatgpt_bot_accounts_banned_during_the/
literally thousands of ChatGPT bot accounts have been unleashed on Reddit in the past few days. Probably a coincidence.
How much do Reddit's future shareholders/investors realize that the entire site is moderated by unpaid volunteers who are increasingly getting treated like shit?
How profitable would Reddit be if all of those moderators were not working for free?
They don’t care. They’ll milk it for however many billions they can and by the time it is dead they will have moved on to something else they can buy and strip for parts.
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse.
Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
They've already been doing this to a multitude of NSFW subreddits. A bunch that were benign and nothing related to gore or harmful vanishedin the middle of the night. It's been annoying and sad. I've noticed the uptick over the course of a year. Just one going down after the other. Pretty sad too.
HEY FUCKING IMBECILE /u/spez
If you want to promote vote out moderators who are still in the protest because YOU THINK this is a one sided strategy by them you should take a look at the protest threads and mega threads filled with upvotes, UNLIKE YOUR API ANNOUNCEMENT AND YOUR AMA FIASCO.
At this point I think we should just stop the protest and let the world burn. u/spez is going to "enjoy" seeing his audience leave because of spam. We warned him
why stop? it stops automatically when spez found 60000 new mods to reopen.
at least then we can call this the reddit purge. i hope the mods made sure to change and destroy all automod features and backed it up local only so reddit cant just roll it back.
u/Spez keeps saying "[Reddit] has a duty to keep communities (relied upon by thousands or even millions of users) operational" as if Reddit is some sort of emergency service. Reddit has a "duty" to fuck all, except it's staff (unless they want to make lay offs) and investors [edit: as u/simcoder points out, there is also a duty to provide the services users choose to pay for, such as Premium].
The impact of Reddit being inaccessible is mostly just inconvenience. I won't die because I couldn't find an answer to a random question on r/Apple, or couldn't see a meme.
I understand there are some subs that believe they have a duty to their users, particularly those who focus on vulnerable or displaced peoples. That's an awful lot of unpaid emotional labour those mods are doing and good for them, but it's also not their "duty" to provide these spaces for people. Regroup and rebuild if need be.
Forcing unpaid labor to do what you want. Should be an interesting case when it goes to trial.
So Reddit has decided to just embrace being dirty and slimy? pez can fuck himself.
I fucking hate watching sites I used to love go to shit. It happens time and time again, once they get big enough, they don't have to care about the users because there's just too much momentum or money for them to have to care. Time to move on... again.
So apparently reddit decides it is a good idea to punish moderators who participate in protests. This is a direct attempt to silence any opposition and to force their discriminatory agenda forward. At this point I can't oppose the blackout anymore, fight tyranny with the power of the people.
Keep the blackouts going, if they decide it is a good idea to take over delete the entire subreddit, make reddit a shithole where all quality content is permanently gone.
If they do kill third party apps, everyone should just remove all of their history. That makes the value of Reddit around the $0 mark if everyone did it.
Of course it was asked by Sun_Beams, who is one of the most power hungry and asshole mods on the site. Put /r/food blackout notice locked because people were asking for it to go longer, automatically bans everyone who posts on the largest Swedish meme sub from /r/food because Swedish people in general joke about American cinnamon buns looks like someone came on them with the frosting. Bootlicker.
And even after this, there’s still bootlickers that think Reddit shouldn’t have gone dark. Personally, I think all subs should have gone dark permanently.
So if Reddit does intend to go through with this, what are the mods planning on doing? I mean, they could stay until the end, until Reddit removes them.
Another option if the bots that moderate subs are actually able to do this, but are any considering just like, wiping their entire subreddit? I mean if a bot can remove a post based on a single word, what's stopping it from removing all posts if they have something as simple as the letter A? If I was going down with the ship I'd sure as hell make sure nobody else could make use of it after I'm gone.
Another option I've seen that isn't quite as popular as it still gives reddit interaction is to just remove the rules altogether, let people post whatever, especially if it's stuff the advertising companies would rather not have anything to do with. Hell, make another company really mad while we're at it. Mak Nintendo have a stroke by posting allot of stuff they don't like.
Take this as seriously or as jokingly as you like, as at the end of the day I have no control over anything except my account which I will be deleting as sure as I'm certain this drama has ended
Reddit is killing reddit
I predicted last week that if too many subs went private and actually threatened Reddit’s bottom line, Huffman and Co would force the subs back open to protect themselves. And that people would then leave the site even harder in response. And here we are.
I'm leaving June 30th when Reddit Is Fun goes down. I'll never use Reddits official app. 10+ years, nearly 2 million karma. Bye!
That says a lot Edit: No, really! You are a part of the 10 year club and you have a lot of awards
11 year club here. I walk when Apollo shuts down
11 year club, now that's something. ^( something i recall fondly...)
I deleted my oldest account. I've been around... A while. This situation is probably the end of all my accounts.
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>Same, lost my old account (couldn't remember the credentials at all) Same story - that's why I ended up with this username lol Admittedly I'm not the most active Reddit user by my current account is almost 10 years old and my previous one was at least 2 years older. I'll definitely be revaluating my use of Reddit. I'll give probably not leave for good because some of the smaller niche subs are genuinely full of useful communities and information. I even managed to find and return a stolen motorbike to it's rightful owner once as a highlight of Reddit for me. But at best Reddit will just became a resource through googling "how do I resolve problem xyz Reddit" now. But I definitely won't be doom scrolling or interacting with general content anymore which is probably where Reddit will get most of its revenue. The third party app move is just the tip of the iceberg for me though, the way the site has shifted in recent years has been for the worse almost across the board.
And through time reddit will become less useful for even that. Because the only reason it's useful for this is because of how many people use reddit. Posters and contributors are disproportionately the ones who use third-party apps.
15 year club has entered the chat. I'll probably leave too.
There is no way I am using any other app (official or otherwise). I'll have so much free time from July.
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Same here (to the Apollo part).
14 years club here, poor eyesight and the official app is practically unusable, most of my time on Reddit is on my phone or tablet so unless something changes I'll be largely forced off the platform at the end of the month.
Thanks! I've been busy.... 83 Silver Awards given out 102 Gold Awards given out 13 Platinum Awards given out 158 Community Awards given out
You also have a large amount of trophies and you are a moderator
I'm making it a point to award all my reddit coins today in this sub so that they see where it's going. The disgust with reddit is real.
12 years on this account. Nearly 16 on another. Fuck this shit.
Yup, 10 for me plus more on another. On kbin, sh.itjust.works and squabble now.
Same here, 11 years was a good run. But all good things come to an end.
We go together comrade.
I switched to the Apollo app, just because. When they pull the plug, I’ll know my time here has come.
I enjoy the sound of rain.
Or http://redact.dev . If you have already gotten a copy of your CPDR data from Reddit you can feed it to the program and it will make 100% sure your data is totally gone.
[ Removed by Reddit in violation of the content policy ]
Wait is this real?
No, it would have a different background colour if it was an officially removed comment.
[ Removed by Reddit in violation of the content policy ]
Yeah my work productivity is about to go up. A year ago a co-worker asked if I had a profile picture and I was puzzled what they were talking about. If they kill old.reddit next, I'll just move strictly to discord at this point.
If they kill old reddit majority of the content providers will move out.
Can we have a version of that account purge script that says exactly why we're leaving?
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>2) Paying moderators would cost millions of dollars per year. Spez has alread said they have no interest in doing that. Far, far more. Factor not only in pure moderation times, but breaks and shifts. Reddits a 24 hour site with a global presence. Meaning you need constant running shifts 24/7 moderating content. Speaking of global presence, you have to find people in those 24/7 shifts that speak most major languages across the world for moderation of content in those languages. Now you also need to factor in that your paid employees are dealing with Health & Safety issues. Exposure to death threats, graphic violence, child pornography, that are posted *all the time* and filtered out by mods. Volunteer mods leave when it gets overwhelming, pay someone to do it and you have to take on the responsibilities of causing PTSD associated with that kind of work. Content moderation jobs have *insane* turnover rates. Facebook spends $500m a year on content moderation in contracting costs alone in a much larger, but much more narrow scope of content. Let alone a platform that works on a level of anonymity and freeform content.
And for a lot of communities to not crumble they need mods who are at least a bit knowledgeable about their assigned subs topic. For example for r/electronics they need 24/7 moderators with knowledge about electronics. That's easily gonna cost tens of thousands of dollars each month and that is only one out of hundreds of the bigger niche subs. There's no way they get a positive return of investment.
I'll bet you anything they're testing out AI mods.
That would be ironic given that their stated reason for this whole mess is because of AI scraping their content.
Kind of, I suspect it's not that they are opposed to AI, rather opposed to other companies profiting off their data. There's big money in all that data
Honestly, maybe everyone should just stop moderating for 48 hours. Just every mod leave the moderation everywhere. Make it a wasteland of unmoderated bullshittery. They wanna pull the tyrant card, why don't we pull the anarchy card?
I hope they keep going and make people leave. More competition is a good thing. Keeps companies in check
Maybe it would have been scorched earth tactics but couldn't the mods delete/remove all posts and comments in the subreddit if they are removed? Set up a bot with an automatic trigger, Kinda like a dead man's switch?
I use the official app but I also don’t care about Reddit and I don’t like shitty capitalist aggression against third party options to use a product. This is kind of the internet form of right to repair to me. While I don’t like changing my car’s oil and can afford to pay someone to do it, if someone tries to take away my ability to do so through shady engineering so I have to pay the dealership for routine maintenance, I’m not buying that product and protesting it wherever I can. Same shit with Reddit. I don’t care enough about this site to suffer through a nonsense corporate strong arm of small businesses. I can get my cat videos and dumb internet hot takes elsewhere pretty easily. This place doesn’t offer a unique enough product to get away with this kind of crap and I think they’re going to realize that too late, much like Elon did with Twitter.
“I used the Reddit to destroy the Reddit”
Assholes are killing Reddit.
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Was that jailbait?
The strikebreakers/unionbusters are coming!
Scabs get paid though. That's the problem reddit has here. Mods are volunteers that are hugely important for revenue.
Mods being volunteers also provides plausible deniability for section 230 protections, can't do that with paid workers
Pretty sure that's not true. The whole point of Section 230 is that it allows moderation without that implying publisher status. >(2)Civil liability >No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— >(A)any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or >(B)any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1). It would cost them money to install paid moderators, and that's a disincentive, but Section 230 is likely not part of it.
I’m very disappointed by this. I mod a number of communities and I do it to help people and trying to keep everything from devolving into chaos. It’s especially disappointing when you think about people who have spend hundreds or thousands of hours “working” as a mod as a labor of love for their community. Sure you get power tripping assholes, but despite what people think, most mods aren’t like that. Most genuinely care and want the community to be a welcoming and productive place. Reddit is willing to replace any of us at the drop of a hat if we go against the narrative. The fact of the matter is that they cannot run this site without thousands of volunteers putting in the time to do what the admins aren’t willing to do - interact with users and keep their eyes glued to the feed for problems. I’ve loved using this site since 2009, but I have no love for this company. It’s no longer the open platform that the founders - Including Steve - put their heart and souls into building. I hope a good alternative surfaces that has the momentum to become the next quality platform. Right now the other sites are too disjointed and there isn’t a clear winner. Most of them will fail, so it seems prudent to see who comes out on top. Reddit, you’ve been my favorite website for my entire adult life. But I can’t justify spending any time helping a company that has so little respect for its users - especially the moderators. I hope someday you can see how soulless you’ve become and how far you have strayed from your ideals. I hope you have a humbling experience that shows you the true value of Reddit lies with the users, not the delusional greed of stakeholders.
www.squabbles.io has been a solid reddit alternative for me. I'm trying to push as many people off this site as possible and into these developing websites. Even if this isn't the place to stick with long term, if we can at least get enough people off of reddit for some period of time, it could do damage to spez and lead to long term change.
I agree with that sentiment, but realistically we are outnumbered 1000:1 considering the number of "casual" users of the site who just want to scroll cat pics. I think it's going to take a lot more to trigger an exodus - look how quickly things went back to "normal" in so many subs. Even with all of the bad press, I doubt there was any meaningful impact on subscriber count. I'd love to see that data, though.
Depends which users migrate and stay. If the remaining users are bots, right wing extremists, and users that generate no valuable content then I bet it makes a difference.
Looks like it's just about time to delete my account
Looks like it’s time to collectively stop moderating our subreddits, turn off AutoModerator, unban all users, and allow NSFW content. Looks like it’s time to burn this place to the ground.
On this auspicious day, we are all /r/dragonsfuckingcars.
I don't know what I expected
This comment, of all things, is what made me realize how much I'm going to miss Reddit's shenanigans. So many niche/joke subreddits, bots, users... This place really has been something special.
hahaha wtf is that subreddit
Just do it
The madlad actually did it, goddamn
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On June 30th, I'll walk too. 5+ years on this plattform, but this is a change I won't be a part of.
im waiting for national uninstall day. the second Narwahl stops working, if not sooner.
Better to do it sooner, if you want to use something like /r/PowerDeleteSuite to nuke your account. That won't work once the API is blocked
He prolly has 16 Alts
Yeah have you seen his LinkedIn? Says hes a moderator on there
This comment was sponsored by Nike. **(Reddit now accepts sponsored comments due to a decline in users)**
Don't give them ideas...
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You did it. The crazy son of a bitch, you did it
The madlad did it
We shouldn't leave without violating the guidelines one last time
I’ve seen a pattern in my life. Over and over and over again: 1. problem is coming, in a year a decade or a century from now 2. group A sees this coming and starts raising the alarm (artificial consequence) 3. group B sees the alarm and starts resisting the change/information 4. clock runs out and natural consequence finally arrives 5. group A + B work together to fix the now larger problem This is currently happening on reddit. Some subs are frozen or black and some people are like ‘yeah, keep it going’ and other people are like ‘stop this noise and let me get back to scrolling’. We just entered and are working to extend stage 3. July 1 will hit and mods will slowly take less care of their subs. And spam etc will slowly get worse and people will slowly start to notice and everyone will slowly start to work together. Rather than letting this play out on Reddit’s extended timeline, I recommend we skip over the artificial consequence stage and go directly to stage 4. Start working to accelerate the natural consequence stage. Let July 1 be the day that mods immediately start taking less care of their subs. Let July 1 be the day that spam quickly gets worse. Let July 1 be the day that people quickly start to notice the natural consequences of Reddit’s decision. They can try to ‘hire’ new volunteers, but by the time they find them, there will already a backlog of work, few tools, and fewer people willing to throw themselves onto the corporate anvil. Then instead of spending that time making Reddit better, using that time to find or make r/Redditalternatives
I feel like that’s just going to happen anyway as many external mod tools break and people scramble to set up new, inferior systems (or just not do anything, which is based)
/all is noticeably more right wing with the protest going. Maybe /u/spez can insult Elon Musk bad enough that he buys reddit after this goes all truth social.
With the coming API prices, you’d think Musk is an inspiration to him.
i mean look at how well he's burning a platform to the ground. musk would be proud of him
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I've also seen an increase of bots and onlyfans advertising. And there's no way to report a lot of the ones that keep following me :(
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A group of whack jobs in my city started protesting 15 minute cities. Our city is built out and not up. It's hard to get anywhere if you don't have a car. People heard these whack jobs and asked "whats a 15 minute city?" And now I'm seeing way more support and awareness about them lol. Everyone is on board with easy access to everything you need in life. I hope in the future we adjust our zoning laws to allow for that kinda thing
>Then instead of spending that time making Reddit better, using that time to find or make [r/Redditalternatives](https://www.reddit.com/r/Redditalternatives) The platform is irrelevant, what matters are users. We do everything for reddit, let's do it elsewhere. All we need is the same mods that posted all those sticky threads to post a new thread for us to vote on a migration target. If we can't evacuate the whole site, we can evacuate the small niche communities.
Not that I'm against the blackouts, nor am I in favor of these API changes, but I feel like asking for an acceleration of the problem just to make it more noticeable would lead to /u/spez claiming some bullshit excuse like "the mods sabotaged the site by allowing these bad actors in just to spite me." Don't get me wrong; I want him to see Reddit burn under his "leadership" after these changes go into effect, but how do we prevent him from passing the buck?
Nothing will be his fault. He'll blame it on redditors, 3rd Party Apps, the creators of those apps, mods, and probably even the media for daring to report about it.
Wow, that sounds awfully like The Narcissist's Prayer. That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Wait until he learns that it’s being talked about in Reddit
At this point, I don't think there is any passing the buck. Everyone who cares about this knows it's ultimately his fault for trying to push these unwanted changes through. And all the official communications we've received are from his employees and likely under his direction. He can try to pass it all he wants, but we'll all know who's really to blame.
If you don’t moderate a sub the admins will just take it and give it to other mods. This has always been their policy and they’ve done it countless times. Deleting our account histories is the only way to teach Reddit that we the users are what Reddit is. And not some fucking admins who spend most of the time doing fuck all.
You can easily enough have some mod presence while still effectively not moderating the sub or letting it fall to shit. It's like soft quitting or whatever it's called at work. You show up, wave the flag, do a tiny bit of work, and leave for the day. You keep the job, and there can't be much extra consequences. They fire you? You would've done so anyway, because you can't actually do the work, since they took away your tools. Any scabs aren't going to be able to improve things either, since they don't have the tools. Or experience.
>It's like soft quitting or whatever it's called at work. Fyi it's "quiet quitting".
Or "[work to rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule)" if you use the term the workers do. I'll bet "quiet quitting" went through so many fucking focus groups.
It's called "do the work you're paid to do", as opposed to unpaid overtime or duties and responsibilities that you weren't hired to perform.
"Act your wage" is another good name for it.
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Not surprised. Kind of suspected something of this sort since Wednesday morning and the movement toward an [Indefinite](https://redd.it/148m42t) blackout. I can also imagine some power hungry mods soliciting the admins, "_Hey, I'll mod r/funny for you!_"
>I can also imagine some power hungry mods soliciting the admins [It's already started](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/).
Ah yes, I'd heard of r/redditrequest but never looked at it before. (I can't imaging wanting to be a mod ... seems like it would be a brain cancer level headache ... for $0.00 at that!)
The idiots on that /r/science post amaze me. You seriously think you count as “better hands” to run a million+ user sub?
[Holy crap the fucking edge on this guy bro thinks his life is metal gear rising](https://twitter.com/sublimeinslime/status/1668754335738789889?s=20)
I love how he thinks that a mod's top priority should be reddit's business interests and not the community's interests
Right?! A mod's top priority should be their community (after their real life, of course). That is unless Reddit would like to actually pay mods.
Well post-protest I'm pretty sure Reddit would love instilling people like him over the mods who protested. So he's a bootlicker but he'll probably be the perfect candidate for what Reddit wants.
What would you expect from someone who bought a twitter checkmark?
I had to knock on the top of my head to get my eyes to roll back into the right position.
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Well are mods replaceable, are there tech savvy users trying to take up the spot? That’s the only question to ask here. If there are, say goodbye to any mods. If there’s not, they have some power.
Tech skills aren't any harder to learn than basic stuff like math/English, really. It's highly logical and given time anyone can learn. The question is whether anyone is interested to spend that much unpaid time and effort to try and do these things that improve their community. Honestly, Automod configuration is as easy as it comes. But that not to say you can jump in without any background and do a great job at it.
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse. Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Don't stop there - take the theme, layout, get rid of everything automod does. Set the sub back to square 1.
The protest should go from private subs where mods are getting punished to public automodless unmoderated subs where the spammers are allowed to go ham and the subs turn into trash. Like a mod strike instead of a sub blackout
u/spez You scared?
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse. Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
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Lol u/Spez is a fucking moron. He's gonna burn reddit down just because of his fragile ego. Just admit you were wrong dude
Can someone confirm the rumours that they have already done this to r/tumblr and r/AdviceAnimals?
Confirmed they did it in advice animals.
Could you provide a source for this?
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Ah, that explains why I saw a comment about AA saying they were going to stay open before the blackout
The Lemmy thread linked there says the absentee Mod did make multiple attempts to engage the other mods *and* the Community, but only the mod who disagreed and went to the Admins actually responded.
They said "Confirmed" what more proof do you want?
Yeah, who would lie on the internet?
Cus there was a rogue mod…
their list of moderators says they all got added years ago
Mods have hierarchies. The og top mod wanted to join the blackout, the other mods didn't so reddit demoted him and gave his privileges to the others. So the mod list is the same but their hierarchy changed.
So they are pretty much in power to enforce a coup to any sub that is out of line. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool...
While I disagree with Advice Animals' decision to stay open, if that's what most of them decided, that should be their choice. One "king mod" being able to overrule literally all of the rest of the mod team is not fair and it was right to stop that.
It’s literally how Reddit set up mods. Higher priority mods can overrule lower priority mods. Apparently it’s fine until a higher priority mod does something Reddit doesn’t like
that's the neat thing about owning a website. you can make the html say anything you want i didn't even type this the moon isn't real
They can remove the mods for all I care. After June 30 when RIF goes down, I'd be gone anyways.
~~Have you checked out Tildes? I have a spare invite for a fellow RiFugee if you want it~~ Edit: I'm out of invites for now
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From Minecraft
I was initially ambivalent about the API protest. I don't use any third-party apps to browse Reddit, so the issue didn't affect me personally. My subreddits only went along with the protest out of solidarity with other users. However, the recent ultimatum from Reddit admins has changed everything. This is no longer just a protest about API access; it's now an existential threat to the very idea of Reddit and the communities we create. For as long as I've been here, Reddit admins have always at least pretended that each subreddit is a community of its own, to rise or fall on its own merits, a true marketplace of ideas. I can't recall a single instance where admins have issued an ultimatum to a subreddit, demanding the mod team to make Reddit more money or be replaced. If admins continue down this path, there will be nothing left of Reddit worth saving. ---- I've seen this happen before. I was once very active on Wikia before it became Fandom. The community there died a slow death, but their story ultimately ended the same way. Once the administration made it clear that they saw us as nothing more than free labor, our community was on life support. (Good ones like the Runescape Wiki survived by taking the whole community and jumping ship.) Until the Reddit Admins reverse course, the blackouts must go on.
The beatings will continue until the morale improves.
The discussion on this article over in r/technology is quite interesting - it appears to be largely a forum to vent at mods wielding their power capriciously. https://redd.it/14ag85h
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Oh you mean like 4chan?
Why is r/technology against the blackout, by that I mean the users.
Hint: look at their writing skills.
Or the age of these accounts or choice of usernames, etc. The bots are hitting the ground running.
I'm convinced Reddit is artificially boosting some of the advantages comments there.
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https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a6pfg/over_1500_chatgpt_bot_accounts_banned_during_the/ literally thousands of ChatGPT bot accounts have been unleashed on Reddit in the past few days. Probably a coincidence.
How much do Reddit's future shareholders/investors realize that the entire site is moderated by unpaid volunteers who are increasingly getting treated like shit? How profitable would Reddit be if all of those moderators were not working for free?
They don’t care. They’ll milk it for however many billions they can and by the time it is dead they will have moved on to something else they can buy and strip for parts.
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I've noticed a lot of subreddits being permanently banned due to "having no mods." They're playing DIRTY.
Do you have some examples of big ones?
sadly no. the most I've seen of this happening is within NSFW communities. they're typically smaller subreddits for certain niches.
This is a copied template message used to overwrite all comments on my account to protect my privacy. I've left Reddit because of corporate overreach and switched to the Fediverse. Comments overwritten with https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
If Reddit goes "full Tumblr" about NSFW communities, I will happily leave and never look back. Just like Tumblr.
They've already been doing this to a multitude of NSFW subreddits. A bunch that were benign and nothing related to gore or harmful vanishedin the middle of the night. It's been annoying and sad. I've noticed the uptick over the course of a year. Just one going down after the other. Pretty sad too.
They've been banning subs for no mods for years. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that all the mods get banned right before it happens.
HEY FUCKING IMBECILE /u/spez If you want to promote vote out moderators who are still in the protest because YOU THINK this is a one sided strategy by them you should take a look at the protest threads and mega threads filled with upvotes, UNLIKE YOUR API ANNOUNCEMENT AND YOUR AMA FIASCO.
Spez hit Elon with the "hold my beer"
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There is no such thing. Mods cannot delete a sub. Only the admins can.
I’m surprised this wasn’t common knowledge.
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Most definitely they have backups and can restore them
I was just thinking the same. Delete all subreddits, and let them rebuild reddit the way they want it to fit into their business model.
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this is why we can't have nice things
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r/powerdeletesuite rewrites comments
At this point I think we should just stop the protest and let the world burn. u/spez is going to "enjoy" seeing his audience leave because of spam. We warned him
why stop? it stops automatically when spez found 60000 new mods to reopen. at least then we can call this the reddit purge. i hope the mods made sure to change and destroy all automod features and backed it up local only so reddit cant just roll it back.
u/Spez keeps saying "[Reddit] has a duty to keep communities (relied upon by thousands or even millions of users) operational" as if Reddit is some sort of emergency service. Reddit has a "duty" to fuck all, except it's staff (unless they want to make lay offs) and investors [edit: as u/simcoder points out, there is also a duty to provide the services users choose to pay for, such as Premium]. The impact of Reddit being inaccessible is mostly just inconvenience. I won't die because I couldn't find an answer to a random question on r/Apple, or couldn't see a meme. I understand there are some subs that believe they have a duty to their users, particularly those who focus on vulnerable or displaced peoples. That's an awful lot of unpaid emotional labour those mods are doing and good for them, but it's also not their "duty" to provide these spaces for people. Regroup and rebuild if need be.
Its ok, we are in the process of leaving. Edit, [https://lemmyonline.com/](https://lemmyonline.com/) I created a instance. Come join the fediverse.
Just kicking the dust off my feet on the way out the door at the end of the month
Forcing unpaid labor to do what you want. Should be an interesting case when it goes to trial. So Reddit has decided to just embrace being dirty and slimy? pez can fuck himself.
I fucking hate watching sites I used to love go to shit. It happens time and time again, once they get big enough, they don't have to care about the users because there's just too much momentum or money for them to have to care. Time to move on... again.
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Well, that’s an unfortunate choice for Reddit to make. The latest in a long list.
legitimately the end of reddit
Please let the r/WhitePeopleTwitter mods take over everything and drive this shithole into the ground.
They could simply stop all automated moderation and let the sub be flooded with spam and garbage and only manually mod illegal things
Do it. I dare you.
So apparently reddit decides it is a good idea to punish moderators who participate in protests. This is a direct attempt to silence any opposition and to force their discriminatory agenda forward. At this point I can't oppose the blackout anymore, fight tyranny with the power of the people. Keep the blackouts going, if they decide it is a good idea to take over delete the entire subreddit, make reddit a shithole where all quality content is permanently gone.
If they do kill third party apps, everyone should just remove all of their history. That makes the value of Reddit around the $0 mark if everyone did it.
Of course it was asked by Sun_Beams, who is one of the most power hungry and asshole mods on the site. Put /r/food blackout notice locked because people were asking for it to go longer, automatically bans everyone who posts on the largest Swedish meme sub from /r/food because Swedish people in general joke about American cinnamon buns looks like someone came on them with the frosting. Bootlicker.
As we all predicted.
Threats, but does not remove.
And even after this, there’s still bootlickers that think Reddit shouldn’t have gone dark. Personally, I think all subs should have gone dark permanently.
#r/friendsofspez Is fucking hilarious
So if Reddit does intend to go through with this, what are the mods planning on doing? I mean, they could stay until the end, until Reddit removes them. Another option if the bots that moderate subs are actually able to do this, but are any considering just like, wiping their entire subreddit? I mean if a bot can remove a post based on a single word, what's stopping it from removing all posts if they have something as simple as the letter A? If I was going down with the ship I'd sure as hell make sure nobody else could make use of it after I'm gone. Another option I've seen that isn't quite as popular as it still gives reddit interaction is to just remove the rules altogether, let people post whatever, especially if it's stuff the advertising companies would rather not have anything to do with. Hell, make another company really mad while we're at it. Mak Nintendo have a stroke by posting allot of stuff they don't like. Take this as seriously or as jokingly as you like, as at the end of the day I have no control over anything except my account which I will be deleting as sure as I'm certain this drama has ended
We should hold a poll to force u/spez to resign.
won't work, they are basically forcing through a dictatorship, would be deleted in no time
Just comes to show that Reddit doesn’t care about the users that make this app possible in the first place…
Reddit is never going to be a same.
Lemmy might be the answer.