I've been seeing a lot of pro-reddit, anti-mod comments, despite tens of thousands of up votes on Reddit blackout posts. Pro-reddit comments also have a ton of gold for some reason.
Is reddit trying to change the narrative towards hating on mods for "ruining everything" before they try and remove them?
I really liked Reddit Sync and I've never used the official app before. The way I see it, if I'm going to be forced to make a change anyway, I might as well leave Reddit altogether for something new.
I deleted my 3 Reddit accounts last night, one that had over 110k karma. I'm starting to get cosy with Lemmy now, hopefully some refinements and it will be great.
It felt good, right? I nuked mine today after a reddit user was an ass after I agreed with a sub mod on an extended blackout. This place is much cozier and you folks are a lot nicer.
I feel the same. Cutting out Twitter a year and a half ago was rough, but Mastodon and Feedly took it's place nicely. I guess that prepared me for Reddit's shenanigans as Kbin has filled the gap without issue.
I may miss out on some things here and there, but I don't feel the need to be "in the know" as much.
This is the way. Tons of people will stay on Reddit, Reddit will be fine. Just look at Facebook, how long it has lasted and what it has done, etc. Reddit is the new Facebook (platform, not company) and tons of people will be fine sticking with it. That's okay.
The beauty is we have options, and we're working to improve those options.
I wonder how much will change with so many long time active users leaving Reddit. I've been very active for 15 years on Reddit, deleted thousands of posts and even more comments and won't be returning. I know there are a lot of people like me who are finally done with the site. Is it just going to go more downhill than it already has?
I think it'll be a slow decay. I'm in the same category of long time user that deleted their history and isn't going back. Reddit has lost a lot of accounts like ours.
In the short run Reddit has already lost a lot of its 'cultural history and identity' (sounds dumb I know but I think the terms apply). There were a ton of 'inside jokes' and reddit history references that made it feel like a broad community and there's probably not going to be a critical mass of users that perpetuate that feeling much longer.
In the longer term the loss of personal mod and active user investment in their subs will start to show. Subs will be poorly curated and become dominated by whoever is loudest and angriest. Reddit was fun because it had a huge amount of engagement on any topic, but that was tempered by the ability to find subs with active moderation on topics you cared about. Now they're going to have to deal with all that desire for engagement but with nothing to keep it on the rails, which will mean the engagement will only remain desirable for those that don't want rails. But once they get their way they'll get bored too because they'll only have their own anger to engage with.
I'm seeing this a lot in the stickies for reopened subs discussing whether they want to continue the blackout. Last week they all wanted to protest, this week they don't want it anymore and prefer the sub to stay up. It's likely a different subset of people commenting.
The people left on reddit are inherently anti-collective-bargaining. This protest inconveniences them, with no idea or care why it's happening in the first place. So they stamp their feet and scream about it.
when has the narrative ever changed away from that attitude? look at how mutahar has acted - knowing that we're doing the right thing but still throwing as much contempt into everything as he possibly can. the only times that people side with mods is when we're taking enormous damage so that general users don't cop it instead, or if there's a power-mad despot who should never have control of anything larger than a toy train
They are fighting for their life (whether they admit it, or just think they're minimizing the amount of damage to their ipo) and they have expansive resources. Surely they're doing all they can to limit the leak, likely many things we have no idea about.
We won't have any idea of how huge the impact is on reddit.
But we already know what it's doing for the Fediverse.
The issue with something the sheer size of reddit or facebook is that whatever your stance, you can be absolutely deluged with thousands of people who feel the same. Everything is just way too big for anyone to be exposed to all of it and get a fair assessment of the stance - ultimately we now rely on algorithms and karma systems and other things to do that filtering for us, and these systems all have their inherent flaws.
Accept that in any system large enough, you will never get a fair assessment of what the majority of people think. And even if you could, what would it matter? Each half of a divisive issue that splits reddit is big enough to go and make its own system, which would still be so big you'd not be able to tell the difference from the original.
There has always been a disconnect between who upvotes and who comments. It is not unusual to see a highly upvoted post filled with negative commenters. The "vocal minority" if you will.
I think it is also likely that the blackout supports are still in blackout. I sure am.
Accounts with a ton go gold complaining about mod actions that impact the service they're paying for isn't all that surprising. I think you may just be seeing selection bias in action.
I'm not surprised, a lot of people that are unhappy have left, at least temporarily, and that means those that don't think it's a big deal are able to come out in the open.
I've also noticed that several of the "Should we remain restricted/private or reopen" polls are going towards open.
There's a lot of people who just resent the idea of mods in general because they feel affronted that they can't just spray their shitposts wherever they feel like and/or object to the idea of the Internet having any kind of quality bar. They're mainly just reacting to it with a "if the mods are for it, I'm against it" mentality.
But yeah, also, the people who didn't leave for the blackout are more likely than not to side with Reddit, or actually like the Reddit app and not care about the fuss.
Also also, there's a vast majority of people who consider this whole brouhaha to be nerd shit and don't care.
There did seem to be a distinct air of smugness/"I told you so" in quite a few of the blackout or future-related comment sections I was in. Whether they're shills or just being cynical/butthurt for losing out on two days worth of Internet points and argument time, I have no idea.
I wouldn't be surprised if Reddit was astroturfing it's on shit on its own shit. Probably ends up as a slide in their next investor meeting as a way to 'steer the narrative'.