Reddit Takes Over Popular Subreddit Amid Moderator Protest
Reddit Takes Over Popular Subreddit Amid Moderator Protest
The Reddit debacle continues as it replaces the r/malefashionadvice subreddit moderators following their refusal to reopen to the public.
Lemmys been a great alternative, hope it starts to take off
Starts? My sibling in Christ, it's happening already.
Showed Lemmy to a few friends and my significant other. Hopefully it keeps gaining critical mass with all the negative attention Reddit’s been having.
I think once threads is federated that should become the club to the knees of Reddit. I hate Meta but I enjoy threads.
Props to the mods for sticking to their guns.
Definitely. The mods that pretended to give a damn and then punking out were extremely disappointing.
It's fine enough to disagree with the protests over 3rd party apps. And at the end of the day it is such a small issue. But if you're going to do something, be about it.
The Reddit debacle continues as it replaces the r/malefashionadvice subreddit moderators following their refusal to reopen to the public.
Reddit followed through on its threat to take over subreddits if they did not reopen to the public with its takeover of r/malefashionadvice on Thursday. Prior to closing down in protest of Reddit’s API price changes. The subreddit was one of the biggest on the platform that was still engaged in the protest, boasting more than five million subscribers.
Reddit reached out to moderators telling them if they didn’t reopen their subreddits they would be in violation of the company’s moderator code and could be replaced. “We more or less have been expecting the removal for the past few days,” one former moderator of r/malefashionadvice, who asked to go by “Walker,” told The Verge.
A Reddit administrator warned r/malefashionadvice it would be replaced if it didn’t reopen and a month later, it stayed true to its word and took over the platform. The subreddit originally had three moderators but was replaced on Thursday with just one, ModCodeofConduct. Reddit users can once again browse the content on r/malefashionadvice, but it will be in a restricted mode that prohibits all but certain users from making new posts.
Although ModCodeofConduct has taken over the subreddit, the mod posted a call for people to volunteer to become a moderator for the page on Friday, telling people to comment on the post to volunteer.
ModCodeofConduct has also taken over other subreddits including r/ShittyLifeProTips, r/AccidentalRenaissance, r/oldbabies, r/fordtransit, and others.
Major Reddit moderators went dark last month in protest of the company’s announcement that it would be raising its API prices, saying it was necessary because Big Tech companies like Microsoft and Google are using its data to train AI models. The site’s API allows other companies to use data from Reddit to bolster their own products and services, but the change would mean a large surcharge for premium access.
Nearly 9,000 subreddits temporarily shut down on June 12 in protest, but in a group statement, moderators said, “Others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app,” The Guardian reported. It continued, “This isn’t something any of us do lightly: we do what we do because we love Reddit, and we truly believe this change will make it impossible to keep doing what we love.”
The comments on the post the mods made yesterday about discord are awful. “Get over yourselves,” “Spez owned you guys,” “Why would we go to Didcord, we chose Reddit.” They’re all from accounts that are 8+ years old that have never interacted on MFA or didn’t start commenting until Rexxit started.
They're half right. Discord is a horrible platform. It's idiotic most of these mods are suggesting it.
Oh yeah no, I don’t disagree that going to discord of all places is a horrible idea. I hate discord and I hate that people are trying to use it as community alternatives, but the real issue is the Reddit apologism.
Discord is good for live chat, but horrible for aggregation and public discussion. I mean that's why most of us are here, because the platform works well for our needs. Supposedly Discord has a forum, but I've never seen a link to it on the regular site and from what I understand it doesn't get much traffic. It's simply not in a position to be an alternative to Reddit.
They probably manually created those users directly in the database.
That article has some spin loaded in there.
“Major Reddit moderators went dark last month in protest of the company’s announcement that it would be raising its API prices, saying it was necessary because…”
Bullshit bwana! They instituted OSFA pricing, when prior it was free.
Get the fucking facts straight before publishing, ya gits.
They instituted OSFA pricing, when prior it was free.
Even that, while technically true doesn't paint the full picture. Let me try:
They cut off the API to everyone: 3rd-party apps, disabled users, mods who use tools to moderate (that don't exist on Reddit). Then, they priced access to the that API so high that basically no 3rd-party could afford it.
This is cutting off the API to practically everyone (in practice, if not in action) ahead of their planned IPO. And because they want to charge for the LLM AI's that use Reddit content for training...
It wasn't just that, they followed with other changes that alienated mods and users. The API thing was just the beginning of a campaign. It's not even something new, this kind of downfall has happened before when social media sites prioritize profit above community. They had a good run and outlasted those that preceded them, but evidently the cycle is doomed to repeat.
I see this as a good thing. Now Reddit has to bear the cost. Even if they find replacement volunteers, some employee still has to make that happen. Likely several. It’s costing them. And that’s what the goal was. To weigh them down.
I was hoping every mod would walk away. All at once. Like you say you can run it all, there you go.
The subreddit originally had three moderators but was replaced on Thursday with just one, ModCodeofConduct.
I’m guessing u/Modcodeofconduct is a bot.
Or a sellout
The only reason I go back to reddit is to copy/paste a modmail I wrote to those asking to get in. I end it with listing asking them to think about some Reddit alternatives and link the sites too. (I list: Lemmy.world, kbin.social, tildes.net and squabbles.io in that order)
I love the bias in the article, like the 3rd party apps were basically just stealing revenue. And understating exactly how insane the api prices were too
Man I hope people volunteer and then immediately take the subreddit private again
Get selected as a mod and private the community again, it’ll make for hilarious headlines and look wonderful for their IPO.
If any I'm glad the mods got their life back
What a useless headline. They could write it hundreds more times for the hundreds of other subs still in revolt.
But not every such sub has >5 million members - this one is big.
MFA was one of my fave subs so I decided to check out what happened since this forced reopening. The pinned thread asking for mod volunteers is being trolled right now. I love it.
That first comment has thrown me for a loop. The replies accuse if of being ChatGPT, and it extremely looks like ChatGPT, but I think it might be a human imitating ChatGPT? Bang-on imitation if so.
Didnt another fashion subreddit open in lieu of this sub going down? Its been a few weeks since ive gone to reddit so i dont know
Is there a replacement community?