"we respect the protests, but we will remove everyone that will protest"
the part "decide that don't want to be a mod anymore" is so infuriating and unrespectful. Like they don't know what's goin on...
Actually, as a mod, that's the strongest action you could take... stop moderating for free for reddit. "Jun 12, 2023 When they're all functioning normally, Reddit boasts nearly 140,000 active subreddits at any given time" according to https://wegotthiscovered.com/social-media/how-many-subreddits-are-on-reddit/ Now imagine 1 in 10 subreddits were abandoned by their mods. That's 14,000 subreddits without moderation. Let Spez take over the role of the Landed Gentry for 14,000 subreddits. If he thinks he's not making money now, how much will he have to pay to take care of all those subreddits?
have fun scaling
They don't even respect the protest. They also said that subreddits have gone private "to avoid the flood of traffic"
Dear person volunteering your time and effort for what you thought was a worthy endeavor. We're trying to commodify your work so we can make a killing so don't fuck it up for us.
Dear Spez,
I've learned that Reddit wants to profit from my content. I've therefore decided to monetize my content going forward. I have very reasonable rates of $50 USD per post. $75 USD for long posts.
I'm willing to discuss this with Reddit but these rates are nonnegotiable.
This
Subreddits belong to the community of users...
Spez, read that again. Slower this time.
It's not even true though. Subreddits belong to the user who creates it, they become the top mod and delegate to other mods. If users don't like how a subreddit is moderated, they are free to make their own subreddit - they aren't supposed to take over someone else's subreddit.
A few days ago I didn't have a single reason to leave reddit. Yet, with so many reasons now, here I am, and I look forward to lemmy and kbin.
Ditto. I wasn't happy but I thought they'd find some sort of compromise since being reddit, the replacement for Digg 2.0, they'd surely understand they can't just be complete twats about it. Then they started denigrating/banning their own mods.... Wtf?
There are still a few niche subs I'll have to keep using reddit for for now, but for everything else I'm happy to move on. I'll also be cancelling my reddit monthly subscription, obviously.
There are still a few niche subs I'll have to keep using reddit for for now
Id at least say stick to your guns. I left before the the blackout and haven't been back since. It sucks because I'm missing GameDay threads for the Braves, and 1 or 2 niche subs I'd visit daily, but using it less is still using is.
It would have been so easy, just add some rules to 3rd party apps in exchange for reduced API charges.
Any middle ground would have sorted this out in a few days with minimal issues, now they are trying to put out an oil fire by throwing water at it.
If you used a credit card for your subscription fee, would going directly to your credit card company and doing a chargeback cause more chaos for Reddit? Instead of politely canceling your sub and asking for a refund? Chargebacks are a PITA for accounts receivable.
Yeah, I ended up canceling my premium and I'm now using it to donate to lemmy / mastodon instances I'm migrating too. They (spez) has destroyed any (trust) chances of me going back too.
thats what annoys me. If reddit had came forward and said "API access is expensive, we need to be paid a reasonable fee for it, or we cant afford to continue", i would have dontated, or paid for it.
But just saying "its insanely expensive, in 1 month", and then attacking the mods just pisses people off.
“Reopen this, or else!”
But they’re carefully avoiding to say or else what. My guess is every next step option would cost them resources at the scale of subreddits they’re reaching out to, so they’re hoping that the empty threat alone will cause some to relent without costing them anything. Right?
What's there to take? Like, these guys are working for free running on their enthusiasm and passion. You make them question whether the community is really worth their time, even if they relent for now, how does that do reddit any good? It isn't like reddit has any actual power over the mods on their ultimate decision of quiting.
Unfortunately, from what I'm seeing in a lot of subs, it's working. You do have protests from places like r/aww and r/pics doing the John Oliver thing, and r/Steam posting about literal steam. But it seems like on the large, threats of people losing their ability to give Reddit free labor is working to get subs back open.
Edit: r/pics changed, they've chosen total anarchy.
They'd most likely take over at least the frontpage subs. They could hire contractors for dirt cheap from the far corners of the world and it would probably be good enough.
Subreddits belong to the community of users…
So you're providing tools to allow democratic control of subreddits, right?
Right?
I mean, one of the subreddits just gave all subscribers to it mod status. I think it was political humor. Something like 1 million people are now mods for that subreddit.
If you set a few AutoModerator rules, you can make everyone a moderator.
Pure chaos. It's brilliant.
That's hilarious
One of the other admins said they hadn't talked about that in an interview shortly after spez said that.
So once again he's talking out both sides of his mouth.
... and other orifices
You have the right to decide which hand your mind control chip gets installed on.
Alright. They can hire some employees to moderate all of Reddit then.
Reddit doesn't make enough revenue. Even if all posts were ads, it won't be enough to pay minimum wage for all the staff necessary to mod just the protesting communities.
Reddit: "Subreddits are for the community of reddit users who rely on them."
Community of reddit users: "We think the sub should stay private, and if you force it open, we'll spam sexy John Oliver and porn."
Reddit: "wait no not like that"
This message is mind-blowingly tone deaf.
It's not tone deaf so much as it's gaslighting. Their intention isn't to get compliance or work through any of the valid concerns - their intention seems to be to cover themselves and give plausible deniability for potential investors.
They're sending this to mods as if they are the audience, which we know is not the case since anything the mods say is not actually considered.
Except that's not always what's happening. A couple subs I'm in have voted to reopen, when they've had the ability to vote at all (since it's hard to vote when the subreddit is locked).
One voted to reopen and the mods removed the poll and are pretending it went their way despite some people having screenshots of the poll.
The sad truth is, now that many of us who would otherwise protest have migrated, those who are left are less likely to protest.
I love the condescension here - your protest is "taking a break from moderating"
It's corporate rhetoric.
They define the reality they want their audience (press, investors) to see: No protests, no demands, no conflict with Reddit, just moderators not taking their job seriously while Reddit is taking its communities seriously and reaching out in good faith and with empathy.
Then they go all method actor and assume this reality, and start writing.
All that lazy "landed gentry" no longer volunteering their time and labor.
It's interesting to see because this is exactly what dictators do. I wonder what does that tell us about Reddit admins?
It's just a PR notice.
"Hey mod! Go back working for free so we can make money or we'll take action you peasant. You own nothing. Kneel and obey."
Steve Hoffman probably
"...we'll take action you
peasantlanded gentry....FTFY
Open it back up and just stop moderating it? Make them mildly infuriated that you're acting your wage.
It seems like that's common at the moment, the amount of trash being let slide on Reddit is unreal. I'm not surprised at all.
I got the same message for a sub with around 600 members.
Someone created it when I took a photo of my 3d printer keeping a bowl of pizza dough warm during cooking.
As I'm European I think I might just wait this out, if they force open the sub. They already have my Gdpr request for information, then I might either send another one for deletion or send bimonthly information requests, especially regarding the use of the photo I took as photo for the sub.
Other suggestions how to be annoying to reddit are welcome. I heard about selling the account, but wouldn't know where, for example.
lol, "subreddits belong to the community of users..." clearly doesn't belong to the users. That's the whole problem
This is why I left reddit, they say they care for the community. Only to use their actions to remove good moderators (maybe 1 or 2 bad ones in the process of this fire bombing of bans) and the nail in the coffin being u/spez doing more dumb decisions. Like doubling down on the API. . . Despite the protests and his app going downhill.
I like how we made fun of the mods, but all stood up for them.
They are our mods, only we can make fun of them XD.
Eddit:almost all
The problem is that Reddit never really made a better way for communities to mod themselves. They kept the really bad mod rank system because replacing it with something else would cost money and potentially threaten the existing mod base.
Of course, it isn't like Reddit would listen to the mods if the mods had a user mandate.
Moderating is volunteer work. *Spez exhibits unlikeable characteristics. Why volunteer for someone who exhibits unlikeable characteristics?
*Edited from "Spez is a narcissist. Why volunteer for a narcissist?"
Because I'm sure all those people aren't volonteering for spez but rather the subs users, the ones that keep their communities alive because of their shared interests.
"Narcissist" is a psychological term describing a person with NPD, a disability in ego regulation. There is no evidence that Spez is disabled, neurodivergent, or otherwise mentally disordered. Even if he did suffer from ego disability, there are plenty of good reasons to hate him, and hating someone for being disabled is a bad reason. Comments like this one contribute to the stigma faced by mentally disordered people.
OK; he has such a need for control that he modified toxic comments directed at him.
On November 23, 2016, a member of a subreddit dedicated to Donald Trump, /r/The_Donald, posted evidence indicating that Reddit administrators had modified multiple user comments inside the subreddit. Following this post, Huffman took responsibility for the comment modifications, writing, "Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again." His administrative modifications involved changing one specific insulting phrase, in several comments, to make them appear as if the insults were directed toward the moderators of the subreddit instead of him.
https://gizmodo.com/reddit-ceo-caught-secretly-editing-user-comments-chatl-1789342358
You might not like Ellen Pao, but it's funny that the NBA sided with her comments against him in 2020:
When moderators protested in 2023, Spez compared them to Landed Gentry.
“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”
Reddit was founded in 2005. In January of 2008, Reddit decides to let users create their own custom reddits, or subreddits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Reddit
So the Landed Gentry are from 2008 + (15 years). How many Parent-to-child hand-offs can you really expect in that time?
He belittles volunteers (moderators). He has manipulated the site. He is currently scrubbing the site of disparaging comments about himself now.
https://lemmy.world/post/392621
He is not someone to volunteer your services for. Moderation is like gardening. It's a never-ending activity of pulling weeds.
Roses are red, violets are blue. Open your sub, or we'll boot you too.
"Subreddits belong to the community of users". Followed by "a path forward to make sure your subreddit is available... which is it?? lol
If they are being honest, they will let users from those communities to take over moderation.
Reddit has always treated the subs as the domain of the subreddit owner. "Yours to do with as you please" and now they're spewing all this duty shit to make it look like they're somehow virtuous.
Im a reddit mod with a sub over 20 million - today they removed our top mod, and then sent us a message saying that 'we requested a re-ordering'. It's total bullshit.
i wish they'd just fucking nut up and be up front about it. then you can at least see it in plain view as can everyone else.
"we're putting down dissent, regardless of if it kills our site usage or valuation. get on board or fuck off." is the exact same thing that's occurring, but is at least slightly more respectable than this microsoft-esque "we're doing this for your own good (whether you like it or not)" approach.
Reddit preaches democracy but suddenly when this same democracy votes to focus on John Oliver content, they threaten to take control.
From "redit is 4 evry1 guise lets be demcratic" to "no, not like that. Fuck it I'm taking this shit "
What a disaster man
Remember the old saying: if a company is giving you something for free, you're not the customer, you're the product.
Subreddits are Reddit's product. Reddit makes money by selling subreddits to advertisers. If moderators damage that product, Reddit takes action. End of story.
It’s hilarious to me that they are telling subs that they can’t just switch the NSFW button on like that, after they recently made the vape communities go NSFW against their will.
Fuck em. God its nice to be able to say "fuck em" without having to worry about elon or spez getting butthurt and banning my account.
They are slowly taking away the platforms of free speech. First they came for the self hosted websites; then they changed the search engine functions; then they came for twitter; now they are at Reddit. Make no mistake this is not just about an IPO. This is about controlling how the public communicates. Discourse is discouraged.
The trouble is they didn't like what actual free speech had to say which was we just want to use apps that work, so now he's having a temper tantrum.
I think it's a combination of both; people want apps to work; reddit wants ads to serve and NSFW content removed prior to IPO; and they want to disenfranchise the user base. It's similar to the twitter fucking stuff; change of moderation; change of API access; and control of what people are saying. In addition /u/spez is pissed that he sold in 2005 and wants his share of internet gold. ;)
Can’t wait to see Reddit crash and burn
I really hope Reddit dies a slow painful death, it's already mostly bots talking with each other in the main subs. They got too greedy and think they're so large their sh* don't stink. Apologize for the crass, but man I just hope we get more major blunders and fuckups from spez&co
Is there actually proof that they're bots? I checked it out again recently and the comments are kind of suspect... But it's just a weird feeling I have like a bunch of the comments are AI generated just cause the typos they make feel strange. I just shook it off, but if there's actually proof that's what's going on I'd be very interested
Really interesting theory right? It’s a little bit spooky to think of that being “regular” in the future. The point of Reddit (now Lemmy) was to connect with other humans imo. Am not looking forward to removing the human aspect haha
Yeah this type of stuff brought me Lemmy.
Fuck Spez, Lemmy is doing alright. (I like community ran solutions better anyway)
In short, you will be replaced.
O no 😱
Anyway...
Promoted to being a normal user, what an Honor
Replaced with who or what?
With likely worse, less experienced volunteer moderators. But Reddit seems committed to rolling those dice, as evidenced by their communications and actions. We'll see how that works out for them.
I’m so glad that we have an alternative to Reddit!
Me too :’) history in the making!
It's interesting how during numerous examples of users trying to fight mod teams over changing direction of the sub, new rules, unwanted new mods etc., and getting admins involved, the answer was ALWAYS the same "Subs are owned by their creators/mods. If you don't like it you can always create a new one".
Suddenly they belong to communieties? Communities that in numerous examples voted by themselves to stay closed? How absolutely full of shit they are...
These are the rules. You can rely and trust on these being upheld for as long as it serves us.
What is reddit smoking? This message is so out of touch
Money.
And Musk, Spez is basically taking marching orders from him at this point to make it PrOfItAbLe (read: chase off everyone who cares and take $5/mo from people whose only need is to be free to use slurs and organize terrorism)
It's smoking from the dumpster fire it has become in the past few years...and money.
The message is addressed to mods, but its actual audience is potential investors.
LMAO I got this too. Probably just gonna open 'er back up with minimal mod-activity. Let the bots and NSFW problems flow rampant.
"Subreddits belong to the community" is not what reddit says when mods abuse their power
Fuck u/ModCodeOfConduct
all my homies hate mod coc
Mod Command and Conquer
I just deleted three of my reddit accounts. I am done. As an artist, I have more work to do on my primary current account. I feel I should delete my art from reddit so that they can not make money from my art and music.
As a fellow creative, I think that would be a good idea. I'm personally leaving my account live for basic reasons, but I'm going through and deleting posts containing anything I've created.
Fuck Reddit
With the biggest most oblong bad dragon the world has ever seen
i want the XL version that glows in the dark with the tubes for the liquid inside
Without lube.
I was thinking more along the lines of a literal dragon. But sure, bad dragon works for me
It's ridiculous that they are referring to the protest as a "break". Are they that dilusional?
No, this is passive aggressive for "if you don't want to do your unpaid job then get out".
Because that's the reason you're supposed to be closing a large public subreddit. They don't think of it as a tool for protest.
That's the line that really pisses me off about when reddit or apologists spout: "If they don't want to do what they signed up to do, then they should be removed..." Man, fuck them. Way to not even acknowledge the reason that the subreddit is closed. It's not closed because they're lazy.
r/modcodeofconduct is spez. I guarantee it
There's no way he's doing that much work. Even if that was the only message he sent that day, there's no way he's doing that much work.
The piece of shit's probably too busy sucking his own dick 25 hours per day to do anything productive for the company
"subreddits belong to the community of users who come to the for support" good way to justify kicking a mod with a passion for such a community and forcing people to post only the things you want.
Because if you force people to have fun they'll be happy, of course.
Mhm I just got info that a certain Poo the bear wants to talk to you about strongarming communities. But don't worry, his methods definitely work.
the really funny part is that the users were polled and overwhelmingly wanted the protest, so forcibly opening it is the thing that's actually going against the wishes of the community
The people who don't like it will leave but a not insignificant proportion will stay despite things changing.
Can only hope the quality people bail and the dredges lower the quality enough that it slowly dies out.
this is so desperate. they write this stuff to make up an excuse for take away its creators and in the name of the "users". it's just so they can keep up their advertisement revenue im agry
Reddit's staff or the fucking mafia?
They are gonna make you an offer you cannot refuse
Listen Jimmy, that mod status o' yours, it's quite nice, aint it? Would be a shame if something happened to it. Real shame.
- The Reddit Admins, probably.. on your daughters wedding day
both send threats, I only see it as a single unit and not as two different orginizations.
I just blocked *.reddit.com on my DNS servers. This page is history.
I believe this will only hurt you more than it hurts them. You're locking yourself out of a lot of useful posts and guides.
Just don't engage with the site. Remain a guest user. If you really wanna, use Tor to remain anonymous.
Guessing they’ll just restore a backup from before the shutdown and install new Reddit backed mods. I can’t see this really going any other way. Maybe the subscribed users will drop out of the restored subreddit, but I’m guessing most people just won’t care.
Which is fine. Do you really think a bunch of people who don't care will build a thriving community after Reddit hammers them once, twice, three times, over and over?
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
The absolute sad shills that agree to pick up moderation for free at this point is just pathetic. No mod should volunteeer for Reddit, ever
OMG, can you play a reverse uno card on this? So much of this argument is the problem with the changes they are making. So frustrating.
a duty to keep these spaces active Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection.
I thought it was private property lmao. Conversation spaces shouldn't act as public plazas when they're private.
I got one too
Love your reply
Honestly, mods should just force the issue and make Reddit replace them. It's going to be a big problem if Reddit needs to find new moderators for hundreds if not thousands of subreddits. And that's assuming all the new moderators will play along and not immediately join the protest, go on a tyrannical power trip, or just go dark after a few weeks.
Why would anyone even want to be a mod right now? It's like your boss threatening to fire you from a job you're not paid for while the building is actively on fire.
Mod of /r/homeimprovement here, that's exactly what we are doing. We are staying dark and forcing them to replace us if that's what they want to do at this point. We are at least going to make them work for it, lol.
PS: Please setup a community here. I will join.
If they aren't making enough money now, they'll just love paying people to keep popular subreddits up.
Did yall move to the fedeverse somewhere?
That seems like it will present a problem. If an uninformed redditor asks, “hey is it safe to move this wire?” And some troll replies, “yes”… with no one there who is knowledgeable to moderate. Might lead to some disastrous outcomes.
*edit - I agree with you forcing the admin’s hands. Im not sure they know what they will be getting themselves into.
If they replace you, can I have the sub? And force every User to stay in character or get banned?
Hey, one of my favorite subreddits! Get 'er done! I left with the fiasco and not turning back. I'm happy you guys are buckling up your seatbelt.
Good, if they insist on having things done the way they want for free, then they can take care of doing it themselves.
The K-man did that : https://kbin.social/m/Seinfeld I'm flopping I'm flowing I'm all over the place. It be so
What short sighted assholes
The only way to win is to not play (being a mod at reddit)
Translation: we rely on you to make money give me more money, money now .
What's crazy is since last year the admins have been asking mods to step up their free labor or lose their subreddits. Now they want to micromanage mod decisions too? Coupled with the admins trying to turn communities against their mods, there's a serious loss of trust at this point, and I don't think the admins are going to get it back.
Fuck Reddit
Reddit admin seem to be under the very mistaken impression that the passive viewers are the source of Reddit's success. Creating and modding a sub is a labor of love, and people who have the love, time, and patience to do it well are a tiny minority of Reddit's users. When they alienate mods, Reddit dies.
Reddit dies. Nah, it will not. It will be like Facebook - retards platform.
Just delete that community ;)
doesn't look like you can delete them, they have a whole system where you put them up for adoption (r/adoptareddit) and others can comment on your post offering to adopt it and you have to mod them and unmod yourself and probably edit or delete the post.
Ahh ok thanks!
At this point I'm cheering for reddit to keep going as they are so the migration keeps on going too.
Just start deleting every comment that isn’t hate speech.
Owners of reddit seem like tin pot dictators.
Sounds like "Yeah. Sometimes people accidently fall on the knife with their stomach you know. After that they prefer removing it and putting back for a few times to ease pain"
And then he ran into my knife.
He ran into my knife ten times.
He had it coming…
“Cell Block Tango” from the movie Chicago
"Redditos rely on these spaces..."
And mods rely on the modding tools? Btw what would they say if you made the sub public but in a way that no one can post anything
I thought most mods asked their communities what they'd like to the mods to do. In which case they are already doing what the communities have asked.
High five!! We got the exact same message at the exact same time!!🥳🥳
Well good! They can pay to mod everything then! Should be easy when everyone is gone or posting the new Lemmy community that is taking overr.
Alotta lotta justification on that mail...
Time for Lemmy to advertise like crazy on Reddit.
yes but don't give them any money plz
Nah bro, I don’t have money
Got one too, my sub is only 17k. Let’s see what they’re gonna do since it’s staying private
Yeah, I just got one of those too lol.
So wholesome 100! Thank you admins from helping to protect us from stinky and potentially dangerous third party apps! [email protected]
Just pull a French and answer with "Je ne parle pas anglais" or smth
And then they receive a message in badly mangled, machine-translated French. If there's something that I'd love to let the French lead the way, it's protesting, and possibly guillotines. Hopefully in that order.
I got the same one yesterday.
This must be an automated post right? When did it get written up initially? If this is actually from someone its at a whole new level of bullishness.
Hmm, seems like the way to conform with this - is to post clear instructions on how to open a lemmy account and access the relevant community here instead - then the community will really belong to themselves, right?
(If a move to lemmy is going to work, we need to make sure that clear instructions are provided, and there is an easy map of existing subreddits over to new lemmy communities/channels.
I made an account, like, 15 minutes ago and it's not too difficult. But yeah, a simple guide would've been really nice
I think the only thing that's really missing is the whole subscribing to another instances sublemmies. Clicking a link here and being taken to another server and told to log in on a site for which we have no login as our Achilles heel at the moment.
But it's not that unlike going to new subreddits on Reddit used to be where you had to know /r/whatever now it's /c/[email protected]
Think there just needs to a YouTuber or something that makes a "Lemmy in 100 seconds" guide.
The best way to think about lemmy / kbin is that instead of a client / server model, where we have one facebook, one twitter, one reddit, we have one website that can view facebook / twitter / reddit all at the same time. They share, in this case, we can go to reddit and view facebook / twitter as well. So if facebook's /askreddit is better than twitter's /askreddit, we can view facebook's /askreddit on reddit and interact with facebook's /askreddit on reddit.
The great thing is that if server A has the best news content, server B has the best music content, and server C has the best porn content, we can be on server D and subscribe to all 3, and interact with all 3 seamlessly. And if we don't like the admin on server B, we can move the community to server E.
The hardest part is finding the best communities, since the are spread out everywhere, but once you find out about https://lemmyverse.net , it isn't so bad.
Reddit will demand complete control it seems.
Also got one on the only sub I used to mod a couple of hours ago 🙃
Fuck You Pay Me
Maybe the admins were always like this and are just now starting to show their true colors. You know, in the face of a cash grab.
My guess is more like they found out that several big places were making big bucks off of what they were offering for free, and they want to cash in on the profit being made.
I got one of those for my sub with a whopping ~1000 members.
Joke's on Reddit, though: I can set the visibility back to "restricted" instead of "private" all they want, but the only user accounts authorized to post content there are mine...
Me too, for PulitzerComments and queerjaw. Queerjaw only has 38 members... tf reddit?
They shoot themselves more in the foot each passing day.
Running out of toes to blast off at this point
Lol!
Oh boy, starting to look like we might have one more John Oliver sub!
Here is what to do, use a script to delete everything from the sub and then delete the sub. If thry dont care about you, dont let them take yoyr sub and contiue making money.
I would say the best thing is to find a way to hijack the link to your community to bring people here, and have their accounts there work seamlessly here. I bet that's impossible, so I guess it's time to scale back the ambitions of the community, linking to a "better" version here.
Bruh, waht happened to "its a private company"
It's pretty obvious that reddit needs these communities. But these communities don't need Reddit, clearly.
Does this also mean that users that have been banned from reddit subs will know get unbanned and that all subreddits that where forced to close can reopen.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say probably not.
damn
What subreddit is this for?
I was wondering the same.
🥰
