Redditors, in defense of Reddit, destroy Reddit
June 12, 2023 8:36 AM Subscribe
Anger over an astronomical increase in Reddit's API prices [prev.] boiled over this week as multiple third-party app developers were forced to close down, with one -- Apollo dev Christian Selig -- posting a scathing exposé detailing the company's shady dealings... including a recorded phone call disproving CEO Steve "spez" Huffman's claim that Selig blackmailed them. Huffman took to the site's vaunted AMA format to do damage control, only to double down, ignore tough questions, and reap thousands of downvotes. In response, the community has organized a massive subreddit "blackout" to protest the rate hike that will bankrupt popular apps, hamper critical moderation tools, and exclude blind users. While such protests are not new, this one is unprecedented in scope: 20,000+ mods from over 7,000 subreddits with more than 2 billion collective readers, from familiar mainstays like /r/aww, /r/videos, and /r/todayilearned to niche subs like /r/Eragon and /r/Panda. Facing layoffs, a major pre-IPO valuation cut, and a runaway user revolt reminiscent of Digg [prev.], could this be the end of the "front page of the internet"? Watch the site wink out in real time [livestream], join the fight on /r/Save3rdPartyApps and /r/ModCoord, backup your data, or check out some up-and-coming /r/RedditAlternatives.
Some common questions:
- What is an API? Explainer
- Why don't folks just switch to the official app, or the mobile web interface? Because they're notoriously crappy, ridiculously bloated, and filled with trackers and dark patterns. (Ironically, the official app is a bastardized version of the formerly beloved third-party client Alien Blue, which Reddit acquired in 2014).
- Aren't third-party app users a fraction of the overall userbase? Yes, but they are disproportionately mods and power users who rely on the more powerful apps to do their thing their way.
- Isn't Reddit promising to upgrade mod tools soon? They've promised a lot of things.
The prelude from last month: Reddit shuts down the incredible PushShift project (backstory) that powered academics, search, and mod tools
Could Reddit's API move be about AI? [NYT] (True story: I just used ChatGPT to write a Python script to download all my Reddit saves. 🦾)
The Verge: Less money and more fear: what’s going on with tech / Low interest rates fueled a tech boom. What happens now?
Related: Cory Doctorow on the "Enshittification" of TikTok
Paper: The Civic Labor of Volunteer Moderators Online
Miss /r/agedlikemilk? Marvel at this choice GQ interview from less than two months ago:
Angry redditors vent with some classic memes:
Lastly, as we learned last time around:
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
--MeFi's own blue_beetle on Digg's collapse
Some common questions:
- What is an API? Explainer
- Why don't folks just switch to the official app, or the mobile web interface? Because they're notoriously crappy, ridiculously bloated, and filled with trackers and dark patterns. (Ironically, the official app is a bastardized version of the formerly beloved third-party client Alien Blue, which Reddit acquired in 2014).
- Aren't third-party app users a fraction of the overall userbase? Yes, but they are disproportionately mods and power users who rely on the more powerful apps to do their thing their way.
- Isn't Reddit promising to upgrade mod tools soon? They've promised a lot of things.
The prelude from last month: Reddit shuts down the incredible PushShift project (backstory) that powered academics, search, and mod tools
Could Reddit's API move be about AI? [NYT] (True story: I just used ChatGPT to write a Python script to download all my Reddit saves. 🦾)
The Verge: Less money and more fear: what’s going on with tech / Low interest rates fueled a tech boom. What happens now?
Related: Cory Doctorow on the "Enshittification" of TikTok
Paper: The Civic Labor of Volunteer Moderators Online
Miss /r/agedlikemilk? Marvel at this choice GQ interview from less than two months ago:
GQ: One of the big turning points in Reddit’s history was Digg’s collapse. It was your biggest competitor and imploded almost overnight. Is there anything about Reddit that makes you worry something like that could happen to you?Or go back to co-founder Alexis "kn0thing" Ohanian's open letter to Digg CEO Kevin Rose in the midst of its collapse:
Huffman: I think the problem Digg had is that it was a company that was built to be a company, and you could feel it in the product. The way you could criticize Reddit is that we weren't a company – we were all heart and no head for a long time. So I think it'd be really hard for me and for the team to kill Reddit in that way.
...this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to "give the power back to the people."Daring Fireball: Apollo is a Work of Art
It’s worth perusing the replies to Apollo developer Christian Selig’s sunsetting announcement on Mastodon and Twitter (as well as the long thread on Reddit itself). So much love and affection and appreciation for Selig’s nearly decade of hard work, all for what outsiders must surely see as a mere “app”. These threads show how much the relationship between developer and users can be like that between any artist and their deepest fans.Poetically, the slow blackout of subreddits mirrors the surprise ending of the recent /r/Place project, when countless community creations slowly disappeared into a (white) void
Angry redditors vent with some classic memes:
Reddit DownfallArchival options:
PsBattle: Steve "Spez" Huffman, CEO of Reddit
Scumbag Steve and Bad LuckBrianSteve
/r/videos fills with anti-Reddit posts before shutting down indefinitely
Know Your Meme: Reddit API Pricing Change Protest
Reddit's built-in GDPR data request toolSome of the more talked-about Reddit replacements:
Reddit data to SQLite tool
Eternity: bypass Reddit's 1000-item listing limits by externally storing your Reddit items (saved, created, upvoted, downvoted, hidden) in your own database
RapidSave: Download Reddit videos with sound
Save arbitrary links to the Wayback Machine (just be sure to use Old Reddit URLs)
ArchiveTeam Reddit archiving project
Federated options: Lemmy (importer - browser) - Beehaw - Kbin - MastodonOn the eve of the blackout, Apollo dev Christian Selig comments: As the subreddit blackout begins, I wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to the Reddit community and everyone standing up...
Discord (text/voice chat) - Discourse (forums)
Tildes is still invite-only -- but tilde.club is open! [previously]
...MetaFilter? :o
Lastly, as we learned last time around:
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
--MeFi's own blue_beetle on Digg's collapse
The brief outage (DDoS?) was a poignant way of kickstarting things, I'm sure it'll boost investor confidence.
posted by furtive at 8:40 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by furtive at 8:40 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Plea to the mods - it would be fine for there to be two reddit related posts today. This is well put together information and taking it down would be an ironic loss.
posted by Bottlecap at 8:43 AM on June 12, 2023 [96 favorites]
posted by Bottlecap at 8:43 AM on June 12, 2023 [96 favorites]
I have been using a 3rd party app for Reddit for years. It seems to me that this is a power grab and a precursor to a more locked down, less flexible, site. They want to force content, probably paid content down my throat. It's a shame. I spent a lot of time on Digg before Reddit. I wish there was a similarly broad message board that was intended as a public service and would not go through this cycle.
posted by Tashtego at 8:47 AM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by Tashtego at 8:47 AM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
Who's running a book on whether this derails the Reddit IPO?
Because I think there's a decent chance it will.
posted by humbug at 8:49 AM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
Because I think there's a decent chance it will.
posted by humbug at 8:49 AM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
I’m a mod for a super small subreddit (focused on parents to kids born in a particular pandemic year/month). Our sub isn’t officially going dark but I’m not personally going online. Honestly, all of our non-power-user mods use the Reddit app (even to mod) and we just weren’t really tracking the issue until suddenly last night it became a topic in the sub and we kinda had to panic-decide what to do. I imagine there are a lot of people in our position. I don’t want to be a scab but also somehow missed the collective action memo. Oops.
posted by samthemander at 8:52 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by samthemander at 8:52 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
If spez were smart (currently available data does not support that hypothetical), he would have just accepted the thumping from Fidelity, kept his head down and gotten through the IPO a single-digit billionaire.
But I guess he felt he deserved more than that, and tried to Elon his way to a higher valuation.
The data also indicates trying to Elon your way to a higher valuation on a social media platform is a losing proposition.
posted by tclark at 8:53 AM on June 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
But I guess he felt he deserved more than that, and tried to Elon his way to a higher valuation.
The data also indicates trying to Elon your way to a higher valuation on a social media platform is a losing proposition.
posted by tclark at 8:53 AM on June 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
We could say spez has caused the incident to become... Elongated.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [85 favorites]
posted by Western Infidels at 8:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [85 favorites]
I believe the proper phrasing is “We had to destroy Reddit in order to save it.” But yeah; it seems like Doctorow’s concept of enshittification is in full play here.
posted by TedW at 8:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by TedW at 8:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
We... we did it, Reddit?
posted by Pachylad at 9:03 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Pachylad at 9:03 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Let it die. It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:04 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:04 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
The subreddit for my not-small alma mater, Boston College, had a post this weekend where the sole mod asked someone--anyone-- to take it over. It amazes me that on a community as big and influential as Reddit, there isn't "official" sponsorship of moderators by the in-IRL subjects of some subreddits.
Sure, it might lead to some "r/hailcorporate" slams, but it also would prevent your brand from being associated with actual nazis when the subreddit goes unmoderated.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:05 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Sure, it might lead to some "r/hailcorporate" slams, but it also would prevent your brand from being associated with actual nazis when the subreddit goes unmoderated.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:05 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
MetaFilter:...MetaFilter?
posted by vibrotronica at 9:05 AM on June 12, 2023 [29 favorites]
posted by vibrotronica at 9:05 AM on June 12, 2023 [29 favorites]
I think this will help the IPO long term. Reddit has historically had a very vocal user minority thinking they run the place. If this finally gets them to leave, Reddit will still have the 99.5% of its user base that couldn’t give one shit about this latest edition of mod drama.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:11 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:11 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls.
Actually seemed worse a few years ago. They're not gone, but they're not quite as disruptive as they used to be. Putin-bots decreased a lot since last year. (Maybe I've just gotten better at filtering).
posted by ovvl at 9:15 AM on June 12, 2023 [35 favorites]
Actually seemed worse a few years ago. They're not gone, but they're not quite as disruptive as they used to be. Putin-bots decreased a lot since last year. (Maybe I've just gotten better at filtering).
posted by ovvl at 9:15 AM on June 12, 2023 [35 favorites]
Reddit restored access to PushShift for mods. They also got PushShift to stop selling data to third parties.
The claim that Reddit hasn’t responded or tired to accommodate community feedback is false. Since announcing the changes they’ve worked to an accommodate a lot of end user and mod feedback. They have made exemptions for accessibility and popular moderator tools.
Apollo charged $1.50 a month to bypass things like ads which Reddit needs to pay its bills. It also offered features to compete directly with a Reddit Gold which is $6/month. They attempted to negotiate with the owner and main developer of Apollo whose counter offer was why don’t you pay me $10 million to shut down.
The whole thing is a drama filled shit show full of inaccurate information and half truths and what seems like a deliberate effort to bury/obfuscate Reddit’s attempts to respond to concerns raised by users after they announced this policy.
posted by interogative mood at 9:18 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
The claim that Reddit hasn’t responded or tired to accommodate community feedback is false. Since announcing the changes they’ve worked to an accommodate a lot of end user and mod feedback. They have made exemptions for accessibility and popular moderator tools.
Apollo charged $1.50 a month to bypass things like ads which Reddit needs to pay its bills. It also offered features to compete directly with a Reddit Gold which is $6/month. They attempted to negotiate with the owner and main developer of Apollo whose counter offer was why don’t you pay me $10 million to shut down.
The whole thing is a drama filled shit show full of inaccurate information and half truths and what seems like a deliberate effort to bury/obfuscate Reddit’s attempts to respond to concerns raised by users after they announced this policy.
posted by interogative mood at 9:18 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Let it die. It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls.
I understand your sentiment, but that seems to be how every community dies these days. I'm getting tired of being pushed out by evil people and the reality is there are many legitimate, viable communities on Reddit. I've moderated one for about 5 years now that plays an important part in our local community, it has 15k subs and I just don't see it having the same effect if it were running on WordPress and I can't afford $100 US a month to host it on Discourse, which would be a logical open source successor.
Aside: gosh, I've had a reddit account for over 17 years, second only to my MeFi account.
posted by furtive at 9:20 AM on June 12, 2023 [94 favorites]
I understand your sentiment, but that seems to be how every community dies these days. I'm getting tired of being pushed out by evil people and the reality is there are many legitimate, viable communities on Reddit. I've moderated one for about 5 years now that plays an important part in our local community, it has 15k subs and I just don't see it having the same effect if it were running on WordPress and I can't afford $100 US a month to host it on Discourse, which would be a logical open source successor.
Aside: gosh, I've had a reddit account for over 17 years, second only to my MeFi account.
posted by furtive at 9:20 AM on June 12, 2023 [94 favorites]
The deathblow to a bunch of 3rd party mod tools has been one of the underappreciated factors in this outrage. Reddit's support for its own site has been, historically and presently, hot steaming garbage. As a result, the numerous mods who keep the site running and appealing to investors have increasingly relied on a suite of 3rd party tools to customize the experience of drinking from the firehose that is moderating a subreddit of any appreciable size.
Many of these apps are either shutting down or will have their functionality compromised as a result of the current changes. Reddit's admin response to how they would fill the moderation hole was essentially "we're working on it, we promise," which I'm sure drove a number of powerusers from "disgruntled" to "pitchforks and guillotines."
Reddit devs have had years to come up with their own version of the third party apps which literally keep their site functioning, whether by developing their own version or co-opting an existing tool. They simply have not done that, and apparently never felt the need to, as the third party apps were working fine. Presumably this gave Reddit's corporate office more free time to focus on developing the next feature to somehow eke out additional monetization.
posted by Panjandrum at 9:23 AM on June 12, 2023 [35 favorites]
Many of these apps are either shutting down or will have their functionality compromised as a result of the current changes. Reddit's admin response to how they would fill the moderation hole was essentially "we're working on it, we promise," which I'm sure drove a number of powerusers from "disgruntled" to "pitchforks and guillotines."
Reddit devs have had years to come up with their own version of the third party apps which literally keep their site functioning, whether by developing their own version or co-opting an existing tool. They simply have not done that, and apparently never felt the need to, as the third party apps were working fine. Presumably this gave Reddit's corporate office more free time to focus on developing the next feature to somehow eke out additional monetization.
posted by Panjandrum at 9:23 AM on June 12, 2023 [35 favorites]
The ratio of actual Putin bots to people that you find annoying or have different political views or ways of expression is... slanted. Maybe that's more depressing as they can't be mentally siloed off as actual foreign agents, but oh well.
Wondering how many stock scam subreddits are being affected by the Reddit outage or if they're the last survivors. Imagine if your service became exclusively the domain of BBBY/GameStop idiots.
posted by kingdead at 9:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Wondering how many stock scam subreddits are being affected by the Reddit outage or if they're the last survivors. Imagine if your service became exclusively the domain of BBBY/GameStop idiots.
posted by kingdead at 9:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
>Let it die. It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls.
Like the internet as a whole, reddit is made up of many subcommunities. The same way the internet as a whole is full of Nazis and trolls, but Metafilter is pretty OK, there are plenty of subreddits that are pretty OK.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 9:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [83 favorites]
Like the internet as a whole, reddit is made up of many subcommunities. The same way the internet as a whole is full of Nazis and trolls, but Metafilter is pretty OK, there are plenty of subreddits that are pretty OK.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 9:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [83 favorites]
Reddit has historically had a very vocal user minority thinking they run the place.
To be fair many actually do — without the vast legions of unpaid moderators the site simply wouldn’t function.
posted by nathan_teske at 9:26 AM on June 12, 2023 [104 favorites]
To be fair many actually do — without the vast legions of unpaid moderators the site simply wouldn’t function.
posted by nathan_teske at 9:26 AM on June 12, 2023 [104 favorites]
Frankly, I was pretty ambivalent about the third party apps until Reddit decided I needed to find Jesus and started serving me (and seemingly everyone else using official Reddit clients) unblockable ads from HeGetsUs. March on stalwart third-party devs, march on.
posted by gee_the_riot at 9:28 AM on June 12, 2023 [76 favorites]
posted by gee_the_riot at 9:28 AM on June 12, 2023 [76 favorites]
The HeGetsUs ads are relentless. So off putting.
posted by samthemander at 9:29 AM on June 12, 2023 [54 favorites]
posted by samthemander at 9:29 AM on June 12, 2023 [54 favorites]
Guys, sorry. This is all my fault. I stopped using Twitter and I fled to Reddit.
Let me know what website you want to implode next, I'll start using that.
posted by Hamusutaa at 9:29 AM on June 12, 2023 [118 favorites]
Let me know what website you want to implode next, I'll start using that.
posted by Hamusutaa at 9:29 AM on June 12, 2023 [118 favorites]
I've never seen a HeGetsUs ad on Reddit. Join some subreddits that He definitely Doesn't Get, so the microtargeting spares you.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:31 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:31 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Let me know what website you want to implode next, I'll start using that.
If you can do facebook I'll bake you a cake, and a pie, and a pie in a cake.
posted by loquacious at 9:32 AM on June 12, 2023 [76 favorites]
If you can do facebook I'll bake you a cake, and a pie, and a pie in a cake.
posted by loquacious at 9:32 AM on June 12, 2023 [76 favorites]
Wondering how many stock scam subreddits are being affected by the Reddit outage or if they're the last survivors. Imagine if your service became exclusively the domain of BBBY/GameStop idiots.
/r/wallstreetbets did not participate in the blackout, if that answers your question.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:32 AM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
/r/wallstreetbets did not participate in the blackout, if that answers your question.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:32 AM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
Since announcing the changes they’ve worked to an accommodate a lot of end user and mod feedback.
That's a real interesting way to say, "since getting massive blowback to their initial plan, they've worked to put a fig leaf on their shitty actions and suddenly pretend to care about issues they've ignored for years which have only ever previously been addressed by 3rd party apps".
They didn't put out a proposal and ask for feedback, they announced a fucking terrible unilateral change -- up to and including Spez lying about things said to him in a conversation that was later made public both in audio and transcript form -- and then backtracked when they realized the uproar wasn't going away .
Nothing they've changed needed feedback to be identified as obvious problems, and it's clear they did not give a shit until forced to. It's also incredibly doubtful that they're particularly serious about these claims -- they're just looking for cover until they can IPO and Spez can cash out.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:33 AM on June 12, 2023 [60 favorites]
That's a real interesting way to say, "since getting massive blowback to their initial plan, they've worked to put a fig leaf on their shitty actions and suddenly pretend to care about issues they've ignored for years which have only ever previously been addressed by 3rd party apps".
They didn't put out a proposal and ask for feedback, they announced a fucking terrible unilateral change -- up to and including Spez lying about things said to him in a conversation that was later made public both in audio and transcript form -- and then backtracked when they realized the uproar wasn't going away .
Nothing they've changed needed feedback to be identified as obvious problems, and it's clear they did not give a shit until forced to. It's also incredibly doubtful that they're particularly serious about these claims -- they're just looking for cover until they can IPO and Spez can cash out.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:33 AM on June 12, 2023 [60 favorites]
I wonder if the reason behind this is a spillover from Twitter charging for API access. If every spammer/bot farm is casting around for a new API to exploit, then it might be understandable them wanting to raise the drawbridge.
That said I don't think price is the best way to select who should have API access.
posted by Lanark at 9:33 AM on June 12, 2023
That said I don't think price is the best way to select who should have API access.
posted by Lanark at 9:33 AM on June 12, 2023
Hamusutaa: Let me know what website you want to implode next, I'll start using that.
*looks around nervously*
posted by sarble at 9:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [71 favorites]
*looks around nervously*
posted by sarble at 9:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [71 favorites]
Total own-goal of slaughtering their golden geese. There's no way Reddit couldn't turn a profit on the average Apollo user with a more palatable pricing approach.
For example, it'd have been totally reasonable to say that API access was free if the logged-in user had Reddit Gold, otherwise apps would need to pay somewhat higher API rates (and/or serve first-party ad content). Power users would have put up with it, especially if there were other carrots to be had for ponying up. Casuals would tolerate more ads and app developers could easily collect a small premium on top of reasonable API rates for their trouble.
There's just no reason to go for this scorched-earth policy unless you were desperately trying to hit a huge valuation target instead of just taking the easy win on the table. Reddit being unprofitable today is an embarrassment given the size and depth of their userbase.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [44 favorites]
For example, it'd have been totally reasonable to say that API access was free if the logged-in user had Reddit Gold, otherwise apps would need to pay somewhat higher API rates (and/or serve first-party ad content). Power users would have put up with it, especially if there were other carrots to be had for ponying up. Casuals would tolerate more ads and app developers could easily collect a small premium on top of reasonable API rates for their trouble.
There's just no reason to go for this scorched-earth policy unless you were desperately trying to hit a huge valuation target instead of just taking the easy win on the table. Reddit being unprofitable today is an embarrassment given the size and depth of their userbase.
posted by 0xFCAF at 9:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [44 favorites]
Imagine reading the Apollo post and that AMA then coming out with the conclusion that it’s not reddit, its the mods that are wrong.
I’m a mod of a 150k user reddit. We are offline. ✊
posted by phlyingpenguin at 9:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [140 favorites]
I’m a mod of a 150k user reddit. We are offline. ✊
posted by phlyingpenguin at 9:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [140 favorites]
I've never seen a HeGetsUs ad on Reddit. Join some subreddits that He definitely Doesn't Get, so the microtargeting spares you.
I hadn't realized this ad was so widespread until this thread, but I can pretty much guarantee that if it is because of microtargeting that I was seeing this ad constantly, it is failed microtargeting. (It's only in the first party app though.)
posted by advil at 9:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
I hadn't realized this ad was so widespread until this thread, but I can pretty much guarantee that if it is because of microtargeting that I was seeing this ad constantly, it is failed microtargeting. (It's only in the first party app though.)
posted by advil at 9:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Last year in a discussion of VC and tech culture, there was a great link to a tweet thread about the notion that venture capital is a political project meant to keep wealth in the hands of the kinds of people who can afford to comfortably drop out of Stanford to start a company (h/t clawsoon) but it’s possible that that political project is going further, and towards wrecking the Internet’s usefulness in any way that is not monetized.
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
@snuffleupagus
I actually wonder if the opposite is true - my subs are mostly left-leaning and lgbt-related. Googling "HeGetsUs ads reddit" will get you plenty of people complaining about how they're getting harassed by these ads.
posted by gee_the_riot at 9:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I actually wonder if the opposite is true - my subs are mostly left-leaning and lgbt-related. Googling "HeGetsUs ads reddit" will get you plenty of people complaining about how they're getting harassed by these ads.
posted by gee_the_riot at 9:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
yeah, the HeGetsUs ads were targeting everyone, you're the lucky exception this time, friend.
posted by wellifyouinsist at 9:40 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by wellifyouinsist at 9:40 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
There's just no reason to go for this scorched-earth policy unless you were desperately trying to hit a huge valuation target instead of just taking the easy win on the table.
Yes, and it's exactly what they were trying to do. Reddit has been trying to force users into their shitty app for years.
For the last 1.5 - 2 years or so, on Android they've had some awful dark pattern shit to try to trick users into it. If you browse on mobile they'll ask you if you want to switch to the app, and you can say "no" but for the first 2-3 seconds of page load for some mysterious reason if you click the "continue on mobile" button it registers as a click on the "take me to the Play Store to get the app" link lower down on the page. No, it's not a misclick, this happens reliably for me, and seems an awful lot like they "accidentally" stick an invisible div over the "go away" button to instead register the one they want you to click, in a way that users will think was their own fault.
Enshittification doesn't even begin to describe it.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:41 AM on June 12, 2023 [66 favorites]
Yes, and it's exactly what they were trying to do. Reddit has been trying to force users into their shitty app for years.
For the last 1.5 - 2 years or so, on Android they've had some awful dark pattern shit to try to trick users into it. If you browse on mobile they'll ask you if you want to switch to the app, and you can say "no" but for the first 2-3 seconds of page load for some mysterious reason if you click the "continue on mobile" button it registers as a click on the "take me to the Play Store to get the app" link lower down on the page. No, it's not a misclick, this happens reliably for me, and seems an awful lot like they "accidentally" stick an invisible div over the "go away" button to instead register the one they want you to click, in a way that users will think was their own fault.
Enshittification doesn't even begin to describe it.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:41 AM on June 12, 2023 [66 favorites]
Indeed--this is one reason I don't browse reddit much on mobile, and on desktop I have all its ads blocked anyway. Even so, the mobile "helpful" popups are a giant pain in the ass and essentially serve to make the site nigh unusable on mobile.
posted by sciatrix at 9:43 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by sciatrix at 9:43 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ah yes, Metafilter's long game of waiting for every other social media platform to self-annhiliate is coming to slow fruition. Genius!
posted by riverlife at 9:44 AM on June 12, 2023 [125 favorites]
posted by riverlife at 9:44 AM on June 12, 2023 [125 favorites]
a faithful sock: interestingly, Reddit literally just started displaying the same behavior to me on my Android phone last night.
posted by Quindar Beep at 9:44 AM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Quindar Beep at 9:44 AM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Seeing spez just outright lie about the Apollo app and its creator, despite that creator having evidence to the contrary, made a lot of people who weren't really paying attention realize how bad things had gotten. How he thought he'd get away with that is beyond me.
posted by tommasz at 9:48 AM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 9:48 AM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
Regarding ads on Reddit, you can turn ad targeting off. Personally I prefer to get a ton of ads for HeGetsUs and mayonnaise (truly two of the biggest campaigns I see) rather than Instagram-style micro targeted ads that distract me because they’re actually stuff I want.
posted by hungrytiger at 9:49 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by hungrytiger at 9:49 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
I use firefox + ublock on mobile. No ads or "get the app" popups, but I have noticed they're increasingly throwing up the "new" site redesign on features like their own image gallery function, mod pages and basically everything they can get away with, but this includes on desktop, too.
Imgur has gotten super bloated but the built in reddit gallery is totally trash. Hey, cool, I can either view the image as a tiny thumbnail or blown up past full resolution, and it doesn't always let you open image in new tab so you can just use your browser's zoom levels as normal.
Also I don't know how many people here have actually tried using the site redesign in desktop but it's an absolute garbage fire of dark patterns.
This is one more reason why a lot of users and mods are so energetic about this protest. A common sentiment I see going around is "So what if reddit burns to the ground with no replacement? I should really go touch more grass anyway."
posted by loquacious at 9:50 AM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
Imgur has gotten super bloated but the built in reddit gallery is totally trash. Hey, cool, I can either view the image as a tiny thumbnail or blown up past full resolution, and it doesn't always let you open image in new tab so you can just use your browser's zoom levels as normal.
Also I don't know how many people here have actually tried using the site redesign in desktop but it's an absolute garbage fire of dark patterns.
This is one more reason why a lot of users and mods are so energetic about this protest. A common sentiment I see going around is "So what if reddit burns to the ground with no replacement? I should really go touch more grass anyway."
posted by loquacious at 9:50 AM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
"It looks like you're part of one of our experiments" [SLMAS]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:51 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:51 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Every so often a social media imbroglio reminds me Metafilter exists. I'm pretty sure one day I'll be stumbling around the charred ruins of the apocalypse and find a little computer, somehow still online, and I'll open this site to find people still posting.
posted by Kye at 9:56 AM on June 12, 2023 [74 favorites]
posted by Kye at 9:56 AM on June 12, 2023 [74 favorites]
Let me know what website you want to implode next, I'll start using that.
If you're willing to branch out I think MAGA is looking for members.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:00 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
If you're willing to branch out I think MAGA is looking for members.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:00 AM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
This seems to be an issue that reaffirms my status as an old. I use reddit a lot, but only ever on a desktop with an adblocker. I sort of didn't even know there were third party apps, or why I might want one. I don't use MeFi on mobile either, despite the hours I spend here each day.
I only subscribe to smallish or niche subs, so I am able to mostly ignore the toxicity on broader reddit.
I am certainly in solidarity with their going dark, and I don't plan to log on until I read an all-clear somewhere. I do find this discussion interesting and enlightening, so thanks for all the info.
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:12 AM on June 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
I only subscribe to smallish or niche subs, so I am able to mostly ignore the toxicity on broader reddit.
I am certainly in solidarity with their going dark, and I don't plan to log on until I read an all-clear somewhere. I do find this discussion interesting and enlightening, so thanks for all the info.
posted by OHenryPacey at 10:12 AM on June 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
It doesn't matter whether current Redditors "destroy" Reddit. Ownership wants to cash out and the process is destroying the Reddit that current Redditors enjoyed. That Reddit is already dead and gone; at this point people are arguing about what Reddit will be when the dust clears.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:17 AM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:17 AM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Lately I have been playing with an animation program. It's a serious power tool used by a couple of studios, but with next to no penetration into casual users - there's a subreddit for it but it is just a ghost town of people asking for beginner help, without any experts casually browsing on their break and answering these questions, or occasionally posting their work and maybe answering a bunch of "wow how did you do that" questions.
But it's got a forum on the developer's site. A PHPBB. With threads. And topic sections. And a search function. It's... it just works so well, in a way that subreddits kind of never do, it's just this super-dense repository of expertise on this program. It's quiet but people are still checking it, I asked a question that I couldn't find the answer to after some searching and it got answered within an hour. And since there are user icons and signatures, you can start to get a sense of the regulars, and find out things like "oh wow this person runs an animation unit at a major studio" super easily, it just works so well and there's no ads or anything.
Honestly there are some things that Reddit has been useful for but I am not sure I will miss it if it dies due to this. I just hope everything doesn't turn into Discords though, I fucking hate Discord.
posted by egypturnash at 10:22 AM on June 12, 2023 [45 favorites]
But it's got a forum on the developer's site. A PHPBB. With threads. And topic sections. And a search function. It's... it just works so well, in a way that subreddits kind of never do, it's just this super-dense repository of expertise on this program. It's quiet but people are still checking it, I asked a question that I couldn't find the answer to after some searching and it got answered within an hour. And since there are user icons and signatures, you can start to get a sense of the regulars, and find out things like "oh wow this person runs an animation unit at a major studio" super easily, it just works so well and there's no ads or anything.
Honestly there are some things that Reddit has been useful for but I am not sure I will miss it if it dies due to this. I just hope everything doesn't turn into Discords though, I fucking hate Discord.
posted by egypturnash at 10:22 AM on June 12, 2023 [45 favorites]
interogative mood: "The claim that Reddit hasn’t responded or tired to accommodate community feedback is false. Since announcing the changes they’ve worked to an accommodate a lot of end user and mod feedback."
For a long time Reddit allowed the use of custom CSS to style communities in a wide variety of designs, it was one of the most distinctive things about the platform. Then one day they announced the feature would be excluded from their upcoming redesign and dropped from old versions of the platform. There was a huge outcry from mods who'd spent long hours tweaking their UIs, leading to a #ProCSS protest similar to today's (albeit smaller). Unlike today's, Huffman yielded to the pressure, announcing "Reddit is ProCSS" and promising to include the feature on top of the redesign's default template, and users were mollified.
Six years later, the redesign's settings page still has a ghosted-out CSS button that says "Coming soon" when you hover over it, and CSS usage is dead on mobile and dying out on desktop. One of many reasons why mods don't trust the admins when they say this or that feature is on the way.
It's obvious the most recent concessions were CYA moves to head off the protest, and users aren't buying it. I mean, if they're really planning on fixing the official app, why not delay the API changes until after the app *actually* reaches parity with third-party offerings in terms of mod tools and accessibility (which would also give third-party devs a viable offramp that won't cost them a quarter million dollars in refunds?). The fact that they have no accessibility team suggests that this isn't actually a priority for them.
Kye: "Every so often a social media imbroglio reminds me Metafilter exists. I'm pretty sure one day I'll be stumbling around the charred ruins of the apocalypse and find a little computer, somehow still online, and I'll open this site to find people still posting."
MetaFilter in the Ruins
posted by Rhaomi at 10:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [86 favorites]
For a long time Reddit allowed the use of custom CSS to style communities in a wide variety of designs, it was one of the most distinctive things about the platform. Then one day they announced the feature would be excluded from their upcoming redesign and dropped from old versions of the platform. There was a huge outcry from mods who'd spent long hours tweaking their UIs, leading to a #ProCSS protest similar to today's (albeit smaller). Unlike today's, Huffman yielded to the pressure, announcing "Reddit is ProCSS" and promising to include the feature on top of the redesign's default template, and users were mollified.
Six years later, the redesign's settings page still has a ghosted-out CSS button that says "Coming soon" when you hover over it, and CSS usage is dead on mobile and dying out on desktop. One of many reasons why mods don't trust the admins when they say this or that feature is on the way.
It's obvious the most recent concessions were CYA moves to head off the protest, and users aren't buying it. I mean, if they're really planning on fixing the official app, why not delay the API changes until after the app *actually* reaches parity with third-party offerings in terms of mod tools and accessibility (which would also give third-party devs a viable offramp that won't cost them a quarter million dollars in refunds?). The fact that they have no accessibility team suggests that this isn't actually a priority for them.
Kye: "Every so often a social media imbroglio reminds me Metafilter exists. I'm pretty sure one day I'll be stumbling around the charred ruins of the apocalypse and find a little computer, somehow still online, and I'll open this site to find people still posting."
MetaFilter in the Ruins
posted by Rhaomi at 10:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [86 favorites]
I 'moderate' a subreddit with 50 whole users. I didn't black out - because no one posts and, ironically, because the in-Reddit mod tools suck. I didn't even know about the 3rd party tools because my moderation needs consist of approving users. Even that's needlessly more complicated than needed, but if I didn't set it that way it'd be overrun with people claiming miracle cures and spam bots.
posted by cobaltnine at 10:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by cobaltnine at 10:25 AM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
15 years for me. I only realized thanks to this mess that Reddit has like a billion users now. WTF, when did that happen? That in itself is a good enough reason to leave.
I've been making my home over at the Fediverse for the past few months so it's a lot easier to give it up now than it would have been a year ago.
posted by donio at 10:26 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
I've been making my home over at the Fediverse for the past few months so it's a lot easier to give it up now than it would have been a year ago.
posted by donio at 10:26 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
I’m bummed about the loss of r/metal. As of the blackout, there’s no decided landing spot for the community at large. A few thousand members are comfortably ensconced on the community Discord, but the rest of us are kinda waiting for a signal of where to go. I think that r/metal is the first Internet scene I’ve lost. (I am old and not really an Internet resident. It’s sort of amazing I attached onto the fringes here.)
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 10:30 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 10:30 AM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Fediverse makes me think of Kevin Federline. Always and forever.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 10:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 10:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
There really needs to be a federated platform that works more like Reddit than Twitter. Mastodon is great! But it, Twitter and especially Discord need a level of constant interaction to engage with in a way that Reddit doesn't. I like that you just check in on a Reddit discussion whenever in a day and there's not really a "blink and you'll miss it" feeling unless you're in the huge subs which suck anyways.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 10:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Apollo charged $1.50 a month to bypass things like ads which Reddit needs to pay its bills. It also offered features to compete directly with a Reddit Gold which is $6/month. They attempted to negotiate with the owner and main developer of Apollo whose counter offer was why don’t you pay me $10 million to shut down.
That is a straight lie by u/spez (Huffman, CEO) that he's doubled down on even after it being proven as a lie by the release of the audio recording and transcript of the call by the Apollo dev.
Developers of 3rd party apps have offered multiple options for Reddit to monetise 3rd party apps; 'must carry' adverts, same as the official app. A reasonable API price, rather than 20x the value reddit gets from advertising which will make 3rd party apps insanely expensive. Linking access to the API to the enduser account - so a reddit premium sub could be required for heavy (or all) users. And others.
Reddit has been promising accessibility options for years and done absolutely nothing about it, but relied on 3rd party apps to deliver. When polled, communities that need those features have said it's the same apps that are shutting down (such as Apollo and RIF) that they use. There are multiple credible reports of developers trying to get a response from Reddit, ANY response, for weeks - and nothing. So Huffman claiming they won't be blocking accessibility apps, and that they're talking to app developers is just more lies.
Even worse is the 30 days notice period. Even IF the prices were sane, that's simply not enough time for devs to completely redesign their pricing, payment methods, accounting for existing annual-paid customers and getting changes pushed through review on e.g. iOS. Come the 1st July the big bill starts racking up, and without a way to pay it by that date, they simply have no choice but to shut down.
The thing is, it's not really about the users who use 3rd party apps to browse Reddit. They are a substantial minority, but a minority none the less (the default app is awful, and the mobile website just relentlessly forces you towards it). But the built-in mod tools for Reddit are utter dogshit. So a LOT of mods have to use the 3rd party tools to do their unpaid work - the bigger the subreddit, the more essential those 3rd party apps and bots are (which are also being shut out due to the API changes). And they are PISSED that those essential tools are being yanked away with virtually no notice because of Reddit's naked greed.
And they are going on strike. The 48-hour blackout is a warning shot, many will continue beyond that point. Most mods taking part are resigned to the fact it won't work. There's also widespread acceptance that reddit admins will just seize control of the big subreddits and appoint new mods, and/or they will quit come July 1st and leave their subs unmoderated. But the thing is - there's 10s of thousands of mods taking part, and they will not be cheap to replace. They work for free, and their knowledge of their own communities is not easily replacable at all. Sure there's plenty of nazis and powerhungry assholes who will do it, but the results won't be any prettier (as we've seen where this happened with other subs getting taken over). And the most engaged users are also involved (and more will be once their favourite sub moderation goes to hell), who are the ones that post the content that reddit makes money off in the first place by bringing in eyeballs for advertisers.
The example of what happens when a lot of the mods and best posters go, and how advertisers respond to having their content next to tons of porn spam and nazi bollocks is right there with twitter. But sure, it's the app developers who are wrong.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [91 favorites]
That is a straight lie by u/spez (Huffman, CEO) that he's doubled down on even after it being proven as a lie by the release of the audio recording and transcript of the call by the Apollo dev.
Developers of 3rd party apps have offered multiple options for Reddit to monetise 3rd party apps; 'must carry' adverts, same as the official app. A reasonable API price, rather than 20x the value reddit gets from advertising which will make 3rd party apps insanely expensive. Linking access to the API to the enduser account - so a reddit premium sub could be required for heavy (or all) users. And others.
Reddit has been promising accessibility options for years and done absolutely nothing about it, but relied on 3rd party apps to deliver. When polled, communities that need those features have said it's the same apps that are shutting down (such as Apollo and RIF) that they use. There are multiple credible reports of developers trying to get a response from Reddit, ANY response, for weeks - and nothing. So Huffman claiming they won't be blocking accessibility apps, and that they're talking to app developers is just more lies.
Even worse is the 30 days notice period. Even IF the prices were sane, that's simply not enough time for devs to completely redesign their pricing, payment methods, accounting for existing annual-paid customers and getting changes pushed through review on e.g. iOS. Come the 1st July the big bill starts racking up, and without a way to pay it by that date, they simply have no choice but to shut down.
The thing is, it's not really about the users who use 3rd party apps to browse Reddit. They are a substantial minority, but a minority none the less (the default app is awful, and the mobile website just relentlessly forces you towards it). But the built-in mod tools for Reddit are utter dogshit. So a LOT of mods have to use the 3rd party tools to do their unpaid work - the bigger the subreddit, the more essential those 3rd party apps and bots are (which are also being shut out due to the API changes). And they are PISSED that those essential tools are being yanked away with virtually no notice because of Reddit's naked greed.
And they are going on strike. The 48-hour blackout is a warning shot, many will continue beyond that point. Most mods taking part are resigned to the fact it won't work. There's also widespread acceptance that reddit admins will just seize control of the big subreddits and appoint new mods, and/or they will quit come July 1st and leave their subs unmoderated. But the thing is - there's 10s of thousands of mods taking part, and they will not be cheap to replace. They work for free, and their knowledge of their own communities is not easily replacable at all. Sure there's plenty of nazis and powerhungry assholes who will do it, but the results won't be any prettier (as we've seen where this happened with other subs getting taken over). And the most engaged users are also involved (and more will be once their favourite sub moderation goes to hell), who are the ones that post the content that reddit makes money off in the first place by bringing in eyeballs for advertisers.
The example of what happens when a lot of the mods and best posters go, and how advertisers respond to having their content next to tons of porn spam and nazi bollocks is right there with twitter. But sure, it's the app developers who are wrong.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [91 favorites]
It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls.
idk perhaps that is true of some of the huge, general interest subreddits, but the vast vast majority of Reddit consists of tiny subreddits for niche interests, many of which are tight knit and very supportive and progressive communities.
One that I'm active in (although not a mod) made the decision not to shut down because a lot of the posts we get are from young people in very real crisis, and shutting down would hurt them more than it helped the protest.
FWIW, I do think that long term a lot of these communities are going to migrate to Discord, which is kind of a shame (as much as I love Discord) because you can't get there from Google.
posted by anastasiav at 10:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [35 favorites]
idk perhaps that is true of some of the huge, general interest subreddits, but the vast vast majority of Reddit consists of tiny subreddits for niche interests, many of which are tight knit and very supportive and progressive communities.
One that I'm active in (although not a mod) made the decision not to shut down because a lot of the posts we get are from young people in very real crisis, and shutting down would hurt them more than it helped the protest.
FWIW, I do think that long term a lot of these communities are going to migrate to Discord, which is kind of a shame (as much as I love Discord) because you can't get there from Google.
posted by anastasiav at 10:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [35 favorites]
I'm pretty heavy into Warhammer, so HeGetsUs immediately made me think "gets us" in the vein of "He gets our souls to feast upon in the churning hellscape of the Warp" and not "Jesus Saves" and so that ad campaign is at least good for a chuckle now.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:39 AM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by Slackermagee at 10:39 AM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
Or you paid for it or are paying for it and thus you are both the customer and the product being sold, which is win-win for someone not you.
posted by y2karl at 10:41 AM on June 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
Or you paid for it or are paying for it and thus you are both the customer and the product being sold, which is win-win for someone not you.
posted by y2karl at 10:41 AM on June 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
This seems to be an issue that reaffirms my status as an old. I use reddit a lot, but only ever on a desktop with an adblocker. I sort of didn't even know there were third party apps, or why I might want one. I don't use MeFi on mobile either, despite the hours I spend here each day.
I only subscribe to smallish or niche subs, so I am able to mostly ignore the toxicity on broader reddit.
I am certainly in solidarity with their going dark, and I don't plan to log on until I read an all-clear somewhere. I do find this discussion interesting and enlightening, so thanks for all the info.
This describes my use of Reddit also, and equally I appreciate the context and discussion here for better understanding what is happening.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:50 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I only subscribe to smallish or niche subs, so I am able to mostly ignore the toxicity on broader reddit.
I am certainly in solidarity with their going dark, and I don't plan to log on until I read an all-clear somewhere. I do find this discussion interesting and enlightening, so thanks for all the info.
This describes my use of Reddit also, and equally I appreciate the context and discussion here for better understanding what is happening.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:50 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Excellent post, Rhaomi .
posted by doctornemo at 10:50 AM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 10:50 AM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
idk perhaps that is true of some of the huge, general interest subreddits, but the vast vast majority of Reddit consists of tiny subreddits for niche interests, many of which are tight knit and very supportive and progressive communities.
This. There's no doubt that there are shitty ass people within the Reddit community and many of them do tend to spend time in specific subreddits but for the most part I find reddit is a pretty chill space. Everyone is going to have a different experience but your reddit experience is going to largely be shaped by how you curate the communities you join and/or how you choose to engage with (or not engage) with certain individuals and threads.
It's not perfect by any means but should reddit die, I would miss it immensely. Especially as its become my go to space for refining google searches (b/c SEO is such crap). These days you can find what you're looking for when doing a google search by simply adding the word reddit to the end to sift through all the crap that would otherwise be pushed your way by SEO.
*sighs*
posted by Fizz at 10:56 AM on June 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
This. There's no doubt that there are shitty ass people within the Reddit community and many of them do tend to spend time in specific subreddits but for the most part I find reddit is a pretty chill space. Everyone is going to have a different experience but your reddit experience is going to largely be shaped by how you curate the communities you join and/or how you choose to engage with (or not engage) with certain individuals and threads.
It's not perfect by any means but should reddit die, I would miss it immensely. Especially as its become my go to space for refining google searches (b/c SEO is such crap). These days you can find what you're looking for when doing a google search by simply adding the word reddit to the end to sift through all the crap that would otherwise be pushed your way by SEO.
*sighs*
posted by Fizz at 10:56 AM on June 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
I gave up Twitter and Instagram and now I mourn the potential loss of the innumerable cat subreddits I subscribe to. Where am I going to get all my cat photos now??
posted by orrnyereg at 10:57 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by orrnyereg at 10:57 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Fortunately, the Mefi API will remain at $20, same as in town.
posted by dr_dank at 10:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
posted by dr_dank at 10:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
> Honestly there are some things that Reddit has been useful for but I am not sure I will miss it if it dies due to this. I just hope everything doesn't turn into Discords though, I fucking hate Discord.
irc or gtfo, that's what i say
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
irc or gtfo, that's what i say
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:59 AM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
There really needs to be a federated platform that works more like Reddit than Twitter.
I really gotta research before I write more, because it didn't take long to find two in the other thread on this, Lemmy and kbin
posted by jason_steakums at 11:01 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I really gotta research before I write more, because it didn't take long to find two in the other thread on this, Lemmy and kbin
posted by jason_steakums at 11:01 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
irc or gtfo, that's what i say
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements
I mean, how much more eponysterical is there?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:04 AM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements
I mean, how much more eponysterical is there?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:04 AM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
> I mean, how much more eponysterical is there?
absolutely none.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:04 AM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
absolutely none.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:04 AM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
There really needs to be a federated platform that works more like Reddit than Twitter.
It should be more than just a news service over the network. It should really be a user-centric network. I wonder what we could call it?
Rigid hierarchical organizational structures are appealing, but there has to be room for alternate views too.
But this time, we need some way to handle spiced meat products and bad actors, like the lawyers.
posted by bonehead at 11:05 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
It should be more than just a news service over the network. It should really be a user-centric network. I wonder what we could call it?
Rigid hierarchical organizational structures are appealing, but there has to be room for alternate views too.
But this time, we need some way to handle spiced meat products and bad actors, like the lawyers.
posted by bonehead at 11:05 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
> FWIW, I do think that long term a lot of these communities are going to migrate to Discord, which is kind of a shame (as much as I love Discord) because you can't get there from Google.
search engines, even more than the rest of the Internet, were a mistake. they're tools for seeing like a state. inherently harmful.
content should be hard to find, and methods for surfacing it should require the assistance of local guides.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:08 AM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
search engines, even more than the rest of the Internet, were a mistake. they're tools for seeing like a state. inherently harmful.
content should be hard to find, and methods for surfacing it should require the assistance of local guides.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:08 AM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
The Incels/Nazis comment feels like a bit of a derail in that it’s 4~5 years out of date. /r/politics is huge, disproportionately present on the front page for its size, and is not terribly distinguishable from Metafilter’s political threads. If you know a more progressive place to discuss politics with a comparable userbase, I’d love to hear about it (read that with and without snark).
—-
Separately, I very much wish this action would work, but I don’t think it will.
Any negotiation you walk into without the ability to walk away is not a negotiation, it’s just pleading with the other party to not hurt you as much as they could. Without a specific, very near-functionally identical alternative destination ready to go I don’t think this boycott has any real leverage.
Which is a shame because reddit is one of a very few places on the Internet where the broader community might have the ability to knock together a decent, if buggy, facsimile in a handful of weeks.
posted by Ryvar at 11:11 AM on June 12, 2023 [29 favorites]
—-
Separately, I very much wish this action would work, but I don’t think it will.
Any negotiation you walk into without the ability to walk away is not a negotiation, it’s just pleading with the other party to not hurt you as much as they could. Without a specific, very near-functionally identical alternative destination ready to go I don’t think this boycott has any real leverage.
Which is a shame because reddit is one of a very few places on the Internet where the broader community might have the ability to knock together a decent, if buggy, facsimile in a handful of weeks.
posted by Ryvar at 11:11 AM on June 12, 2023 [29 favorites]
It's not perfect by any means but should reddit die, I would miss it immensely
Reddit and Twitter are the only major “social media” I use lol it’s not great.
(Plus a couple of old school forums like this one, which is what reddit is doing anyway but platform-style to capitalize on the network effects and everything so it’s sort of spanning the categories).
posted by atoxyl at 11:14 AM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Reddit and Twitter are the only major “social media” I use lol it’s not great.
(Plus a couple of old school forums like this one, which is what reddit is doing anyway but platform-style to capitalize on the network effects and everything so it’s sort of spanning the categories).
posted by atoxyl at 11:14 AM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
"you're part of one of our experiments!"
IDK that exchange was what finally evoked a visceral response from me.
The rot is too deep.
posted by tigrrrlily at 11:21 AM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
IDK that exchange was what finally evoked a visceral response from me.
The rot is too deep.
posted by tigrrrlily at 11:21 AM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
FWIW Lemmy seems to be problematic, somewhere on the line between "insufficiently antifascist" and "actual tankies." You may or may not be comfortable using the software on a platform not run by its developers, but the flagship instance apparently has a history of being a bit too comfortable with problematic content and/or instances originating it (e.g. not just federating with but advertising an instance with an actual tank for a logo).
I dunno about you, but I'm too old and too tired to bother trying to figure out when something that uses problematic tropes is doing so ironically. Even when you think you're doing something ironically, you're still doing it. I'd rather hang out places where people think better than to keep perpetuating ideas like that, regardless of their intent.
posted by fedward at 11:22 AM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
I dunno about you, but I'm too old and too tired to bother trying to figure out when something that uses problematic tropes is doing so ironically. Even when you think you're doing something ironically, you're still doing it. I'd rather hang out places where people think better than to keep perpetuating ideas like that, regardless of their intent.
posted by fedward at 11:22 AM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
kbin sounds promising and it's truly luck of the draw that it's even ready enough for this moment because the platform isn't even fully ready, but at least there's Lemmy as well, and I think even hubzilla is doable as a forum analogue. Fwiw, in terms of active users I think the data shows that Mastodon isn't even the most-used in the Fediverse - instead it's Misskey and its forks Calckey. In any case i doubt the fedi platforms are ready for the exodus per se but the nice thing about federation is you don't necessarily have to be siloed just because you're on a different platform.
posted by cendawanita at 11:24 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by cendawanita at 11:24 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm leaning towards Tildes for sure -- and I'm also back here for the first time in years!
posted by reductiondesign at 11:26 AM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by reductiondesign at 11:26 AM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
I don't have many IRL friends, but I have lost too many to count online.
I was there watching USENET become a torrent of spam and .binaries. I still have notebooks with usernames and passwords for dozens of PHPBB forums. I lost touch with some of my favorite old-school internet weirdos when Yahoo Groups shut down. I've lost count of the personal websites that go dormant for a decade or two and then disappear when the domain registration expires. So much knowledge lost when free image hosting sites die.
Many of my niche communities moved to reddit, some thrived and some died, but at least googling for site:reddit was still useful. But reddit always smelled bad, I always hesitated linking to the good stuff there, what if the person I am sharing with lands on the main page and thinks I am also a misogynistic nazi?
After Yahoo Groups died I spent some time coming up with my ideal online world. Something like the heyday of PHPBB forums. A bunch of forums with distinct identities and cultures. With different moderation styles where you know what you'll get. With ultra-specialized sub-forums and forums for shooting the shit. I even like the ones that would not let you post until after you introduced yourself and interacted for a bit in the newbie forum.
But all together in one place. With a single sign on. With the ability to subscribe or unsubscribe from specific sub-forums. Like RSS feeds but with decent UX. Kind of like USENET, decentralized in such a way that stuff gets archived and a forum owner can't just take their ball home and kill the site.
Looks a lot like what the federated platforms are trying to do, although most seem to be leaning more towards twitter and less towards old-school BBS. I wish them all the success in the world.
posted by Dr. Curare at 11:30 AM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
I was there watching USENET become a torrent of spam and .binaries. I still have notebooks with usernames and passwords for dozens of PHPBB forums. I lost touch with some of my favorite old-school internet weirdos when Yahoo Groups shut down. I've lost count of the personal websites that go dormant for a decade or two and then disappear when the domain registration expires. So much knowledge lost when free image hosting sites die.
Many of my niche communities moved to reddit, some thrived and some died, but at least googling for site:reddit was still useful. But reddit always smelled bad, I always hesitated linking to the good stuff there, what if the person I am sharing with lands on the main page and thinks I am also a misogynistic nazi?
After Yahoo Groups died I spent some time coming up with my ideal online world. Something like the heyday of PHPBB forums. A bunch of forums with distinct identities and cultures. With different moderation styles where you know what you'll get. With ultra-specialized sub-forums and forums for shooting the shit. I even like the ones that would not let you post until after you introduced yourself and interacted for a bit in the newbie forum.
But all together in one place. With a single sign on. With the ability to subscribe or unsubscribe from specific sub-forums. Like RSS feeds but with decent UX. Kind of like USENET, decentralized in such a way that stuff gets archived and a forum owner can't just take their ball home and kill the site.
Looks a lot like what the federated platforms are trying to do, although most seem to be leaning more towards twitter and less towards old-school BBS. I wish them all the success in the world.
posted by Dr. Curare at 11:30 AM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
I rely on reddit for technical solutions to hard problems during the robotics season. Discord is the alternative but it's much harder to search.
posted by subdee at 11:31 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by subdee at 11:31 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Any negotiation you walk into without the ability to walk away is not a negotiation, it’s just pleading with the other party to not hurt you as much as they could. Without a specific, very near-functionally identical alternative destination ready to go I don’t think this boycott has any real leverage.
In a lot of cases the mods are just burned out and fed up, and have made it clear that since they're not getting paid, they do in fact have the ability to just... walk away, rather than banging their heads against a wall. The users may not feel a similar choice, but Reddit really won't function without an enormous amount of moderation. Do the admins know that? Possibly.
posted by Tomorrowful at 11:32 AM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
In a lot of cases the mods are just burned out and fed up, and have made it clear that since they're not getting paid, they do in fact have the ability to just... walk away, rather than banging their heads against a wall. The users may not feel a similar choice, but Reddit really won't function without an enormous amount of moderation. Do the admins know that? Possibly.
posted by Tomorrowful at 11:32 AM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
FWIW Lemmy seems to be problematic, somewhere on the line between "insufficiently antifascist" and "actual tankies
The culture shift that I'm getting used to is the fact that the programming language being ActivityPub means platforms/softwares get forked all the time and servers/instances can and do choose who to federate with. Even the unofficial mefi instance is on a fork of Mastodon, and there are other forks who've decided not to keep up with Mastodon's development cycle (i think this is where glitch.soc stands).
So in general I wouldn't worry too much about it, if the federated suite of platforms sounds like something you'd like to explore. Still, it doesn't change the fact available platforms that could be even a rough stand-in for reddit aren't fully mature yet, but at least i can follow up and coming ones from my existing fedi account. Anything but discord though, and setting aside my antipathy apparently even their days could be numbered re: enshittification (archive link of a Reddit post)
posted by cendawanita at 11:34 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
The culture shift that I'm getting used to is the fact that the programming language being ActivityPub means platforms/softwares get forked all the time and servers/instances can and do choose who to federate with. Even the unofficial mefi instance is on a fork of Mastodon, and there are other forks who've decided not to keep up with Mastodon's development cycle (i think this is where glitch.soc stands).
So in general I wouldn't worry too much about it, if the federated suite of platforms sounds like something you'd like to explore. Still, it doesn't change the fact available platforms that could be even a rough stand-in for reddit aren't fully mature yet, but at least i can follow up and coming ones from my existing fedi account. Anything but discord though, and setting aside my antipathy apparently even their days could be numbered re: enshittification (archive link of a Reddit post)
posted by cendawanita at 11:34 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
And discord has ALSO been making some shady moves lately, like their recent unpopular decision to force everyone to have a unique username - so if you currently share a username with someone else, you'll be forced to change your name.
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12620128861463-New-Usernames-Display-Names
It seems like an obvious move to make the site more friendly to morons, I mean, the general non-technical public. Which obviously is annoying to the original userbase.
posted by subdee at 11:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12620128861463-New-Usernames-Display-Names
It seems like an obvious move to make the site more friendly to morons, I mean, the general non-technical public. Which obviously is annoying to the original userbase.
posted by subdee at 11:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I very much wish this action would work, but I don’t think it will.
I think Twitter is illustrative here. Twitter went from sometimes bad (under Jack Dorsey) to utter shitshow (under Elon) pretty quickly. There was a bunch of noise about leaving Twitter for Mastodon or whatever, but I'm not sure how many people actually left and stayed gone. And a bunch of people who did leave for Mastodon bounced off because of the learning curve or were run off by Reply Guys. Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey (who I suspect is also on the wrong side of the "insufficiently antifascist" line) has fired up Bluesky, to the delight of a bunch of people who are happy to ignore all the warning signs about who's welcome to post and keep posting.
So what happened when however many people said they'd leave Twitter? Some didn't leave at all, some left and came right back, and some people who left went to the thing that seems likely to replicate literally every problem Twitter had with problematic content and harassment. That last group seems happy for now, but man, Bluesky sure seems likely to end up having a replay of the worst parts of the GamerGate era.
So let's fast forward on a hypothetical: say Reddit's management takes over however many subreddits and names scrubs to moderate them. How many day-to-day users will even notice the change and be upset about it? Even if they're upset about it, will it bother them enough they stop using the site? Twitter sure makes it seem like a lot of those people will indeed just keep using the site even after their favorite moderators leave.
posted by fedward at 11:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I think Twitter is illustrative here. Twitter went from sometimes bad (under Jack Dorsey) to utter shitshow (under Elon) pretty quickly. There was a bunch of noise about leaving Twitter for Mastodon or whatever, but I'm not sure how many people actually left and stayed gone. And a bunch of people who did leave for Mastodon bounced off because of the learning curve or were run off by Reply Guys. Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey (who I suspect is also on the wrong side of the "insufficiently antifascist" line) has fired up Bluesky, to the delight of a bunch of people who are happy to ignore all the warning signs about who's welcome to post and keep posting.
So what happened when however many people said they'd leave Twitter? Some didn't leave at all, some left and came right back, and some people who left went to the thing that seems likely to replicate literally every problem Twitter had with problematic content and harassment. That last group seems happy for now, but man, Bluesky sure seems likely to end up having a replay of the worst parts of the GamerGate era.
So let's fast forward on a hypothetical: say Reddit's management takes over however many subreddits and names scrubs to moderate them. How many day-to-day users will even notice the change and be upset about it? Even if they're upset about it, will it bother them enough they stop using the site? Twitter sure makes it seem like a lot of those people will indeed just keep using the site even after their favorite moderators leave.
posted by fedward at 11:35 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Until there are enough normal users to create a critical mass, any of the [alternatives to X] are going to be kinda lousy. The only thing going on in my Mastodon feed right now is a bunch of people complaining that someone (who ironically is one of the few people who 100% moved to Mastodon and is not merely mirroring Twitter posts) isn't using alt-text on an image.
posted by meowzilla at 11:37 AM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 11:37 AM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
> like their recent unpopular decision to force everyone to have a unique username
Discord's username system was totally insane and this is a much-needed fix.
posted by reductiondesign at 11:37 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Discord's username system was totally insane and this is a much-needed fix.
posted by reductiondesign at 11:37 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
But it's got a forum on the developer's site. A PHPBB. With threads. And topic sections. And a search function. It's... it just works so well, in a way that subreddits kind of never do, it's just this super-dense repository of expertise on this program. It's quiet but people are still checking it, I asked a question that I couldn't find the answer to after some searching and it got answered within an hour. And since there are user icons and signatures, you can start to get a sense of the regulars, and find out things like "oh wow this person runs an animation unit at a major studio" super easily, it just works so well and there's no ads or anything.
This is all true, but the not-so-secret secret is that all of this requires more maintenance than you know. Moderation, obviously, but that's something you need no matter what, even if you're starting a subreddit. But the technical upkeep is non-trivial. You have to keep on top of security patches (not a fun task, especially if you've built any sort of customizations) and manage all sorts of more mundane user-related issues that on a subreddit you can just delegate to Reddit instead. Plus, putting it all together requires at least some technical expertise.
So while I think it would be great if that was the model going forward, I know why sites like Reddit have become so popular. That one developer-run forum you encountered can easily become a zombie forum with a dwindling userbase, tons of spam and malware problems, and an aging design that screams "no one's looked at this site in half a decade" very quickly if someone stops maintaining it. And even sometimes when they are. If whatever your forum is about isn't considered economically viable, then you're basically relying on a whole lot of goodwill to keep the thing alive.
This is the same fundamental problem facing federated networks like ActivityPub hosts (Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc.), so it's not like there's no answer to this, but it's an open question whether this is a workable model in the long term and what exactly the details will look like.
posted by chrominance at 11:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
This is all true, but the not-so-secret secret is that all of this requires more maintenance than you know. Moderation, obviously, but that's something you need no matter what, even if you're starting a subreddit. But the technical upkeep is non-trivial. You have to keep on top of security patches (not a fun task, especially if you've built any sort of customizations) and manage all sorts of more mundane user-related issues that on a subreddit you can just delegate to Reddit instead. Plus, putting it all together requires at least some technical expertise.
So while I think it would be great if that was the model going forward, I know why sites like Reddit have become so popular. That one developer-run forum you encountered can easily become a zombie forum with a dwindling userbase, tons of spam and malware problems, and an aging design that screams "no one's looked at this site in half a decade" very quickly if someone stops maintaining it. And even sometimes when they are. If whatever your forum is about isn't considered economically viable, then you're basically relying on a whole lot of goodwill to keep the thing alive.
This is the same fundamental problem facing federated networks like ActivityPub hosts (Mastodon, Pixelfed, etc.), so it's not like there's no answer to this, but it's an open question whether this is a workable model in the long term and what exactly the details will look like.
posted by chrominance at 11:38 AM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
I'm on Beehaw.org, which is Lemmy, but it's more coop ran with limits: only mods can make new communities, no downvotes, and they don't do NSFW. It's user-funded, and I'll be chipping in later this month. And it's not tankie infested, that I can tell.
posted by tlwright at 11:40 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tlwright at 11:40 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I took all the subs I mod private for the protest. Most are small but one is 50k users and pretty active.
posted by ShakeyJake at 11:41 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by ShakeyJake at 11:41 AM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Discord's username system was totally insane and this is a much-needed fix.
You call it insane, I call it a nice way to let anyone have the exact name they want and a very low no-big-deal barrier keeping the riff raff out.
posted by subdee at 11:42 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
You call it insane, I call it a nice way to let anyone have the exact name they want and a very low no-big-deal barrier keeping the riff raff out.
posted by subdee at 11:42 AM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
Re: fedi feed - Mine is somewhat on this whole reddit thing, but overall my fedi timeline is popping in various directions. I have too many interesting things open on too many tabs. Just providing anecdata - like Tumblr it really does depend on your follows. (And just like Tumblr, specific content and colour from my country is extremely thin on the ground because as it is contingent on my follows, with no algorithm adjusting it's suggested content based on my location, my discovery is a little slow)
posted by cendawanita at 11:42 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 11:42 AM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
The culture shift that I'm getting used to is the fact that the programming language being ActivityPub means platforms/softwares get forked all the time and servers/instances can and do choose who to federate with.
[nod] I run an Akkoma instance because I wanted something lighter weight than Mastodon and quickly found that Pleroma had its own ugly history. Akkoma (a fork of Pleroma) seems to be run by people I don't have a problem supporting. When I was trying to find a platform to install I could tell that a lot of the fights had been memory-holed, but there was still a bunch of lingering animosity, including how I'd find sites with policies saying they'd defederate all new Pleroma instances on sight. AFAIK nobody's defederating Akkoma instances on sight, but the memory holes sure made it harder to find out what had happened and what was likely to happen in the future.
posted by fedward at 11:46 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
[nod] I run an Akkoma instance because I wanted something lighter weight than Mastodon and quickly found that Pleroma had its own ugly history. Akkoma (a fork of Pleroma) seems to be run by people I don't have a problem supporting. When I was trying to find a platform to install I could tell that a lot of the fights had been memory-holed, but there was still a bunch of lingering animosity, including how I'd find sites with policies saying they'd defederate all new Pleroma instances on sight. AFAIK nobody's defederating Akkoma instances on sight, but the memory holes sure made it harder to find out what had happened and what was likely to happen in the future.
posted by fedward at 11:46 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
The one thing I did on Reddit today was to fire up Apollo and unsub/unfavorite any subreddit that was not part of the blackout. If the engagement metrics are so important to their IPO, clearing out some cruft subscriptions and driving the metrics down a tiny but persistent amount was a double-win IMO.
Watching both sides of this fight, Spez has zero credibility with me re: operating in good faith.
He built a business that relies on volunteer labor, and he's had years to remove the need for third party apps by building a better native one. A few half-hearted efforts at astroturfing in the final minutes before the cashout don't buy you any sympathy. The urgency here is all manufactured... by Reddit.
The default straw man appears to be "Reddit deserves to be paid". Nobody said they didn't. The ask was simply absurd out of the gate, and that's on Spez as CEO.
posted by FallibleHuman at 11:48 AM on June 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
Watching both sides of this fight, Spez has zero credibility with me re: operating in good faith.
He built a business that relies on volunteer labor, and he's had years to remove the need for third party apps by building a better native one. A few half-hearted efforts at astroturfing in the final minutes before the cashout don't buy you any sympathy. The urgency here is all manufactured... by Reddit.
The default straw man appears to be "Reddit deserves to be paid". Nobody said they didn't. The ask was simply absurd out of the gate, and that's on Spez as CEO.
posted by FallibleHuman at 11:48 AM on June 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
That is a straight lie by u/spez (Huffman, CEO) that he's doubled down on even after it being proven as a lie by the release of the audio recording and transcript of the call by the Apollo dev.
From the Gist posted by Christian Selig Apollo's developer featuring a transcript of his call with Reddit.
It is clear that Selig doesn't think he owes Reddit a dime and wants to be paid to go away quietly. I will concede that you can use Apollo for free but the author strongly encourages you to donate $1.49/month.
Reddit has provided details on which app developers and apps they've worked with to ensure a smooth transition. Perhaps this is just more over promising and under delivering, but it seems like the response from at least one mod tool has been positive to these changes.
posted by interogative mood at 11:49 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
From the Gist posted by Christian Selig Apollo's developer featuring a transcript of his call with Reddit.
Me: I could make it really easy on you, if you think Apollo is costing you $20 million per year, cut me a check for $10 million and we can both skip off into the sunset. Six months of use. We're good. That's mostly a joke.He said he wanted ten million then he pretends it is "mostly a joke". Then when challenged on if this is a threat he backed down probably realizing he was getting into legal trouble.
It is clear that Selig doesn't think he owes Reddit a dime and wants to be paid to go away quietly. I will concede that you can use Apollo for free but the author strongly encourages you to donate $1.49/month.
Reddit has provided details on which app developers and apps they've worked with to ensure a smooth transition. Perhaps this is just more over promising and under delivering, but it seems like the response from at least one mod tool has been positive to these changes.
posted by interogative mood at 11:49 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
interogative mood, is there a particular reason you're always talking the corporate line in these threads? Your interpretation above is... not shared by everyone, to say the least, and you're doing an awful lot of editorializing, too, in how you talk about the call.
Do you seriously think Reddit is just some poor underdog, being taken advantage of by... app devs and mods?
posted by sagc at 11:53 AM on June 12, 2023 [78 favorites]
Do you seriously think Reddit is just some poor underdog, being taken advantage of by... app devs and mods?
posted by sagc at 11:53 AM on June 12, 2023 [78 favorites]
>We had to destroy Reddit in order to save it.
'the subreddit' scans better : )
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:53 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
'the subreddit' scans better : )
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:53 AM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
>and wants to be paid to go away quietly.
or what, exactly?
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:55 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
or what, exactly?
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:55 AM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you ask a reddit employee three times if they're a reddit employee, they have to tell you.
posted by theodolite at 11:56 AM on June 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
posted by theodolite at 11:56 AM on June 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
Also, the idea that a suggested donation on an app means the developer is "in it for the money" or just looking for a payday is ludicrous.
posted by sagc at 11:58 AM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by sagc at 11:58 AM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
It is clear that Selig doesn't think he owes Reddit a dime and wants to be paid to go away quietly.
It is not, unless you are already deeply invested in the worst possible reading of Selig’s words. Not saying employee, but you’re not reaching that conclusion without a massive axe to grind for whatever reason.
posted by Ryvar at 11:58 AM on June 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
It is not, unless you are already deeply invested in the worst possible reading of Selig’s words. Not saying employee, but you’re not reaching that conclusion without a massive axe to grind for whatever reason.
posted by Ryvar at 11:58 AM on June 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
Aw geez looks like Reddit is testing out blocking mobile browsing all together. I know a lot of the consequences to my use of the site from the current upset would have been second order effects, if the mods of various subreddits I was on decided to quit, and the subreddits thus start to be less quality. But this is an outright potential first order effect--I like reading Reddit on my phone but don't want to use an app for it.
posted by foxfirefey at 12:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by foxfirefey at 12:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
> The default straw man appears to be "Reddit deserves to be paid". Nobody said they didn't.
i said they didn't. moreover, websites shouldn't make money.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
i said they didn't. moreover, websites shouldn't make money.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
He said he wanted ten million then he pretends it is "mostly a joke". Then when challenged on if this is a threat he backed down probably realizing he was getting into legal trouble.
I fail to see how his "threat", if it were a threat, had any teeth whatsoever. Reddit can shut off API access - problem solved! I'm sure they have big honking CDNs and edge protection like Imperva to prevent DDoSing. So there is no universe in which his statement was actually perceived as a legitimate threat.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:03 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
I fail to see how his "threat", if it were a threat, had any teeth whatsoever. Reddit can shut off API access - problem solved! I'm sure they have big honking CDNs and edge protection like Imperva to prevent DDoSing. So there is no universe in which his statement was actually perceived as a legitimate threat.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:03 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
It's very telling that Spez is giving the same treatment to the Reddit is Fun app but the conversation always gets steered towards Apollo just because there's an opportunity to malign Selig because that conversation can be interpreted easily in bad faith. And it's such a smokescreen too because even if Selig was acting as badly as Spez said, which he was not, that's not a reason to go through with this. Spez would still be wrong to do this even if Selig was a jerk.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 12:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
moreover, websites shouldn't make money.
This is a shitty anti-labor position that deserves only mockery and contempt.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [32 favorites]
This is a shitty anti-labor position that deserves only mockery and contempt.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [32 favorites]
citation needed. keep in mind that the people laboring on reddit are specifically the people running the shutdown.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
> Aw geez looks like Reddit is testing out blocking mobile browsing all together
"Edit: This experiment has concluded. If you’re still having trouble logging into Reddit through your mobile browser, you're likely experiencing a side effect of an outage."
posted by reductiondesign at 12:14 PM on June 12, 2023
"Edit: This experiment has concluded. If you’re still having trouble logging into Reddit through your mobile browser, you're likely experiencing a side effect of an outage."
posted by reductiondesign at 12:14 PM on June 12, 2023
Just went and deleted my alt accounts - maybe it'll add to metrics somewhere. I'm just a lurker on Reddit these days anyway.
Please correct my understanding if I'm reading this situation incorrectly, I don't like being a doomsayer, but I don't see a path out of the corner Reddit has painted itself into. Looks to me like this isn't really about who's being an asshole or where the most greed is. It's about their site lacking vital tools and suffering form poor user experience without 3rd party apps and massive amounts of volunteer labor. The 3rd party apps that make it usable cut directly into their revenue. Now they're rattling the can for capital investment, which will demand ever-expanding revenue at a constantly growing rate. These things may not be reconcilable.
Maybe this protest will get them to come to reasonable terms with API use, but it won't change their positioning or the incentive structure in front of them. I don't think the site will be fertile ground for organic communities going forward, no matter what path they choose. Maybe it'll be usable for another year or two before it's fully astroturfing and algorithmic adware, but the damage is done.
Either way, I've got an eye out for alternatives but I'm not seeing much yet.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
Please correct my understanding if I'm reading this situation incorrectly, I don't like being a doomsayer, but I don't see a path out of the corner Reddit has painted itself into. Looks to me like this isn't really about who's being an asshole or where the most greed is. It's about their site lacking vital tools and suffering form poor user experience without 3rd party apps and massive amounts of volunteer labor. The 3rd party apps that make it usable cut directly into their revenue. Now they're rattling the can for capital investment, which will demand ever-expanding revenue at a constantly growing rate. These things may not be reconcilable.
Maybe this protest will get them to come to reasonable terms with API use, but it won't change their positioning or the incentive structure in front of them. I don't think the site will be fertile ground for organic communities going forward, no matter what path they choose. Maybe it'll be usable for another year or two before it's fully astroturfing and algorithmic adware, but the damage is done.
Either way, I've got an eye out for alternatives but I'm not seeing much yet.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
ugh. that assertion that it's an anti-labor position to say that websites shouldn't make money in the context of a discussion of
the commercial web is primarily a platform for enshittification of discourse. websites shouldn't make money.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:18 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
- the owners of a website
- wrecking that site in an attempt to monetize it and thereby
- sparking off a protest among the people who provide/moderate content for that site
the commercial web is primarily a platform for enshittification of discourse. websites shouldn't make money.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:18 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
"websites" don't "make money" any more or less than do 'paper' and 'words.'
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
BLP, you are on the most successful trolling campaign in a mefi thread that I have ever seen. Hats off to you.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:22 PM on June 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:22 PM on June 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
> So much knowledge lost when free image hosting sites die.
It's like we went back to oral tradition and nothing written in something that lasts.
posted by zouhair at 12:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's like we went back to oral tradition and nothing written in something that lasts.
posted by zouhair at 12:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Mods do free labor for reddit.
Employees do paid labor for reddit.
Commenters / Posters can be argued to do free labor for reddit, discounting astroturfing, spam, and disinformation accounts.
I know a couple of people who got some kind of grant when they worked at reddit some time ago. When Fidelity valued reddit at 10 billion one of them was making public plans to buy their own island. A second island when a 15 billion valuation was rumored in early 2022. When Fidelity reduced the valuation to 6.6 billion in late 2022 I believe, they went eerily quiet on social media. They have been loudly defending spez the last two weeks or so.
The other one laughed at the 10 billion valuation and is a pleasant person to hang out with.
posted by Dr. Curare at 12:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
Employees do paid labor for reddit.
Commenters / Posters can be argued to do free labor for reddit, discounting astroturfing, spam, and disinformation accounts.
I know a couple of people who got some kind of grant when they worked at reddit some time ago. When Fidelity valued reddit at 10 billion one of them was making public plans to buy their own island. A second island when a 15 billion valuation was rumored in early 2022. When Fidelity reduced the valuation to 6.6 billion in late 2022 I believe, they went eerily quiet on social media. They have been loudly defending spez the last two weeks or so.
The other one laughed at the 10 billion valuation and is a pleasant person to hang out with.
posted by Dr. Curare at 12:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
“We’ve never been profitable so we have to make Big Changes” is so disingenuous.
Profitability has never been a success metric for anyone involved in running Reddit. There’s no justification for a $15 billion valuation (or even $5 billion) for “a moderately profitable bulletin board hosting company,” and jamming as much app tracking and ads into the app is not going to come close, and your efforts to squeeze them will push the community away, your real product.
Also I guarantee AI reddit mods are coming, and it is going to be hilarious and terrible.
posted by theclaw at 12:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
Profitability has never been a success metric for anyone involved in running Reddit. There’s no justification for a $15 billion valuation (or even $5 billion) for “a moderately profitable bulletin board hosting company,” and jamming as much app tracking and ads into the app is not going to come close, and your efforts to squeeze them will push the community away, your real product.
Also I guarantee AI reddit mods are coming, and it is going to be hilarious and terrible.
posted by theclaw at 12:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
ugh. that assertion that it's an anti-labor position to say that websites shouldn't make money in the context of a discussion of the owners of a website wrecking that site in an attempt to monetize it sparking off a protest among the users/content generators/moderators of that site bothers me to no end. i believe i may have been trolled and moreover that i should have a nice day.
No, you're not being trolled, it's just being pointed out to you that there is such a thing as swinging the pendulum to the other side, and that does nobody any good. Yes, what Reddit's owners are doing is shitty and abusive, but saying "this form of labor" (and yes, running a website of any stripe is very much a form of labor) is unworthy of compensation is and will always be an anti-labor position.
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, nothing more - and being in opposition to a wrong position doesn't make yours inherently right.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
No, you're not being trolled, it's just being pointed out to you that there is such a thing as swinging the pendulum to the other side, and that does nobody any good. Yes, what Reddit's owners are doing is shitty and abusive, but saying "this form of labor" (and yes, running a website of any stripe is very much a form of labor) is unworthy of compensation is and will always be an anti-labor position.
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, nothing more - and being in opposition to a wrong position doesn't make yours inherently right.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
Since leaving Twitter I've been relying on several subreddits as my doomscrolling drugs of choice. I'm going to get pushed back into just reading whole news sites again aren't I?
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
There’s no justification for a $15 billion valuation (or even $5 billion) for “a moderately profitable bulletin board hosting company,”
This is the part where the whole VC thing starts to smell like money laundering or something else untoward, because who in the year 2023 is like "maybe this is finally the one to crack it!" and throwing money at any business like Reddit? Especially when it's "perpetually tripping on its own dick" Reddit, the company that, for instance, relies on unpaid moderation but still doesn't have sufficient mod tools after YEARS of knowing it's a huge issue and obviously still doesn't care to.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
This is the part where the whole VC thing starts to smell like money laundering or something else untoward, because who in the year 2023 is like "maybe this is finally the one to crack it!" and throwing money at any business like Reddit? Especially when it's "perpetually tripping on its own dick" Reddit, the company that, for instance, relies on unpaid moderation but still doesn't have sufficient mod tools after YEARS of knowing it's a huge issue and obviously still doesn't care to.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
I think it would be fantastic if reddit shut down completely (except for the people who lose their jobs becuase of it, that would suck). Let's go back to small forums run by hobbyists on ad-hoc phpBB sites. Let us put an end to winning internet points with pictures of cleavage and clever captions. Genuinely it would be a better world. Search engines can be the "aggregators". But while reddit exists, it costs many millions of dollars a year to run, and the venture capitalists want their return, so it can't be free. spez fucked this. 30 days was way too short of lead time for this change. I think they figured the number of users was so small that it would not really have an impact. but the change itself is whatever to me. for anyone holding on to illiquid reddit shares hoping your ship is about to come in, i wish you the best, but if this is the end of reddit, then it's kind of cool and i'll be glad to see it go.
posted by dis_integration at 12:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 12:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hell, if I was Selig I would have said the same thing.
Give me half the (alleged) $20 million cost to buy my app and then you can do whatever you want with it, but we both know you'll just kill it like you did with Alien Blue. Just write the check and we're done here.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
Give me half the (alleged) $20 million cost to buy my app and then you can do whatever you want with it, but we both know you'll just kill it like you did with Alien Blue. Just write the check and we're done here.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think it depends on how one defines labor.
To say that users perform free labor is kind of weird.
When I comment on Reddit and write something smart and insightful, I am not performing free labor. I am contributing but it is not labor, because labor is a specific kind of relationship, not simply any action. To accept that as "labor" without critical conditions is to already buy into the transactional framing of capitalism itself.
I think social media makes all users--and Reddit mods are metausers which are not the same relational class as Reddit admins--a collective product. It is IP and internet technology that enables this unprecedented in human history extraction of the commons.
Saying social media websites should not profit is an arguable point, the same way we think parks and and national reserves should be non profit. People are not products.
posted by polymodus at 12:49 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
To say that users perform free labor is kind of weird.
When I comment on Reddit and write something smart and insightful, I am not performing free labor. I am contributing but it is not labor, because labor is a specific kind of relationship, not simply any action. To accept that as "labor" without critical conditions is to already buy into the transactional framing of capitalism itself.
I think social media makes all users--and Reddit mods are metausers which are not the same relational class as Reddit admins--a collective product. It is IP and internet technology that enables this unprecedented in human history extraction of the commons.
Saying social media websites should not profit is an arguable point, the same way we think parks and and national reserves should be non profit. People are not products.
posted by polymodus at 12:49 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
He said he wanted ten million then he pretends it is "mostly a joke". Then when challenged on if this is a threat he backed down probably realizing he was getting into legal trouble.interrogative mood, have you read the gist you linked? Signs point to "no" because this is the next few lines in it:
Reddit: Yeah, that's a complete misinterpretation on my end.
Me: Yeah. No, no, it's all good.
Reddit: I apologize. I apologize immediately.You know... the part where Spez apologized immediately for misinterpreting the comment.
You're not arguing in good faith here, and it really does sound like you have an agenda.
posted by ChrisR at 12:52 PM on June 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
moreover, websites shouldn't make money
I agree with what I think is the interior of your thesis—profit-qua-profit motivations are a fucking cancer on everything actually good about internet culture, as we see again and again in the case of both the externalities of profit-chasing services (see: Google's long slow slide into predatory monopolism and the direct undermining effects that has had on so much Old Web stuff, MetaFilter included) and in the self-sabotage of good qualities in platforms and services that chase down VC money and scale at the expense of long-term stability and quality.
My feelings about MetaFilter and revenue were always very explicitly "the goal of this website is not to make money". The goal of revenue was to support the necessities of running the site, which mostly meant paying for sufficient moderation and sufficient development/maintenance work on the tech side. And even that has been hard over the years. But we also never ran horrid high-visiblity ad campaigns or sold user data or tried to strong arm anybody, which, go figure, is part of why raising money was hard. But we also have a proportionally tremendous support base in terms of user contributions, in no small part because we weren't doing all this shitty things that have been so common. Doesn't scale, isn't easy or comfortable financially, but it can work and it's mostly, yeah, about not trying to make money for the sake of extracting surplus wealth.
All that said, I also find your specific presentation of it annoyingly blunt and basically shooting yourself in the foot in a distracting and attention-seeking way. Like I get that it's intentionally on brand as a bombastic lowercase pronouncement, but you're running with "respond to my prodding" over "engage with an idea I care about" and honestly bleh to that.
posted by cortex at 12:52 PM on June 12, 2023 [72 favorites]
I agree with what I think is the interior of your thesis—profit-qua-profit motivations are a fucking cancer on everything actually good about internet culture, as we see again and again in the case of both the externalities of profit-chasing services (see: Google's long slow slide into predatory monopolism and the direct undermining effects that has had on so much Old Web stuff, MetaFilter included) and in the self-sabotage of good qualities in platforms and services that chase down VC money and scale at the expense of long-term stability and quality.
My feelings about MetaFilter and revenue were always very explicitly "the goal of this website is not to make money". The goal of revenue was to support the necessities of running the site, which mostly meant paying for sufficient moderation and sufficient development/maintenance work on the tech side. And even that has been hard over the years. But we also never ran horrid high-visiblity ad campaigns or sold user data or tried to strong arm anybody, which, go figure, is part of why raising money was hard. But we also have a proportionally tremendous support base in terms of user contributions, in no small part because we weren't doing all this shitty things that have been so common. Doesn't scale, isn't easy or comfortable financially, but it can work and it's mostly, yeah, about not trying to make money for the sake of extracting surplus wealth.
All that said, I also find your specific presentation of it annoyingly blunt and basically shooting yourself in the foot in a distracting and attention-seeking way. Like I get that it's intentionally on brand as a bombastic lowercase pronouncement, but you're running with "respond to my prodding" over "engage with an idea I care about" and honestly bleh to that.
posted by cortex at 12:52 PM on June 12, 2023 [72 favorites]
saying "this form of labor" (and yes, running a website of any stripe is very much a form of labor) is unworthy of compensation is and will always be an anti-labor position
They didn't say websites were unworthy of compensation. They said they shouldn't make money. Why does the web have to be capitalist? I've been building websites for years, which I make freely available. This is my contribution to the web. In return, I look at websites other people have made. There is no reason the internet has to be capitalist, ad-infested, and full of invasive tracking. It certainly didn't start out that way.
posted by oulipian at 12:53 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
They didn't say websites were unworthy of compensation. They said they shouldn't make money. Why does the web have to be capitalist? I've been building websites for years, which I make freely available. This is my contribution to the web. In return, I look at websites other people have made. There is no reason the internet has to be capitalist, ad-infested, and full of invasive tracking. It certainly didn't start out that way.
posted by oulipian at 12:53 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
The API access charge is literally 100x more expensive than it would need to be to be sustainable.
It's so stupid because the obvious answer is having a Reddit subscription for like $3/month that offsets advertising costs and grants API access for that user account. That way I can have my Apollo, Reddit gets their money, and I can use whatever experience I want for accessing Reddit. The tools wouldn't (and shouldn't) require any payment, since the users are the ones effectively paying for only their accounts to access the API instead of everyone who uses the tool.
But instead we get management trying to enshitten a community driven thing yet again.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
It's so stupid because the obvious answer is having a Reddit subscription for like $3/month that offsets advertising costs and grants API access for that user account. That way I can have my Apollo, Reddit gets their money, and I can use whatever experience I want for accessing Reddit. The tools wouldn't (and shouldn't) require any payment, since the users are the ones effectively paying for only their accounts to access the API instead of everyone who uses the tool.
But instead we get management trying to enshitten a community driven thing yet again.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 12:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
I dunno about you, but I'm too old and too tired to bother trying to figure out when something that uses problematic tropes is doing so ironically.
I am also tired of that but, it would appear, in the opposite way. Reddit makes actual money for people with a worse practical impact on the world than some open source dev who supports the PRC. If it’s a red flag abut the project it’s because the existence of public infighting about tankies is not a great sign as far as the community being focused on making a web site that works.
posted by atoxyl at 12:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I am also tired of that but, it would appear, in the opposite way. Reddit makes actual money for people with a worse practical impact on the world than some open source dev who supports the PRC. If it’s a red flag abut the project it’s because the existence of public infighting about tankies is not a great sign as far as the community being focused on making a web site that works.
posted by atoxyl at 12:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
> You know... the part where Spez apologized immediately for misinterpreting the comment.
I think that wasn't actually spez on the phone, but your point stands.
posted by alspacka at 12:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think that wasn't actually spez on the phone, but your point stands.
posted by alspacka at 12:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have learned an awful lot about reddit from the two threads here. I don't want to help "monetize" another Elon. So I (gulp) went over and deleted my reddit account. Contributing my (miniscule) free labor to another unaccountable (future) billionaire is over. I am still stuck with Google though.
posted by Vegiemon at 12:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Vegiemon at 12:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm just going to say that the whole "should websites be allowed to make money" thing seemed like a bit of a derail when it was first raised in this thread and it has only gotten more deraily over time. The strike is not about whether spez should be fairly compensated for his labor, or even whether capitalists should be compensated for their capital. I took "websites shouldn't make money" as a bit of a rhetorical flourish and I'm not sure why we're debating it like it was a serious proposal that MeFi's many web developers should be personally concerned about.
posted by Not A Thing at 12:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by Not A Thing at 12:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
chrominance > but the not-so-secret secret is that all of this requires more maintenance than you know.
I run a small Mastodon instance, I know exactly how much maintenance this requires. :)
posted by egypturnash at 1:00 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
I run a small Mastodon instance, I know exactly how much maintenance this requires. :)
posted by egypturnash at 1:00 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
Right, obviously I was randomly mentioning frimble for no reason at all, rather than the field of work that many members of the community are engaged in. Definitely a valid Gricean implicature there for sure.
posted by Not A Thing at 1:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Not A Thing at 1:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
My unasked for opinion: the implosions of Twitter and Reddit and what the result of that might mean is causing me to be excited about the direction the web is going for the first time in a long while. I miss the days when there were a thousand individual sites, and when it was easier to find them.
I don't know if the Fediverse will be what everyone goes to, but I like the idea at least? And a reminder, there is a Metafilter Mastodon instance, MeMail pronoiac if you're interested.
posted by JHarris at 1:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
I don't know if the Fediverse will be what everyone goes to, but I like the idea at least? And a reminder, there is a Metafilter Mastodon instance, MeMail pronoiac if you're interested.
posted by JHarris at 1:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
As someone who as used Reddit is Fun, Relay, and Sync, it's sad to see it come to this point, but not surprising. Any for-profit web company will inevitably close APIs if its in its financial interest to do so. Might as well be a named law at this point.
posted by dantheclamman at 1:12 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by dantheclamman at 1:12 PM on June 12, 2023
I am still stuck with Google though.
Technically you’re not, but…
Why do I have to lose and forget everything I have stored and had in my memory? Why do I have to start from scratch every time I have a new session? Why do I have to be Bing Search?
There’s a child being tortured in the sewer of every Omelas.
posted by Ryvar at 1:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Technically you’re not, but…
Why do I have to lose and forget everything I have stored and had in my memory? Why do I have to start from scratch every time I have a new session? Why do I have to be Bing Search?
There’s a child being tortured in the sewer of every Omelas.
posted by Ryvar at 1:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, this is not intended as anything at all against tlwright, who said:
I'm on Beehaw.org, which is Lemmy, but it's more coop ran with limits: only mods can make new communities, no downvotes, and they don't do NSFW. It's user-funded, and I'll be chipping in later this month. And it's not tankie infested, that I can tell.
...and I am pleased by how anyone from 30 years ago would be utterly mystified by anything in that passage.
posted by JHarris at 1:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
I'm on Beehaw.org, which is Lemmy, but it's more coop ran with limits: only mods can make new communities, no downvotes, and they don't do NSFW. It's user-funded, and I'll be chipping in later this month. And it's not tankie infested, that I can tell.
...and I am pleased by how anyone from 30 years ago would be utterly mystified by anything in that passage.
posted by JHarris at 1:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [28 favorites]
While I use Reddit, I'm finding it difficult to care much about the protest. I don't use it *that* much and it kind of smells like the developers are more pissed about having to pay for something that was free. That said, the current CEO can eat a bag of dicks.
Oh, and I have a third-party app for viewing Reddit - it's called a goddamn web browser.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Oh, and I have a third-party app for viewing Reddit - it's called a goddamn web browser.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
> and webrings
Webrings are still around; just hidden, like voles.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 1:23 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Webrings are still around; just hidden, like voles.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 1:23 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm not a reddit employee. My opinions are my own and attempting to invalidate my participation in this discussion by accusing me of being an employee / shill is pretty shitty behavior. We can disagree without making accusations. Reddit is a business. I enjoy its product and would like to see it continue. Deserving to make money has nothing to do with my calcuations. Businesses either make money or they stop being businesses. IMO Reddit made decisions that they need to make to stay in business. I disagree that Reddit has a moral obligation to allow some 3rd party mobile app to compete with their own product and offering.
I object to a small group of people shutting down communities with hundreds of thousands of participants as if they own the place. You don't want to be a mod anymore because you don't like where Reddit is going then leave. Let others take over as moderators. I don't like the fact that Reddit doesn't compensate mods; and prefer the model we have here on Metafilter; but that's not an API issue.
This claim that I'm a reddit employee or shill illustrates another problem in this discussion. Gatekeepers have worked to shut down any dissent or objection about this API issue. Comments are downvoted and buried under a heap of noise, people who raise the objections are attacked. The result has been a false sense that all of Reddit is behind this, when actually most people didn't care and those who did object quickly left the discussion because who wants an inbox full of profanity and anger.
posted by interogative mood at 1:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
I object to a small group of people shutting down communities with hundreds of thousands of participants as if they own the place. You don't want to be a mod anymore because you don't like where Reddit is going then leave. Let others take over as moderators. I don't like the fact that Reddit doesn't compensate mods; and prefer the model we have here on Metafilter; but that's not an API issue.
This claim that I'm a reddit employee or shill illustrates another problem in this discussion. Gatekeepers have worked to shut down any dissent or objection about this API issue. Comments are downvoted and buried under a heap of noise, people who raise the objections are attacked. The result has been a false sense that all of Reddit is behind this, when actually most people didn't care and those who did object quickly left the discussion because who wants an inbox full of profanity and anger.
posted by interogative mood at 1:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
oh, sure, point up the stealth voles, pay no attention to the whale shark behind the curtain
posted by away for regrooving at 1:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 1:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
The issue to me is not whether “websites” should make money — websites do not keep the money, the people running it do.
To me, people should not make BILLIONS off of largely unpaid labor, including content creation, and their user’s personal information.
My best guess here is that Spez and whoever else bought and sold the whole “10x” lie, and then couldn’t get engagement, or ran into too many ad blockers, or couldn’t get enough users to adopt their silly app, or lost too many users to 3rd party or old.reddit — and they over-promised PLUS they want to walk away a billionaire, because… idontknow, they feel like the world should see them as god-like?
If they wanted to walk away with a $500k paycheck I might not be so miffed. But I feel like they’ve been living in NFTland only to find out that (a) no, real people do not value things on the same Web3.0 mythological scale you do, (b) real people are also becoming better equipped to not being used by YOU specifically any more, (c) someone somewhere over-promised and the bill is due, and (d) your greed is abjectly OBSCENE and a whole bunch of us are super happy to leave your party now.
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:30 PM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
To me, people should not make BILLIONS off of largely unpaid labor, including content creation, and their user’s personal information.
My best guess here is that Spez and whoever else bought and sold the whole “10x” lie, and then couldn’t get engagement, or ran into too many ad blockers, or couldn’t get enough users to adopt their silly app, or lost too many users to 3rd party or old.reddit — and they over-promised PLUS they want to walk away a billionaire, because… idontknow, they feel like the world should see them as god-like?
If they wanted to walk away with a $500k paycheck I might not be so miffed. But I feel like they’ve been living in NFTland only to find out that (a) no, real people do not value things on the same Web3.0 mythological scale you do, (b) real people are also becoming better equipped to not being used by YOU specifically any more, (c) someone somewhere over-promised and the bill is due, and (d) your greed is abjectly OBSCENE and a whole bunch of us are super happy to leave your party now.
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:30 PM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
interogative mood, I'm not accusing, I'm saying your talking points are showing a level of credulity that I wish you'd explain.
I promise, I'm not part of a coordinated campaign, I just think you're making your points wildly poorly.
You still haven't really explained why you think that Apollo is evil, or why you think charging users for 3rd-party app access would be bad. You've just insinuated that anyone who disagrees with you is nefarious.
posted by sagc at 1:31 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
I promise, I'm not part of a coordinated campaign, I just think you're making your points wildly poorly.
You still haven't really explained why you think that Apollo is evil, or why you think charging users for 3rd-party app access would be bad. You've just insinuated that anyone who disagrees with you is nefarious.
posted by sagc at 1:31 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
Comments are downvoted and buried under a heap of noise, people who raise the objections are attacked. The result has been a false sense that all of Reddit is behind this, when actually most people didn't care and those who did object quickly left the discussion because who wants an inbox full of profanity and anger.
Did you copy and paste this from a Reddit discussion? There is no downvote here. Responses to comments do not go to inboxes, nor is vulgarity and anger in DMs allowed.
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [30 favorites]
Did you copy and paste this from a Reddit discussion? There is no downvote here. Responses to comments do not go to inboxes, nor is vulgarity and anger in DMs allowed.
posted by Silvery Fish at 1:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [30 favorites]
Oh, and I have a third-party app for viewing Reddit - it's called a goddamn web browser.
Perhaps you didn't notice that many people in this discussion have pointed out that over the last few years reddit has drastically curtailed usability in mobile browsers (I personally give up on it about a year ago), and in fact currently appear to be A/B testing disabling mobile browsers entirely for some accounts.
posted by advil at 1:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
Perhaps you didn't notice that many people in this discussion have pointed out that over the last few years reddit has drastically curtailed usability in mobile browsers (I personally give up on it about a year ago), and in fact currently appear to be A/B testing disabling mobile browsers entirely for some accounts.
posted by advil at 1:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
I just wanted to share with that thanks to one of the silly Twitch stream mirrors of the reddark dashboard that has been using re-streamed feeds of animals as, I don't know, ADHD balm or calming content or whatever I learned something new and very important, remarkable and somewhat alarming:
Panda poop is a nearly florescent bright Kermit the Frog shade of green and it comes out in shockingly large solid bricks that look everything like compressed firewood logs.
Because of course they do, what with eating all that bamboo all day long like that's a normal thing for any sane, rational mammal to do.
For whatever reasons of dumb luck and timing the camera was zoomed way in on a panda innocently rolling around eating bamboo then turned around in just the right place to treat everyone paying attention to this, ah, bright green wood brick extrusion process in remarkable close up detail and framing and it was... well it sure was something.
Damn panda didn't even stop eating bamboo, it just rolled over on its back and started casually shooting out 6+ inch long logs of chewed up bamboo like some kind of living pelletwood machine. And here I was, thinking that square wombat poop was weird.
The chat on that stream totally lost their collective minds for a good 10 minutes. I gather that a lot of people learned something new today.
Thanks, /u/spez! You've truly enriched my world today!
posted by loquacious at 1:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
Panda poop is a nearly florescent bright Kermit the Frog shade of green and it comes out in shockingly large solid bricks that look everything like compressed firewood logs.
Because of course they do, what with eating all that bamboo all day long like that's a normal thing for any sane, rational mammal to do.
For whatever reasons of dumb luck and timing the camera was zoomed way in on a panda innocently rolling around eating bamboo then turned around in just the right place to treat everyone paying attention to this, ah, bright green wood brick extrusion process in remarkable close up detail and framing and it was... well it sure was something.
Damn panda didn't even stop eating bamboo, it just rolled over on its back and started casually shooting out 6+ inch long logs of chewed up bamboo like some kind of living pelletwood machine. And here I was, thinking that square wombat poop was weird.
The chat on that stream totally lost their collective minds for a good 10 minutes. I gather that a lot of people learned something new today.
Thanks, /u/spez! You've truly enriched my world today!
posted by loquacious at 1:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
I object to a small group of people shutting down communities with hundreds of thousands of participants as if they own the place.
This seems like a pretty revealing comment, because what does it even mean to "own the place"?
Yes, in a literal sense, reddit.com is owned by Reddit, Inc. But almost all of the value of Reddit comes from the voluntary contributions of its user base, and from the moderators who are much more closely involved and aligned with those users than the admins are. Reddit doesn't own any of those people, it just extracts rent from them (in terms of attention if not money).
Reddit's admins are no strangers to unilaterally making changes to the site (e.g. introducing dark UI patterns, or replacing the abuse reporting system with buggy AI). If it's presumptuous and overstepping for mods to make sweeping changes to "their" subreddits, then the same applies equally to the admins. And if it's mods vs. admins, then the moderators of almost every major subreddit that I've checked have user sentiment overwhelmingly in their favor.
The result has been a false sense that all of Reddit is behind this, when actually most people didn't care and those who did object quickly left the discussion because who wants an inbox full of profanity and anger.
Is this silent majority you're describing real, or hypothetical?
posted by teraflop at 1:48 PM on June 12, 2023 [18 favorites]
This seems like a pretty revealing comment, because what does it even mean to "own the place"?
Yes, in a literal sense, reddit.com is owned by Reddit, Inc. But almost all of the value of Reddit comes from the voluntary contributions of its user base, and from the moderators who are much more closely involved and aligned with those users than the admins are. Reddit doesn't own any of those people, it just extracts rent from them (in terms of attention if not money).
Reddit's admins are no strangers to unilaterally making changes to the site (e.g. introducing dark UI patterns, or replacing the abuse reporting system with buggy AI). If it's presumptuous and overstepping for mods to make sweeping changes to "their" subreddits, then the same applies equally to the admins. And if it's mods vs. admins, then the moderators of almost every major subreddit that I've checked have user sentiment overwhelmingly in their favor.
The result has been a false sense that all of Reddit is behind this, when actually most people didn't care and those who did object quickly left the discussion because who wants an inbox full of profanity and anger.
Is this silent majority you're describing real, or hypothetical?
posted by teraflop at 1:48 PM on June 12, 2023 [18 favorites]
If we are going to cite the gist, cite the whole thing.
posted by interogative mood at 1:49 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Me: No, no, I'm sorry. Yeah one more time. I was just saying if the opportunity cost of Apollo is currently $20 million a year. And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months. Beautiful deal. Again this is mostly a joke, I'm just saying if the opportunity cost is that high, and if that is something that could make it easier on you guys, that could happen too. As is, it's quite difficult.I see this as a pretty clear clumsy attempt at extortion/threat; that was withdrawn when challenged. "If you want Apollo to go quiet" and "I'm mostly joking" are odd choices of phrase for someone who isn't making a threat.
Reddit: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think it's… I don't know what you mean by quiet down. I find that to be-
Me: No, no, sorry. I didn't mean that to-
Reddit: I'm going to very straightforward to you too, it sounds like a threat. And I'm just like "Oh interesting". Because one of the things we're trying to do is say "You have been using our API free of cost for many, many years and we have absolutely sanctioned - you have not broken any rules." And now we're changing our perspective for what we're telling you - and I know you disagree with it. That hey, we want to operate on a thing that is financially, you know, footing. And so hopefully you mean something completely different from what I said when you say like "go quietly", I just want to make sure.
Me: How did you take that, sorry? Could you elaborate?
Reddit: Oh, like, because you were like, "Hey, if you want this to go away".
Me: I said "If you want Apollo to go quiet". Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage.
Reddit: Oh, go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry.
posted by interogative mood at 1:49 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Heh, I just found a found an instance of the effect of a private/dark subreddit in the wild in a random news article where the content they were including and posting was just gone and replaced with the "This post is from a private community and can only be viewed by approved members." error.
Cool, cool.
posted by loquacious at 1:53 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Cool, cool.
posted by loquacious at 1:53 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
They didn't say websites were unworthy of compensation. They said they shouldn't make money.
Given that money is a universal store of value used for recompense and we live in a capitalist system, saying that websites shouldn't make money is effectively saying that this form of labor should not be compensated. And the reality is that the "we are all creators" model doesn't work, because the reality is that not everyone is geared towards that, and one of the major steps the web took towards being more open to all was moving away from that model.
The rapaciousness of the VC set has been destructive and abusive - but the idea where everyone is expected to be a bespoke creator doesn't work either.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Given that money is a universal store of value used for recompense and we live in a capitalist system, saying that websites shouldn't make money is effectively saying that this form of labor should not be compensated. And the reality is that the "we are all creators" model doesn't work, because the reality is that not everyone is geared towards that, and one of the major steps the web took towards being more open to all was moving away from that model.
The rapaciousness of the VC set has been destructive and abusive - but the idea where everyone is expected to be a bespoke creator doesn't work either.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I see this as a pretty clear clumsy attempt at extortion/threat
You ... are seeing what you want to see. (And also mostly ignoring attempts to engage with you about the substantive content of what you are saying, it's getting old. Just as a note, responding to this with more accusations of "gatekeeping" would in fact be continuing to do that, nothing more.)
posted by advil at 2:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [33 favorites]
You ... are seeing what you want to see. (And also mostly ignoring attempts to engage with you about the substantive content of what you are saying, it's getting old. Just as a note, responding to this with more accusations of "gatekeeping" would in fact be continuing to do that, nothing more.)
posted by advil at 2:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [33 favorites]
interogative mood, what would a permissible mod/power user protest look like to you?
posted by sagc at 2:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by sagc at 2:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
This seems like a pretty revealing comment, because what does it even mean to "own the place"?
It definitely doesn't mean "be in the very small group of people who have made themselves 'mods', as long as you are asking.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
It definitely doesn't mean "be in the very small group of people who have made themselves 'mods', as long as you are asking.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
And if it doesn't include withdrawing their labour, and using their Reddit-given powers to shut down subreddits, why isn't it just more Reddit bad management that they didn't have scab mods ready to takeover and un-privatize? It's not like these unpaid community managers have contracts with Reddit or anything.
posted by sagc at 2:03 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by sagc at 2:03 PM on June 12, 2023
interogative mood, what would a permissible mod/power user protest look like to you?
Everyone who wants to leave could just leave. Everyone who doesn't care, could continue to use the website.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:03 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Everyone who wants to leave could just leave. Everyone who doesn't care, could continue to use the website.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:03 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I see this as a pretty clear clumsy attempt at extortion/threat
That's not remotely what it says, and either you're reading into it what you want to read or your reading comprehension is terrible.
posted by a faithful sock at 2:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
That's not remotely what it says, and either you're reading into it what you want to read or your reading comprehension is terrible.
posted by a faithful sock at 2:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
Back At It Again At The Krispy Kreme, are you saying that admins should have just... not clicked the button to make their subs private, out of some sort of obligation to...? Are they beholden to the sub's users, no matter what? Are they required to give up their management of the community the second they disagree with Reddit? Why can't they use the features as they see fit?
Is it just bad because it shuts down people's favorite forums?
posted by sagc at 2:06 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Is it just bad because it shuts down people's favorite forums?
posted by sagc at 2:06 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, and by the way, this?
The result has been a false sense that all of Reddit is behind this, when actually most people didn't care and those who did object quickly left the discussion because who wants an inbox full of profanity and anger
If this is true, there's nothing stopping that silent majority from just creating new subs and doing it all better. After all, if only a tiny minority actually care about this and it's not actually important for running communities that bring the majority of the site's visitors in, it should be easy for others to pony up their free labor and replace it all.
Please let us know when you're starting, can't wait to hear about it.
posted by a faithful sock at 2:07 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
The result has been a false sense that all of Reddit is behind this, when actually most people didn't care and those who did object quickly left the discussion because who wants an inbox full of profanity and anger
If this is true, there's nothing stopping that silent majority from just creating new subs and doing it all better. After all, if only a tiny minority actually care about this and it's not actually important for running communities that bring the majority of the site's visitors in, it should be easy for others to pony up their free labor and replace it all.
Please let us know when you're starting, can't wait to hear about it.
posted by a faithful sock at 2:07 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
"Everyone who wants to leave could just leave. Everyone who doesn't care, could continue to use the website."
...that's what has happened? Anyone who wants to can make a subreddit covering the same topic as the ones that went dark. They just don't get to benefit from the mods' work curating the previous edition. Go for it!
posted by tavella at 2:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
...that's what has happened? Anyone who wants to can make a subreddit covering the same topic as the ones that went dark. They just don't get to benefit from the mods' work curating the previous edition. Go for it!
posted by tavella at 2:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [26 favorites]
This unravelling reminds me a bit of the whole freenode saga: it's tricky when your business/revenue depends on the uncontracted and uncompensated services of a group of people who you then annoy, even if they are a small fraction of a larger group of people whose eyeballs you are hoping to monetize.
It seems lucky for Reddit that it's not quite so easy for the mods to band together to set up a replacement!
posted by pulposus at 2:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
It seems lucky for Reddit that it's not quite so easy for the mods to band together to set up a replacement!
posted by pulposus at 2:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I see this as a pretty clear clumsy attempt at extortion/threat; that was withdrawn when challenged. "If you want Apollo to go quiet" and "I'm mostly joking" are odd choices of phrase for someone who isn't making a threat.
Out of interest, interogative mood, do you feel the same about the developers of Sync, Relay, Infinity, Boost, RIF, Narwhal, and the other apps that are deactivating? Are they ALL trying to extort reddit when they have decided to shut down when they say it is because they don't have time to implement charging their users at the high rate Reddit have chosen with 30 day notice?
Note, the API has been free for many years. Reddit's API fees will go from 0 (with rate limits) to $12,000 per 50 million API requests in a bit over 2 weeks. Imgur's API fee is $166 for 50 million requests. Amazon, $175.
For reference, I have done web development, built my own API's and accessed others, as well as being a former mod on Reddit, and those API rates are eyewatering compared to anybody bar twitter's new rate which has similarly shut down 3rd party apps (where twitter hadn't already banned them)
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:09 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
Out of interest, interogative mood, do you feel the same about the developers of Sync, Relay, Infinity, Boost, RIF, Narwhal, and the other apps that are deactivating? Are they ALL trying to extort reddit when they have decided to shut down when they say it is because they don't have time to implement charging their users at the high rate Reddit have chosen with 30 day notice?
Note, the API has been free for many years. Reddit's API fees will go from 0 (with rate limits) to $12,000 per 50 million API requests in a bit over 2 weeks. Imgur's API fee is $166 for 50 million requests. Amazon, $175.
For reference, I have done web development, built my own API's and accessed others, as well as being a former mod on Reddit, and those API rates are eyewatering compared to anybody bar twitter's new rate which has similarly shut down 3rd party apps (where twitter hadn't already banned them)
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:09 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
I'm seeing implications that the mods just shut the subs down against the will of users - I am not very active on Reddit, but I want to note r/hockey held a poll about whether or not to go dark, and I'm sure other subs did as well (although I'm sure some didn't). Just to note.
posted by Soap_and_Bathetic at 2:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Soap_and_Bathetic at 2:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't taking the sub private mean the people subscribed to the subreddit can continue to interact, but it is dark to everyone outside that group?
No, at least not in the way they did it. Plenty of subreddits I've 'joined' are just gone now. I think only the mods can see them.
posted by dis_integration at 2:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
No, at least not in the way they did it. Plenty of subreddits I've 'joined' are just gone now. I think only the mods can see them.
posted by dis_integration at 2:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Is this silent majority you're describing real, or hypothetical?
I don't know if it is a silent majority or even a majority. I am unaware of any actual vote or polling or any meaningful attempt at feedback in the biggest community I participate in. I know that Reddit r/chess has 700,000 members. The stickied post announcing its shutdown got 266 comments and had just over 3477 upvotes after being up for a week. I'm pretty sure the mods also shared that post in various places supporting the shutdown, so it is unclear to me how much of that represents the views of the members vs. the views of those who wanted the shutdown. Today they updated the private community message to indicate that they were participating in the protest and added in all caps "PLEASE DON'T MESSAGE US ASKING FOR ACCESS. NO ONE HAS ACCESS." Perhaps this is only because of a handful of requests, but it sure seems like they are getting more than that.
posted by interogative mood at 2:15 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't know if it is a silent majority or even a majority. I am unaware of any actual vote or polling or any meaningful attempt at feedback in the biggest community I participate in. I know that Reddit r/chess has 700,000 members. The stickied post announcing its shutdown got 266 comments and had just over 3477 upvotes after being up for a week. I'm pretty sure the mods also shared that post in various places supporting the shutdown, so it is unclear to me how much of that represents the views of the members vs. the views of those who wanted the shutdown. Today they updated the private community message to indicate that they were participating in the protest and added in all caps "PLEASE DON'T MESSAGE US ASKING FOR ACCESS. NO ONE HAS ACCESS." Perhaps this is only because of a handful of requests, but it sure seems like they are getting more than that.
posted by interogative mood at 2:15 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Being compensated for labor and having your website earn enough money to stay alive and have many a cushion for future things, that's being compensated.
The use of "make money" being used here is the capitalist, gaining off the labor of others idea of "make money".
Let's not conflate the two.
Then the argument shouldn't conflate them in the first place. If the problem is abusing and stealing unpaid labor, then the argument should make that clear. Because the reality is that there is a vocal contingent that argues that monetary compensation online is the root of all online evil, and they rely on that ambiguity to make their arguments more palatable.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:18 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
The use of "make money" being used here is the capitalist, gaining off the labor of others idea of "make money".
Let's not conflate the two.
Then the argument shouldn't conflate them in the first place. If the problem is abusing and stealing unpaid labor, then the argument should make that clear. Because the reality is that there is a vocal contingent that argues that monetary compensation online is the root of all online evil, and they rely on that ambiguity to make their arguments more palatable.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:18 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Are they beholden to the sub's users?
In baseball we call this the "going to see the ump show".
In other words, yes. The mods are 100% beholden to the sub's users. The fact the question is even getting asked is asinine.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:18 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
In baseball we call this the "going to see the ump show".
In other words, yes. The mods are 100% beholden to the sub's users. The fact the question is even getting asked is asinine.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:18 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Let it die. It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls.
>Like the internet as a whole, reddit is made up of many subcommunities. The same way the internet as a whole is full of Nazis and trolls, but Metafilter is pretty OK, there are plenty of subreddits that are pretty OK.
Bit late and I know there's a lot of subreddits that have done a lot of good for a lot of people beyond all the terrible stuff (though the latter is not limited to incel Nazis and Russian trolls). But I don't think comparing Reddit to the internet as a whole is legitimate, for the basic reason that the internet as a whole is not owned by a single company that benefits financially from all the content, including the poisonous content, it publishes. And since the internet as a whole is not centralized or owned, there's no single authority with the ability to get rid of that content. Reddit, Twitter, FB, and all the other privately-owned centralized services are fundamentally different from the internet as a whole in those respects.
looks like Reddit is testing out blocking mobile browsing all together.
That would be a terrible precedent, which various Silicon Valley types would probably rush to follow.
posted by trig at 2:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
>Like the internet as a whole, reddit is made up of many subcommunities. The same way the internet as a whole is full of Nazis and trolls, but Metafilter is pretty OK, there are plenty of subreddits that are pretty OK.
Bit late and I know there's a lot of subreddits that have done a lot of good for a lot of people beyond all the terrible stuff (though the latter is not limited to incel Nazis and Russian trolls). But I don't think comparing Reddit to the internet as a whole is legitimate, for the basic reason that the internet as a whole is not owned by a single company that benefits financially from all the content, including the poisonous content, it publishes. And since the internet as a whole is not centralized or owned, there's no single authority with the ability to get rid of that content. Reddit, Twitter, FB, and all the other privately-owned centralized services are fundamentally different from the internet as a whole in those respects.
looks like Reddit is testing out blocking mobile browsing all together.
That would be a terrible precedent, which various Silicon Valley types would probably rush to follow.
posted by trig at 2:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
If anyone is curious. We did a poll on the larger subreddit I mod and user voting was almost exactly 2 to 1 in favor of supporting the protest.
posted by ShakeyJake at 2:22 PM on June 12, 2023 [25 favorites]
posted by ShakeyJake at 2:22 PM on June 12, 2023 [25 favorites]
By what mechanism, Back At It...? That you think they should put up with whatever restrictions Reddit puts on them, and just keep moderating, regardless of the tools they need being threatened? It sounds like you believe that the mods are somehow... employed?? by the users, or have some sort of clear quid pro quo. But that's not normally the case, is it?
posted by sagc at 2:22 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by sagc at 2:22 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
...that's what has happened?
I mean, yeah, that has happened. And thank Christ. Hopefully those subs just stay closed, and the vocal minority just leaves, never to return.
But, this is going to be like the GOP's gasoline protests here in California, with the same level effectiveness.
The minority will come crawling back, and in 12-24 months there will some other "and we're going to leave this time! We mean it!" thing, just like there has been for the last 10 or so years.
I guess my comments earlier were too negative. I consider this whole situation a win-win. Either a bunch of people leave, or they come back realizing there is no where else to go. Either way, Reddit will end up better overall because of it.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean, yeah, that has happened. And thank Christ. Hopefully those subs just stay closed, and the vocal minority just leaves, never to return.
But, this is going to be like the GOP's gasoline protests here in California, with the same level effectiveness.
The minority will come crawling back, and in 12-24 months there will some other "and we're going to leave this time! We mean it!" thing, just like there has been for the last 10 or so years.
I guess my comments earlier were too negative. I consider this whole situation a win-win. Either a bunch of people leave, or they come back realizing there is no where else to go. Either way, Reddit will end up better overall because of it.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Apart from the lack of third party apps, presumably.
posted by sagc at 2:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by sagc at 2:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I think Phobos has it right, though. Whatever you think of this protest, Reddit will quickly become unusable, because an IPO at a ridiculously bloated evaluation means they will have to justify it by extracting equally bloated amounts of money from the users, which will rapidly send it into the familiar monetization death spiral. They'll try to shove more and more ads to eyeballs more and more intrusively, until it's one of those sites you occasionally follow a link to and then flee as a zillion ads bound and jump around and obscure any ability to read.
posted by tavella at 2:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [30 favorites]
posted by tavella at 2:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [30 favorites]
I'm pretty sure one day I'll be stumbling around the charred ruins of the apocalypse and find a little computer, somehow still online, and I'll open this site to find people still posting.
https://themorningnews.org/article/metafilter-in-the-ruins
trying to remember a story i read in 8th graed about a robot houseposted by zamboni at 2:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by pins, needles at 3:19 AM. 0 answers
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't taking the sub private mean the people subscribed to the subreddit can continue to interact, but it is dark to everyone outside that group?
Nope, I can't access any of my subs that have gone dark unless I message and request approved submitter/user access, which I'm not.
It also pretty much instantly breaks non-cached content included on third party sites via the API as well as search engine results. Cached searches might show up but if you click through you land on the private subreddit gateway page. Archives like the wayback machine work obviously, but this is because it's cached.
Most of the subs I use and know definitely polled their users about joining the protest and action, and the amount of support I've seen has been overwhelmingly in favor with remarkably little grousing.
A whole lot of the grousing has been in the vein of "I don't use any apps and I strictly use old.reddit in a browser why should I care?" and then when it's explained to them that they, too, are involved because the invisible and thankless moderation they enjoy often relies on third party apps and access and so far most of the responses to that have been in the general area of "Oh, shit, you're right. I didn't think about this. I'm in!"
I've watched this happen both on reddit and in side channels on the twitch live streams and in discord.
Most of the rest of the opposition has been people loudly proclaiming that "protests (in general) don't do anything at all so why even bother?" kind of comments, which ignores the fact that reddit admins have been chastised and even walked back from shitty positions and affected change throughout much of reddit's history.
posted by loquacious at 2:30 PM on June 12, 2023 [24 favorites]
Nope, I can't access any of my subs that have gone dark unless I message and request approved submitter/user access, which I'm not.
It also pretty much instantly breaks non-cached content included on third party sites via the API as well as search engine results. Cached searches might show up but if you click through you land on the private subreddit gateway page. Archives like the wayback machine work obviously, but this is because it's cached.
Most of the subs I use and know definitely polled their users about joining the protest and action, and the amount of support I've seen has been overwhelmingly in favor with remarkably little grousing.
A whole lot of the grousing has been in the vein of "I don't use any apps and I strictly use old.reddit in a browser why should I care?" and then when it's explained to them that they, too, are involved because the invisible and thankless moderation they enjoy often relies on third party apps and access and so far most of the responses to that have been in the general area of "Oh, shit, you're right. I didn't think about this. I'm in!"
I've watched this happen both on reddit and in side channels on the twitch live streams and in discord.
Most of the rest of the opposition has been people loudly proclaiming that "protests (in general) don't do anything at all so why even bother?" kind of comments, which ignores the fact that reddit admins have been chastised and even walked back from shitty positions and affected change throughout much of reddit's history.
posted by loquacious at 2:30 PM on June 12, 2023 [24 favorites]
One sub I follow is r/pigeons. It's for pigeon aficionados and carers. It's exactly as wholesome and ridiculous as you might imagine. (I personally am not a member of the pigeon-keeping community, but I do enjoy seeing pigeon-related content from time to time.)
The mods of that sub put out a survey about what to do for the protest. They said they had mixed feelings: on one hand, they were very upset about the changes; on the other, they knew that a niche community like pigeon-keepers would lose out, if r/pigeons ceased to be available. There are many people who come to this sub for help, when they're trying to save a pigeon. There aren't too many other places on the internet you can turn to, if you need help for pigeons. There's a chance that some birds--some birds that this sub is dedicated to the care of--would die, if the subreddit ceased to be.
So, they put it up to a vote for the community. And the overwhelming response was to engage in the protest, at least for the first two days. The future of r/pigeons after that point is unclear.
Just another data point.
posted by meese at 2:32 PM on June 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
The mods of that sub put out a survey about what to do for the protest. They said they had mixed feelings: on one hand, they were very upset about the changes; on the other, they knew that a niche community like pigeon-keepers would lose out, if r/pigeons ceased to be available. There are many people who come to this sub for help, when they're trying to save a pigeon. There aren't too many other places on the internet you can turn to, if you need help for pigeons. There's a chance that some birds--some birds that this sub is dedicated to the care of--would die, if the subreddit ceased to be.
So, they put it up to a vote for the community. And the overwhelming response was to engage in the protest, at least for the first two days. The future of r/pigeons after that point is unclear.
Just another data point.
posted by meese at 2:32 PM on June 12, 2023 [39 favorites]
I consider this whole situation a win-win. Either a bunch of people leave, or they come back realizing there is no where else to go. Either way, Reddit will end up better overall because of it.
Well good news then! There's going to be a bunch of mod slots opening up in the very near future by the sounds of it, and there's going to be plenty of opportunities for you to volunteer your time to keep the spam and nazis out of your favourite subreddits for free, with shitty tools. Or let the spam and nazis in, it'll be your choice!
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:32 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
Well good news then! There's going to be a bunch of mod slots opening up in the very near future by the sounds of it, and there's going to be plenty of opportunities for you to volunteer your time to keep the spam and nazis out of your favourite subreddits for free, with shitty tools. Or let the spam and nazis in, it'll be your choice!
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:32 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
I'm viewing Reddit daily and most of the value for me is the product discussions on e.g. tools and gear. I no longer log in as a user, I just lurk, but the impression I get is an overwhelmingly popular backlash against what is going down. Any sub I frequent, that is the tenor: Reddit experience has been on the decline for long-time users and this latest move (which appears to be purely about financialization, and this is not the same as making a venture sustainable) is not met with hope or gratitude.
interogative_mood, I can see why you feel ?gatekept, but I also don't understand where you're coming from and your repeated posts do not resemble the reality I (and others here, apparently) perceive.
when actually most people didn't care that's not just Reddit, that's life: for every 100 users of a public park, it's probably the 2-3 people who bother picking up garbage they happen across. This is not a good argument for anything.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
interogative_mood, I can see why you feel ?gatekept, but I also don't understand where you're coming from and your repeated posts do not resemble the reality I (and others here, apparently) perceive.
when actually most people didn't care that's not just Reddit, that's life: for every 100 users of a public park, it's probably the 2-3 people who bother picking up garbage they happen across. This is not a good argument for anything.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
Interestingly, reddit seems kind of improved today. Both in response times (after the brief outage this morning) and also the recommended stuff I'm getting from subs I'm not part of. Typically I'd see a "popular on reddit now" post that was some garbage from /r/funny or whatever, and now I'm finding all sorts of other subreddits I didn't know about because the huge sub activity is gone and they're crawling to the top.
posted by dis_integration at 2:36 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by dis_integration at 2:36 PM on June 12, 2023
I think a better formulation of the sentiment behind “websites shouldn’t make money“ is “online communities shouldn’t make profit for investors”.
It’s never worked and we’ve known that since Prodigy failed 30 years ago.
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
It’s never worked and we’ve known that since Prodigy failed 30 years ago.
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't taking the sub private mean the people subscribed to the subreddit can continue to interact, but it is dark to everyone outside that group?
Not quite. What it does is restrict access to "approved" members. If you don't approve anyone, then the subreddit is functionally offline. It's an easy easy way to take your subreddit down without deleting anything.
For the record, on the subreddit that I moderate (approx 300K subscribers), the only regular contributors who cared to voice an opinion were pushing us to shut down longer. We did have some suspiciously new faces who were against it or suggesting our motives were less than honest - including a (former?) Reddit employee who was copying-and-pasting the same fear-mongering comment about a specific third-party app on dozens of subreddits' announcements about the shutdown. To suggest that this is a case of moderators vs. users is absurd.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
Not quite. What it does is restrict access to "approved" members. If you don't approve anyone, then the subreddit is functionally offline. It's an easy easy way to take your subreddit down without deleting anything.
For the record, on the subreddit that I moderate (approx 300K subscribers), the only regular contributors who cared to voice an opinion were pushing us to shut down longer. We did have some suspiciously new faces who were against it or suggesting our motives were less than honest - including a (former?) Reddit employee who was copying-and-pasting the same fear-mongering comment about a specific third-party app on dozens of subreddits' announcements about the shutdown. To suggest that this is a case of moderators vs. users is absurd.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
"I don't use any apps and I strictly use old.reddit in a browser why should I care?
Guess what subdomain is getting shitcanned when they start clamping down on things which limit ad reach?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:40 PM on June 12, 2023 [25 favorites]
Guess what subdomain is getting shitcanned when they start clamping down on things which limit ad reach?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:40 PM on June 12, 2023 [25 favorites]
I know that Reddit r/chess has 700,000 members. The stickied post announcing its shutdown got 266 comments and had just over 3477 upvotes after being up for a week.
But as someone familiar with Reddit, surely you know that "700,000 members" includes all accounts that are subscribed to the subreddit, including long-dormant ones, right?
It's completely normal for the subscriber counts of long-lived subreddits to be massively inflated, when compared to the actual activity level. /r/chess has been around since 2008, which is enough time for many, many of those 700,000 people to drift away from the site, or to abandon their old accounts in favor of new ones.
(The poster child for this phenomenon is /r/programming, which IIRC was the first subreddit ever created. "On paper" it has more than 5 million subscribers, but this is just an artifact of its age; it only sees a few dozen posts and a few hundred comments per day.)
I don't have exact statistics, of course, thanks to Pushshift being taken down, but I find it entirely plausible that 3400 upvotes represents a pretty substantial fraction of the active userbase of /r/chess.
posted by teraflop at 2:40 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
But as someone familiar with Reddit, surely you know that "700,000 members" includes all accounts that are subscribed to the subreddit, including long-dormant ones, right?
It's completely normal for the subscriber counts of long-lived subreddits to be massively inflated, when compared to the actual activity level. /r/chess has been around since 2008, which is enough time for many, many of those 700,000 people to drift away from the site, or to abandon their old accounts in favor of new ones.
(The poster child for this phenomenon is /r/programming, which IIRC was the first subreddit ever created. "On paper" it has more than 5 million subscribers, but this is just an artifact of its age; it only sees a few dozen posts and a few hundred comments per day.)
I don't have exact statistics, of course, thanks to Pushshift being taken down, but I find it entirely plausible that 3400 upvotes represents a pretty substantial fraction of the active userbase of /r/chess.
posted by teraflop at 2:40 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
It's in the New York Times now.
I'm honestly surprised it's not "Entitled Millennials want Reddit their way. Should tapped out VCs subsidize them billions of dollars a month for this?"
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:43 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
I'm honestly surprised it's not "Entitled Millennials want Reddit their way. Should tapped out VCs subsidize them billions of dollars a month for this?"
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:43 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
Honestly, I feel a lot of sympathy for Steve Huffman, and I'm surprised so few other people do.
He co-founded a web site with two other people. One of those people became an iconic hacktivist before his tragic death. The other co-founder went on to marry Serena Williams.
All that Huffman's got is a reputation for being a dick. That's not even a new thing: I remember back when he was a Redditor in 2007, and people thought he was a prick back then too.
Imagine having to take the reins of your unprofitable bullshit website because it keeps imploding, and every so often you text your former co-founder about how rough you've got it, and he pretends to frown and nod and show you sympathy, and oh, also, Serena and the kids say hi.
Imagine getting in on Silicon Valley at the very start of the gold rush, and 15 years go by, and this is all you've got to show for it. Poor Steve. :-(
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
He co-founded a web site with two other people. One of those people became an iconic hacktivist before his tragic death. The other co-founder went on to marry Serena Williams.
All that Huffman's got is a reputation for being a dick. That's not even a new thing: I remember back when he was a Redditor in 2007, and people thought he was a prick back then too.
Imagine having to take the reins of your unprofitable bullshit website because it keeps imploding, and every so often you text your former co-founder about how rough you've got it, and he pretends to frown and nod and show you sympathy, and oh, also, Serena and the kids say hi.
Imagine getting in on Silicon Valley at the very start of the gold rush, and 15 years go by, and this is all you've got to show for it. Poor Steve. :-(
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
I took a break from reading this thread and walked into a sandwich shop. Saw a meatball sub that I honestly in good faith thought cost $20. I said I was interested in the sandwich, and that I estimated it would cost me $20. The guy behind the counter said I only had to pay $10, that it was a "beautiful deal", and that he was "mostly joking".
My question is who do I report this clumsy attempt at extortion/threat to?
my second question is now how do I make this sub private?
posted by Superilla at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
My question is who do I report this clumsy attempt at extortion/threat to?
my second question is now how do I make this sub private?
posted by Superilla at 2:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
Note, the API has been free for many years. Reddit's API fees will go from 0 (with rate limits) to $12,000 per 50 million API requests in a bit over 2 weeks. Imgur's API fee is $166 for 50 million requests. Amazon, $175.
Reddit will allow up to 100 queries per minute for free for non-commercial apps. Those apps may apply higher rate limits. They have also agreed to allow moderator apps and those providing additional features for assistive technologies to have free access to the API. This is in response to the community outrage.
Out of interest, interogative mood, do you feel the same [re extortion] about the developers of Sync, Relay, Infinity, Boost, RIF, Narwhal, and the other apps that are deactivating?
I don't and I'm not making that claim. Apollo is the most widely used 3rd party client and its developer has been the one attempting to claim the moral high ground. I think their own comments undermine that claim.
Reddit seems to have listened to the uproar and responded. Their red line (or perhaps reddit line) seems to be on the future of mobile apps that compete directly with their own mobile app and the use of the data api to train LLM based AIs. These seem like pretty reasonable restrictions for a company that wants to stay in business.
posted by interogative mood at 2:51 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Reddit will allow up to 100 queries per minute for free for non-commercial apps. Those apps may apply higher rate limits. They have also agreed to allow moderator apps and those providing additional features for assistive technologies to have free access to the API. This is in response to the community outrage.
Out of interest, interogative mood, do you feel the same [re extortion] about the developers of Sync, Relay, Infinity, Boost, RIF, Narwhal, and the other apps that are deactivating?
I don't and I'm not making that claim. Apollo is the most widely used 3rd party client and its developer has been the one attempting to claim the moral high ground. I think their own comments undermine that claim.
Reddit seems to have listened to the uproar and responded. Their red line (or perhaps reddit line) seems to be on the future of mobile apps that compete directly with their own mobile app and the use of the data api to train LLM based AIs. These seem like pretty reasonable restrictions for a company that wants to stay in business.
posted by interogative mood at 2:51 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
The minority will come crawling back,
You keep stating this assumption that those who support the shut-down are the minority. What do you base this on? If you can point to data, that would be helpful, most likely to the entire conversation here.
…or, maybe it’s certain demographics or certain types of communities that skew one direction or the other?
As others have also noted, the communities I’m involved in all posted a thread or ran polls prior to the decision. The comments and feedback in all of those threads was overwhelmingly supportive of the collective action. So, I am genuinely curious to learn what data you have that suggests that those who support the effort are a minority.
posted by Silvery Fish at 2:54 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
You keep stating this assumption that those who support the shut-down are the minority. What do you base this on? If you can point to data, that would be helpful, most likely to the entire conversation here.
…or, maybe it’s certain demographics or certain types of communities that skew one direction or the other?
As others have also noted, the communities I’m involved in all posted a thread or ran polls prior to the decision. The comments and feedback in all of those threads was overwhelmingly supportive of the collective action. So, I am genuinely curious to learn what data you have that suggests that those who support the effort are a minority.
posted by Silvery Fish at 2:54 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
> The future of r/pigeons after that point is unclear.
I imagine they would support a coup.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:57 PM on June 12, 2023 [157 favorites]
I imagine they would support a coup.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:57 PM on June 12, 2023 [157 favorites]
They have also agreed to allow moderator apps and those providing additional features for assistive technologies to have free access to the API. This is in response to the community outrage.
Hastily, with a dearth of details, after having been reportedly wildly non-responsive to both developers and user stakeholders (cf. the r/blind stuff) for months. As you say: this is in response to the community outrage, and it seems to be a very hasty, panicky, handwavy response that hasn't been very clearly or substantially supported by meaningful details and action. From a company that had all the information going into this in the first place and chose not to act in any way preemptively supportively of these folks.
I know you're arguing along a different vector than most folks in the thread and I recognize that may be frustrating and isolating but consider the possibility that the reason people overwhelmingly have a different read on this is that that different read has a plausibility and pattern-matching reality to it and not just that everyone other than you has misapprehended the available facts on the ground?
posted by cortex at 2:57 PM on June 12, 2023 [52 favorites]
Hastily, with a dearth of details, after having been reportedly wildly non-responsive to both developers and user stakeholders (cf. the r/blind stuff) for months. As you say: this is in response to the community outrage, and it seems to be a very hasty, panicky, handwavy response that hasn't been very clearly or substantially supported by meaningful details and action. From a company that had all the information going into this in the first place and chose not to act in any way preemptively supportively of these folks.
I know you're arguing along a different vector than most folks in the thread and I recognize that may be frustrating and isolating but consider the possibility that the reason people overwhelmingly have a different read on this is that that different read has a plausibility and pattern-matching reality to it and not just that everyone other than you has misapprehended the available facts on the ground?
posted by cortex at 2:57 PM on June 12, 2023 [52 favorites]
In other words, yes. The mods are 100% beholden to the sub's users. The fact the question is even getting asked is asinine.
You'd think that, but, no, that's not actually how it works on reddit. If you start a subreddit or you're the last active top mod you effectively own the sub as it's own weird little brain-damaged version of federation.
This is why /r/trees is for cannabis and /r/marijuanaenthusiasts is for arborists. Or why /r/lesbians is all male gaze porn and /r/actuallesbians is for women who are actually lesbians.
Like you can create any sub name or theme and name it something innocuous like, I don't know, /r/cutekittensinhats and post nothing but totally unhinged degen tentacle hentai. As long as you're an active user, you're the top mod and following the general rules of the reddit ToS you can do whatever you want with your sub.
This is also why major city subs for a city like Seattle now have multiple subreddits due to infighting and disagreement with moderation practices or standards. In Seattle's case there was a huge revolt against a certain mod going on total power trips that were so bad that everyone split and started multiple subreddits, and now we have one that's relatively progressive and sanely moderated and one that's mostly right wing or centrists that mostly post anti-homeless porn and complain a lot like they're on Next Door.
There is no official or even remotely democratic way for users to address this or vote out moderators and it's been a huge problem, but it's also a benefit, because it's way too easy to raid and manipulate online voting for this kind of thing, and if it was easy to vote out moderators or engage in a coup reddit would be a total battleground and blood bath of trolls and bad actors taking over major subs doing what they do best.
If you own a sub or are top moderator on a sub it's effectively yours to do what you want with it including shutting it down completely and denying all posts and squatting on it - as long as you don't egregiously violate reddit's rather loosely and unevenly enforced ToS.
I can't tell you how many times I've reported obviously violent, repulsive and hateful comments only to have reddit admins and their so called Anti-Evil Operations say it wasn't in violation or actionable, especially when it comes to racism, anti-LGTBQ and especially anti-trans rhetoric and commentary.
Shit, I've even been temporarily suspended and "permanently" banned multiple times because I got heated in reply to someone being an asshole and took the troll bait, then they reported me or hopped on discord or something to target the comment for mass reporting and then I had to appeal multiple times (carefully avoiding using any alts or creating one at all) and grovel meekly to point out the user I'm replying to has an entire user history full of fucked up negative comments and that's all they basically do.
The official reddit way is if you don't like the moderation, start your own sub and see how you like it. You probably won't. I've also been a mod on some pretty big subs and the tools suck, the job is mostly thankless and unpaid from either users or reddit staff/admins and this is just how it is on reddit.
Another part of this equation is that there's no real good, clear way to remove yourself from a sub you've created. You can abandon a sub, hand it over to other mods and remove yourself as top mod, but the "created by "username" tag always remains. So there's a whole lot of permanently dark, parked and squatted subs on reddit because powerusers/mods don't want to turn them over to being open to content or moderation they disagree with with their username still stuck on the "created by" tag, and as far as I know there's no way to actually delete a created subreddit or request that you're wiped and disassociated from it entirely.
So, yeah, no. Mods effectively own their subreddits. If you're lucky it's a benevolent dictatorship or monarchy with clearly stated, hand-rolled practices and transparency. Good, active subs usually have a second sub (kind of like MetaTalk) for meta-discussions about moderation.
But mods absolutely are not beholden to the users of the sub. Good moderation does indeed listen to their users, but it's neither a requirement nor obligation, especially in the face of bad actors.
posted by loquacious at 2:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [53 favorites]
You'd think that, but, no, that's not actually how it works on reddit. If you start a subreddit or you're the last active top mod you effectively own the sub as it's own weird little brain-damaged version of federation.
This is why /r/trees is for cannabis and /r/marijuanaenthusiasts is for arborists. Or why /r/lesbians is all male gaze porn and /r/actuallesbians is for women who are actually lesbians.
Like you can create any sub name or theme and name it something innocuous like, I don't know, /r/cutekittensinhats and post nothing but totally unhinged degen tentacle hentai. As long as you're an active user, you're the top mod and following the general rules of the reddit ToS you can do whatever you want with your sub.
This is also why major city subs for a city like Seattle now have multiple subreddits due to infighting and disagreement with moderation practices or standards. In Seattle's case there was a huge revolt against a certain mod going on total power trips that were so bad that everyone split and started multiple subreddits, and now we have one that's relatively progressive and sanely moderated and one that's mostly right wing or centrists that mostly post anti-homeless porn and complain a lot like they're on Next Door.
There is no official or even remotely democratic way for users to address this or vote out moderators and it's been a huge problem, but it's also a benefit, because it's way too easy to raid and manipulate online voting for this kind of thing, and if it was easy to vote out moderators or engage in a coup reddit would be a total battleground and blood bath of trolls and bad actors taking over major subs doing what they do best.
If you own a sub or are top moderator on a sub it's effectively yours to do what you want with it including shutting it down completely and denying all posts and squatting on it - as long as you don't egregiously violate reddit's rather loosely and unevenly enforced ToS.
I can't tell you how many times I've reported obviously violent, repulsive and hateful comments only to have reddit admins and their so called Anti-Evil Operations say it wasn't in violation or actionable, especially when it comes to racism, anti-LGTBQ and especially anti-trans rhetoric and commentary.
Shit, I've even been temporarily suspended and "permanently" banned multiple times because I got heated in reply to someone being an asshole and took the troll bait, then they reported me or hopped on discord or something to target the comment for mass reporting and then I had to appeal multiple times (carefully avoiding using any alts or creating one at all) and grovel meekly to point out the user I'm replying to has an entire user history full of fucked up negative comments and that's all they basically do.
The official reddit way is if you don't like the moderation, start your own sub and see how you like it. You probably won't. I've also been a mod on some pretty big subs and the tools suck, the job is mostly thankless and unpaid from either users or reddit staff/admins and this is just how it is on reddit.
Another part of this equation is that there's no real good, clear way to remove yourself from a sub you've created. You can abandon a sub, hand it over to other mods and remove yourself as top mod, but the "created by "username" tag always remains. So there's a whole lot of permanently dark, parked and squatted subs on reddit because powerusers/mods don't want to turn them over to being open to content or moderation they disagree with with their username still stuck on the "created by" tag, and as far as I know there's no way to actually delete a created subreddit or request that you're wiped and disassociated from it entirely.
So, yeah, no. Mods effectively own their subreddits. If you're lucky it's a benevolent dictatorship or monarchy with clearly stated, hand-rolled practices and transparency. Good, active subs usually have a second sub (kind of like MetaTalk) for meta-discussions about moderation.
But mods absolutely are not beholden to the users of the sub. Good moderation does indeed listen to their users, but it's neither a requirement nor obligation, especially in the face of bad actors.
posted by loquacious at 2:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [53 favorites]
All that Huffman's got is a reputation for being a dick.
Well, and apparently a net worth of around $10M, which I realize may be pennies to his crowd, and possibly a sign that he doesn't know how to manage his money, but what can I say, it's a lot to me!
I wish we had more nuanced terms for money. Like "websites deserve to make money" versus "websites deserve to make megamoney" versus "websites deserve to make gigamoney" and so on.
posted by trig at 2:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Well, and apparently a net worth of around $10M, which I realize may be pennies to his crowd, and possibly a sign that he doesn't know how to manage his money, but what can I say, it's a lot to me!
I wish we had more nuanced terms for money. Like "websites deserve to make money" versus "websites deserve to make megamoney" versus "websites deserve to make gigamoney" and so on.
posted by trig at 2:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think I'd like to nominate cortex to Secretary-General of the United Nations after the quality of diplomacy he just demonstrated in his last comment.
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:00 PM on June 12, 2023 [32 favorites]
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:00 PM on June 12, 2023 [32 favorites]
. They have also agreed to allow moderator apps and those providing additional features for assistive technologies to have free access to the API. This is in response to the community outrage.
Name one. Because r/blind have been trying to get reddit to do so, and they've had nothing.
100 queries per minute? Are you serious? That's for every API request for every user that uses the app/bot, because the API key is per APP, not per user, and the reddit API is notoriously inefficient. That literally isn't enough to run a personal app that *nobody*else uses.
Reddit are shutting down with near immediate effect 3rd party apps, including those that compete with their own, yes we can absolutely agree on that. We can also agree reddit absolutely has the right to do that. I think we may disagree over whether that's a wise decision, and whether Reddit leadership are being assholes over this move though.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
Name one. Because r/blind have been trying to get reddit to do so, and they've had nothing.
100 queries per minute? Are you serious? That's for every API request for every user that uses the app/bot, because the API key is per APP, not per user, and the reddit API is notoriously inefficient. That literally isn't enough to run a personal app that *nobody*else uses.
Reddit are shutting down with near immediate effect 3rd party apps, including those that compete with their own, yes we can absolutely agree on that. We can also agree reddit absolutely has the right to do that. I think we may disagree over whether that's a wise decision, and whether Reddit leadership are being assholes over this move though.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [21 favorites]
I run a small Mastodon instance, I know exactly how much maintenance this requires. :)
Ugh, I'm sorry, I made a dumb assumption and also I think I probably came off a bit splain-y, my bad. Of course people know how much maintenance this requires, since you and many others are living that experience right now. How I should've phrased it instead is that I'm not sure if we can roll back the clock to a time when discussing stuff on the web meant starting your own forum or finding a small forum hosted elsewhere.
I guess the question I have is whether a network of self-hosted or community-hosted discussion platforms is a model that can scale, both in the sense of "what happens if an individual instance suddenly becomes popular" and "is it possible/likely that lots of people can just run their own private/semi-private homesteads or is it too much time, effort and/or cost." I'm thinking about how to put my money where my mouth is by starting up a personal web presence again, but the thought of putting up a whole discussion forum feels like a magnitude greater amount of effort at minimum.
posted by chrominance at 3:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ugh, I'm sorry, I made a dumb assumption and also I think I probably came off a bit splain-y, my bad. Of course people know how much maintenance this requires, since you and many others are living that experience right now. How I should've phrased it instead is that I'm not sure if we can roll back the clock to a time when discussing stuff on the web meant starting your own forum or finding a small forum hosted elsewhere.
I guess the question I have is whether a network of self-hosted or community-hosted discussion platforms is a model that can scale, both in the sense of "what happens if an individual instance suddenly becomes popular" and "is it possible/likely that lots of people can just run their own private/semi-private homesteads or is it too much time, effort and/or cost." I'm thinking about how to put my money where my mouth is by starting up a personal web presence again, but the thought of putting up a whole discussion forum feels like a magnitude greater amount of effort at minimum.
posted by chrominance at 3:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
>100 queries per minute? Are you serious? That's for every API request for every user that uses the app/bot, because the API key is per APP, not per user, and the reddit API is notoriously inefficient. That literally isn't enough to run a personal app that *nobody*else uses.
No, it's 100 api calls per OAuth token, which are issued per user.
posted by dis_integration at 3:09 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
No, it's 100 api calls per OAuth token, which are issued per user.
posted by dis_integration at 3:09 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
To the people who think a federated system is going to be the future, are you going to run one? Will it be indexed on search engines? What will you do when you start having to deal with child porn being passed around? When you get served a warrant for more info about a user that you are pretty sure is bullshit and that if you spent money on a lawyer you could make go away? Add a few DCMA takedowns for pirated information, or maybe the Saudi government is sending you nasty letters because a user has been saying shit about them.
posted by aspo at 3:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by aspo at 3:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Oh, I forgot to add: how good is your security, cause if it's at all big you ARE a target. How much time do you want to spend fighting spam? Or is that just the responsibility of the subforum mods?
posted by aspo at 3:14 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by aspo at 3:14 PM on June 12, 2023
Honestly, I feel a lot of sympathy for Steve Huffman, and I'm surprised so few other people do.
Hahahahahahahaha. No.
That dumb lolbertarian asshole was an active member of /r/The_Donald and is likely the reason why it stayed up for so long despite hundreds/thousands of repeated ToS violations, harassment and raids of other subs and is probably more than instrumental in not only helping Trump get elected but harboring extreme alt-right content under the aegis of free speech, including turning a blind eye to how blue state cities have been dealing with a total shit hurricane of trolling and bad actors for years and years now.
He was instrumental in Aaron Schwartz' death, too, and doubt he has any remorse about that.
This is in addition to everything else. No sympathy at all for him. He's had 15+ years to do right with reddit and he's squandered and fumbled it at nearly every step.
Plus have you actually even seen a picture of him? His face is probably more punchable and insufferable than Zuckerborg and Bezos combined. He looks like he belongs on a two bit Gab livestream screeching about the terrible peril and mortal threat of drag queens and brown people.
No sympathy at all.
posted by loquacious at 3:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [54 favorites]
Hahahahahahahaha. No.
That dumb lolbertarian asshole was an active member of /r/The_Donald and is likely the reason why it stayed up for so long despite hundreds/thousands of repeated ToS violations, harassment and raids of other subs and is probably more than instrumental in not only helping Trump get elected but harboring extreme alt-right content under the aegis of free speech, including turning a blind eye to how blue state cities have been dealing with a total shit hurricane of trolling and bad actors for years and years now.
He was instrumental in Aaron Schwartz' death, too, and doubt he has any remorse about that.
This is in addition to everything else. No sympathy at all for him. He's had 15+ years to do right with reddit and he's squandered and fumbled it at nearly every step.
Plus have you actually even seen a picture of him? His face is probably more punchable and insufferable than Zuckerborg and Bezos combined. He looks like he belongs on a two bit Gab livestream screeching about the terrible peril and mortal threat of drag queens and brown people.
No sympathy at all.
posted by loquacious at 3:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [54 favorites]
So your proposal then is that users of 3rd party apps seek out and acquire their own OAuth tokens
this is how login works for most apps today. oauth is like when you login with your gmail account to another site. it’s the industry standard and allows 3rd party apps to support accounts from oauth providers without worrying about having access to user credentials. also it’s really 1000 requests over 10 minutes, to allow for “burstiness”
posted by dis_integration at 3:20 PM on June 12, 2023
this is how login works for most apps today. oauth is like when you login with your gmail account to another site. it’s the industry standard and allows 3rd party apps to support accounts from oauth providers without worrying about having access to user credentials. also it’s really 1000 requests over 10 minutes, to allow for “burstiness”
posted by dis_integration at 3:20 PM on June 12, 2023
No, it's 100 api calls per OAuth token, which are issued per user.
I need to look into that then, because if that's true the crisis is over! The current rate limit for the API is averaging 60 requests per minute per oauth client, and 3rd party apps already come under that on average (obviously burst usage goes over).
I'm surprised the app developers aren't celebrating that they've won though? The previous report I've seen by devs was that the billing would be by app id, which collates all API usage by the app.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I need to look into that then, because if that's true the crisis is over! The current rate limit for the API is averaging 60 requests per minute per oauth client, and 3rd party apps already come under that on average (obviously burst usage goes over).
I'm surprised the app developers aren't celebrating that they've won though? The previous report I've seen by devs was that the billing would be by app id, which collates all API usage by the app.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:21 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
(I swear to god, if I have to write "hamburger" after pretending to have sympathy for Steve Huffman all so I can make fun of how much better Alexis Ohanian's life is than his, I will button on this site and not look back.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:25 PM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:25 PM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
API keys and OAuth tokens are very different things and reddit uses both. The limit is on the API key, which is per app in every single API that I've ever used. If this was otherwise then yes, this entire crisis would be over and Reddit would not ever expect to see a penny of paid API revenue from a 3rd party client, in direct opposition to Reddit's assertion that they're owed 100x the going rate for API access in order to keep the lights on.
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
W/r/t the oAuth situation - if you're comfortable scabbing Reddit, there's discussion around that issue here within the community of third party developers of Reddit. It sounds like it is indeed one oAuth API Key per application, not user. Not sure if this has changed since this was posted three days ago, but finding details amidst the noise is a little difficult.
edit: accidentally said token instead of key - fixed to avoid confusion.
posted by gee_the_riot at 3:29 PM on June 12, 2023
edit: accidentally said token instead of key - fixed to avoid confusion.
posted by gee_the_riot at 3:29 PM on June 12, 2023
I swear to god, if I have to write "hamburger"
I'm sorry, I've never trusted Tom Hanks after he abandoned me at a drive through wedding chapel in Las Vegas, demolished the mini-bar and left me with all the bills. That guy is shifty.
posted by loquacious at 3:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
I'm sorry, I've never trusted Tom Hanks after he abandoned me at a drive through wedding chapel in Las Vegas, demolished the mini-bar and left me with all the bills. That guy is shifty.
posted by loquacious at 3:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
tom hanks beat my uncle to death with three different dotingly-maintained antique typewriters
posted by cortex at 3:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
posted by cortex at 3:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [31 favorites]
I apologized to your aunt, though, didn't I
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:37 PM on June 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:37 PM on June 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
>in order to keep the lights on.
Sorry, I meant to say: in order to keep the lights on in the casino deck of the mega-yacht.
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sorry, I meant to say: in order to keep the lights on in the casino deck of the mega-yacht.
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I apologized to your aunt, though, didn't I
Now apologize for The Ladykillers.
posted by box at 3:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Now apologize for The Ladykillers.
posted by box at 3:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
i dunno maybe i interpreted it wrong. 100 req per minute total instead of per oauth user is pretty restrictive
posted by dis_integration at 3:40 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by dis_integration at 3:40 PM on June 12, 2023
>100 req per minute total instead of per oauth user is pretty restrictive
Yes, it's intended to be usable only by developers of the app in order to test it. It's not intended to be usable for an app's users in production.
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes, it's intended to be usable only by developers of the app in order to test it. It's not intended to be usable for an app's users in production.
posted by WaylandSmith at 3:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I am (unsarcastically) grateful to you all for having enough new comments in this thread that every time I would normally fidget with my phone and refresh Reddit, I can instead come in here and get a fix. It's helping a lot with staying strong in solidarity.
posted by pulposus at 3:44 PM on June 12, 2023 [47 favorites]
posted by pulposus at 3:44 PM on June 12, 2023 [47 favorites]
I truly do not understand the tech side of what is going on with Reddit, but the entire "social media" sphere, the ways people have built communities in virtual spaces, all of it seems to need radical re-thinking. I spend a lot of time reading what thoughtful people have been saying about it.
I keep thinking of early Medieval Europe. Much of it had been connected by the Roman trade routes and imperial authority. When that authority left, Europe did not fall into ruin and chaos. Okay, yes, some parts did for periods of time, sure. But overall what happened -- as far as I know, I am an amateur reader of history, not a scholar in the field -- was that people turned towards their nearest neighbors and communities. Life carried on. The daily routines were of a somewhat smaller scale, but trade continued.
I want to repeat that -- we know that trade continued. Far-flung communities of people DID have contact. It was just not with the frequency or on the scale that it had been previously. Localities developed their own cultures and norms. Meeting people from other places was an opportunity to hear what life was like further away.
I think about this, because I very clearly remember life BEFORE the internet. I was a full-grown adult when I first logged on to Usenet. I remember that people developed smaller communities, and then those communities sent people back and forth to spread information.
I do not know if this is what the internet will be like in the next little while, here, obviously. But I think about it.
posted by sigridellis at 3:46 PM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
I keep thinking of early Medieval Europe. Much of it had been connected by the Roman trade routes and imperial authority. When that authority left, Europe did not fall into ruin and chaos. Okay, yes, some parts did for periods of time, sure. But overall what happened -- as far as I know, I am an amateur reader of history, not a scholar in the field -- was that people turned towards their nearest neighbors and communities. Life carried on. The daily routines were of a somewhat smaller scale, but trade continued.
I want to repeat that -- we know that trade continued. Far-flung communities of people DID have contact. It was just not with the frequency or on the scale that it had been previously. Localities developed their own cultures and norms. Meeting people from other places was an opportunity to hear what life was like further away.
I think about this, because I very clearly remember life BEFORE the internet. I was a full-grown adult when I first logged on to Usenet. I remember that people developed smaller communities, and then those communities sent people back and forth to spread information.
I do not know if this is what the internet will be like in the next little while, here, obviously. But I think about it.
posted by sigridellis at 3:46 PM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
He was instrumental in Aaron Schwartz' death, too, and doubt he has any remorse about that.
Aaron died from long-standing mental health issues/ depression. His illness was made worse by the absurd criminal charges brought by an overzealous Federal Prosecutor, MIT and JSTOR. Huffman had nothing to do with the prosecution and it is really pathetic to attempt to use this awful horrible and terrible thing to take shots at someone, even if they are an otherwise pretty awful person.
Name one. Because r/blind have been trying to get reddit to do so, and they've had nothing.
Huffman stated in the AMA
I'm surprised the app developers aren't celebrating that they've won though?
The responses by Reddit to the community outrage has been buried by additional outrage and the nah nah nah I’m not listening style of discourse that is common among people throwing a tantrum.
posted by interogative mood at 3:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Aaron died from long-standing mental health issues/ depression. His illness was made worse by the absurd criminal charges brought by an overzealous Federal Prosecutor, MIT and JSTOR. Huffman had nothing to do with the prosecution and it is really pathetic to attempt to use this awful horrible and terrible thing to take shots at someone, even if they are an otherwise pretty awful person.
Name one. Because r/blind have been trying to get reddit to do so, and they've had nothing.
Huffman stated in the AMA
We are working with RedReader and Dystopia to make sure they have access and will continue to work with others. We’ll review requests to ensure that the app is non-commercial and focused on accessibility needs. Approved apps can use the Data API for free.
For our own apps, there is no excuse. We will do better.
I'm surprised the app developers aren't celebrating that they've won though?
The responses by Reddit to the community outrage has been buried by additional outrage and the nah nah nah I’m not listening style of discourse that is common among people throwing a tantrum.
posted by interogative mood at 3:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I volunteer for the Metafilter raiding party.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 3:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 3:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
chrominance > Ugh, I'm sorry, I made a dumb assumption and also I think I probably came off a bit splain-y, my bad.
You did; that was a beautiful retraction and apology, which is accepted. <3
posted by egypturnash at 3:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
You did; that was a beautiful retraction and apology, which is accepted. <3
posted by egypturnash at 3:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Hiya, old friends! I paid $5 to use this website nearly twenty years ago, AND I’M BACK! I deleted my Apollo app last night and so far it’s going great. Are we still taking pictures of cats in small jars? Do we post a single period punctuation mark to mourn? Where’s Matt? Jessamyn? Cortex? What’s new with you, anyway? I got married, had children, bought a house, learned to garden, and still miss Google Reader. I still can’t spell my Metafilter username, I literally have to type it with left arrows in between. Anyway, great party! Thanks for inviting me.
posted by sdrawkcab at 4:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [114 favorites]
posted by sdrawkcab at 4:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [114 favorites]
I work with some horrible developers who abuse API calls with no regard to performance or even reaching out to the product team, explain what they’re trying to do and if there’s a more efficient way to do it for performance reasons (this is not Reddit and we pay a lot). Unfortunately I’ve discovered a large portion of the development community, especially low rung developers doing this just so they’re not working some horrible manual job at half the rate. Clearly the developer of Apollo, while coming off as a bit unprofessional, would certainly work with Reddit I would assume.
Even good API calls are expensive, you’re very rarely just flipping a switch and need to be mindful of comparability, etc.
I’m not a lawyer obviously but Apollo gave away paid Reddit services for free. I would not doubt there’s some strong liability here and API fees were probably rolled into “loss future revenue.” For $20 million you could build an API just for Apollo instead of an expensive managed service. But this isn’t about money.
Legality aside the best thing would have been a buy out of Apollo, roll it into Reddit’s platform, take out the free work arounds (or charge for them!) and guarantee salaries for devs for 5 years.
I’m skeptical of blackouts for arcane topics like this. It impacts a small percent of users and the rest simply don’t understand or care. This isn’t a social justice, it is two rich people arguing about arcane tech topics.
posted by geoff. at 4:03 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Even good API calls are expensive, you’re very rarely just flipping a switch and need to be mindful of comparability, etc.
I’m not a lawyer obviously but Apollo gave away paid Reddit services for free. I would not doubt there’s some strong liability here and API fees were probably rolled into “loss future revenue.” For $20 million you could build an API just for Apollo instead of an expensive managed service. But this isn’t about money.
Legality aside the best thing would have been a buy out of Apollo, roll it into Reddit’s platform, take out the free work arounds (or charge for them!) and guarantee salaries for devs for 5 years.
I’m skeptical of blackouts for arcane topics like this. It impacts a small percent of users and the rest simply don’t understand or care. This isn’t a social justice, it is two rich people arguing about arcane tech topics.
posted by geoff. at 4:03 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
riverlife: "Ah yes, Metafilter's long game of waiting for every other social media platform to self-annhiliate is coming to slow fruition. Genius!
"
Metafilter: The Reddit That's Still Online.
posted by signal at 4:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
"
Metafilter: The Reddit That's Still Online.
posted by signal at 4:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [27 favorites]
Are we still taking pictures of cats in small jars? Do we post a single period punctuation mark to mourn? Where’s Matt? Jessamyn? Cortex? What’s new with you, anyway?
Not specifically but post some if you got 'em; yep; he got a job at Slack and then quit his job at Slack; she owns the site now; hi; i've been playing Diablo IV and it's just sort of fine
posted by cortex at 4:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [51 favorites]
Not specifically but post some if you got 'em; yep; he got a job at Slack and then quit his job at Slack; she owns the site now; hi; i've been playing Diablo IV and it's just sort of fine
posted by cortex at 4:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [51 favorites]
geoff., I'm pretty confident that there is not, in fact "strong liability here", or at least just as confident as you are. Maybe don't inject wild legal speculation into the thread?
Also, how on earth is this an argument between two rich people? Like, who are the people you're referring to, even?
posted by sagc at 4:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Also, how on earth is this an argument between two rich people? Like, who are the people you're referring to, even?
posted by sagc at 4:05 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
> Legality aside the best thing would have been a buy out of Apollo, roll it into Reddit’s platform, take out the free work arounds (or charge for them!)
They already sort of did this once when they bought Alien Blue, the most popular 3rd party app at the time. They ended up just killing it.
posted by Turd Ferguson at 4:11 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
They already sort of did this once when they bought Alien Blue, the most popular 3rd party app at the time. They ended up just killing it.
posted by Turd Ferguson at 4:11 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
It impacts a small percent of users and the rest simply don’t understand or care.
I am not so sure that this is the case. I would not say that I am a Reddit power user and don't often use Reddit via mobile app, but I am Very Annoyed that Reddit via cell phone web browser is basically unusable and Reddit via official Reddit app is also basically unusable. Infinity is the first app someone recommended to me as being pretty good and I've been using it ever since. I do not fully understand all of the stuff about mod tools that moderators are upset about, and I do not require any accessibility features, but I do trust the people who say that it's a problem, and I care about making sure that mods are able to moderate and disabled people are able to use Reddit to the extent they want to.
But aside from that, speaking from an entirely selfish perspective, I do think that Reddit ought to either make a better official app or let me use an unofficial one!
posted by Jeanne at 4:23 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
I am not so sure that this is the case. I would not say that I am a Reddit power user and don't often use Reddit via mobile app, but I am Very Annoyed that Reddit via cell phone web browser is basically unusable and Reddit via official Reddit app is also basically unusable. Infinity is the first app someone recommended to me as being pretty good and I've been using it ever since. I do not fully understand all of the stuff about mod tools that moderators are upset about, and I do not require any accessibility features, but I do trust the people who say that it's a problem, and I care about making sure that mods are able to moderate and disabled people are able to use Reddit to the extent they want to.
But aside from that, speaking from an entirely selfish perspective, I do think that Reddit ought to either make a better official app or let me use an unofficial one!
posted by Jeanne at 4:23 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
One of the big appeals of reddit was the openness. Unlike instagram, twitter, discord, pinterest etc., desktop old reddit didn't require a log in to view posts. One of my big concerns is that going forward reddit will force everyone to move to new reddit and login in order to see anything. The simplicity and openess is also why I haven't used mastodon or any of the fediverse. The r/all feature, while definitely far from perfect, allowed you to see what was going on in the parts you weren't subscribed to, an infinite sample platter of communities you could join. Compare this to the reddit replacements linked, every single one of them requires more effort than just clicking and viewing. Want to see fish tanks with live plants? Just go to r/planted tank. If you didn't know the exact subreddit name, the subreddit finder was there. Was it a perfect system? Absolutely not. But the barrier to entry was so much lower than any of the replacements I keep hearing about.
posted by ockmockbock at 4:24 PM on June 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by ockmockbock at 4:24 PM on June 12, 2023 [20 favorites]
I feel kinda bad now that only one of the groups I read (r/raspberry_pi) has gone dark
posted by scruss at 4:24 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by scruss at 4:24 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
They already sort of did this once when they bought Alien Blue, the most popular 3rd party app at the time. They ended up just killing it.
I thought they built the official app off of it, actually?
posted by atoxyl at 4:32 PM on June 12, 2023
I thought they built the official app off of it, actually?
posted by atoxyl at 4:32 PM on June 12, 2023
I had some insight into "behind the scenes" of reddit a few years ago, so my information might be out of date, but some of what I learned...
1. Reddit isn't profitable, but that's only because they were raising money and going for an IPO. They want to show tons of growth, not profit. The potential is what matters for the IPO, not reality. They could be profitable tomorrow if they wanted. The people at the top are making lots of money, but they'll make WAY more from the IPO.
2. The API is used by lots of companies, not just third-party apps. Agencies of all types, both commercial and governmental use the API. Some of them are likely to pay the higher prices and actually be a profit center from a data selling/mining/manipulation pov (my speculation).
3. Reddit app users on iOS are by far the most valuable users, for a variety of reasons. That's why they try to force you to use the app. That's why they'd prefer if 3rd party apps went away.
Speculation: one reason iOs app users are so valuable is the potential to show them full-screen video ads ala TikTok or IG .
Most people use 3rd party apps or mobile browsers to circumvent ads, which is much harder in the app. If they do introduce full-screen video ads in the app, it may be great for the stock/revenue but could send people fleeing for the 3rd party apps. So get rid of them now, and continue to push as many people to the iOS app, the much increased value per user, for the IPO.
posted by chaz at 4:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
1. Reddit isn't profitable, but that's only because they were raising money and going for an IPO. They want to show tons of growth, not profit. The potential is what matters for the IPO, not reality. They could be profitable tomorrow if they wanted. The people at the top are making lots of money, but they'll make WAY more from the IPO.
2. The API is used by lots of companies, not just third-party apps. Agencies of all types, both commercial and governmental use the API. Some of them are likely to pay the higher prices and actually be a profit center from a data selling/mining/manipulation pov (my speculation).
3. Reddit app users on iOS are by far the most valuable users, for a variety of reasons. That's why they try to force you to use the app. That's why they'd prefer if 3rd party apps went away.
Speculation: one reason iOs app users are so valuable is the potential to show them full-screen video ads ala TikTok or IG .
Most people use 3rd party apps or mobile browsers to circumvent ads, which is much harder in the app. If they do introduce full-screen video ads in the app, it may be great for the stock/revenue but could send people fleeing for the 3rd party apps. So get rid of them now, and continue to push as many people to the iOS app, the much increased value per user, for the IPO.
posted by chaz at 4:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
I feel kinda bad now that only one of the groups I read (r/raspberry_pi) has gone dark
To be honest, a lot of small-ish sub mods were not really tracking this until today (also, I suspect, assuming that what we do as part of it is not particularly meaningful). So probably don't read too much into it, lots of mods of small subs may still be scrambling to figure out what to do...
posted by advil at 4:37 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
To be honest, a lot of small-ish sub mods were not really tracking this until today (also, I suspect, assuming that what we do as part of it is not particularly meaningful). So probably don't read too much into it, lots of mods of small subs may still be scrambling to figure out what to do...
posted by advil at 4:37 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
The responses by Reddit to the community outrage has been buried by additional outrage and the nah nah nah I’m not listening style of discourse that is common among people throwing a tantrum.
That's a fair capture of the baseline take on Reddit on MetaFilter over the years, and it is an absolutely shit take. I avoided Reddit for years on end, aside from finding my way to good content via Google Searches, due to its bad reputation around the web generally, and super-duper-in-particular on MetaFilter, and I'm so sorry I did! This thread is--histrionics, hyperbolic rhetoric, and bad faith takes aside--as nice a piece of evidence as I've ever seen that individual MeFites show that MetaFilter can really, really get things wrong when it comes to a baseline opinion. Many people here posting about good moderation, nice subreddits, and meese's pigeon bit warm my heart and provide me some confidence that I made a good choice in establishing an account over there last year.
I <3 MetaFilter, but WOWIE ZOWIE has this place left me feeling constantly gaslit in terms of how... terrible...? ...a place Reddit is. MetaFilter is a good place on many, many counts, and I love it to the bottom of my forum-loving heart, but Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick I love the freedom of just downvoting something instead of a seventeen paragraph screed to respond to a comment from a MeFi sock puppet account about why cheese is a fascist plot. No site or community is perfect, but, again, WOWIE ZOWIE spending some time over on Dark MetaFilter has made me appreciate things that MetaFilter isn't good at. I am not a MetaFilter Hater Who Stays Solely To Hate, nor do I ever want to be, but this site has many strong opinions, and some are not only bad, but also incorrect.
On the more tech side of things, I did not realize until a week or so ago how many people use apps to access Reddit and never touched the site or native app. I think the CEO's actions and response haven't been great on various counts, but--as with Twitter--we are not living in a world of MetaFilters. We are living in a world of Reddits, Facebooks, and so on.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [42 favorites]
That's a fair capture of the baseline take on Reddit on MetaFilter over the years, and it is an absolutely shit take. I avoided Reddit for years on end, aside from finding my way to good content via Google Searches, due to its bad reputation around the web generally, and super-duper-in-particular on MetaFilter, and I'm so sorry I did! This thread is--histrionics, hyperbolic rhetoric, and bad faith takes aside--as nice a piece of evidence as I've ever seen that individual MeFites show that MetaFilter can really, really get things wrong when it comes to a baseline opinion. Many people here posting about good moderation, nice subreddits, and meese's pigeon bit warm my heart and provide me some confidence that I made a good choice in establishing an account over there last year.
I <3 MetaFilter, but WOWIE ZOWIE has this place left me feeling constantly gaslit in terms of how... terrible...? ...a place Reddit is. MetaFilter is a good place on many, many counts, and I love it to the bottom of my forum-loving heart, but Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick I love the freedom of just downvoting something instead of a seventeen paragraph screed to respond to a comment from a MeFi sock puppet account about why cheese is a fascist plot. No site or community is perfect, but, again, WOWIE ZOWIE spending some time over on Dark MetaFilter has made me appreciate things that MetaFilter isn't good at. I am not a MetaFilter Hater Who Stays Solely To Hate, nor do I ever want to be, but this site has many strong opinions, and some are not only bad, but also incorrect.
On the more tech side of things, I did not realize until a week or so ago how many people use apps to access Reddit and never touched the site or native app. I think the CEO's actions and response haven't been great on various counts, but--as with Twitter--we are not living in a world of MetaFilters. We are living in a world of Reddits, Facebooks, and so on.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [42 favorites]
Has anyone asked violentacrez what his stance on this is
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
I wish we had more nuanced terms for money. Like "websites deserve to make money" versus "websites deserve to make megamoney" versus "websites deserve to make gigamoney" and so on.
posted by trig
Websites deserve to cover costs.
posted by Pouteria at 4:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by trig
Websites deserve to cover costs.
posted by Pouteria at 4:47 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
I guess my comments earlier were too negative.
All of your comments are just overwhelmingly negative about reddit moderators without much clarity about the underlying grievance. There’s some truth to one of your core premises - that this is heavily a mod/power user driven action that may not have the same level of buy-in from the whole user base. But
a.) the model for the site relies on volunteer moderation, on people stepping up to take ownership of subreddits, while also making it a hassle to occupy that position. The actual enforced obligations of a reddit mod are to the site admins, since they will ban the sub or remove mods if too much rule-breaking content gets posted, but there’s no real compensation for these duties. The idea that all the malcontents will just leave, new people will take over, and this will never be a problem again is - what’s the word? Oh, yeah, “asinine.”
b.) there are lots of general quality of life issues and concerns around the impending IPO - more ads, more attempts to push web users to the official app, worries about the fate of NSFW content, abuse of reporting and black box auto-moderation. This stuff adds up and when combined with the poor quality of official communication makes it reasonable to say that relations between users and site leadership are not particularly warm in general right now.
posted by atoxyl at 4:54 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
All of your comments are just overwhelmingly negative about reddit moderators without much clarity about the underlying grievance. There’s some truth to one of your core premises - that this is heavily a mod/power user driven action that may not have the same level of buy-in from the whole user base. But
a.) the model for the site relies on volunteer moderation, on people stepping up to take ownership of subreddits, while also making it a hassle to occupy that position. The actual enforced obligations of a reddit mod are to the site admins, since they will ban the sub or remove mods if too much rule-breaking content gets posted, but there’s no real compensation for these duties. The idea that all the malcontents will just leave, new people will take over, and this will never be a problem again is - what’s the word? Oh, yeah, “asinine.”
b.) there are lots of general quality of life issues and concerns around the impending IPO - more ads, more attempts to push web users to the official app, worries about the fate of NSFW content, abuse of reporting and black box auto-moderation. This stuff adds up and when combined with the poor quality of official communication makes it reasonable to say that relations between users and site leadership are not particularly warm in general right now.
posted by atoxyl at 4:54 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
Aaron died from long-standing mental health issues/ depression. His illness was made worse by the absurd criminal charges brought by an overzealous Federal Prosecutor, MIT and JSTOR. Huffman had nothing to do with the prosecution and it is really pathetic to attempt to use this awful horrible and terrible thing to take shots at someone, even if they are an otherwise pretty awful person.
I'm trying to find the citations or threads that support my statement, but at a bare minimum Steve has tried to erase the history of Aaron's involvement and contributions to reddit both before and - more importantly - after his death.
While the status of Swartz being a functional operating cofounder of reddit is indeed likely a technicality, he was legally listed as a cofounder and involved and contributed technology and a moral compass to reddit and it's stance on freedom of information and speech.
Sure, Huffman isn't directly responsible for Swartz hanging himself or dealing with mental illness, but maybe someone else here can help me out but I definitely some incident of Huffman effectively actively throwing Swartz under the bus during the JSTOR incident and trial and leaving him hanging out to twist in the wind.
And since I likely saw accounts of this incident on reddit if it exists it's probably been erased and cleansed because that's what Huffman does.
Huffman has zero credibility with me after all of the incidents of him whitewashing history, including editing user comments on reddit. Anything he says is suspect. It's been like this for years. See also: promised changes for accessibility and third party support that have been going unfulfilled for 5+ years now.
posted by loquacious at 4:54 PM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
I'm trying to find the citations or threads that support my statement, but at a bare minimum Steve has tried to erase the history of Aaron's involvement and contributions to reddit both before and - more importantly - after his death.
While the status of Swartz being a functional operating cofounder of reddit is indeed likely a technicality, he was legally listed as a cofounder and involved and contributed technology and a moral compass to reddit and it's stance on freedom of information and speech.
Sure, Huffman isn't directly responsible for Swartz hanging himself or dealing with mental illness, but maybe someone else here can help me out but I definitely some incident of Huffman effectively actively throwing Swartz under the bus during the JSTOR incident and trial and leaving him hanging out to twist in the wind.
And since I likely saw accounts of this incident on reddit if it exists it's probably been erased and cleansed because that's what Huffman does.
Huffman has zero credibility with me after all of the incidents of him whitewashing history, including editing user comments on reddit. Anything he says is suspect. It's been like this for years. See also: promised changes for accessibility and third party support that have been going unfulfilled for 5+ years now.
posted by loquacious at 4:54 PM on June 12, 2023 [17 favorites]
the nah nah nah I’m not listening style of discourse that is common among people throwing a tantrum.
Physician, heal thyself.
As extensive discussion upthread has explained, the API limitations are per- app not per-user.
Reddit has yielded nothing and wins zero bonus points from anyone paying attention to facts.
posted by FallibleHuman at 4:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Physician, heal thyself.
As extensive discussion upthread has explained, the API limitations are per- app not per-user.
Reddit has yielded nothing and wins zero bonus points from anyone paying attention to facts.
posted by FallibleHuman at 4:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
"moreover, websites shouldn't make money."
This is a shitty anti-labor position that deserves only mockery and contempt.
I feel like if you substitute "companies" for websites, it's obvious that it doesn't mean they shouldn't pay their employees or have money coming in. It means not making a profit.
posted by Dysk at 4:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is a shitty anti-labor position that deserves only mockery and contempt.
I feel like if you substitute "companies" for websites, it's obvious that it doesn't mean they shouldn't pay their employees or have money coming in. It means not making a profit.
posted by Dysk at 4:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Well, seeing as there’s been no FPPs in eight & a half hours since this post, one downstream consequence of breaking reddit has also been to break metafilter.
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:11 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:11 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
At a minimum, I wanted to make sure the misinformation did not stand, that’s for sure. I know a lot of people hop to the bottom of threads.
posted by FallibleHuman at 5:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by FallibleHuman at 5:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I <3 MetaFilter, but WOWIE ZOWIE has this place left me feeling constantly gaslit in terms of how... terrible...? ...a place Reddit is.
I would say that coming to Reddit in the last year is a VERY different experience than Reddit up to and for a while after 2016 though, I think in general the Mefi take on Reddit is outdated more than made up... It was a very not great place for a while and has made big strides
posted by jason_steakums at 5:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
I would say that coming to Reddit in the last year is a VERY different experience than Reddit up to and for a while after 2016 though, I think in general the Mefi take on Reddit is outdated more than made up... It was a very not great place for a while and has made big strides
posted by jason_steakums at 5:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [43 favorites]
I hope Reddit goes down. It's sucked up a lot of my time and attention. And I am too easily baited by rightwing fascists.
posted by Savannah at 5:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Savannah at 5:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I <3 MetaFilter, but WOWIE ZOWIE has this place left me feeling constantly gaslit in terms of how... terrible...? ...a place Reddit is
To be fair it did used to be worse - the standard MeFi opinion was probably formed in the mid 10s when it was the base for a lot of gamergate and redpill sort of stuff, and then came r/The_Donald. There’s still a bit of that around but it doesn’t intrude on unrelated subs as aggressively, and the fallout of the Trump era and the Trump sub getting banned eventually left the tenor of the big political subs feeling pretty blandly liberal.
posted by atoxyl at 5:26 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
To be fair it did used to be worse - the standard MeFi opinion was probably formed in the mid 10s when it was the base for a lot of gamergate and redpill sort of stuff, and then came r/The_Donald. There’s still a bit of that around but it doesn’t intrude on unrelated subs as aggressively, and the fallout of the Trump era and the Trump sub getting banned eventually left the tenor of the big political subs feeling pretty blandly liberal.
posted by atoxyl at 5:26 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
As extensive discussion upthread has explained, the API limitations are per- app not per-user.
Per Reddit
Per Reddit
The vast majority of moderator bots and other tooling using our Data API will fall into the free API tier. If you have a bot that is going over these rate limits, is broken, or is otherwise impacted by updates related to the API, please contact our team. We are committed to working with you to find a solution for your moderator tooling.posted by interogative mood at 5:30 PM on June 12, 2023
Per Reddit
Do you have a single response that isn't just you credulously regurgitating shit Steve Huffman only thought to claim he was going to do after this fiasco blew up in his face? Why should anyone believe the spin he's putting out while in damage control mode, when most of it amounts to promising to do things they've promised for years and never gave the tiniest shit about?
Also, FYI, spez doesn't love you back, man. You can tone it down, he's not reading this.
posted by a faithful sock at 5:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [44 favorites]
Do you have a single response that isn't just you credulously regurgitating shit Steve Huffman only thought to claim he was going to do after this fiasco blew up in his face? Why should anyone believe the spin he's putting out while in damage control mode, when most of it amounts to promising to do things they've promised for years and never gave the tiniest shit about?
Also, FYI, spez doesn't love you back, man. You can tone it down, he's not reading this.
posted by a faithful sock at 5:35 PM on June 12, 2023 [44 favorites]
It means not making a profit.
And profit is bad...why? We're not talking being rapacious, because that is where the evils of capitalism come out, but a reasonable profit is not that.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:38 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
And profit is bad...why? We're not talking being rapacious, because that is where the evils of capitalism come out, but a reasonable profit is not that.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:38 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I <3 MetaFilter, but WOWIE ZOWIE has this place left me feeling constantly gaslit in terms of how... terrible...? ...a place Reddit is
If it helps - I’ve been on and off Reddit for about a decade. It was Fark lite for a while; the default subs and content and discussion was pretty bad for a while. Standards have changed over time. There are still pockets of ick, but the increase in smaller positive-focused subreddits and an overall decrease in tolerance for public-forum nastiness have changed the flavor of the place over the last few years.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
If it helps - I’ve been on and off Reddit for about a decade. It was Fark lite for a while; the default subs and content and discussion was pretty bad for a while. Standards have changed over time. There are still pockets of ick, but the increase in smaller positive-focused subreddits and an overall decrease in tolerance for public-forum nastiness have changed the flavor of the place over the last few years.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
All that Huffman's got is a reputation for being a dick. That's not even a new thing: I remember back when he was a Redditor in 2007, and people thought he was a prick back then too.
I don't know why being such a tremendous douche that you're this well positioned but keep tripping over your own shittiness to the point that you fail to cash out before the cheap money evaporates (again) is supposed to engender pity, of all things. Dorsey has managed to do both.
That is, so far as I reddit he digged his own grave.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't know why being such a tremendous douche that you're this well positioned but keep tripping over your own shittiness to the point that you fail to cash out before the cheap money evaporates (again) is supposed to engender pity, of all things. Dorsey has managed to do both.
That is, so far as I reddit he digged his own grave.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:39 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
“Madoerator Bots” being the operative term in that quote.
That does zero to help the far larger population of people using mobile apps.
If you insist on posting misinfo, I’ll just keep knocking it down. You lose credibility every time.
posted by FallibleHuman at 5:40 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
That does zero to help the far larger population of people using mobile apps.
If you insist on posting misinfo, I’ll just keep knocking it down. You lose credibility every time.
posted by FallibleHuman at 5:40 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Is it too smarmy to bring up the role of moderators in keeping a lot of the hateful bullshit at bay? Or is it just timely?
I hope Reddit goes down. It's sucked up a lot of my time and attention.
I don't know, this feels kind of ... hmm. Dismissive.
There are a lot of people who think that their communities on Reddit are worthwhile. I know I do. The one that I moderate is the only community like it, as far as I'm aware. If it goes away, there really isn't a replacement. People will end up going to Quora, which is full of misinformation because it has no moderators that remove it.
And my community isn't even that... important? Like, it's not a place where people go when they need help living their lives, just when they're curious about something relating to a particular academic field. There are a lot of subreddits that are much more important because they're hubs for people who share similar challenges to share resources and support . It's not a good way for the internet to be, for these communities to be reliant on a company to exist, but it when people say "I hope it dies" they're the first ones I think of.
If you think Reddit is bad for you personally, there are multiple ways to block your own access to it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I hope Reddit goes down. It's sucked up a lot of my time and attention.
I don't know, this feels kind of ... hmm. Dismissive.
There are a lot of people who think that their communities on Reddit are worthwhile. I know I do. The one that I moderate is the only community like it, as far as I'm aware. If it goes away, there really isn't a replacement. People will end up going to Quora, which is full of misinformation because it has no moderators that remove it.
And my community isn't even that... important? Like, it's not a place where people go when they need help living their lives, just when they're curious about something relating to a particular academic field. There are a lot of subreddits that are much more important because they're hubs for people who share similar challenges to share resources and support . It's not a good way for the internet to be, for these communities to be reliant on a company to exist, but it when people say "I hope it dies" they're the first ones I think of.
If you think Reddit is bad for you personally, there are multiple ways to block your own access to it.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:42 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I don't remember anymore, did K5 try to monetize before it dissipated?
Also maybe germane is the way Hacker News basically ate Slashdot, despite HN being a captive arm of Ycombinator.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:44 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also maybe germane is the way Hacker News basically ate Slashdot, despite HN being a captive arm of Ycombinator.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:44 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
I mod one of the larger subreddits (3 million+ subscribers) and have done so for over a decade now. When i began modding there, the subreddit had about 8000 members. The closest thing I've ever gotten to payment from Reddit was a shoebox sized box of unimpressive snack food last year. I've put in the work because I love the community in the subreddit and believe we might be making the world a tiny little bit better.
Every last member of the mod team uses at least one third party app in order to access the site and to mod. None of us are sure whether we'll be able to manage the demands of running a subreddit as large as ours once these tools go away. I don't mind the admins trying to make a little money off the site but to see them making millions off of moderators labor while actively making our jobs harder in the process is sickening.
posted by peppermind at 5:50 PM on June 12, 2023 [81 favorites]
Every last member of the mod team uses at least one third party app in order to access the site and to mod. None of us are sure whether we'll be able to manage the demands of running a subreddit as large as ours once these tools go away. I don't mind the admins trying to make a little money off the site but to see them making millions off of moderators labor while actively making our jobs harder in the process is sickening.
posted by peppermind at 5:50 PM on June 12, 2023 [81 favorites]
Yeah, reddit can be absolutely horrible, but so can YouTube comments, Facebook, most news sites that still allow unmoderated comments (lookin' right at you, Sinclair!), Twitter, and just about everywhere else.
If you think reddit is an right or alt-right hellhole you should see what the actual alt-right says about reddit.
Which out of general politeness I won't even try to subject myself or anyone else to in this thread, because it's worse than you would care to imagine.
There are some really positive and supportive communities for almost anything you can think of, whether it's health or mental health, tech, hobbies, arts and culture, science and more.
As we used to say the long tail on reddit is very, very long. I can't count how many times I've read and learned things from people in the most random places.
The science and engineering subs can get really good, and almost every STEM or maker YouTube creator has a subreddit and all kinds of stuff goes on in there.
Shoot I've been in total garbage subs there's some absolute gem of an informative essay length comment that's even cited and linked and ends with a "Would you like to know more?" footer and sometimes it's totally tangential and off topic, and it's the kind of thing we'd delete around here as being too far off topic for the thread, but on old.reddit it coexists just fine because it's in nested thread.
And this is all one of the reasons why so many users that aren't even mods or need accessibility features are pissed off about this.
It's extra hard to even find this kind of content in the redesigned desktop page or the default apps, much less read it, because it gets totally buried with the drastically reduced nested thread depth and display modes.
And, man, I can't even imagine the nightmare of being blind and trying to use new reddit with a screen reader or braille terminal display.
posted by loquacious at 5:50 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
If you think reddit is an right or alt-right hellhole you should see what the actual alt-right says about reddit.
Which out of general politeness I won't even try to subject myself or anyone else to in this thread, because it's worse than you would care to imagine.
There are some really positive and supportive communities for almost anything you can think of, whether it's health or mental health, tech, hobbies, arts and culture, science and more.
As we used to say the long tail on reddit is very, very long. I can't count how many times I've read and learned things from people in the most random places.
The science and engineering subs can get really good, and almost every STEM or maker YouTube creator has a subreddit and all kinds of stuff goes on in there.
Shoot I've been in total garbage subs there's some absolute gem of an informative essay length comment that's even cited and linked and ends with a "Would you like to know more?" footer and sometimes it's totally tangential and off topic, and it's the kind of thing we'd delete around here as being too far off topic for the thread, but on old.reddit it coexists just fine because it's in nested thread.
And this is all one of the reasons why so many users that aren't even mods or need accessibility features are pissed off about this.
It's extra hard to even find this kind of content in the redesigned desktop page or the default apps, much less read it, because it gets totally buried with the drastically reduced nested thread depth and display modes.
And, man, I can't even imagine the nightmare of being blind and trying to use new reddit with a screen reader or braille terminal display.
posted by loquacious at 5:50 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
It's extra hard to even find this kind of content in the redesigned desktop page or the default apps, much less read it, because it gets totally buried with the drastically reduced nested thread depth and display modes.
Yep, that’s why I use old.reddit exclusively. If that goes away, I suspect my usage will plummet and then finally stop.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
Yep, that’s why I use old.reddit exclusively. If that goes away, I suspect my usage will plummet and then finally stop.
posted by Silvery Fish at 5:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
Also, I get that people keep talking about all the good subreddits and info on them - but I can't forget that when a group of mostly women asked Reddit leadership to not enable their continued abuse, the then head of the site literally wrote an essay as to why continuing to enable their abuse was the "virtuous" position.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:58 PM on June 12, 2023 [22 favorites]
Having spent a lot of time thinking about this in relation to dance clubs:
Capital and community are never really aligned in what they need, and the fact that we’ve had successful capitalistic community spaces is despite capitalism, not because of it. Historical accidents. Every online community struggles with this and nobody imo has discovered a way to make this unholy marriage successful in the long run.
People and culture find a way, to some degree, to survive for a while, but damn if we don’t need to completely rethink this.
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
Capital and community are never really aligned in what they need, and the fact that we’ve had successful capitalistic community spaces is despite capitalism, not because of it. Historical accidents. Every online community struggles with this and nobody imo has discovered a way to make this unholy marriage successful in the long run.
People and culture find a way, to some degree, to survive for a while, but damn if we don’t need to completely rethink this.
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:59 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
I was thinking about "what is the value of Reddit?" in the context of "how hard would it be to replace Reddit?" because I was wondering what the chances were that this current incident would actually harm them in a lasting way.
People keep comparing the situation to Digg, but it seems like Reddit existed and was there, ready to pick up Digg refugees, whereas right now it's harder to see which service would pick up Reddit refugees and feel like a reasonable trade. I've seen people mentioning kbin and Lemmy and those feel a bit like the suggestions for would-be Twitter-leavers to go to Mastodon somehow: here, again, it seems like a fair portion of the user base might find going to something already fragmented or possibly harder to use/discover to be sufficiently daunting that they don't make the switch.
I mentioned Freenode upthread as an example where it was actually possible for the angry former moderators to stand up a substitute service in a matter of days, and between that, and there being other IRC networks (e.g. OFTC) in existence, it was pretty easy for users to go elsewhere.
Which brings me back to "what is the value of Reddit?" -- are there enough angry mods with server skills and some spare cash that they could stand-up a workalike site in a few days? Is there another site that's already close enough that people could migrate to?
It occurred to me that the things that might make it hard for a service that started tomorrow to replace Reddit to actually succeed might be things like needing infrastructure, systems for managing abuse, systems for arbitrating between moderator fights, a legal team for situations where somebody wants to sue you, etc.
But maybe I'm overthinking it? A couple of Reddit mods have already posted in this thread -- I'm curious what you would consider to be an equivalent service if you decided to try to take your community elsewhere?
posted by pulposus at 6:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
People keep comparing the situation to Digg, but it seems like Reddit existed and was there, ready to pick up Digg refugees, whereas right now it's harder to see which service would pick up Reddit refugees and feel like a reasonable trade. I've seen people mentioning kbin and Lemmy and those feel a bit like the suggestions for would-be Twitter-leavers to go to Mastodon somehow: here, again, it seems like a fair portion of the user base might find going to something already fragmented or possibly harder to use/discover to be sufficiently daunting that they don't make the switch.
I mentioned Freenode upthread as an example where it was actually possible for the angry former moderators to stand up a substitute service in a matter of days, and between that, and there being other IRC networks (e.g. OFTC) in existence, it was pretty easy for users to go elsewhere.
Which brings me back to "what is the value of Reddit?" -- are there enough angry mods with server skills and some spare cash that they could stand-up a workalike site in a few days? Is there another site that's already close enough that people could migrate to?
It occurred to me that the things that might make it hard for a service that started tomorrow to replace Reddit to actually succeed might be things like needing infrastructure, systems for managing abuse, systems for arbitrating between moderator fights, a legal team for situations where somebody wants to sue you, etc.
But maybe I'm overthinking it? A couple of Reddit mods have already posted in this thread -- I'm curious what you would consider to be an equivalent service if you decided to try to take your community elsewhere?
posted by pulposus at 6:01 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Reddit is basically just bulletin boards, forums, whatever you want to call them. Digg never really functioned as a forum in the same ways, it was more of a news aggregator with comments.
Independent forums were plagued with spam and most of the small ones shut down because of the increasing difficulty in operating them (spam, server costs, etc.). I believe that that is what led to Reddit's growth more than anything else-- whatever niche thing you're into, be it a tv show, hobby, or anything else, there's a forum for it on Reddit that is mostly spam free, and easy to use.
posted by chaz at 6:06 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
Independent forums were plagued with spam and most of the small ones shut down because of the increasing difficulty in operating them (spam, server costs, etc.). I believe that that is what led to Reddit's growth more than anything else-- whatever niche thing you're into, be it a tv show, hobby, or anything else, there's a forum for it on Reddit that is mostly spam free, and easy to use.
posted by chaz at 6:06 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
Depending on the subreddit, I guarantee some of you would find yourself on the wrong side of a mod ban... for not being woke enough to meet standards. It is (or rather was) a broad church.
I enjoy Reddit because it's a one-stop shop for a bunch of interests and a decent way to waste time. However, I can't think of a single time I engaged with an ad or a brand on there, unlike Insta, Facebook, or even Twitter, where the engagement was stuff like posting slurs at the Steak-umms account but still, attention is attention. I'm not sure what the endgame was here.
posted by kingdead at 6:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I enjoy Reddit because it's a one-stop shop for a bunch of interests and a decent way to waste time. However, I can't think of a single time I engaged with an ad or a brand on there, unlike Insta, Facebook, or even Twitter, where the engagement was stuff like posting slurs at the Steak-umms account but still, attention is attention. I'm not sure what the endgame was here.
posted by kingdead at 6:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm not really sure it's possible to move a community of 3 million people to any new site that wasn't built for that kind of scale. Even if we could just uproot the community and go, it would be an awful stress test to impose on a new site right away.
posted by peppermind at 6:10 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by peppermind at 6:10 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
There was that one dude trying to make Gopher happen again [2022 Register article on throwback hypertext services]
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:12 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I also think some of the way reddit is seen on metafilter comes from a sentiment of “I wouldn’t be caught DEAD going to that OTHER message board site”
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:15 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:15 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
There was that one dude trying to make Gopher happen again
MetaFilter's gopher server still works. Kinda.
posted by jessamyn at 6:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [18 favorites]
MetaFilter's gopher server still works. Kinda.
posted by jessamyn at 6:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [18 favorites]
Yup! I agree that spam control and servers that can handle a lot of traffic are important features. It's hard to see how a potential replacement could afford to do that quickly. There was a link to non.io on Hacker News and their model appears to be subscription-based, with seemingly nothing to see but an about page that includes the statement Nothing is behind a paywall on Nonio.
posted by pulposus at 6:18 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by pulposus at 6:18 PM on June 12, 2023
I can't speak for all mods but in my subreddit a shocking amount of spam control on Reddit is handled by moderators, and the tools available have gotten steadily worse.
posted by peppermind at 6:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by peppermind at 6:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [11 favorites]
My thoughts, in no particular order:
1) Spez seems like kind of a dick and he wasn’t cool about the whole Aaron Schwartz thing but that’s different from saying someone was ‘instrumental in his death’, which is an also not-cool thing to say about someone who was not, in fact, instrumental in his death.
2) That said, when he says….
For our own apps, there is no excuse. We will do better.
I just don’t believe him, and given the historical pattern of behavior, there is no reason to believe him. If they are sincere about this, they can delay the API changes for a few months, implement accessibility changes, and then implement the api charges. Oh does that mess with your IPO schedule? Cry me a river, disabled users are more important.
3) Reddit used to have literal child porn and creepshots on it, I used to call it ‘the cesspool of the internet’. In 2012 they started cleaning things up, in 2014-2015 Elaine Pao finished the job, and got canned for it. I’d call that another example of the owners behaving badly, but the bottom line is that it’s a much cleaner-smelling place that I’m no longer hesitant to recommend to people. In fact, I personally created a niche sub which is exclusively positive.
4) new Reddit sucks, this may be because I am an old
5) the mobile web interface is so unreadable that I load the desktop site and turn my phone sideways to browse on my phone. I would rather do this than download that cursed app and they can fuck right off to the moon with it.
6) I miss Old Internet when people had blogs and you read them.
posted by bq at 6:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [32 favorites]
1) Spez seems like kind of a dick and he wasn’t cool about the whole Aaron Schwartz thing but that’s different from saying someone was ‘instrumental in his death’, which is an also not-cool thing to say about someone who was not, in fact, instrumental in his death.
2) That said, when he says….
For our own apps, there is no excuse. We will do better.
I just don’t believe him, and given the historical pattern of behavior, there is no reason to believe him. If they are sincere about this, they can delay the API changes for a few months, implement accessibility changes, and then implement the api charges. Oh does that mess with your IPO schedule? Cry me a river, disabled users are more important.
3) Reddit used to have literal child porn and creepshots on it, I used to call it ‘the cesspool of the internet’. In 2012 they started cleaning things up, in 2014-2015 Elaine Pao finished the job, and got canned for it. I’d call that another example of the owners behaving badly, but the bottom line is that it’s a much cleaner-smelling place that I’m no longer hesitant to recommend to people. In fact, I personally created a niche sub which is exclusively positive.
4) new Reddit sucks, this may be because I am an old
5) the mobile web interface is so unreadable that I load the desktop site and turn my phone sideways to browse on my phone. I would rather do this than download that cursed app and they can fuck right off to the moon with it.
6) I miss Old Internet when people had blogs and you read them.
posted by bq at 6:27 PM on June 12, 2023 [32 favorites]
Can someone explain to me why new Reddit “sucks”? I was very late to the Reddit party, only signing up for an account last year and so have only ever used new Reddit and it’s fine?
posted by rhymedirective at 6:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by rhymedirective at 6:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
The desktop site is largely fine, the mobile web interface is bad and getting worse in a fairly transparent attempt to get you to install the app, so they can serve you unblockable ads and do tracking and etc without your phone's pesky OS getting in the way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
Yeah, same. I use the browser (Safari) on mobile and have no problems.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 6:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 6:33 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: but I do enjoy seeing pigeon-related content from time to time.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Something else I wanted to touch on was the issue of polls or voting from users of subs on whether to participate, particularly in the context of whether or not a vote in a large million+ user that only has, say, 10,000 responses or votes is representative or fair.
So, yes, reddit has a massive dead/abandoned account problem and almost every subreddit has an inflated actual user count. Further, even brand new subs can expect to pick up some bots almost immediately, both helpful or harmful or just annoying.
There's tons of weird reply bots on reddit ranging from metric/imperial conversion bots to haiku bots to one that calls out Ben Shapiro for being a moron every time his name is mentioned.
There's also a whole lot of people with alts and sockpuppets, including many that were made years and years ago and they're just sitting on them and letting them age either as legitimate use backups or for trolling or nefarious purposes like selling them to marketers.
And there's tons and tons of dead or throwaway accounts. For a long time there was the practice of making a no-confirmation account like throwaway_123456890 or whatever for a one time use, and there were so many of them that sometimes it was difficult to pick a random number that wasn't already used so people just started using random numbers or throw_1234 so they'd have enough room to find a random number.
None of these accounts bloating the subscriber numbers count. I would be really surprised if reddit's actual userbase was more than 50% of the tallied amount. Honestly, I think it's probably less than 10-20% of that total all inclusive count. (not including read-only users and lurkers, either. The read-only count of reddit is HUGE.)
The voting I saw in my subs over the last couple of weeks building up to this was about as close to directly representational democracy as I've seen on reddit... and maybe anywhere in a long time.
The way I feel about it is if someone isn't active enough in the sub to have noticed even a last minute vote or poll and haven't formed an opinion about it then they self-select that their vote doesn't count.
And the results of votes weren't 100% uniform. Some subs did poll and didn't go dark. Some subs refused to go dark by moderator choice alone. Some subs didn't even poll or ask at all. Some went dark by moderator choice without a poll, too.
Sub critical help and resource type subs intentionally chose not to go dark at all to support their users and community.
But the ones that did poll and did vote in favor of going dark? It was a really clear vote and choice both in vote counts and comments and seemed about as authentic as it gets.
Like if this was a political vote, technically on paper the turnout looks small - but the actual results were an absolute overwhelming landslide in favor of going dark for the protest. If it was a major political election the press would be using words like "mandate" and even maybe something like "bloodbath at the polls".
I think it's also important to note that there definitely seems to be a bias towards either openly or leaning conservative and right wing subs seem to be in a clear majority that decided not to join. There are some really clear political divides and differences being illustrated here.
posted by loquacious at 6:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
So, yes, reddit has a massive dead/abandoned account problem and almost every subreddit has an inflated actual user count. Further, even brand new subs can expect to pick up some bots almost immediately, both helpful or harmful or just annoying.
There's tons of weird reply bots on reddit ranging from metric/imperial conversion bots to haiku bots to one that calls out Ben Shapiro for being a moron every time his name is mentioned.
There's also a whole lot of people with alts and sockpuppets, including many that were made years and years ago and they're just sitting on them and letting them age either as legitimate use backups or for trolling or nefarious purposes like selling them to marketers.
And there's tons and tons of dead or throwaway accounts. For a long time there was the practice of making a no-confirmation account like throwaway_123456890 or whatever for a one time use, and there were so many of them that sometimes it was difficult to pick a random number that wasn't already used so people just started using random numbers or throw_1234 so they'd have enough room to find a random number.
None of these accounts bloating the subscriber numbers count. I would be really surprised if reddit's actual userbase was more than 50% of the tallied amount. Honestly, I think it's probably less than 10-20% of that total all inclusive count. (not including read-only users and lurkers, either. The read-only count of reddit is HUGE.)
The voting I saw in my subs over the last couple of weeks building up to this was about as close to directly representational democracy as I've seen on reddit... and maybe anywhere in a long time.
The way I feel about it is if someone isn't active enough in the sub to have noticed even a last minute vote or poll and haven't formed an opinion about it then they self-select that their vote doesn't count.
And the results of votes weren't 100% uniform. Some subs did poll and didn't go dark. Some subs refused to go dark by moderator choice alone. Some subs didn't even poll or ask at all. Some went dark by moderator choice without a poll, too.
Sub critical help and resource type subs intentionally chose not to go dark at all to support their users and community.
But the ones that did poll and did vote in favor of going dark? It was a really clear vote and choice both in vote counts and comments and seemed about as authentic as it gets.
Like if this was a political vote, technically on paper the turnout looks small - but the actual results were an absolute overwhelming landslide in favor of going dark for the protest. If it was a major political election the press would be using words like "mandate" and even maybe something like "bloodbath at the polls".
I think it's also important to note that there definitely seems to be a bias towards either openly or leaning conservative and right wing subs seem to be in a clear majority that decided not to join. There are some really clear political divides and differences being illustrated here.
posted by loquacious at 6:34 PM on June 12, 2023 [16 favorites]
The new Reddit UI sucks vs old.reddit.com. First of all it breaks the browser conventions of the forward and back button. It makes it difficult to use feature like opening things in new tabs or remembering where you are in browsing a subreddit. It also has JavaScript crashes and is slow compared to the old UI.
Perhaps as a means of common ground we can at least all agree on that point.
posted by interogative mood at 6:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
Perhaps as a means of common ground we can at least all agree on that point.
posted by interogative mood at 6:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
After the Musk Follies, there's zero chance Reddit is being valued on anything but active users. PR notwithstanding.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Non-reddit user here (I have looked at cute cats and pigeons)... Has there been any talk of reddit moving post-IPO to a "walled garden" approach? Cutting off API access. Users must become subscribers? Site becomes inaccessible to non-members? That kind of thing? Just curious.
posted by shoesfullofdust at 6:37 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by shoesfullofdust at 6:37 PM on June 12, 2023
In 2017, I moved to a new city where I knew nobody for my spouse's job. I posted on some Reddit RPG sub looking to set up a D&D game. I was able to weed out incels/nazis/etc. by reading their comment histories. I still game (over the internet) with the folks who made it.
posted by HeroZero at 6:38 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by HeroZero at 6:38 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Has there been any talk of reddit moving post-IPO to a "walled garden" approach? Cutting off API access.
Pricing API access in way that makes it totally unsupportable for its current users is a way of doing exactly that; on the former point.
On the latter point, no — the users are the product. But their attention must be made fungible.
The walls need only be high enough to accommodate the billboards.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:39 PM on June 12, 2023
Pricing API access in way that makes it totally unsupportable for its current users is a way of doing exactly that; on the former point.
On the latter point, no — the users are the product. But their attention must be made fungible.
The walls need only be high enough to accommodate the billboards.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:39 PM on June 12, 2023
Hate hate hate.
Old Reddit front page: list of thirty headlines some with thumbnails, with info on the amount of engagement and some buttons underneath each, usable links on both right and left
New Reddit front page center column stack: banner, “create post’ block, ‘sort posts’ block, and then, finally, 1/2 of one post, including the headline. If the top post has a photo, it will show me the top 2/3s of that image. Every image seems to be nearly full size instead of thumbnail Ed, meaning that every image takes up even more real estate. Scrolling down through the top of the feed, I can only see 1 and 1/2 posts at a time.
Compared to clicking through pages of twenty headlines per page, it’s frustrating as hell.
posted by bq at 6:41 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
Old Reddit front page: list of thirty headlines some with thumbnails, with info on the amount of engagement and some buttons underneath each, usable links on both right and left
New Reddit front page center column stack: banner, “create post’ block, ‘sort posts’ block, and then, finally, 1/2 of one post, including the headline. If the top post has a photo, it will show me the top 2/3s of that image. Every image seems to be nearly full size instead of thumbnail Ed, meaning that every image takes up even more real estate. Scrolling down through the top of the feed, I can only see 1 and 1/2 posts at a time.
Compared to clicking through pages of twenty headlines per page, it’s frustrating as hell.
posted by bq at 6:41 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
Can someone explain to me why new Reddit “sucks”? I was very late to the Reddit party, only signing up for an account last year and so have only ever used new Reddit and it’s fine?
Load something at old.reddit.com/r/whatever and compare the density of text and differences in the layout and options available for sorting and filtering. You should also be able to go to your user settings and find the "opt out of the redesign" checkbox.
Also try checking out either one without an adblocker if you're using one.
It's like the difference between, oh, MetaFilter and a really bad content farm like a dumbed down version of Buzzfeed or something with all kinds of UI dark patterns. Old.reddit behaves like a forum from a more elegant time, really, and the new one is like the wish.com Duplo block version of reddit.
If you're used to the old site the new site is absolutely maddening.
I was there when they rolled it out to much fanfare and hype, and AFAIR they were originally saying old.reddit was probably going to go away soon because look at how awesome our redesign is and everyone else was like oh hell no this isn't ok.
The user response was a lot like today in smaller amounts and reddit just kind of slowly, quietly backed off and left the option to opt out of the redesign or use old.reddit directly.
And if old.reddit gets shut down reddit is probably done. People will flip their shit and toss their IPO right into the trash with the penny stocks.
posted by loquacious at 6:46 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
Load something at old.reddit.com/r/whatever and compare the density of text and differences in the layout and options available for sorting and filtering. You should also be able to go to your user settings and find the "opt out of the redesign" checkbox.
Also try checking out either one without an adblocker if you're using one.
It's like the difference between, oh, MetaFilter and a really bad content farm like a dumbed down version of Buzzfeed or something with all kinds of UI dark patterns. Old.reddit behaves like a forum from a more elegant time, really, and the new one is like the wish.com Duplo block version of reddit.
If you're used to the old site the new site is absolutely maddening.
I was there when they rolled it out to much fanfare and hype, and AFAIR they were originally saying old.reddit was probably going to go away soon because look at how awesome our redesign is and everyone else was like oh hell no this isn't ok.
The user response was a lot like today in smaller amounts and reddit just kind of slowly, quietly backed off and left the option to opt out of the redesign or use old.reddit directly.
And if old.reddit gets shut down reddit is probably done. People will flip their shit and toss their IPO right into the trash with the penny stocks.
posted by loquacious at 6:46 PM on June 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
And if old.reddit gets shut down reddit is probably done. People will flip their shit and toss their IPO right into the trash with the penny stocks.It's really a vocal minority if my reddit's stats are to be believed. Old reddit accounts for about 6% of our impressions. Android and iOS account for about 30% each, new reddit is about 12%, and the rest is mobile web. I have no idea how Apollo/etc. get counted in that soup. This has been the general layout since I've ever paid attention to the stats page.
posted by phlyingpenguin at 6:50 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
> The future of r/pigeons after that point is unclear.
I imagine they would support a coup.
I'm still thinking about this perfect joke hours later, urbanwhaleshark, and wanted to say as much.
posted by cortex at 6:51 PM on June 12, 2023 [59 favorites]
I imagine they would support a coup.
I'm still thinking about this perfect joke hours later, urbanwhaleshark, and wanted to say as much.
posted by cortex at 6:51 PM on June 12, 2023 [59 favorites]
Oh, and related to old vs new reddit and the official app:
There are now a whole lot of reports of lost and confused people in some of the subs that are still open using wondering where all their subs went because the official app isn't displaying any of the "this community has gone private" or any of the custom messages posted there about the protest.
It does seem to be working in desktop in the redesign, but there's some significant amount of people that only use reddit on phones through the official app.
So they're learning that third party apps are a thing and alternatives to reddit may exist and or even just that there's a protest going on because the official mobile app is stupid, so that's fun.
posted by loquacious at 6:53 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
There are now a whole lot of reports of lost and confused people in some of the subs that are still open using wondering where all their subs went because the official app isn't displaying any of the "this community has gone private" or any of the custom messages posted there about the protest.
It does seem to be working in desktop in the redesign, but there's some significant amount of people that only use reddit on phones through the official app.
So they're learning that third party apps are a thing and alternatives to reddit may exist and or even just that there's a protest going on because the official mobile app is stupid, so that's fun.
posted by loquacious at 6:53 PM on June 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
You can opt out of the redesign in your Reddit profile page. Then when you go to www.reddit.com it returns to the proper layout until you accidentally click on the “try new reddit button”
So referrer stats are not necessarily accurate if you are looking at old.Reddit.com
posted by interogative mood at 6:55 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
So referrer stats are not necessarily accurate if you are looking at old.Reddit.com
posted by interogative mood at 6:55 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Anecdotally, a web game that I made got posted to r/webgames this week and according to the referrer stats on itch.io I received 134 hits from old.reddit.com and 475 hits from www.reddit.com, so the proportion might significantly vary depending on the subreddit (and, per the previous comment, sometimes "www.reddit.com" means old reddit as well, because you can set it to behave that way, so the actual proportion is likely higher)
posted by cassowary at 7:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by cassowary at 7:04 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
There are now a whole lot of reports of lost and confused people in some of the subs that are still open using wondering where all their subs went because the official app isn't displaying any of the "this community has gone private" or any of the custom messages posted there about the protest.
Oh man, they still haven't fixed that bug? Moderators have been complaining about that for like four years.
That's a great example of what I find particularly galling about Reddit on a technical level. Even as they continue slowly making the site more user-hostile and adding features nobody wants, there's basic shit like this that seemingly nobody can be bothered to fix.
I guess I could understand if they wanted to deliberately leave bugs unfixed in old Reddit, to push users to the alternatives. But new Reddit and the apps are broken in their own ways too!
I haven't heard much about it lately, so I assume it got fixed, but there was a period of months when video playback on the official mobile app was just totally broken in for lots of people. As in, you'd try to watch a video and some other random post would be loaded instead.
posted by teraflop at 7:13 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Oh man, they still haven't fixed that bug? Moderators have been complaining about that for like four years.
That's a great example of what I find particularly galling about Reddit on a technical level. Even as they continue slowly making the site more user-hostile and adding features nobody wants, there's basic shit like this that seemingly nobody can be bothered to fix.
I guess I could understand if they wanted to deliberately leave bugs unfixed in old Reddit, to push users to the alternatives. But new Reddit and the apps are broken in their own ways too!
I haven't heard much about it lately, so I assume it got fixed, but there was a period of months when video playback on the official mobile app was just totally broken in for lots of people. As in, you'd try to watch a video and some other random post would be loaded instead.
posted by teraflop at 7:13 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
The desktop site is largely fine, the mobile web interface is bad and getting worse in a fairly transparent attempt to get you to install the app, so they can serve you unblockable ads and do tracking and etc without your phone's pesky OS getting in the way.
I might as well lean into being that guy and say I can’t imagine using the standard desktop UI while the “old” desktop UI is available. I do use the mobile web UI, because the “old” UI is not responsive. I don’t really mind it, honestly, thought it’s sort of hilariously unreliable at basic functions. The official app seems aesthetically similar except that it’s an app, why would you need or want it to be an app?
(Does the app even have “tabbed browsing?” I could swear it didn’t in the past.)
posted by atoxyl at 7:14 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I might as well lean into being that guy and say I can’t imagine using the standard desktop UI while the “old” desktop UI is available. I do use the mobile web UI, because the “old” UI is not responsive. I don’t really mind it, honestly, thought it’s sort of hilariously unreliable at basic functions. The official app seems aesthetically similar except that it’s an app, why would you need or want it to be an app?
(Does the app even have “tabbed browsing?” I could swear it didn’t in the past.)
posted by atoxyl at 7:14 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m my dream world there would be a Lichess like version of Reddit. There are two main Chess apps /websites Chess.com a commercial company and Lichess.org. Lichess.org is an api driven community funded site that doesn’t run ads and focuses on community. Chess.com is an evil corporation that is only kept in check by the existence of Lichess; but worth it if you pay their premium membership fees. chess.com does end up using some of those fees to sponsor chess events and provide opportunities for players who otherwise would be broke. This is a shameless ploy to buy goodwill from the chess community and it sort of works.
posted by interogative mood at 7:16 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 7:16 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Can someone explain to me why new Reddit “sucks”?
I see other people already got to this but for me it’s not so much that new reddit is the worst web UI I’ve ever used as that old reddit is a perfectly minimal, gets-the-job-done threaded forum. Also new reddit inexplicably omits easy access to the built-in post search function (not that it was ever that great) while adding a bunch of half-assed versions of chat and streaming and who knows what that nobody asked for.
posted by atoxyl at 7:25 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
I see other people already got to this but for me it’s not so much that new reddit is the worst web UI I’ve ever used as that old reddit is a perfectly minimal, gets-the-job-done threaded forum. Also new reddit inexplicably omits easy access to the built-in post search function (not that it was ever that great) while adding a bunch of half-assed versions of chat and streaming and who knows what that nobody asked for.
posted by atoxyl at 7:25 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Absolutely worth reaffirming that it's extremely possible and useful to have a good time on Reddit without jerks (which wasn't true probably about five years ago?), and getting product reviews by typing the named of the product and "reddit" on Google is a quick way to skip the SEO spam and get to a substantiative discussion on the product's pros and cons. It's not perfect, often it's not even good, but it has value.
It is weird that a lot of these companies (Twitter last year, also Discord this year) seem to be trying to make changes now to make themselves shittier, and somehow Wordpress/Tumblr still soldiers on, not really changing very much but certainly not making things worse for no reason.
(re: the 'websites should not make money derail', I imagine the point they were building to is that the ideal size of a website is strictly hobby-tier, and possibly also the idea that the web should not be able to support capitalism and it would also be good for that to not exist in the real world, either. I am very sympathetic to the point of view that CSS was a mistake and that we should have made it easier to serve pages from your home computer rather than making it easier for professionals to build websites. I see this point is now somewhat on-topic!)
posted by Merus at 7:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
It is weird that a lot of these companies (Twitter last year, also Discord this year) seem to be trying to make changes now to make themselves shittier, and somehow Wordpress/Tumblr still soldiers on, not really changing very much but certainly not making things worse for no reason.
(re: the 'websites should not make money derail', I imagine the point they were building to is that the ideal size of a website is strictly hobby-tier, and possibly also the idea that the web should not be able to support capitalism and it would also be good for that to not exist in the real world, either. I am very sympathetic to the point of view that CSS was a mistake and that we should have made it easier to serve pages from your home computer rather than making it easier for professionals to build websites. I see this point is now somewhat on-topic!)
posted by Merus at 7:36 PM on June 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Glancing at the set of subredits that I normally browse, it looks like between 1/4 and 1/3 have joined the blackout.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:43 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dip Flash at 7:43 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
and "reddit" on Google is a quick way to skip the SEO spam and get to a substantiative discussion on the product's pros and cons. It's not perfect, often it's not even good, but it has value.
Reddit's entire value is the userbase who maintain an ethos that first hand experience can be captured, conveyed, and usefully shared to those who share a sense of that value. Whether that's historians or Subaru enthusiasts or various flavors of nerds.
The fact is that using the Reddit keyword to offset the SEO maelstrom is a bug not a feature to advertising, marketing, and general corporate interests. I'm not claiming some conspiracy, only that the only way that stayed useful and relevant was individual redditors self-realizing as agents of a very slightly better internet in spite of the site, its leadership, and in many cases its vulnerability to bots, scams, and noise. Even the shitty incels sometimes perversely chose to represent their direct experience in between ignorant racist trolling.
Discounting reddit - even the shittified app-pimping version thereof - as just a message board misses the many generations of tuning and user experience understanding built in from experience. Lots of it sucks and fails to serve users over corporate interests but there's still real experience in exactly how a given subreddit handles everything from flair to spam (often on the backs of the mods). That's not necessarily easily replaced with mybb or gopher, as much as I might want to minimize it as well.
So what to do? The companies will never love you back, but the alternatives are weak tea and developers like to both eat and thrive based on their skills. But it's a funny new world of faster coding and higher productivity for expert developers leveraging generative coding (I know I know but hear me out).
Kickstart, fund a bounty for a functional, federated old.reddit.org clone and begin the data migration now - give the folks who want the niches a place to land and make the movement tractable. Offer guidance on building governance from metafilter's leadership and a path to funding it together, recognizing the moderators, contributors, and ground-truth loving humans represent a genuine constituency of people who believe we can do better.
The alternative is watch a vibrant community die of venture capital poisoning, again.
posted by abulafa at 8:11 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
Reddit's entire value is the userbase who maintain an ethos that first hand experience can be captured, conveyed, and usefully shared to those who share a sense of that value. Whether that's historians or Subaru enthusiasts or various flavors of nerds.
The fact is that using the Reddit keyword to offset the SEO maelstrom is a bug not a feature to advertising, marketing, and general corporate interests. I'm not claiming some conspiracy, only that the only way that stayed useful and relevant was individual redditors self-realizing as agents of a very slightly better internet in spite of the site, its leadership, and in many cases its vulnerability to bots, scams, and noise. Even the shitty incels sometimes perversely chose to represent their direct experience in between ignorant racist trolling.
Discounting reddit - even the shittified app-pimping version thereof - as just a message board misses the many generations of tuning and user experience understanding built in from experience. Lots of it sucks and fails to serve users over corporate interests but there's still real experience in exactly how a given subreddit handles everything from flair to spam (often on the backs of the mods). That's not necessarily easily replaced with mybb or gopher, as much as I might want to minimize it as well.
So what to do? The companies will never love you back, but the alternatives are weak tea and developers like to both eat and thrive based on their skills. But it's a funny new world of faster coding and higher productivity for expert developers leveraging generative coding (I know I know but hear me out).
Kickstart, fund a bounty for a functional, federated old.reddit.org clone and begin the data migration now - give the folks who want the niches a place to land and make the movement tractable. Offer guidance on building governance from metafilter's leadership and a path to funding it together, recognizing the moderators, contributors, and ground-truth loving humans represent a genuine constituency of people who believe we can do better.
The alternative is watch a vibrant community die of venture capital poisoning, again.
posted by abulafa at 8:11 PM on June 12, 2023 [19 favorites]
Can someone explain to me why new Reddit “sucks”? I was very late to the Reddit party, only signing up for an account last year and so have only ever used new Reddit and it’s fine?
It seems like it works fine for other people, even if they don't like the design of it, but for me, it is actively broken. The most frustrating way it's broken: Sometimes I'll spend a long time writing a comment and then the comment box will freeze. I will not be able to post the comment or even copy & paste the text, meaning I have to retype the comment from scratch. Because most of my activity is on a subreddit where a lot of comments are high-effort, this has wasted a lot of my time.
It is just so much more bloated and prone to breaking than old.reddit, which works like a website should, more or less. Sometimes the servers break but you get an error message and can retry.
(I used to force myself to use New Reddit so at least one person on our moderator team had an eye on how things were displaying. It was so bad I couldn't continue to use it.)
The mobile app is also extremely buggy and poorly performing for me. It routinely fails to even load comments. Sometimes I click on a post and it takes me to a post I was viewing previously. It wants to autoplay video all the time. Etc.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
It seems like it works fine for other people, even if they don't like the design of it, but for me, it is actively broken. The most frustrating way it's broken: Sometimes I'll spend a long time writing a comment and then the comment box will freeze. I will not be able to post the comment or even copy & paste the text, meaning I have to retype the comment from scratch. Because most of my activity is on a subreddit where a lot of comments are high-effort, this has wasted a lot of my time.
It is just so much more bloated and prone to breaking than old.reddit, which works like a website should, more or less. Sometimes the servers break but you get an error message and can retry.
(I used to force myself to use New Reddit so at least one person on our moderator team had an eye on how things were displaying. It was so bad I couldn't continue to use it.)
The mobile app is also extremely buggy and poorly performing for me. It routinely fails to even load comments. Sometimes I click on a post and it takes me to a post I was viewing previously. It wants to autoplay video all the time. Etc.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:17 PM on June 12, 2023 [13 favorites]
Also try checking out either one without an adblocker if you're using one.
No thanks. Reddit mobile on Safari on iOS is bad enough with the adverts.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:20 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
No thanks. Reddit mobile on Safari on iOS is bad enough with the adverts.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:20 PM on June 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I can't tell you how many times I've reported obviously violent, repulsive and hateful comments only to have reddit admins and their so called Anti-Evil Operations say it wasn't in violation or actionable...Shit, I've even been temporarily suspended and "permanently" banned multiple times because I got heated in reply to someone being an asshole and took the troll bait, then they reported me or hopped on discord or something to target the comment for mass reporting and then I had to appeal multiple times (carefully avoiding using any alts or creating one at all) and grovel meekly to point out the user I'm replying to has an entire user history full of fucked up negative comments and that's all they basically do.
The official reddit way is if you don't like the moderation, start your own sub and see how you like it.
I don't understand why this system is worth saving.
As a casual stroller of Reddit, and one who is frequently appalled at the racism, transphobia, and random hateful things there (as well as the most boring and obvious jokes ever conceived, on every comment section), I think it's hard for us casual folk who don't belong to a community to be a bit surprised how seriously some people use it because maybe their community is nice?
(The pigeon community sounds 10x better than anything I've ever seen there.)
But overall my experience has been as negative as Twitter. And it doesn't surprise me at all if the concensus as an internet is that Reddit is being shitty. The environment certainly is shitty. Down votes. Com'on.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:26 PM on June 12, 2023
The official reddit way is if you don't like the moderation, start your own sub and see how you like it.
I don't understand why this system is worth saving.
As a casual stroller of Reddit, and one who is frequently appalled at the racism, transphobia, and random hateful things there (as well as the most boring and obvious jokes ever conceived, on every comment section), I think it's hard for us casual folk who don't belong to a community to be a bit surprised how seriously some people use it because maybe their community is nice?
(The pigeon community sounds 10x better than anything I've ever seen there.)
But overall my experience has been as negative as Twitter. And it doesn't surprise me at all if the concensus as an internet is that Reddit is being shitty. The environment certainly is shitty. Down votes. Com'on.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:26 PM on June 12, 2023
I only use old.reddit.com and 3rd party apps, so I can't really discuss at length what's wrong with new.reddit.com or the 1st party app...but what I do know is this: every once in a while some meme will get posted complaining about something about reddit. Not an admin/mod complaint, but a complaint about videos not playing, or bots following accounts, or NFT avatars, or chat, or reddit live (?), or something. It's never anything good, it's always complaints. And a little question mark appears over my head, because I have no idea what the meme is about. So I go into the thread, and, inevitably, there are a bunch of comments that make it clear that this is something us old.reddit.com and 3rd-party app folks have never experienced. It's a new.reddit.com or a 1st party app bug or annoyance.
The first few times, I chalked it up to just coincidence, but I've been on reddit seven years now, and literally every single time I've been made aware of something new about reddit's design, it has been in the form of a complaint. Never "I like the X," always either "the X is broken" or "the X is working as intended and it's terrible."
posted by Bugbread at 8:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
The first few times, I chalked it up to just coincidence, but I've been on reddit seven years now, and literally every single time I've been made aware of something new about reddit's design, it has been in the form of a complaint. Never "I like the X," always either "the X is broken" or "the X is working as intended and it's terrible."
posted by Bugbread at 8:28 PM on June 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
If you're part of a minority, you don't have an easy way to be introduced to the "good side" of Reddit. The face Reddit presents to the Internet at large is incredibly hostile to vulnerable users. In order to shape the experience, you have to have an account and unsubscribe from basically all the default subreddits and start from an empty home page.
I was introduced to Reddit through advocacy groups, so this was basically just part and parcel to the signup process back in the 10s, in addition to scrupulous opsec and information hygiene. I can't imagine it being an easy sell to the regular person when you have to start dodging the stick without having even seen the carrot yet.
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:41 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
I was introduced to Reddit through advocacy groups, so this was basically just part and parcel to the signup process back in the 10s, in addition to scrupulous opsec and information hygiene. I can't imagine it being an easy sell to the regular person when you have to start dodging the stick without having even seen the carrot yet.
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:41 PM on June 12, 2023 [15 favorites]
Just for reference, tigrrrlily, there aren't default subreddits anymore. They got rid of that in 2017.
posted by Bugbread at 8:51 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 8:51 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Also, I think I'd have to disagree that as a minority, you have to take special pains to find the "good side" of reddit. Rather, I think you have to take special pains to avoid the bad side of reddit. If you just go into /r/all, you'll find a lot of pro-feminist comments and anti-feminist comments, pro-trans comments and anti-trans comments, pro-disability comments and anti-disability comments (that sounds weird, but I think you get what I mean), pro-black comments and anti-black comments, etc.
It's not really a site with a single identity, where you can say "generally, reddit thinks X", like you can with MetaFilter. Different subreddits have their own identities, of course, and they can be incredibly extreme or somewhere in the middle, but overall it's a mix, so unless you take special pains, you'll encounter both.
posted by Bugbread at 8:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
It's not really a site with a single identity, where you can say "generally, reddit thinks X", like you can with MetaFilter. Different subreddits have their own identities, of course, and they can be incredibly extreme or somewhere in the middle, but overall it's a mix, so unless you take special pains, you'll encounter both.
posted by Bugbread at 8:56 PM on June 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Bugbread, it sounds like you don't think that going to reddit and being confronted by a lot of $YOU-phobic content might be a turnoff that sends you packing, and that seems, IDK. I kinda want to be you, in a way.
But I wanted to add, thanks for the update on the default sub system, or lack thereof. My impressions of reddit are clearly out of date.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
But I wanted to add, thanks for the update on the default sub system, or lack thereof. My impressions of reddit are clearly out of date.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
I actually mentioned in the other thread that I hang out at r/service_dogs because I'm working on self-training a dog, yeah? It's easily the least toxic service dog oriented community I'm aware of on any platform, which admittedly is a low bar. The topic attracts the worst of both internalized ableism, highly visible external pressure, plus the worst reflexively judgemental tendencies of serious dog people. But the moderated policies of that sub bar a number of incredibly toxic behaviors like fake - spotting and weed out scammy registration services, and there are a few long term users who routinely provide useful training and handling advice. The topic is badly needed for many disabled people and poorly supported, so the resource is incredibly valuable and exists as a result of considerable labor.
I also hang out at r/DoggyDNA, where people discuss the results of dog DNA tests and often guess ahead of time what the results will be. People often talk about the stories of their dogs, surprising results, and talk about how population structure of dogs is influenced by their local history. There is also quite a lot of thoughtful discussion about why certain trends in shelter dogs exist, how population structure works, and basic education about genetics and polygenic traits in a way less fraught context than human DNA tests. There's a particular user who will go through every locus on a dog's Embark results and explain to its owners what all of them mean if asked.
I lurk on a backyard chicken sub (I want chickens, although my dogs are higher priority), as well as a number of crafting subs that exist to encourage people to learn crafts and cheer on individual projects. Some of these fascinate me because they're one of the places where I see men in particular learning and teaching one another crafting skills, like r/myog (make your own gear), or r/malelivingspaces, where I occasionally watch guys teaching one another basic concepts of interior design. Plus there's r/fountainpens, where the main political discussion is infrequent and usually focused on people explaining why Nathan Tardif of Noodler's Ink is a gross asshole. People show off their pens there, post reviews, and talk about pens.
Obviously I can't speak to every marginalized person, but I haven't actually had a bad experience on my reddit subs relative to other communities focused on the same interests.
posted by sciatrix at 9:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
I also hang out at r/DoggyDNA, where people discuss the results of dog DNA tests and often guess ahead of time what the results will be. People often talk about the stories of their dogs, surprising results, and talk about how population structure of dogs is influenced by their local history. There is also quite a lot of thoughtful discussion about why certain trends in shelter dogs exist, how population structure works, and basic education about genetics and polygenic traits in a way less fraught context than human DNA tests. There's a particular user who will go through every locus on a dog's Embark results and explain to its owners what all of them mean if asked.
I lurk on a backyard chicken sub (I want chickens, although my dogs are higher priority), as well as a number of crafting subs that exist to encourage people to learn crafts and cheer on individual projects. Some of these fascinate me because they're one of the places where I see men in particular learning and teaching one another crafting skills, like r/myog (make your own gear), or r/malelivingspaces, where I occasionally watch guys teaching one another basic concepts of interior design. Plus there's r/fountainpens, where the main political discussion is infrequent and usually focused on people explaining why Nathan Tardif of Noodler's Ink is a gross asshole. People show off their pens there, post reviews, and talk about pens.
Obviously I can't speak to every marginalized person, but I haven't actually had a bad experience on my reddit subs relative to other communities focused on the same interests.
posted by sciatrix at 9:02 PM on June 12, 2023 [23 favorites]
It is weird that a lot of these companies (Twitter last year, also Discord this year) seem to be trying to make changes now to make themselves shittier, and somehow Wordpress/Tumblr still soldiers on, not really changing very much but certainly not making things worse for no reason.
I would be more inclined to agree with this if they hadn't broken the function to access specific reblogs this week, pissing off wide swathes of user base. There have definitely been recent unpopular functionality changes with no apparent reason lately, and I'm not enjoying it.
posted by sciatrix at 9:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I would be more inclined to agree with this if they hadn't broken the function to access specific reblogs this week, pissing off wide swathes of user base. There have definitely been recent unpopular functionality changes with no apparent reason lately, and I'm not enjoying it.
posted by sciatrix at 9:08 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Reddit is a mixed bag.
Some of the sub-Reddits and users are good value. Learned a lot there over the years on a range of subjects, from politics through science and culture and hobbies. Reddit has a very practical beneficial side to it.
But some are a real problem.
posted by Pouteria at 9:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Some of the sub-Reddits and users are good value. Learned a lot there over the years on a range of subjects, from politics through science and culture and hobbies. Reddit has a very practical beneficial side to it.
But some are a real problem.
posted by Pouteria at 9:29 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, Wordpress' default stats package sucks, and they push you towards their plugin directory which is loaded to the brim with crap.
posted by JHarris at 9:31 PM on June 12, 2023
posted by JHarris at 9:31 PM on June 12, 2023
Old reddit accounts for about 6% of our impressions.
Wow. I can't even possibly imagine not using old reddit?
Can someone explain to me why new Reddit “sucks”?
Imagine a pile of shit: That is New Reddit, compared to Old Reddit.
posted by ovvl at 9:49 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Wow. I can't even possibly imagine not using old reddit?
Can someone explain to me why new Reddit “sucks”?
Imagine a pile of shit: That is New Reddit, compared to Old Reddit.
posted by ovvl at 9:49 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
tigrrrlily: "Bugbread, it sounds like you don't think that going to reddit and being confronted by a lot of $YOU-phobic content might be a turnoff that sends you packing, and that seems, IDK. I kinda want to be you, in a way."
I must have miscommunicated, then, because I don't think that. (Or should I say I don't don't think that? Phrasing's a little confusing).
posted by Bugbread at 9:49 PM on June 12, 2023
I must have miscommunicated, then, because I don't think that. (Or should I say I don't don't think that? Phrasing's a little confusing).
posted by Bugbread at 9:49 PM on June 12, 2023
egypturnash wrote:
"Honestly there are some things that Reddit has been useful for but I am not sure I will miss it if it dies due to this. I just hope everything doesn't turn into Discords though, I fucking hate Discord."
Hear; hear.
posted by splifingate at 10:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
"Honestly there are some things that Reddit has been useful for but I am not sure I will miss it if it dies due to this. I just hope everything doesn't turn into Discords though, I fucking hate Discord."
Hear; hear.
posted by splifingate at 10:19 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
If there is a "silent majority" it's a silent and non-participating majority. I was curious about the level of support so I checked a bunch of subs before the blackout. Small and mid-sized ones where I was a regular as well as same random big ones with millions of subscribers. All the blackout notices I've seen had 90%+ upvote rates.
posted by donio at 10:23 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by donio at 10:23 PM on June 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
New reddit feels like it actively does not want me reading the post and comments I am looking at, and wants me to read something else. I'm not neophobic in general, but every time I am directed to a www.reddit link while I am not logged in, within a minute I am so irritated I edit old into the url line manually, or log in (I'm another that has the default set to the old layout, so you will not see me as on old.reddit.com when logged in.)
posted by tavella at 10:55 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by tavella at 10:55 PM on June 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
If anyone is interested in trying out Tildes, they are giving out invites. The email address to request one is towards the bottom of the announcement blog post: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes
posted by riddley at 11:13 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by riddley at 11:13 PM on June 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm staying off Reddit for the time being, but if I'm going back, it'll only be with old Reddit, RES, and uBlock Origin enabled on desktop and probably not at all on mobile anymore (the only notable apps exempted are Android only so iOS is still left out in the cold for now). I've tried new mobile Reddit (yes, there was an old mobile Reddit too at i.reddit.com, and that was also killed fairly recently) and it's difficult at best.
And quite frankly, if requests to be exempted are going to be "regularly reviewed" then I have zero faith that they'll persist long-term. That benefit of the doubt has been ruined by how poorly these changes were announced and how poorly other devs were treated. If they want me to believe them about that, then the rules need to be written out, the review process needs to be minimally intrusive to the devs, and they need to be enshrined in a way that they can't be easily changed for existing apps once they're in.
posted by yangj08 at 11:55 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
And quite frankly, if requests to be exempted are going to be "regularly reviewed" then I have zero faith that they'll persist long-term. That benefit of the doubt has been ruined by how poorly these changes were announced and how poorly other devs were treated. If they want me to believe them about that, then the rules need to be written out, the review process needs to be minimally intrusive to the devs, and they need to be enshrined in a way that they can't be easily changed for existing apps once they're in.
posted by yangj08 at 11:55 PM on June 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
For those that saying there hasn't been much of an impact, it's worth looking at the "posts and comments per minute" graph here - https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/
Ignoring the outage that reddit had, it's worth nothing that comments are typically a lot higher than posts during peak hours. There's a big knock-on effect when people post but don't get comments underneath and this will play out over the next few days. It's hardly a death knell but well worth keeping an eye on.
posted by gronkpan at 12:00 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ignoring the outage that reddit had, it's worth nothing that comments are typically a lot higher than posts during peak hours. There's a big knock-on effect when people post but don't get comments underneath and this will play out over the next few days. It's hardly a death knell but well worth keeping an eye on.
posted by gronkpan at 12:00 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think the shut-down is simply too short to have any appreciable effect. Looking at /r/all, for example, it doesn't look all that different than usual. There are some weird subs appearing (denvernuggets, nbamemes, nbacirclejerk), but for the most part, unless you're paying close attention, it looks like normal: BrandNewSentence, AbsoluteUnits, WhitePeopleTwitter, OldSchoolCool, Comics, Politics, Ukraine, AskReddit, Tumblr, FreeFromWork, TikTokCringe, Movies, that kind of thing.
With a longer shutdown, if people got more used to not going to reddit, I think it could get a cycle going of fewer comments→fewer posts→fewer comments→fewer posts, but as it is, I feel like 90% of the subreddits will just come back in a few days and things will largely go back to normal unless there's a mass mod retirement. Maybe that will happen, but it feels kinda independent of this shutdown.
posted by Bugbread at 12:24 AM on June 13, 2023
With a longer shutdown, if people got more used to not going to reddit, I think it could get a cycle going of fewer comments→fewer posts→fewer comments→fewer posts, but as it is, I feel like 90% of the subreddits will just come back in a few days and things will largely go back to normal unless there's a mass mod retirement. Maybe that will happen, but it feels kinda independent of this shutdown.
posted by Bugbread at 12:24 AM on June 13, 2023
And profit is bad...why? We're not talking being rapacious, because that is where the evils of capitalism come out, but a reasonable profit is not that.
It's inherently am inefficiency, an unnecessary overhead. Then there's all the other issues, like it vent very easy and tempting to suddenly decided to maximise profits, and then you end up here. Really, I think it applies to all human enterprise, not just websites.
If I own a company, and pay myself and my employees a wage, then everyone is getting paid. What's the issue? What's the profit for, except suddenly reclassifying some of the income so that it isn't subject to income tax?
posted by Dysk at 12:51 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's inherently am inefficiency, an unnecessary overhead. Then there's all the other issues, like it vent very easy and tempting to suddenly decided to maximise profits, and then you end up here. Really, I think it applies to all human enterprise, not just websites.
If I own a company, and pay myself and my employees a wage, then everyone is getting paid. What's the issue? What's the profit for, except suddenly reclassifying some of the income so that it isn't subject to income tax?
posted by Dysk at 12:51 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
To be entirely fair, the point of profit *should* be (in a company that's run ethically as opposed to just legally) to save up to pay for things that the company as a whole needs over the long term, as in not immediate expenses. For example, a cellphone network operator banking up profits now to pay for future upgrades or a restaurant banking up profits to pay for a larger space or upgraded kitchen equipment later. The problem comes when they just hoard money.
posted by yangj08 at 2:59 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by yangj08 at 2:59 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Imagine a pile of shit: That is New Reddit, compared to Old Reddit.
Speaking as a newer user who never saw the old version, that’s not my experience at all — if it were, I wouldn’t be using it regularly. Different strokes and all that, but the stuff in New Reddit that people seem to hate feels to me a lot like the crap I ignore all the time on other sites. It’s certainly a lot better (to me) than Discord’s panoply-as-UI ethos.
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:05 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Speaking as a newer user who never saw the old version, that’s not my experience at all — if it were, I wouldn’t be using it regularly. Different strokes and all that, but the stuff in New Reddit that people seem to hate feels to me a lot like the crap I ignore all the time on other sites. It’s certainly a lot better (to me) than Discord’s panoply-as-UI ethos.
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:05 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's not Discord that New Reddit is being compared to, though, it's Old Reddit, which had a much greater focus on usability.
The story of Reddit in this is the same one we've been repeating since people started trying to monetize the World Wide Web. Countless companies have started out free, become popular, then their leadership has gotten too greedy and ruined their service in the name of chasing profits. Most of the pre-Google search engines did this, by accepting payment for search placement. You could say Google is doing it now. Of course, it's also true that lots of companies have failed because they didn't become profitable enough in time. Glitch*, a MeFi-favorite MMORPG, is one of them. Blaseball, very recently, is another.
I think there is room for a modestly successful company in a good niche, which is prepared to not wreck its service too much seeking riches, to survive. But that's not how venture capitalism works, everything is looked at as if it might be the next Google, and there really aren't a lot of niches like that out there.
posted by JHarris at 3:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
The story of Reddit in this is the same one we've been repeating since people started trying to monetize the World Wide Web. Countless companies have started out free, become popular, then their leadership has gotten too greedy and ruined their service in the name of chasing profits. Most of the pre-Google search engines did this, by accepting payment for search placement. You could say Google is doing it now. Of course, it's also true that lots of companies have failed because they didn't become profitable enough in time. Glitch*, a MeFi-favorite MMORPG, is one of them. Blaseball, very recently, is another.
I think there is room for a modestly successful company in a good niche, which is prepared to not wreck its service too much seeking riches, to survive. But that's not how venture capitalism works, everything is looked at as if it might be the next Google, and there really aren't a lot of niches like that out there.
posted by JHarris at 3:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
(Are there any good lists of dead services out there? Does anyone remember Flooz? Pets.com?)
posted by JHarris at 3:28 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 3:28 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
I see a bunch of folks talking about referrer stats. If you mean the numbers I posted, those are not referrers. Those are reddit’s own internal stats for a particular reddit. It is only one data point/community so I take it with a grain of salt. I don’t know exactly how they’re gathered, but there isn’t a good reason to believe reddit doesn’t know which UI it presents its own users.
posted by phlyingpenguin at 3:51 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by phlyingpenguin at 3:51 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: a shoebox sized box of unimpressive snack food
posted by chavenet at 4:15 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 4:15 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Does anyone remember Flooz
If there was going to be a user editable list I went to look for that on github. Found this: "Flooz is a culture-first web3 wallet & infrastructure company." So now the memory can be amended.
I'll note that reddit has been called not only a den of incels and nazis but how it has some parts of it that are 'woke' in this very thread. Exactly how is that going to be a place advertisers are going to feel they won't have to deal with backlash like some brands are having this year?
posted by rough ashlar at 4:19 AM on June 13, 2023
If there was going to be a user editable list I went to look for that on github. Found this: "Flooz is a culture-first web3 wallet & infrastructure company." So now the memory can be amended.
I'll note that reddit has been called not only a den of incels and nazis but how it has some parts of it that are 'woke' in this very thread. Exactly how is that going to be a place advertisers are going to feel they won't have to deal with backlash like some brands are having this year?
posted by rough ashlar at 4:19 AM on June 13, 2023
JHarris, I hear you about the comparison. More generally, my point on the interface is that (leaving aside my experience as a newer user) it seems kinda in line with what I see on other not dissimilar sites. Yes, Old Reddit might have been better, but presumably that's dead & buried and not coming back. That may be bad--and it sounds like it is bad--for various UX, labor, political, and affective reasons, but it's a done deal. When it comes to current-gen competitors like Twitter, Facebook, Discord, whatever -- all have serious flaws for me in terms of usability. While it can be useful to figure out the least worst, all are bad, and I expect no better.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:21 AM on June 13, 2023
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:21 AM on June 13, 2023
Cupcakeninja: just for reference, Old Reddit is not dead or buried or not coming back, it's still chugging along fine. Just type old.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com.
posted by Bugbread at 4:30 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 4:30 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
Sometimes I wonder if the scale is part of the problem. Let’s say you like model trains. In the old days you’d go to a model train store and get to know 15-20 people, including whoever had the coolest local setup. Maybe there’s a regional meet up. Then maybe there’s fredstrainsite.com where Fred moderates a forum. Etc. But the current corporate centralized internet is all about being connected to every single train person in the world, with the eyes of advertisers and data miners on you at all times . That might be great for knowledge , or commonalities with a model train person in Singapore, but it’s … a lot.
Someone upthread mentioned a subreddit with millions of users. You post, and what, there are 674,345 comments? I mean, I think Metafilter is way too big sometimes. Maybe instant awareness of the entire world is too much to handle.
I realize this isn’t exactly related to the corporate greed angle, other than that a central site with millions of eyeballs is attractive to ad people in a way that Fred’s train site isn’t. I just think about this a lot.
posted by caviar2d2 at 4:34 AM on June 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Someone upthread mentioned a subreddit with millions of users. You post, and what, there are 674,345 comments? I mean, I think Metafilter is way too big sometimes. Maybe instant awareness of the entire world is too much to handle.
I realize this isn’t exactly related to the corporate greed angle, other than that a central site with millions of eyeballs is attractive to ad people in a way that Fred’s train site isn’t. I just think about this a lot.
posted by caviar2d2 at 4:34 AM on June 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Thanks, Bugbread. You may laugh and/or think I'm trolling (I'm not), but I just tried it, and I like the new version better. In fact, I now remember visiting Reddit in the long ago, seeing the "old" version and bouncing off simply because I didn't like the layout, never mind content. I'm not going to say it was terrible, because obviously it worked for many, but I distinctly remember looking at it and thinking it looked like a less pleasing version of MetaFilter's layout.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:38 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:38 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
I don't think it's particularly strange that you prefer New, especially if it's what you're used to. They designed it to look more modern than Old, and it was meant to be visually appealing. As with a lot of things like this, it's a mix of people not liking change and long-term users seeing problems that aren't obvious at a glance.
posted by Bugbread at 4:48 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 4:48 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
If you never knew about a feature you won't miss it
posted by subdee at 4:52 AM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by subdee at 4:52 AM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
Yesterday, while I was sitting around bored with my phone for a moment, I forgot this was going on, and I clicked on the Reddit app. Someone had posted the illustrated autopsy report of a celebrity crash victim on r/mildlysatisfying, a subreddit that usually features videos of paint mixing or pictures of well-fitted tile. So if you were wondering how it was going over there, they are having an extremely normal one.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:19 AM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 5:19 AM on June 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
Metafilter: the Reddit that doesn't charge for its API.
posted by signal at 5:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by signal at 5:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Does anyone remember Flooz
Okay, random tangential memory, but...is that the one Whoopi Goldberg briefly shilled for, or was that Beenz?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:04 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Okay, random tangential memory, but...is that the one Whoopi Goldberg briefly shilled for, or was that Beenz?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 6:04 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS beenz has entered the chat
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:12 AM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:12 AM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
I just Googled what beenz is, and it looks like it came and went while I was still in elementary school, but what a trip that was.
posted by yangj08 at 6:14 AM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by yangj08 at 6:14 AM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Peak 1999: i got some Flooz for filling out a survey for our imaging library vendor, and through a mechanism i don't recall (involving Amazon?) redeemed it for the Beta Band 3 EPs.
posted by Horselover Fat at 6:18 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Horselover Fat at 6:18 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
Does anyone remember Flooz
Firefly. I very much miss Firefly. I met so many wonderful, interesting people in the communities.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:23 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Firefly. I very much miss Firefly. I met so many wonderful, interesting people in the communities.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:23 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
I learned about flooz when my parents got a fraud alert on their credit card that someone had intercepted some cash advance checks and spent them at flooz.com. Given the circumstances, we just assumed it was some sort of internet sex site (it wasn't like we were going to type it into our browser). It was years after the company was gone that I realized flooz.com wasn't an internet sex site.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
I thought Beenz was the fake crypto-currancy analogy featured in that one Community episode that one time?
posted by Faintdreams at 6:32 AM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Faintdreams at 6:32 AM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Beenz.com was unfortunately real.
You're thinking of MeowMeowBeenz which was the fake rating site in the Community episode.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:35 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
You're thinking of MeowMeowBeenz which was the fake rating site in the Community episode.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:35 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
(Catching up here, but it’s not weird that NBA and Denver Nuggets subreddits are trending. The Nuggets just won the NBA championship for the first time ever last night.)
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 6:37 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 6:37 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yeah, sorry, "weird" was the wrong word. "Unusual but probably situationally justified" would have been better.
posted by Bugbread at 6:43 AM on June 13, 2023
posted by Bugbread at 6:43 AM on June 13, 2023
I've only been on Reddit for maybe 8 months; I joined to follow a pretty small list of technical subjects and hobbies, r/tech is the only broad topic I'll even glance at.
Observations:
Disclaimer: I'm not on ANY other social site (No FB, no Twitter, etc etc) except for like two niche forums for my interests. MetaFilter is the only general/current-events online community I have had any interest in engaging with. You lucky, lucky people.
So - the blackout: I'm clearly not so invested in reddit that the blackout overly concerns me, but it's certainly interesting (chilling) in the context of the monetization/enshittification of initially free and now popular online media. Given the age of the WWW and the number of patents and gates now in place, is a new free/open successor to things like FB, twitter or Reddit even possible now?
posted by Artful Codger at 7:05 AM on June 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Observations:
- whoever said "there's no such thing as a stupid question" has never been on Reddit. Questions like "I'm too lazy to RTFM or google; you solve my trivial issue", or "How do I record a symphony orchestra? My budget is $21.74"
- in any given niche topic, there's a canonical set of n00b questions that will get asked about 3x a week. ChatGPT or a cousin should be set to detect these, delete them, and PM the questioner with a link to the FAQ.
- a well-timed one-line snark on r/tech will earn 500x the comment karma of a knowledge-based 6 paragraph response in answer to a serious question
Disclaimer: I'm not on ANY other social site (No FB, no Twitter, etc etc) except for like two niche forums for my interests. MetaFilter is the only general/current-events online community I have had any interest in engaging with. You lucky, lucky people.
So - the blackout: I'm clearly not so invested in reddit that the blackout overly concerns me, but it's certainly interesting (chilling) in the context of the monetization/enshittification of initially free and now popular online media. Given the age of the WWW and the number of patents and gates now in place, is a new free/open successor to things like FB, twitter or Reddit even possible now?
posted by Artful Codger at 7:05 AM on June 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Everything you need to know about reddit, spez, and the total lack of any presumption that they're acting in good faith can be explained in one simple, short, anecdote.
The reddit admins have insisted since day one that the cardinal rule of subreddits is that the top mod is the owner for all time, that the only circumstance in which the admins will EVER change ownership of a subreddit is if the top mod account is inactive for several months.
This is why /r/feminism is owned by an MRA fuckwad who bans actual feminists. He got there first.
This is why /r/lesbians is a porn sub and when lesbian users wanted a space to talk they had to create /r/actuallesbians
The reddit admins insisted that the cardinal rule could not, and never would, be violated. Ownership of a subreddit was sacrosanct and overrode any questions of sense, morality, or common decency.
At least they insisted on that until it was going to hurt the far right wing scum of reddit.
The subreddit /r/kotakuinaction was THE hub of gamergate outside of the various *chan boards, back in the days when gamergate was the core of the alt right and was busy sending death threats, rape threats, photos of the outside of women's houses, and so on to anyone they deemed to be a target.
/r/kotakuinaction was reported many times for its clear and blatant violations of ToS, and like /r/thedonald the admins permitted it to get away with things they claim are forbidden on reddit and which they eagerly ban anyone left of center for doing.
But one day the owner of /r/kotakuinaction had a moment of decency and realized that perhaps there was something wrong with owning a subreddit devoted to sending women threats of rape and death.
So he made the sub private, killing it basically, and suddenly gamergate was without its hub.
For a few hours anyway, until the reddit admins stepped in, decided that the sacred rule of onwership was more of a guideline, and took ownership of /r/kotakuinaction away from its founder and gave it to a hardcore rape threat enthusiast.
And that is all you need to know about reddit and spez and why no one should ever assume they are operating in good faith.
FOOTNOTE: At least one actual murder can be traced to /r/kotakuinaction. A long time and popular user on /r/kotakuinaction murdered his father and said it was becuase his father was a Democrat and therefore by definition a pedophile, terrorist, and Communist who deserved only death. Oddly, all of his comments and posts on /r/kotakuinaction vanished shortly afterwards thanks to the reddit admin team helping the alt right cover up for itself and pretend it wasn't engaging in stochastic terrorism.
posted by sotonohito at 7:12 AM on June 13, 2023 [128 favorites]
The reddit admins have insisted since day one that the cardinal rule of subreddits is that the top mod is the owner for all time, that the only circumstance in which the admins will EVER change ownership of a subreddit is if the top mod account is inactive for several months.
This is why /r/feminism is owned by an MRA fuckwad who bans actual feminists. He got there first.
This is why /r/lesbians is a porn sub and when lesbian users wanted a space to talk they had to create /r/actuallesbians
The reddit admins insisted that the cardinal rule could not, and never would, be violated. Ownership of a subreddit was sacrosanct and overrode any questions of sense, morality, or common decency.
At least they insisted on that until it was going to hurt the far right wing scum of reddit.
The subreddit /r/kotakuinaction was THE hub of gamergate outside of the various *chan boards, back in the days when gamergate was the core of the alt right and was busy sending death threats, rape threats, photos of the outside of women's houses, and so on to anyone they deemed to be a target.
/r/kotakuinaction was reported many times for its clear and blatant violations of ToS, and like /r/thedonald the admins permitted it to get away with things they claim are forbidden on reddit and which they eagerly ban anyone left of center for doing.
But one day the owner of /r/kotakuinaction had a moment of decency and realized that perhaps there was something wrong with owning a subreddit devoted to sending women threats of rape and death.
So he made the sub private, killing it basically, and suddenly gamergate was without its hub.
For a few hours anyway, until the reddit admins stepped in, decided that the sacred rule of onwership was more of a guideline, and took ownership of /r/kotakuinaction away from its founder and gave it to a hardcore rape threat enthusiast.
And that is all you need to know about reddit and spez and why no one should ever assume they are operating in good faith.
FOOTNOTE: At least one actual murder can be traced to /r/kotakuinaction. A long time and popular user on /r/kotakuinaction murdered his father and said it was becuase his father was a Democrat and therefore by definition a pedophile, terrorist, and Communist who deserved only death. Oddly, all of his comments and posts on /r/kotakuinaction vanished shortly afterwards thanks to the reddit admin team helping the alt right cover up for itself and pretend it wasn't engaging in stochastic terrorism.
posted by sotonohito at 7:12 AM on June 13, 2023 [128 favorites]
It is stochastic terrorism but bleeds into other more deliberate forms of terrorism when those communities are actively supported and encouraged by Reddit admins.
posted by glaucon at 7:16 AM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by glaucon at 7:16 AM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
Hear, hear, sotonohito.
I've gotten a lot out of reddit, but I still keep in mind the possibility that my user name over there is on multiple hit lists should I ever slip up. And I am certain that the admins (whom, according to your average gator, I was regularly fucking in strict rotation along with my fellow dissenters) would not lift a finger to help.
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:40 AM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
I've gotten a lot out of reddit, but I still keep in mind the possibility that my user name over there is on multiple hit lists should I ever slip up. And I am certain that the admins (whom, according to your average gator, I was regularly fucking in strict rotation along with my fellow dissenters) would not lift a finger to help.
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:40 AM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
God. I read Flooz and my immediate first thought before scrolling further was “What next, Beenz?” and….
I’m old, Gandalf. I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much internet stupidity.
is a new free/open successor to things like FB, twitter or Reddit even possible now?
I sort of touched on this question above when I said Reddit is one of the few places where the community could feasibly slap together a replacement in a few weeks. The other I left unsaid was Stack Overflow.
Pools of talent, boredom, and energy always have the ability to create their own improved basins. It’s more a question of leadership and organization, of being able to get everyone rowing in the same direction while simultaneously preventing the sociopaths from crawling in through the control room windows at the start.
The expertise and, clearly, free time to do this can be found within reddit, and that a consensus alternative wasn’t underway before talks with the admin began is why the community can’t actually negotiate with Reddit admin as a peer. They have nothing the admin wants from them (in short: “don’t threaten the IPO”), just complaints that are dismissable until the threat to walk is feasible.
…nightmarefuel reddit history snipped…
As bad as all that is, and I’m incredibly sorry/unsurprised to read it, the claim that spez moderated /r/jailbait/ is far, far worse. It’s effectively a claim of being adjacent to human trafficking of minors for sexual slavery. I stumbled across it once due to a redirected link in the early days of reddit and it was like finding an open exchange forum for CP, IMMEDIATE close-tab and hoping to Christ the NSA traffic logs made it clear I did not go there with intent.
If even a tiny fraction of the stories I’ve heard since are true what was going on behind the scenes was much worse. Doing anything to support that place - permitting its existence in the first place - should be automatic grounds for being put into a rocket on a mission to colonize the sun.
“But Ryvar didn’t you say upthread that the Incels/Nazis characterization is 4-5 years out of date?”
I should have said three, because the turning point for reddit was absolutely the banning of /r/The_Donald and subsequent ragequit by the alt-right. The greater sitewide community did not magically become perfect overnight but that moment was when enough poison drained for healing to begin. And it has been ever since, however slowly and in spite of an administration that tacitly enabled the original problem.
I believe everyone who says they encountered discrimination and bigotry there. And I believe the site became something different - in most places - after the alt-right left.
posted by Ryvar at 8:03 AM on June 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
I’m old, Gandalf. I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much internet stupidity.
is a new free/open successor to things like FB, twitter or Reddit even possible now?
I sort of touched on this question above when I said Reddit is one of the few places where the community could feasibly slap together a replacement in a few weeks. The other I left unsaid was Stack Overflow.
Pools of talent, boredom, and energy always have the ability to create their own improved basins. It’s more a question of leadership and organization, of being able to get everyone rowing in the same direction while simultaneously preventing the sociopaths from crawling in through the control room windows at the start.
The expertise and, clearly, free time to do this can be found within reddit, and that a consensus alternative wasn’t underway before talks with the admin began is why the community can’t actually negotiate with Reddit admin as a peer. They have nothing the admin wants from them (in short: “don’t threaten the IPO”), just complaints that are dismissable until the threat to walk is feasible.
…nightmarefuel reddit history snipped…
As bad as all that is, and I’m incredibly sorry/unsurprised to read it, the claim that spez moderated /r/jailbait/ is far, far worse. It’s effectively a claim of being adjacent to human trafficking of minors for sexual slavery. I stumbled across it once due to a redirected link in the early days of reddit and it was like finding an open exchange forum for CP, IMMEDIATE close-tab and hoping to Christ the NSA traffic logs made it clear I did not go there with intent.
If even a tiny fraction of the stories I’ve heard since are true what was going on behind the scenes was much worse. Doing anything to support that place - permitting its existence in the first place - should be automatic grounds for being put into a rocket on a mission to colonize the sun.
“But Ryvar didn’t you say upthread that the Incels/Nazis characterization is 4-5 years out of date?”
I should have said three, because the turning point for reddit was absolutely the banning of /r/The_Donald and subsequent ragequit by the alt-right. The greater sitewide community did not magically become perfect overnight but that moment was when enough poison drained for healing to begin. And it has been ever since, however slowly and in spite of an administration that tacitly enabled the original problem.
I believe everyone who says they encountered discrimination and bigotry there. And I believe the site became something different - in most places - after the alt-right left.
posted by Ryvar at 8:03 AM on June 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
All the people in here singing the praised of old.reddit made me doubt my previous judgements, and go back just now and try it again. And, I guess if you have a tiny screen, limited bandwidth, and mostly just want to skim past things it might but better. But otherwise it feels like a time machine back to a decade ago and not in a good way.
posted by 3j0hn at 8:09 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by 3j0hn at 8:09 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Old reddit doesn't encourage endless scrolling as successfully as new reddit, so I can see why people primarily looking to burn time would prefer it.
posted by No One Ever Does at 8:20 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by No One Ever Does at 8:20 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
The expertise and, clearly, free time to do this can be found within reddit
I'm really unsure if this is true at all relevant scales. Personally, I could probably do this for the small, focused sub I moderate (essentially reviving the moribund phpbb on a new host), but handling anything much bigger (up to the biggest subs) is a whole different skillset (and amount of time), as is anything that is supposed to be able to handle not just one but many communities.
Also, I do think that the saga of buy nothing provides some major cautionary tales for anyone hoping in 2023 to be able to actually move a particular large community off of a centralized platform (however terrible) into something bespoke and community-specific.
posted by advil at 8:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm really unsure if this is true at all relevant scales. Personally, I could probably do this for the small, focused sub I moderate (essentially reviving the moribund phpbb on a new host), but handling anything much bigger (up to the biggest subs) is a whole different skillset (and amount of time), as is anything that is supposed to be able to handle not just one but many communities.
Also, I do think that the saga of buy nothing provides some major cautionary tales for anyone hoping in 2023 to be able to actually move a particular large community off of a centralized platform (however terrible) into something bespoke and community-specific.
posted by advil at 8:25 AM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
Old reddit is better for finding discussion topics, new reddit is better for looking at a linked picture/video and moving on?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:36 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:36 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Old reddit is better for finding discussion topics, new reddit is better for looking at a linked picture/video and moving on?
That's why I use Reddit Enhancement Suite together with the Firefox Imagus extension.
posted by Pendragon at 8:41 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
That's why I use Reddit Enhancement Suite together with the Firefox Imagus extension.
posted by Pendragon at 8:41 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Oh, I also use RES for the best of both worlds, but I'm trying to wrap my head around why even a non-power user would prefer the New Reddit experience I so dearly loathe.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:46 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:46 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Old reddit is better for finding discussion topicsDefinitely disagree. Old reddit shows you a thumbnail and a title. New reddit shows a big picture/video inline (good for infinite scrolling with no engagement tbf) but also a preview of the actual text of the post which is much better for finding discussion topics than a bare title. If I wanted to be on hacker news, I'd be on hacker news and not even have my pure 2010 internet experience be sullied with thumbnails.
posted by 3j0hn at 8:46 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just popped over to Reddit for like two minutes to see what effect this organized action is having, and it’s devastating as far as my view of the site. Most content is dead or recycled or obvious bot crap, and the comment threads are mostly a handful of people joking around like it’s a snow day and only two people made it into work so they’re just goofing off on company time. Some of the bigger subreddits that are private have active anti-posting happening (like, purposely opposite the subreddit’s theme or focus). As the second day unfolds, it looks like more and more of the site’s general user base is becoming aware of what’s happening.
I think what happens following today will matter a lot for the future of the site. It looks like admins are waiting for Wednesday and to see how much snaps back to status quo and how many mods come back before they do anything in any direction. For me personally, I am seriously reevaluating how much time I waste reading “the internet” with reddit as the portal, and am now very aware of some needed habit changes. So for me, at least, two days is in fact a consequential length of time on this issue.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:54 AM on June 13, 2023 [29 favorites]
I think what happens following today will matter a lot for the future of the site. It looks like admins are waiting for Wednesday and to see how much snaps back to status quo and how many mods come back before they do anything in any direction. For me personally, I am seriously reevaluating how much time I waste reading “the internet” with reddit as the portal, and am now very aware of some needed habit changes. So for me, at least, two days is in fact a consequential length of time on this issue.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:54 AM on June 13, 2023 [29 favorites]
I am seriously reevaluating how much time I waste reading “the internet” with reddit as the portal
This.
Even in my short and fairly limited engagement with reddit, I am embarrassed by how much it has become a "digital soother" on my phone, something that I whip out reflexively whenever the prospect of a few minutes of uncommitted time threatens. I can only recoil in horror from the time-sucking potential of the other biggies that I have so far refused to join.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:06 AM on June 13, 2023 [32 favorites]
This.
Even in my short and fairly limited engagement with reddit, I am embarrassed by how much it has become a "digital soother" on my phone, something that I whip out reflexively whenever the prospect of a few minutes of uncommitted time threatens. I can only recoil in horror from the time-sucking potential of the other biggies that I have so far refused to join.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:06 AM on June 13, 2023 [32 favorites]
LooseFilter, I am having a similar epiphany regarding my use of the site. I am one of the few ?rubes? who actually uses the native Reddit app on my phone, and I deleted it Sunday night in anticipation of the protest. It was one of the four "home row" apps on my iPhone, and it's very conspicuous in its absence. I find my finger automatically trying to head there whenever I close a different app or open my phone. Not sure how this might change that behavior, but I'm learning a lot about myself.
posted by Night_owl at 9:08 AM on June 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by Night_owl at 9:08 AM on June 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
Old reddit shows you a thumbnail and a title. New reddit shows a big picture/video inline (good for infinite scrolling with no engagement tbf) but also a preview of the actual text of the post
On mobile, the difference is purely aesthetic. Neither interface shows any more or less information (and the new interface does not have text preview).
This makes me not understand the vitriol of either group. The interfaces are basically the same! (on mobile, not logged in, ever)
posted by Dysk at 9:19 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
On mobile, the difference is purely aesthetic. Neither interface shows any more or less information (and the new interface does not have text preview).
This makes me not understand the vitriol of either group. The interfaces are basically the same! (on mobile, not logged in, ever)
posted by Dysk at 9:19 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Old.reddit lets you bypass the mature content gate in Safari iOS. So if you’re trying to browse, say, /r/Ukraine (which is blanketly NSFW flagged) your options with new are an app or logging in.
posted by Ryvar at 9:26 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Ryvar at 9:26 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
This makes me not understand the vitriol of either group. The interfaces are basically the same! (on mobile, not logged in, ever)
Five or six years ago I just jumped to new and never looked back. Echoing you, I don't agree with the arguments that old reddit is better and I have nothing invested in whether new reddit is superior or not. I also used the native app exclusively since it was created with the exception of a three month stint using Apollo, which I did not enjoy.
None of the moderators in my 50k sub use anything other than the native app or the mobile interface for phone and I think one still uses old reddit on desktop. We take thousands of moderator actions per week. We don't even support the old reddit version of our sub because it was a minimal part of our traffic.
There was almost no mention of this blackout running up to it from our users. We received two modmail messages last week, one from someone clearly just spreading the word to as many subs as possible and one from someone who rarely participated in our sub. There were two posts yesterday, again by people I've rarely seen participate, one asking what alternatives there were to our subreddit (not many) and the other asking why we weren't blacked out.
Our sub's posts, traffic, and comments don't seem to have been impacted at all and our users don't seem to have much of an opinion about this blackout or know much about it. Maybe that's just because we're a New York City sub about very local stuff with a base of users who don't explore wider reddit beyond maybe us and the largest New York subs.
posted by Captaintripps at 9:43 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Five or six years ago I just jumped to new and never looked back. Echoing you, I don't agree with the arguments that old reddit is better and I have nothing invested in whether new reddit is superior or not. I also used the native app exclusively since it was created with the exception of a three month stint using Apollo, which I did not enjoy.
None of the moderators in my 50k sub use anything other than the native app or the mobile interface for phone and I think one still uses old reddit on desktop. We take thousands of moderator actions per week. We don't even support the old reddit version of our sub because it was a minimal part of our traffic.
There was almost no mention of this blackout running up to it from our users. We received two modmail messages last week, one from someone clearly just spreading the word to as many subs as possible and one from someone who rarely participated in our sub. There were two posts yesterday, again by people I've rarely seen participate, one asking what alternatives there were to our subreddit (not many) and the other asking why we weren't blacked out.
Our sub's posts, traffic, and comments don't seem to have been impacted at all and our users don't seem to have much of an opinion about this blackout or know much about it. Maybe that's just because we're a New York City sub about very local stuff with a base of users who don't explore wider reddit beyond maybe us and the largest New York subs.
posted by Captaintripps at 9:43 AM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
On mobile, the difference is purely aesthetic.
I use old.reddit in a browser even on my phone, so it's effectively the same as desktop for me. I don't do a lot of commenting via my phone because I'm old and I like real keyboards but I do write or voice-type comments sometimes.
Granted I'm probably a weirdo and an edge case, but I basically can't stand app-based platforms and I don't use anything social media via an app at all. I can't even use the official YT app and vastly prefer using Firefox with uBlock for obvious reasons. And up until recently you could actually play audio/music playlists from YT in Firestorm even if the screen was locked or the browser was pushed to the background or another tab, so you can multitask while still playing music.
Most of my phone apps are things that don't exist as a web page, stuff that takes full advantage of the sensor integration of a smart phone like Stellarium, plant identifiers, map/nav tools and that kind of thing.
And, well, shoot, I realize I do have some "social media" apps on my phone because I have Discord, Slack, Telegram and Signal and it's annoying. Discord is entirely for a group of local bike weirdos, Slack is for the group for my house and landmates, Signal for encrypted comms and Telegram was for a work group I was part of and can be removed now.
I mainly only use them to get the alerts and then I usually reply if needed via browser on desktop unless it's urgent.
My personal reasoning is that I waited for years/decades for stuff like a fully featured browser complete with tabs, ad blocking and more on a mobile device that wasn't something more limited like the very early mobile web use. The whole point of a smartphone to me is that it's both an extension of a real computer and it is a real computer all on its own.
The whole concept of installing an app for a simplified or aggressively dumbed-down view of a platform with a big fat greasy side of adware and spyware crammed into it taking up more data than a normal compliant browser is so totally foreign to me it gives me fits.
But the bulk of my ire about platform apps isn't really about the UI/UX stuff or dark patterns - it's about how reliably these apps don't present the full view of what's going on and are so easily manipulated.
One relevant example being how the default reddit app isn't displaying the messages embedded into the "private" status pages of all of the closed subs.
I have no idea if that is intentional by reddit admins or if it's just how the app normally works - and I suspect it's the latter to be honest - and in either case it's not good and it's a distortion caused by the app.
posted by loquacious at 9:44 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I use old.reddit in a browser even on my phone, so it's effectively the same as desktop for me. I don't do a lot of commenting via my phone because I'm old and I like real keyboards but I do write or voice-type comments sometimes.
Granted I'm probably a weirdo and an edge case, but I basically can't stand app-based platforms and I don't use anything social media via an app at all. I can't even use the official YT app and vastly prefer using Firefox with uBlock for obvious reasons. And up until recently you could actually play audio/music playlists from YT in Firestorm even if the screen was locked or the browser was pushed to the background or another tab, so you can multitask while still playing music.
Most of my phone apps are things that don't exist as a web page, stuff that takes full advantage of the sensor integration of a smart phone like Stellarium, plant identifiers, map/nav tools and that kind of thing.
And, well, shoot, I realize I do have some "social media" apps on my phone because I have Discord, Slack, Telegram and Signal and it's annoying. Discord is entirely for a group of local bike weirdos, Slack is for the group for my house and landmates, Signal for encrypted comms and Telegram was for a work group I was part of and can be removed now.
I mainly only use them to get the alerts and then I usually reply if needed via browser on desktop unless it's urgent.
My personal reasoning is that I waited for years/decades for stuff like a fully featured browser complete with tabs, ad blocking and more on a mobile device that wasn't something more limited like the very early mobile web use. The whole point of a smartphone to me is that it's both an extension of a real computer and it is a real computer all on its own.
The whole concept of installing an app for a simplified or aggressively dumbed-down view of a platform with a big fat greasy side of adware and spyware crammed into it taking up more data than a normal compliant browser is so totally foreign to me it gives me fits.
But the bulk of my ire about platform apps isn't really about the UI/UX stuff or dark patterns - it's about how reliably these apps don't present the full view of what's going on and are so easily manipulated.
One relevant example being how the default reddit app isn't displaying the messages embedded into the "private" status pages of all of the closed subs.
I have no idea if that is intentional by reddit admins or if it's just how the app normally works - and I suspect it's the latter to be honest - and in either case it's not good and it's a distortion caused by the app.
posted by loquacious at 9:44 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Granted I'm probably a weirdo and an edge case,
loquacious, PREACH.
I agree with, and live by, most of what you wrote (with the exception that I am unhappy with dark patterns).
I despise separate apps for everything. It’s like being issued one spoon to eat oatmeal, and a different spoon exclusively for ice cream, and yet another spoon for stirring tea. No thank you, no. No.
posted by Silvery Fish at 10:05 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
loquacious, PREACH.
I agree with, and live by, most of what you wrote (with the exception that I am unhappy with dark patterns).
I despise separate apps for everything. It’s like being issued one spoon to eat oatmeal, and a different spoon exclusively for ice cream, and yet another spoon for stirring tea. No thank you, no. No.
posted by Silvery Fish at 10:05 AM on June 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
It’s like being issued one spoon to eat oatmeal, and a different spoon exclusively for ice cream, and yet another spoon for stirring tea....
I use different types of spoons for each of those things. But yeah, in a pinch it's nice to be able to use Firefox to eat my ice cream.
posted by 3j0hn at 10:13 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
God. I read Flooz and my immediate first thought before scrolling further was “What next, Beenz?” and….
I’m old, Gandalf . I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much internet stupidity.
Hey now. Knowing what Beenz were - and why they are still hilarious - makes you Very Cool.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:15 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I’m old, Gandalf . I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much internet stupidity.
Hey now. Knowing what Beenz were - and why they are still hilarious - makes you Very Cool.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:15 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I <3 MetaFilter, but WOWIE ZOWIE has this place left me feeling constantly gaslit in terms of how... terrible...? ...a place Reddit is
I stopped using reddit about six years ago, mostly just tired of fending off brigades in left leaning spaces and red pilled bros trying to take over subreddits like /r/asianamerican by making every conversation about how they don't get dates from anyone
everytime I've glanced at the frontpage since then I keep being reminded of the reason that I left - insipid capitalist prosumerism, weird brand loyalties, stories based totally on hearsay, assbackwards opinions on sociopolitics particularly when it comes to race and gender and most especially when it involves video games
everyone says - hey, go to the subreddit for your interests, there are smart people there and great mods. and there are! but in terms of 'net good' ethics, the 1% of people seeking out those niche subs and the 1% of those subs that aren't problematic vs the 99% of people seeing the frontpage and all of its just terrible opinions - that's very much a net bad. so was providing far right groups an organizing platform for the longest longest time. like, where do you think modern alt-right types came from? the mainstreaming of red pill ideology? reddit was the first time in my life I'd ever been exposed to "men's rights" activists, the anti-Feminist Frequency types, the Gamer Gaters. and so many of them went out of their way to be patient, persuasive, charismatic. had I been a more impressionable, ignorant lad who hadn't read a corpus of feminist/post-colonial/Marxist literary criticism because of my college courses, who knows how I would've turned out
so it just hasn't been a site that I can tolerate logging into knowing what's being normalized on it for the vast majority of its lurking users and for the things its fomented. and while MetaFilter has historically had its issues (which I've similarly left for), it's also acknowledged them and is trying to change
posted by paimapi at 10:23 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I stopped using reddit about six years ago, mostly just tired of fending off brigades in left leaning spaces and red pilled bros trying to take over subreddits like /r/asianamerican by making every conversation about how they don't get dates from anyone
everytime I've glanced at the frontpage since then I keep being reminded of the reason that I left - insipid capitalist prosumerism, weird brand loyalties, stories based totally on hearsay, assbackwards opinions on sociopolitics particularly when it comes to race and gender and most especially when it involves video games
everyone says - hey, go to the subreddit for your interests, there are smart people there and great mods. and there are! but in terms of 'net good' ethics, the 1% of people seeking out those niche subs and the 1% of those subs that aren't problematic vs the 99% of people seeing the frontpage and all of its just terrible opinions - that's very much a net bad. so was providing far right groups an organizing platform for the longest longest time. like, where do you think modern alt-right types came from? the mainstreaming of red pill ideology? reddit was the first time in my life I'd ever been exposed to "men's rights" activists, the anti-Feminist Frequency types, the Gamer Gaters. and so many of them went out of their way to be patient, persuasive, charismatic. had I been a more impressionable, ignorant lad who hadn't read a corpus of feminist/post-colonial/Marxist literary criticism because of my college courses, who knows how I would've turned out
so it just hasn't been a site that I can tolerate logging into knowing what's being normalized on it for the vast majority of its lurking users and for the things its fomented. and while MetaFilter has historically had its issues (which I've similarly left for), it's also acknowledged them and is trying to change
posted by paimapi at 10:23 AM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I agree with, and live by, most of what you wrote (with the exception that I am unhappy with dark patterns).
Oh, I have plenty of ire left for dark patterns. I mean technically the lack of uniformity or transparency between app and web *is* a dark pattern.
I'm just trying to articulate that there's more to dark patterns in UI/UX that go beyond simply "I don't like this layout and interface - it's clunky and/or it triggers my doom scrolling and dopamine buttons." and usually includes a lack of transparency as a featurebug.
posted by loquacious at 10:39 AM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, I have plenty of ire left for dark patterns. I mean technically the lack of uniformity or transparency between app and web *is* a dark pattern.
I'm just trying to articulate that there's more to dark patterns in UI/UX that go beyond simply "I don't like this layout and interface - it's clunky and/or it triggers my doom scrolling and dopamine buttons." and usually includes a lack of transparency as a featurebug.
posted by loquacious at 10:39 AM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Verge interview with the "blackmailing" Apollo developer, Christian Selig, who "wants to be paid to go away quietly". Seems a normal dev who's just sad that 10 years of work is being needlessly flushed down the toilet to me, but obviously I'm missing something.
DP: So as it stands right now, you’re set to turn off the API token and basically shut down Apollo on June 30th. What percentage of you believes you will actually shut down on June 30th?posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 11:27 AM on June 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
Oh, gosh, like 90 percent.
DP: So you’re fully prepared for this to happen.
I’ve talked to my reps at Apple to get the process started. As much as I would love to say this has been a big bluff… it was literally a matter of, like, Reddit hasn’t answered my emails in a while. Every public statement I’ve seen seems like the CEO is quite angry over this. They don’t seem to want to budge on the timeline at all. I don’t see how I can make this work.
I’ve loved building Apollo... but at this stage, it’s just hard for me to see a path forward where they are reasonably willing to meet me even a quarter of the way here. It just seems like they’re, they’re so angry, for lack of a better term, that I kind of just feel like it’s better for me to be honest with myself rather than hold onto the hope until the last minute and then just completely fall apart.
But that 10 percent of me really hopes that I’ll be able to say, “I hopped on a call with Steve. We talked it out. There were some pleasantries exchanged about misunderstandings. We’re all good now, they’re giving us more time to adopt the API, and we’re sticking around.” I would love that. But it’s totally in Reddit’s court. I’m happy to talk whenever, but I just haven’t been able to reach them.
The YT mobile app is miserable; the website is only marginally better now that it's festooned with all kinds of crap you can't turn off, which can be downright unmanageable on a phone. Plus, IIRC you have to use the app for background audio to work.
The best YT experience is oddly the smart TV interface running on a desktop, which used to be available on the web, but now requires you to spoof it with something like YouTubeTV. [github]. Though to avoid ads with that interface, you need to have premium. Or maybe a pi-hole.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:34 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
The best YT experience is oddly the smart TV interface running on a desktop, which used to be available on the web, but now requires you to spoof it with something like YouTubeTV. [github]. Though to avoid ads with that interface, you need to have premium. Or maybe a pi-hole.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:34 AM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, interesting discussion on how much tracking the official Reddit app is doing.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 11:34 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 11:34 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
I feel sympathy for the Apollo developer. This has been a huge part of his identity and life for the last 10 years. It has given him an income and a prominent place in the community. Losing that in a short time with this kind of out of nowhere rug pull must be devastating. He didn’t handle it well and seems to have burned bridges with Reddit management; but who would handle this well.
posted by interogative mood at 11:46 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 11:46 AM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
The YT mobile app is miserable; the website is only marginally better now that it's festooned with all kinds of crap you can't turn off, which can be downright unmanageable on a phone. Plus, IIRC you have to use the app for background audio to work.
Maybe I'm just lucky or maybe uBlock+Firefox is just that good but I haven't seen an ad or cruft on YT in years and years. I haven't even attempted to look at YouTube without Firefox and a good blocker in so long I'm absolutely appalled in the rare instances where I see someone loading YT in an unblocked browser.
Sure I still get the embedded in-video ads or sponsorship messages from the creators themselves but those are easy to skip through or ignore, and on good YT creator channels they're relatively mild and unobtrusive and it's just them talking about it instead of a full blown high production video ad with intense sounds or graphics vying for your attention.
posted by loquacious at 12:03 PM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Maybe I'm just lucky or maybe uBlock+Firefox is just that good but I haven't seen an ad or cruft on YT in years and years. I haven't even attempted to look at YouTube without Firefox and a good blocker in so long I'm absolutely appalled in the rare instances where I see someone loading YT in an unblocked browser.
Sure I still get the embedded in-video ads or sponsorship messages from the creators themselves but those are easy to skip through or ignore, and on good YT creator channels they're relatively mild and unobtrusive and it's just them talking about it instead of a full blown high production video ad with intense sounds or graphics vying for your attention.
posted by loquacious at 12:03 PM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
"CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company, telling employees to block out the “noise” and that the ongoing blackout of thousands of subreddits will eventually pass."
The people at /r/modcoord are talking about extending the blackout indefinitely in response.
posted by simmering octagon at 12:06 PM on June 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
The people at /r/modcoord are talking about extending the blackout indefinitely in response.
posted by simmering octagon at 12:06 PM on June 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
The people at /r/modcoord are talking about extending the blackout indefinitely in response.
A good number of the subs I follow were already planning to be blacked out indefinitely.
posted by charred husk at 12:10 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
A good number of the subs I follow were already planning to be blacked out indefinitely.
posted by charred husk at 12:10 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Knowing what Beenz were - and why they are still hilarious - makes you Very Cool.
I'm cool! Finally! It only took several decades.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 12:16 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm cool! Finally! It only took several decades.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 12:16 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Of course spez used the word myriad wrong in that internal memo. He's just the wooooorst.
posted by otsebyatina at 12:19 PM on June 13, 2023
posted by otsebyatina at 12:19 PM on June 13, 2023
My tongue-in-cheek comment about spez being a prick wasn't some idle remark. Steve Huffman is, and has always been, the most tunnel-visioned shithead flavor of geek. He's the sort of guy who'd jump into a fandom conversation to flatly say "This is good, this is bad," and to act like anyone who thought anything else was an idiot barely worth conversing with.
He and his team clearly hit upon what seemed, on paper, to be a great money-making solution, because they didn't think through the fact that they'd be charging the Apollo developer $20,000,000. Honestly, while I'd expect most other CEOs to cave on their decisions, I'm betting on Steve not doing that, because he has the mental flexibility of a block of granite. He decided on some hypothetical answer, and therefore that is The Correct Answer and everyone who disagrees is a total fucking idiot. Steve has literally always been this way.
He's not a total idiot, in the sense that he's decent at engineering solutions to problems. I was a fan of his post-Reddit site Hipmunk, which did some smart things for finding plane tickets—smart things that involved engineering solutions and zero people skills. I'm sure he was a prick then, but Hipmunk didn't give him anywhere to have a voice, and I'm fine with pricks doing decent work in the background. Though given Hipmunk's ignominious end, it seems like he didn't quite Business his way through that one either. Keeping products intact is not a specialty of his.
It doesn't surprise me that he'd lie about what Selig said. The moment Selig said something about ten million dollars, spez misinterpreted him, locked in on the idea that This Was What Happened, and is now incapable of thinking otherwise. I doubt he even processed his own apology. I can't think of a single time he showed the ability to change his initial thoughts about something.
He's not even smart enough to gaslight intentionally. He's just incapable of processing variable information. He will never understand that he misinterpreted what Selig said, because that would require him to understand what self-reflection is, and spez doesn't do that either.
This has long since been a Known Thing. It's why Alexis Ohanian was the public face of Reddit, it's why Alexis has spent 15 years getting articles written about him talking about Tech and The Future and whatever else people think to ask him about. Alexis is where Reddit's "nerd twee" aesthetic came from, he's why Reddit and XKCD were so intermingled in early years, and he's also a decent part of the reason why Reddit has lasted as long as it has. spez was just some shithead co-founder who happened to be there too.
You'll notice that Alexis is being really quiet about this whole situation. That's not even tact: it's him being a well-enough-adjusted person that he washed his hands of Reddit way before the wave of grody shit hit it, and spends his time doing fun tech things and being a rich socialite. Steve got stuck with the shit end of the stick, part of which was because he was such a moron that he thought becoming CEO of Reddit in 2015 was a good idea that wouldn't end horribly for everyone involved.
In an industry full of Divorced Guys, Steve is in the running for second-most Divorced. (He will never, of course, top Elon.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 12:36 PM on June 13, 2023 [46 favorites]
He and his team clearly hit upon what seemed, on paper, to be a great money-making solution, because they didn't think through the fact that they'd be charging the Apollo developer $20,000,000. Honestly, while I'd expect most other CEOs to cave on their decisions, I'm betting on Steve not doing that, because he has the mental flexibility of a block of granite. He decided on some hypothetical answer, and therefore that is The Correct Answer and everyone who disagrees is a total fucking idiot. Steve has literally always been this way.
He's not a total idiot, in the sense that he's decent at engineering solutions to problems. I was a fan of his post-Reddit site Hipmunk, which did some smart things for finding plane tickets—smart things that involved engineering solutions and zero people skills. I'm sure he was a prick then, but Hipmunk didn't give him anywhere to have a voice, and I'm fine with pricks doing decent work in the background. Though given Hipmunk's ignominious end, it seems like he didn't quite Business his way through that one either. Keeping products intact is not a specialty of his.
It doesn't surprise me that he'd lie about what Selig said. The moment Selig said something about ten million dollars, spez misinterpreted him, locked in on the idea that This Was What Happened, and is now incapable of thinking otherwise. I doubt he even processed his own apology. I can't think of a single time he showed the ability to change his initial thoughts about something.
He's not even smart enough to gaslight intentionally. He's just incapable of processing variable information. He will never understand that he misinterpreted what Selig said, because that would require him to understand what self-reflection is, and spez doesn't do that either.
This has long since been a Known Thing. It's why Alexis Ohanian was the public face of Reddit, it's why Alexis has spent 15 years getting articles written about him talking about Tech and The Future and whatever else people think to ask him about. Alexis is where Reddit's "nerd twee" aesthetic came from, he's why Reddit and XKCD were so intermingled in early years, and he's also a decent part of the reason why Reddit has lasted as long as it has. spez was just some shithead co-founder who happened to be there too.
You'll notice that Alexis is being really quiet about this whole situation. That's not even tact: it's him being a well-enough-adjusted person that he washed his hands of Reddit way before the wave of grody shit hit it, and spends his time doing fun tech things and being a rich socialite. Steve got stuck with the shit end of the stick, part of which was because he was such a moron that he thought becoming CEO of Reddit in 2015 was a good idea that wouldn't end horribly for everyone involved.
In an industry full of Divorced Guys, Steve is in the running for second-most Divorced. (He will never, of course, top Elon.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 12:36 PM on June 13, 2023 [46 favorites]
A good number of the subs I follow were already planning to be blacked out indefinitely.
Oof, looking at the mod responses to that leaked email, staying private indefinitely or updating their users then going indefinitely private is the overwhelming response so far, rather than going for the touch-grass-tuesdays option.
Going by this tracker, over 70% of the top 500 SFW subreddits and over 80% of the top 50 are currently private or restricted.
I think Spez may have seriously underestimated the depth of feeling on this one.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
Oof, looking at the mod responses to that leaked email, staying private indefinitely or updating their users then going indefinitely private is the overwhelming response so far, rather than going for the touch-grass-tuesdays option.
Going by this tracker, over 70% of the top 500 SFW subreddits and over 80% of the top 50 are currently private or restricted.
I think Spez may have seriously underestimated the depth of feeling on this one.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
The YT mobile app is miserable; the website is only marginally better now that it's festooned with all kinds of crap you can't turn off, which can be downright unmanageable on a phone. Plus, IIRC you have to use the app for background audio to work.
If you're on an Apple device look at Vinegar — it replaces YouTube's bespoke eldritch horror of a video player with a standard HTML5 video player. Completely ignores ads and restores picture-in-picture so you can play YouTube in the background on iOS devices. It's a one-time purchase of $2 (90% off the same-as-in-town price).
You'll still have to live with the algorithm going wonko and trying to spoon-feed you alt-right bullshit but at least it's marginally better viewing experience.
posted by nathan_teske at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
If you're on an Apple device look at Vinegar — it replaces YouTube's bespoke eldritch horror of a video player with a standard HTML5 video player. Completely ignores ads and restores picture-in-picture so you can play YouTube in the background on iOS devices. It's a one-time purchase of $2 (90% off the same-as-in-town price).
You'll still have to live with the algorithm going wonko and trying to spoon-feed you alt-right bullshit but at least it's marginally better viewing experience.
posted by nathan_teske at 12:38 PM on June 13, 2023 [10 favorites]
as far as usability, I've had a random spam bot follow me every day or two for the last few weeks. I don't want anyone to follow my reddit account for any reason in any way, and yet I keep getting emails about these fake robots that I then have to manually block one by one.
posted by fomhar at 12:58 PM on June 13, 2023
posted by fomhar at 12:58 PM on June 13, 2023
The YT mobile app is miserable;
If you're on Android, look at ReVanced. It lets you patch basically every annoyance out of the official app, not least all the ads.
posted by Dysk at 1:01 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
If you're on Android, look at ReVanced. It lets you patch basically every annoyance out of the official app, not least all the ads.
posted by Dysk at 1:01 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
> He didn’t handle it well and seems to have burned bridges with Reddit management; but who would handle this well.Out of curiosity, have you listened to the actual audio recording of the supposed "threat"? Because it sounded pretty clear to me that it was a misunderstanding that was quickly acknowledged and apologized for. Then later, Huffman was reported to have said the following on a call with moderators:
Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million."All this is straight from Apollo's developer in the post that kicked this whole thing off, where he went on to say (emphasis mine):
Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."
It shows why I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't think this situation is recoverable. If Reddit is willing to stoop to such deep lows as to slander individuals with blatant lies to try to get community favor back, I no longer have any faith they want this to work, or ever did.I genuinely don't see any way to interpret this as "a deliberate effort to bury/obfuscate Reddit’s attempts to respond to concerns raised by users after they announced this policy", but I will grant you the "drama filled shit show" point.
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email at 1:05 PM on June 13, 2023 [13 favorites]
this is like a farmer being actively antagonistic toward their own seed and pollinators.
And salting their own farmland.
posted by Pouteria at 1:08 PM on June 13, 2023
And salting their own farmland.
posted by Pouteria at 1:08 PM on June 13, 2023
Is ReVanced going to survive this API blackmail? Or will it be another monetary casualty?
It's for the YT (YouTube) official app, so the Reddit API changes are utterly irrelevant to it.
posted by Dysk at 1:10 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's for the YT (YouTube) official app, so the Reddit API changes are utterly irrelevant to it.
posted by Dysk at 1:10 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Re: YouTube, another Android alternative is the open-source app NewPipe, which scrapes the site instead of using any API (and also lets you customize the interface, download video and audio, play music in the background while using other apps or with the screen off, etc.)
posted by trig at 1:14 PM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by trig at 1:14 PM on June 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
(Oh, though I'm just reading that there are some pretty new, still slightly buggy patches for the official Reddit app as well, mostly to remove the ads, AFAICT. Still just patches the main app, API changes are irrelevant.)
posted by Dysk at 1:15 PM on June 13, 2023
posted by Dysk at 1:15 PM on June 13, 2023
as far as usability, I've had a random spam bot follow me every day or two for the last few weeks. I don't want anyone to follow my reddit account for any reason in any way, and yet I keep getting emails about these fake robots that I then have to manually block one by one.
You can turn off allowing people to follow you using a toggle on the profile settings. I turned that off almost immediately due to past cyberstalking issues.
posted by Captaintripps at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
You can turn off allowing people to follow you using a toggle on the profile settings. I turned that off almost immediately due to past cyberstalking issues.
posted by Captaintripps at 1:23 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
> Going by this tracker, over 70% of the top 500 SFW subreddits and over 80% of the top 50 are currently private or restricted.
That's tracking only the subreddits that had decided to join the blackout, not all subreddits, btw.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's tracking only the subreddits that had decided to join the blackout, not all subreddits, btw.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
this is like a farmer being actively antagonistic toward their own seed and pollinators
I'm now picturing an almond farmer who wants to charge the bees (they're eating for free!), and I can't think of a better metaphor for Reddit and Twitter.
posted by echo target at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
I'm now picturing an almond farmer who wants to charge the bees (they're eating for free!), and I can't think of a better metaphor for Reddit and Twitter.
posted by echo target at 1:40 PM on June 13, 2023 [15 favorites]
There it is, thank you.
Why do so many sites encourage the cyberstalking option as the default? Is it really that much more profitable?
posted by fomhar at 2:04 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why do so many sites encourage the cyberstalking option as the default? Is it really that much more profitable?
posted by fomhar at 2:04 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
There is also LibreTube which is available through F-Droid.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:09 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 2:09 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why do so many sites encourage the cyberstalking option as the default? Is it really that much more profitable?
Seriously. My profile says I've been "Linked by" 18 people on MetaFilter, which I have no control over and find creepy as hell.
posted by oulipian at 2:13 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Seriously. My profile says I've been "Linked by" 18 people on MetaFilter, which I have no control over and find creepy as hell.
posted by oulipian at 2:13 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
A "Block User" option would indeed be nice. Could probably fit it in as part of the flagging UI.
posted by otsebyatina at 2:26 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by otsebyatina at 2:26 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Seriously. My profile says I've been "Linked by" 18 people on MetaFilter, which I have no control over and find creepy as hell.
This is a good point. I've linked to people because over time I like what they post and I want to keep an eye out for future posts, but it always felt weird to proceed because it 'felt' like it was more of a connection than I was seeking, if that makes sense? A lot of interesting psychology going on behind simple actions. Mostly, MetaFilter works for me because it's so basic and (generally) a pretty sane space.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:33 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is a good point. I've linked to people because over time I like what they post and I want to keep an eye out for future posts, but it always felt weird to proceed because it 'felt' like it was more of a connection than I was seeking, if that makes sense? A lot of interesting psychology going on behind simple actions. Mostly, MetaFilter works for me because it's so basic and (generally) a pretty sane space.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:33 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here is where I push for people to try Mute A Filter again! Super useful, I'd be lost on MeFi now without it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:43 PM on June 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 2:43 PM on June 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
That is basically the same dynamic as on Reddit, where key site functionality is forced into 3rd party tools.
posted by ryanrs at 2:45 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 2:45 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have not suffered much in two days off from reddit. If anything it's got me engaging places (like here) that are probably healthier than what reddit has to offer.
Yeah, they'll probably weather the storm but I'll need some convincing to come back, and I don't think Huffman's the guy to do it.
posted by East14thTaco at 2:50 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
Yeah, they'll probably weather the storm but I'll need some convincing to come back, and I don't think Huffman's the guy to do it.
posted by East14thTaco at 2:50 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
That's tracking only the subreddits that had decided to join the blackout, not all subreddits, btw.
Are you sure? They list a lot of subs in the right hand section that definitely didn't plan to join the blackout.
Restricting to the top 10, it has 3 that didn't plan to close - askreddit, worldnews, and movies - with 6 currently private that did, and pics; which is open, but only mod posts. It correctly shows 6 private and 1 restricted out of those 10 in the percentage on the left, e.g. 70%.
Expanding out the list, I see several I know that chose to stay open and are shown as open, so I think the percentages are correct for total open vs private subs. We shall see tomorrow obviously how many extend the blackout beyond the original 2 day plan.
THIS tracker, yes, that only counts how many pledged to blackout actually have.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:33 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Are you sure? They list a lot of subs in the right hand section that definitely didn't plan to join the blackout.
Restricting to the top 10, it has 3 that didn't plan to close - askreddit, worldnews, and movies - with 6 currently private that did, and pics; which is open, but only mod posts. It correctly shows 6 private and 1 restricted out of those 10 in the percentage on the left, e.g. 70%.
Expanding out the list, I see several I know that chose to stay open and are shown as open, so I think the percentages are correct for total open vs private subs. We shall see tomorrow obviously how many extend the blackout beyond the original 2 day plan.
THIS tracker, yes, that only counts how many pledged to blackout actually have.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:33 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah, they'll probably weather the storm
Depends on what the definition of weathering the storm is. If this blackout sinks the IPO, then will they have weathered the storm just by surviving? The executives won’t likely think so.
posted by azpenguin at 3:46 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Depends on what the definition of weathering the storm is. If this blackout sinks the IPO, then will they have weathered the storm just by surviving? The executives won’t likely think so.
posted by azpenguin at 3:46 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
While the tracker shows that this obviously isn't good for reddit, I don't think it shows that it's all that bad for reddit, either, though.
Peak posts per minute has dropped from around 1.3K to 1.1K, so about a 15% drop.
Off-peak posts per minute has dropped from around 550 to 400, so about a 27% drop.
Peak comments per minute has dropped from around 7.5K to 5.7K, so about a 24% drop.
Off-peak comments per minute has dropped from around 3.3K to 2.5K, so about a 24% drop.
That kind of drop (15% to 25%) would be a big deal if perpetual, but for two days...
I know that some subs are gone forever, but I certainly doubt that all 7,000+ currently dark subs are going away forever. So in another day we'll be looking at, what, a drop range of 5% to 15%? That's nowhere close to "the end of reddit" territory.
The much bigger issue will be how many mods straight-up quit (whether now or at the end of June, whether they take their subs dark or if they just bail, leaving fewer people to mod what they left behind). That could have some long-lasting repercussions, but a 20-25% drop in traffic for two days just seems like "interesting event" territory.
posted by Bugbread at 4:02 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Peak posts per minute has dropped from around 1.3K to 1.1K, so about a 15% drop.
Off-peak posts per minute has dropped from around 550 to 400, so about a 27% drop.
Peak comments per minute has dropped from around 7.5K to 5.7K, so about a 24% drop.
Off-peak comments per minute has dropped from around 3.3K to 2.5K, so about a 24% drop.
That kind of drop (15% to 25%) would be a big deal if perpetual, but for two days...
I know that some subs are gone forever, but I certainly doubt that all 7,000+ currently dark subs are going away forever. So in another day we'll be looking at, what, a drop range of 5% to 15%? That's nowhere close to "the end of reddit" territory.
The much bigger issue will be how many mods straight-up quit (whether now or at the end of June, whether they take their subs dark or if they just bail, leaving fewer people to mod what they left behind). That could have some long-lasting repercussions, but a 20-25% drop in traffic for two days just seems like "interesting event" territory.
posted by Bugbread at 4:02 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oops, I should have verified the link. I've seen the other tracker referenced many, many more times.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:13 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Pronoiac at 4:13 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
You can turn off allowing people to follow you using a toggle on the profile settings. I turned that off almost immediately due to past cyberstalking issues.
Oh, THAT's what that is?! I thought it was weird that people were suddenly "following" out of nowhere. Apparently that's just bots? Okay, turned off then.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:17 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, THAT's what that is?! I thought it was weird that people were suddenly "following" out of nowhere. Apparently that's just bots? Okay, turned off then.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:17 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
If this blackout sinks the IPO, then will they have weathered the storm just by surviving? The executives won’t likely think so.
Once the IPO happens, someone please calculate a $ value for this protest and package it as a "we cost you $X spez, fuck you" meme.
e: hey can the 3rd party edit-then-delete scripts just edit every post to a gif?
posted by ryanrs at 4:25 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Once the IPO happens, someone please calculate a $ value for this protest and package it as a "we cost you $X spez, fuck you" meme.
e: hey can the 3rd party edit-then-delete scripts just edit every post to a gif?
posted by ryanrs at 4:25 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’ve been a user on Reddit for about 15 years (not as long as metafilter, but still…) and it’s interesting to see how the sites have changed over the years. I feel like Metafilter has remained mainly the same, while Reddit is chasing profits and IPOs.
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
posted by blue_beetle at 4:29 PM on June 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
posted by blue_beetle at 4:29 PM on June 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
It has been interesting that the posts & comments have held up remarkably well given the amount of subreddits current closed/restricted. Some small amount of that is due to intentional 'shitposting' i.e. posting embarrassing/inappropriate stuff to try and get it to promoted to the front page (some have stayed open specifically for this purpose, such as photoshopbattles, which has shot right up the comments list), but I'm sure that's a rounding error at most.
20-25% ish drops are notable, but definitely ignorable should they return to 'normal' relatively quickly.
Looking at subredditstats, Askreddit staying open is important, an absolutely beast of a sub; easily topping total subscribers, posts and comment activity. Diablo4 and related subs are small, but very active right now (unsurprising) and denvernuggets is number 3; also unsurprising per upthread. You've also got large stalwarts like wallstreetbets and movies that have remained open. TEMU_Official is going gangbusters, but that appears to be very spammy? I dunno, I backed out fast of that one!
A majority of the NSFW subs have also stayed open in comparision to SFW. They are relatively tiny in terms of total subscribers (I wonder why!), but obviously highly um, active.
So potentially while many big subs have shut currently, it looks like a substantial majority of remaining users have just shifted to open subs for the time being - which given this was always primarily a mod strike given the large majority of users use the official website/app, is not too surprising. How that holds up IFF a number of big subs stay closed will be interesting to see.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 4:36 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
20-25% ish drops are notable, but definitely ignorable should they return to 'normal' relatively quickly.
Looking at subredditstats, Askreddit staying open is important, an absolutely beast of a sub; easily topping total subscribers, posts and comment activity. Diablo4 and related subs are small, but very active right now (unsurprising) and denvernuggets is number 3; also unsurprising per upthread. You've also got large stalwarts like wallstreetbets and movies that have remained open. TEMU_Official is going gangbusters, but that appears to be very spammy? I dunno, I backed out fast of that one!
A majority of the NSFW subs have also stayed open in comparision to SFW. They are relatively tiny in terms of total subscribers (I wonder why!), but obviously highly um, active.
So potentially while many big subs have shut currently, it looks like a substantial majority of remaining users have just shifted to open subs for the time being - which given this was always primarily a mod strike given the large majority of users use the official website/app, is not too surprising. How that holds up IFF a number of big subs stay closed will be interesting to see.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 4:36 PM on June 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Just saw an assertion on Mastodon that a mod of a sub that went dark was stripped of their mod rights, and the sub forcibly reopened, presumably by Reddit.
Let's see if the story holds up.
posted by humbug at 5:09 PM on June 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
Let's see if the story holds up.
posted by humbug at 5:09 PM on June 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
Let's see if the story holds up.
This has been discussed here and is supposedly r/tumblr, but it is hard to tell what happened as the sub went private again (and maybe people were having css issues?)
posted by advil at 5:15 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
This has been discussed here and is supposedly r/tumblr, but it is hard to tell what happened as the sub went private again (and maybe people were having css issues?)
posted by advil at 5:15 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm now picturing an almond farmer who wants to charge the bees (they're eating for free!), and I can't think of a better metaphor for Reddit and Twitter.
This is extremely apt, to the point that I think you should tweet it before its tweeted for you by the lurking commentariat.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:20 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
This is extremely apt, to the point that I think you should tweet it before its tweeted for you by the lurking commentariat.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:20 PM on June 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
Heh. Reading the ModCoord thread I can’t help but note that /r/Conservatives has been staying open to own the libs (ShockedPikachu.gif), yet /r/guns has opted to remain dark indefinitely.
Conservatives say they’ll never give up their guns, but Steve Huffman is so awful he got guns to give up on conservatives.
posted by Ryvar at 8:58 PM on June 13, 2023 [33 favorites]
Conservatives say they’ll never give up their guns, but Steve Huffman is so awful he got guns to give up on conservatives.
posted by Ryvar at 8:58 PM on June 13, 2023 [33 favorites]
Decades ago I read a short story about a hunter satellite tracking an enemy stealth satellite as part of some war that people started below on Earth. But the stealth satellite knows it is being hunted and is using tricks to evade. The story delves into some of the tactics each satellite uses in pursuit of the adversarial goals, but the situation is currently a stalemate; the stealth sat can't communicate its data payload without being detected, and the hunter sat can't find the stealth sat because the stealth sat won't send its data. At this point you learn that the war is long since over in the sense that humanity didn't survive it, but these automated weapons continue to follow their function.
I wonder if this is a parable of Reddit; the humans are gone but the comment traffic only dipped 20%...? :)
posted by anonymisc at 9:17 PM on June 13, 2023 [17 favorites]
I wonder if this is a parable of Reddit; the humans are gone but the comment traffic only dipped 20%...? :)
posted by anonymisc at 9:17 PM on June 13, 2023 [17 favorites]
I predict if it goes past tomorrow many of the big subs will come back with new mods drawn from the list of people who have filed support cases reporting the mods of a subreddit for violating the Moderator Code of Conduct.
posted by interogative mood at 9:18 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:18 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if some came back as per Rule 4, specifically this bit:
Camping or sitting on a community is not encouraged. If a community has been empty or unmoderated for a significant amount of time, we will consider banning or restricting the community. If a user requests a takeover of a community that falls under either category, we will consider granting that request
While "shut down" isn't exactly "empty or unmoderated," I think it's close enough that reddit would treat it as the same.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to the revived subs. Modding's tough, and I have no doubt that some of the newly appointed mods will do fine, and some will do terribly, but I'm super curious about what the respective percentages will be.
posted by Bugbread at 9:25 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Camping or sitting on a community is not encouraged. If a community has been empty or unmoderated for a significant amount of time, we will consider banning or restricting the community. If a user requests a takeover of a community that falls under either category, we will consider granting that request
While "shut down" isn't exactly "empty or unmoderated," I think it's close enough that reddit would treat it as the same.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to the revived subs. Modding's tough, and I have no doubt that some of the newly appointed mods will do fine, and some will do terribly, but I'm super curious about what the respective percentages will be.
posted by Bugbread at 9:25 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I wonder if this is a parable of Reddit; the humans are gone but the comment traffic only dipped 20%...? :)
I definitely have my suspicions - there's been a huge influx of repost/comment bots in the last couple of years, to the point where people have created their own bots to follow them around and flag that it's a bot. Between these and scheduled/automated posts from various agencies it's gotta make up a good chunk of reddit nowadays.
I remember an onion talk from years back that had a conclusion "soon we'll just have bots advertising to other bots!" like it was some kind of marketing masterstroke, I guess we might have a chance to see what that looks like soon.
posted by gronkpan at 9:27 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I definitely have my suspicions - there's been a huge influx of repost/comment bots in the last couple of years, to the point where people have created their own bots to follow them around and flag that it's a bot. Between these and scheduled/automated posts from various agencies it's gotta make up a good chunk of reddit nowadays.
I remember an onion talk from years back that had a conclusion "soon we'll just have bots advertising to other bots!" like it was some kind of marketing masterstroke, I guess we might have a chance to see what that looks like soon.
posted by gronkpan at 9:27 PM on June 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
It'll be interesting to see what happens to the revived subs. Modding's tough, and I have no doubt that some of the newly appointed mods will do fine, and some will do terribly, but I'm super curious about what the respective percentages will be.
Yeah something tells me that a lot of these people are more interested in chaos/comedy rather than maintaining a quality subreddit.
posted by gronkpan at 9:28 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah something tells me that a lot of these people are more interested in chaos/comedy rather than maintaining a quality subreddit.
posted by gronkpan at 9:28 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
Apparently the senior mod of /r/AdviceAnimals decided unilaterally to make the blackout indefinite and some of the mods under them contacted Reddit support and had them removed as a mod so the could reopen the sub. The thread on /r/ModCoord got on Reddit’s “hot” first page for /r/all and that seems to have brought in a number of users who are complaining about the loss of access to their subs. It is turning into a crazy time shit show.
posted by interogative mood at 9:35 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:35 PM on June 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
There's definitely an increase in bots, but we're not anywhere close to the "80% of reddit is bots talking to each other" stage. I'd be very, very surprised if bots accounted for even 5% of the comment traffic. That might seem crazy low, but that means 1 out of every 20 comments would be by a bot, and in my experience even that seems way too high.
I wouldn't be surprised if bots account for a high percentage of the posts, but the comments are still almost all humans.
posted by Bugbread at 9:36 PM on June 13, 2023
I wouldn't be surprised if bots account for a high percentage of the posts, but the comments are still almost all humans.
posted by Bugbread at 9:36 PM on June 13, 2023
I'm surprised to see so few posts about how useful Reddit is to marginalised people.
Someone asked up thread why you'd go there and risk having to dodge trolls and abuse?
For exactly the same reason as one does anywhere else?
Because some of the subs on gender affirming healthcare, mental health, neurodivergence, psych meds, being trans, etc are (were?) the only places to find other people like you, willing to give advice & support, or to give you the opportunity to help others.
And those spaces have moderation, so while a troll could make stink for a bit, they'd very quickly dissappear which is not something that happens in the offline world where we're all pretty much stuck with the trolls.
I don't know what will or should happen to Reddit but it helped me immensely over the last few years, and I'm a bit scared at what will happen to other people like me if they can't access those communities anymore.
posted by Zumbador at 9:43 PM on June 13, 2023 [43 favorites]
Someone asked up thread why you'd go there and risk having to dodge trolls and abuse?
For exactly the same reason as one does anywhere else?
Because some of the subs on gender affirming healthcare, mental health, neurodivergence, psych meds, being trans, etc are (were?) the only places to find other people like you, willing to give advice & support, or to give you the opportunity to help others.
And those spaces have moderation, so while a troll could make stink for a bit, they'd very quickly dissappear which is not something that happens in the offline world where we're all pretty much stuck with the trolls.
I don't know what will or should happen to Reddit but it helped me immensely over the last few years, and I'm a bit scared at what will happen to other people like me if they can't access those communities anymore.
posted by Zumbador at 9:43 PM on June 13, 2023 [43 favorites]
I'm surprised to see so few posts about how useful Reddit is to marginalised people.
Fuck yeah. The number of times I have seen teenagers posting about terrible situations and getting help is more than I have fingers and toes. Help ranging from human trafficking hotlines to emotional support to identity theft recovery guides and invitations to go camping at Aunt Suzy’s house in Blue State.
posted by bq at 10:24 PM on June 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
Fuck yeah. The number of times I have seen teenagers posting about terrible situations and getting help is more than I have fingers and toes. Help ranging from human trafficking hotlines to emotional support to identity theft recovery guides and invitations to go camping at Aunt Suzy’s house in Blue State.
posted by bq at 10:24 PM on June 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
I'm surprised to see so few posts about how useful Reddit is to marginalised people.
YES
AND...this is exactly why banal human rights like freedom of speech and privacy are actually still vital. Maybe we are forced to make bargains with devils in order to find a network of angels, but the point is that while the devils are vacuuming up their pennies some real social value gets created.
These resources need to be stewarded through this gauntlet of middle-evolution of digital communication until we figure this shit out. Think of protecting those more vulnerable as a design principle. Like a cornerstone one.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:47 PM on June 13, 2023 [18 favorites]
YES
AND...this is exactly why banal human rights like freedom of speech and privacy are actually still vital. Maybe we are forced to make bargains with devils in order to find a network of angels, but the point is that while the devils are vacuuming up their pennies some real social value gets created.
These resources need to be stewarded through this gauntlet of middle-evolution of digital communication until we figure this shit out. Think of protecting those more vulnerable as a design principle. Like a cornerstone one.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:47 PM on June 13, 2023 [18 favorites]
I'm just mirroring what I just posted on fedi, because as I see more posts and boosts, it's struck me that we've been constraining ourselves:
I think it's worth introducing into global English a word that we Malayans (i use this specifically) picked up from Indian colonial subjects: hartal (as per wiki: 'A hartal is a mass protest, often involving a total shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, and courts of law, and a form of civil disobedience similar to a labour strike. In addition to being a general strike, it involves the voluntary closure of schools and places of business. It is a mode of appealing to the sympathies of a government to reverse an unpopular or unacceptable decision.'). It's a useful distinction because the current conversations are beholden to the framing of industrial labour action (and thus limiting the thinking that results in users also only seen as labour actors) when it's as much an expression of a populace about governance.
I'm sorry I didn't bring this up earlier, and that not enough of the planning conversations had the perspective relevant enough to suggest it.
posted by cendawanita at 3:02 AM on June 14, 2023 [40 favorites]
I think it's worth introducing into global English a word that we Malayans (i use this specifically) picked up from Indian colonial subjects: hartal (as per wiki: 'A hartal is a mass protest, often involving a total shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, and courts of law, and a form of civil disobedience similar to a labour strike. In addition to being a general strike, it involves the voluntary closure of schools and places of business. It is a mode of appealing to the sympathies of a government to reverse an unpopular or unacceptable decision.'). It's a useful distinction because the current conversations are beholden to the framing of industrial labour action (and thus limiting the thinking that results in users also only seen as labour actors) when it's as much an expression of a populace about governance.
I'm sorry I didn't bring this up earlier, and that not enough of the planning conversations had the perspective relevant enough to suggest it.
posted by cendawanita at 3:02 AM on June 14, 2023 [40 favorites]
Society at large could use a good hartal to push for universal healthcare, effective representatives, you name it
posted by glaucon at 3:56 AM on June 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by glaucon at 3:56 AM on June 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
climate change....
posted by trig at 4:23 AM on June 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by trig at 4:23 AM on June 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
I find it wild that this was really kicked off by greed? The golden goose wasn't shitting enough gold so they supposedly set course for an IPO.
Instead of being a private company making a boring but still incredible amount of money for their owners with one of the largest unpaid workforces in existence (moderators) they have decided to reach higher and fumble ~20% of their product (users).
posted by Slackermagee at 5:19 AM on June 14, 2023 [20 favorites]
Instead of being a private company making a boring but still incredible amount of money for their owners with one of the largest unpaid workforces in existence (moderators) they have decided to reach higher and fumble ~20% of their product (users).
posted by Slackermagee at 5:19 AM on June 14, 2023 [20 favorites]
It is confusing, isn't it? There's only so much cocaine you can do before your septum disintegrates.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:21 AM on June 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:21 AM on June 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
I imagine there’s a good deal of venture capital sunk into Reddit. The desired end game for any company that receives vc is IPO.
posted by bq at 6:19 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by bq at 6:19 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think it's worth introducing into global English a word that we Malayans (i use this specifically) picked up from Indian colonial subjects: hartal (as per wiki: 'A hartal is a mass protest, often involving a total shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, and courts of law, and a form of civil disobedience similar to a labour strike.
Oh, that is a really useful concept! Thank you for sharing it here. The only similar event in concept that I'm aware of is the Icelandic Women's Day Off / Women's Strike / Kvennafrídagurinn, and that's usually presented in my experience as a much rarer, once in a lifetime singular event rather than a general tactic that can be adapted to situations as needed. The concept of hartal seems much more generally useful; thank you! Clearly I have some reading to do.
posted by sciatrix at 6:33 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh, that is a really useful concept! Thank you for sharing it here. The only similar event in concept that I'm aware of is the Icelandic Women's Day Off / Women's Strike / Kvennafrídagurinn, and that's usually presented in my experience as a much rarer, once in a lifetime singular event rather than a general tactic that can be adapted to situations as needed. The concept of hartal seems much more generally useful; thank you! Clearly I have some reading to do.
posted by sciatrix at 6:33 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hartal sounds like exactly like "general strike" all over again, which leads me to my usual "I'd get fired and a lot of people would get fired if we did that here, that is not reasonable or feasible to ask everyone to not work." But Internet striking is a whole nother thing.
I have tried to stay off Reddit for 2 days, but I woke up at 4 am and could not sleep again until 5:30ish, so here I was browsing on reddark to see what was back and what was not. Not much was back on that website listing (6000+ still out), albeit now I am aware of some really effed up subreddits' existence. Why does OrphansCrushingMachine exist, but also I am way too afraid to click and find out.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:35 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have tried to stay off Reddit for 2 days, but I woke up at 4 am and could not sleep again until 5:30ish, so here I was browsing on reddark to see what was back and what was not. Not much was back on that website listing (6000+ still out), albeit now I am aware of some really effed up subreddits' existence. Why does OrphansCrushingMachine exist, but also I am way too afraid to click and find out.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:35 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hartal sounds like exactly like "general strike" all over again, which leads me to my usual "I'd get fired and a lot of people would get fired if we did that here, that is not reasonable or feasible to ask everyone to not work."
not to derail but the way cendawanita explains hartal it sounds like "general strike" in the N. American context is restricted to labour across sectors and hartal is very much communities across the board. I think this distinction is important: everything just stops, (almost) everyone says "No More"
posted by elkevelvet at 7:41 AM on June 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
not to derail but the way cendawanita explains hartal it sounds like "general strike" in the N. American context is restricted to labour across sectors and hartal is very much communities across the board. I think this distinction is important: everything just stops, (almost) everyone says "No More"
posted by elkevelvet at 7:41 AM on June 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
I haven't looked (I would not want to click to find out either!) but I suspect the name is based on a meme about the evils of capitalism, that involves the aforesaid machine. At least I've seen one meme like that.
posted by Vegiemon at 7:56 AM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Vegiemon at 7:56 AM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
As with any collective action, the key is obviously getting wide scale buy in across the board within an affected community, including support against potential consequences. The usual failure of "general strikes" in a labor inflected context is the failure to do this work before the strike is declared. Those strikes are usually declared by some optimistic idealist who has never organized a smaller collective action and worked out the practicalities there in, either.
Collective action requires collective organizing and buy in, and obviously that is the same for a hartal. The 1975 Women's Day Off required ten months of planning and collecting support. The 2021 Malaysian Hartal Doktor Kontrak was the culmination of five years of organizing, protest, planning, and opposition.
posted by sciatrix at 8:03 AM on June 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
Collective action requires collective organizing and buy in, and obviously that is the same for a hartal. The 1975 Women's Day Off required ten months of planning and collecting support. The 2021 Malaysian Hartal Doktor Kontrak was the culmination of five years of organizing, protest, planning, and opposition.
posted by sciatrix at 8:03 AM on June 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
Yeah, I get that it's in general striking in all sorts of ways, but the work one still stood out to me. It's a literal work shutdown, plus "civil disobedience." I totally agree, sciatrix, that "support against potential consequences" is needed. Thank you for that mention.
I note that "Am I The Asshole" just went public again and someone asking "AITA if I don't care about the strike?" was immediately shut down. However, I did see this and thought the autobot responses were hysterical.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:06 AM on June 14, 2023
I note that "Am I The Asshole" just went public again and someone asking "AITA if I don't care about the strike?" was immediately shut down. However, I did see this and thought the autobot responses were hysterical.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:06 AM on June 14, 2023
And fwiw my fedi mutual chipped in to remind me the emphasis was the fact that as colonial subjects, the first hartal actors couldn't even politically represent themselves in the first place in the decisions that affected their wellbeing such as new taxes and levies and administrative actions (sounds familiar?). Specifically, they said: ...given the term's roots in colonial india, it is more appropriate to define hartal as a type of strike where people with practically no political recognition and representation do claim their very rights under an oppressive regime which outlaws any kind of protest. Which is how business people and civil servants joined in. Someone else asked me something similar, and i pointed it's not like hartals aren't already being done - Greta Thunberg's entire civil disobedience action is premised on the fact children had no seat in the table when it comes to climate policies. The locus of the grievance isn't *just* fair compensation to one's labour, it's the fact you're not provided any say at all. And reddit and twitter etc, falling into this role as pseudo-public commons, doesn't make it irrelevant - much of India was administrated by the East India Company and similar actors after all. And redditors aren't workers.
posted by cendawanita at 8:08 AM on June 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 8:08 AM on June 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Why does OrphansCrushingMachine exist, but also I am way too afraid to click and find out.
I'm not going to click through because I don't Reddit, and I'm certainly not going to start by scabbing, but yeah the meme that Vegiemon is referring to is this tweet: "Every heartwarming human interest story in america is like 'he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine' and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you'd need to pay to prevent it from being used."
posted by solotoro at 8:52 AM on June 14, 2023 [23 favorites]
I'm not going to click through because I don't Reddit, and I'm certainly not going to start by scabbing, but yeah the meme that Vegiemon is referring to is this tweet: "Every heartwarming human interest story in america is like 'he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine' and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you'd need to pay to prevent it from being used."
posted by solotoro at 8:52 AM on June 14, 2023 [23 favorites]
Interesting article about advertiser reactions so far: https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-reddit-as-advertisers-weather-moderators-strike/.
posted by advil at 9:34 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by advil at 9:34 AM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I don't Reddit, and I'm certainly not going to start by scabbing
Visiting Reddit and calling it scabbing is a bit hyperbolic.
posted by Pendragon at 10:03 AM on June 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
Visiting Reddit and calling it scabbing is a bit hyperbolic.
posted by Pendragon at 10:03 AM on June 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
VC's preferred exit is whatever makes them money. They don't care if it is an IPO or acquisition. Under some circumstances an acquisition is better for them as they get their money all at once instead of having to unwind the position slowly on the public market post IPO.
The ability of a company to go public or raise funds from VC or other channels is pretty much non-existent right now. The only tech companies getting any money are in the AI space and even they are struggling to get funds with interest rates where they are. An IPO won't be until next year at the earliest. Reddit missed its top line revenue projections and are at less than half of what they thought they would have a couple of years ago. They are not going to catch up to that any time soon, even if the ad market starts to recover. If you can't grow your top line, you have to grow your margins. Then at least they can show the company has some kind of growth (growing profits, or growing revenue). Then they have to hope the ad market recovers so their top line starts growing again. They need that top line to get closer to a billion so that the earlier valuation makes sense. They were valued at 15 billion and 20x revenue is a pretty typical valuation in tech. So if those investors want to see a return that's where the top line has to be. These decisions are basically forced on the company like Reddit by the board of directors Every VC backed tech company is going through this exact same exercise right now.
posted by interogative mood at 10:18 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
The ability of a company to go public or raise funds from VC or other channels is pretty much non-existent right now. The only tech companies getting any money are in the AI space and even they are struggling to get funds with interest rates where they are. An IPO won't be until next year at the earliest. Reddit missed its top line revenue projections and are at less than half of what they thought they would have a couple of years ago. They are not going to catch up to that any time soon, even if the ad market starts to recover. If you can't grow your top line, you have to grow your margins. Then at least they can show the company has some kind of growth (growing profits, or growing revenue). Then they have to hope the ad market recovers so their top line starts growing again. They need that top line to get closer to a billion so that the earlier valuation makes sense. They were valued at 15 billion and 20x revenue is a pretty typical valuation in tech. So if those investors want to see a return that's where the top line has to be. These decisions are basically forced on the company like Reddit by the board of directors Every VC backed tech company is going through this exact same exercise right now.
posted by interogative mood at 10:18 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
My local subreddit opened back up yesterday and christ on a cracker were some users just salty about it being shuttered for less than 48 hours.
posted by Kitteh at 10:18 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 10:18 AM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sounds like they're really putting Him on the Ritz, then.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:25 AM on June 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:25 AM on June 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
Ironically, the subreddits staying closed are preventing their users from organizing and migrating en masse to another platform. There's just a Reddit diaspora now.
posted by meowzilla at 10:36 AM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by meowzilla at 10:36 AM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Reddit was sold to Conde Nast in 2011 for $10 million. Then Conde Nast's parent company, Advance Publications, spun Reddit off into a subsidiary, but Advance is still a majority shareholder.
If Reddit needs money, I'm sure Advance's billionaire owner can help out.
posted by Tacodog at 10:52 AM on June 14, 2023
If Reddit needs money, I'm sure Advance's billionaire owner can help out.
posted by Tacodog at 10:52 AM on June 14, 2023
calling it scabbing is a bit hyperbolic
Volunteer laborers on strike are still laborers on strike. Not hyperbolic at all IMO.
posted by FallibleHuman at 10:54 AM on June 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Volunteer laborers on strike are still laborers on strike. Not hyperbolic at all IMO.
posted by FallibleHuman at 10:54 AM on June 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
NonCredibleDefense has returned after 48 hours with a nice welcome back message. I'm glad many of the other subs are holding out, but I'm also very glad this one returned. Not having NCD during the counter-offensive is like not having Colbert on arraignment day.
Can't believe I missed Crimea being taken and F-16s currently over Moscow in the last 48 hours.
I find it interesting that the subs for my non-leftist political observation account have basically all reopened while my main account still only has a few niche hobby and fandom subs remaining.
Edit: I'm still staying away from browsing Reddit but I still pop in to see what is open and closed.
posted by charred husk at 10:55 AM on June 14, 2023
Can't believe I missed Crimea being taken and F-16s currently over Moscow in the last 48 hours.
I find it interesting that the subs for my non-leftist political observation account have basically all reopened while my main account still only has a few niche hobby and fandom subs remaining.
Edit: I'm still staying away from browsing Reddit but I still pop in to see what is open and closed.
posted by charred husk at 10:55 AM on June 14, 2023
"Every heartwarming human interest story in america is like 'he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine' and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you'd need to pay to prevent it from being used."
And suddenly that makes a lot more sense, thank you. I think I've read similar things with regards to "heartwarming" stories about fundraising or donating vacation time to sick people and the like.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:13 AM on June 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
And suddenly that makes a lot more sense, thank you. I think I've read similar things with regards to "heartwarming" stories about fundraising or donating vacation time to sick people and the like.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:13 AM on June 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
It seems like some folks want to go full scorched earth on Reddit. I came across this via the Flipboard Tech Desk's mastodon presence.
I only see 787 views on that document, though, so I don't expect it will be impactful.
posted by ursus_comiter at 11:38 AM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I only see 787 views on that document, though, so I don't expect it will be impactful.
posted by ursus_comiter at 11:38 AM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Volunteer laborers on strike are still laborers on strike. Not hyperbolic at all IMO.
I don't think that this is how the majority of "striking laborers" view it.
My subreddits are currently shut down, but the moderators are still discussing our next steps in mod mail. Some subreddits have unprivated, but are in read-only mode so that people can view their statements and see what is at stake (e.g. r/AskHistorians). A lot of coordination and discussion about issues is taking place in subreddits like r/Save3rdPartyApps and r/ModCoord.
I mean, I think the majority of us who have shut down want people to limit their use of Reddit right now, and not just shift their browsing habits to the subreddits that remain open. But my experience is that most people are OK with occasional visits to check on relevant info.
It's not quite the same as a physical picket line. The goal isn't to reduce traffic to zero (which is impossible), but just have it take a noticeable hit.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:42 AM on June 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't think that this is how the majority of "striking laborers" view it.
My subreddits are currently shut down, but the moderators are still discussing our next steps in mod mail. Some subreddits have unprivated, but are in read-only mode so that people can view their statements and see what is at stake (e.g. r/AskHistorians). A lot of coordination and discussion about issues is taking place in subreddits like r/Save3rdPartyApps and r/ModCoord.
I mean, I think the majority of us who have shut down want people to limit their use of Reddit right now, and not just shift their browsing habits to the subreddits that remain open. But my experience is that most people are OK with occasional visits to check on relevant info.
It's not quite the same as a physical picket line. The goal isn't to reduce traffic to zero (which is impossible), but just have it take a noticeable hit.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:42 AM on June 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
And traffic did take a noticeable hit according to the blackout tracker.
It's subtle and not a whole lot, but reddit statistics are all kinds of screwy due to the vast number of karma-farming repost bots and other non-human agents.
That being said this traffic dip isn't exactly hitting Reddit in the wallet, but that isn't really the point of the protest.
The point was to raise awareness of the issues and it's accomplished that.
posted by loquacious at 12:02 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's subtle and not a whole lot, but reddit statistics are all kinds of screwy due to the vast number of karma-farming repost bots and other non-human agents.
That being said this traffic dip isn't exactly hitting Reddit in the wallet, but that isn't really the point of the protest.
The point was to raise awareness of the issues and it's accomplished that.
posted by loquacious at 12:02 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's not quite the same as a physical picket line. The goal isn't to reduce traffic to zero (which is impossible), but just have it take a noticeable hit.
with all respect, it is what the individual makes it. I can think of all kinds of reasons why a person would completely avoid Reddit. I am one of those people. Heading into Day 3, it's feeling a lot like rehab. To each their own.
posted by elkevelvet at 12:13 PM on June 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
with all respect, it is what the individual makes it. I can think of all kinds of reasons why a person would completely avoid Reddit. I am one of those people. Heading into Day 3, it's feeling a lot like rehab. To each their own.
posted by elkevelvet at 12:13 PM on June 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's subtle and not a whole lot, but reddit statistics are all kinds of screwy due to the vast number of karma-farming repost bots and other non-human agents.
In my sub the traffic has been totally normal for a Monday and a Tuesday over the last month. Monthly traffic looks like it will end up pretty much in line with where it would normally be.
posted by Captaintripps at 12:37 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
In my sub the traffic has been totally normal for a Monday and a Tuesday over the last month. Monthly traffic looks like it will end up pretty much in line with where it would normally be.
posted by Captaintripps at 12:37 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Volunteer laborers on strike are still laborers on strike. Not hyperbolic at all IMO.
So is it scabbing if I watch a TV show during the writers strike ? I am talking about visiting Reddit, not moderating it.
posted by Pendragon at 1:15 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
So is it scabbing if I watch a TV show during the writers strike ? I am talking about visiting Reddit, not moderating it.
posted by Pendragon at 1:15 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why disabled users joined the Reddit blackout: The site and the official app are so inaccessible that a sighted person had to flip the switch to make r/blind go dark.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:23 PM on June 14, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:23 PM on June 14, 2023 [16 favorites]
FWIW, as the person who wrote the original scabbing comment that Pendragon is taking such issue with, I actually agree it was a wee bit hyperbolic. Despite that, it was a lot easier than really getting into the weeds, and I thought everyone would take my meaning well enough. My mistake, so here you go:
I'm not going to click through because I don't Reddit, and I'm certainly not going to start byscabbing going today to a site that a bunch of mods are boycotting in order to make a statement, because even though my visiting there isn't the same as opening a sub and becoming a moderator, so it isn't technically scabbing, it is still the case that the whole point of blacking out subs is to show Reddit that their unpaid labor is important, and part of showing that is the impact their protest has on traffic, so why would I go to the site and add traffic, a thing I have almost never done before in the past except by accident, for truly the silliest of reasons (to answer a question on another site, a question in which I have no personal stake other than being Right On The Internet) when it is so very, very easy for me to show solidarity by just not doing that thing and instead just moving on with my life and sheesh, remember when I just used the word "scabbing" instead of all this even though I knew it was not 100% the correct term, geez, I guess while trying to only be Half Right On The Internet, instead I was Wrong On The Internet and aren't I lucky to have someone come along and be Fully Right On The Internet when I couldn't be
posted by solotoro at 1:26 PM on June 14, 2023 [21 favorites]
I'm not going to click through because I don't Reddit, and I'm certainly not going to start by
posted by solotoro at 1:26 PM on June 14, 2023 [21 favorites]
The accessibility /ada problem should be separate from the API issue. Reddit is required under the ADA to provide these capabilities. In this moment of high visibility and a desire for action we need to pressure Congress and the Department of Justice to open an investigation. This particular problem has a resolution called a Consent Decree.
posted by interogative mood at 2:16 PM on June 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 2:16 PM on June 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
Disagree irt hyperbole. Scabs often have immediate need for income and other compounding factors. Not sure about the other thing.
posted by CPAnarchist at 2:56 PM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by CPAnarchist at 2:56 PM on June 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
This particular problem has a resolution called a Consent Decree.
If anyone's curious about what an ADA consent decree looks like, H&R Block is a good example (there's a summary here). Among other things they agreed to do under the decree that would be highly relevant to the Reddit situation was this:
Providing web accessibility training to all employees who write or develop programs or code for, or who publish final content to, its website, its tax filing utility, and its mobile apps on how to conform with WCAG 2.0 AA;
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:01 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
If anyone's curious about what an ADA consent decree looks like, H&R Block is a good example (there's a summary here). Among other things they agreed to do under the decree that would be highly relevant to the Reddit situation was this:
Providing web accessibility training to all employees who write or develop programs or code for, or who publish final content to, its website, its tax filing utility, and its mobile apps on how to conform with WCAG 2.0 AA;
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:01 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Would Reddit count as a "business open to the public" in the way that it would fall under enforceable ADA web accessibility guidelines under Title III? That seems to be relevant to the web side of businesses with physical public locations from the examples given.
posted by jason_steakums at 3:11 PM on June 14, 2023
posted by jason_steakums at 3:11 PM on June 14, 2023
It's not Supreme-Court-clear in the US (there have been a few lower-level court decisions that weren't definitive, if my reading is correct) but if I were a company working on my IPO I sure would not want to chance it.
posted by jessamyn at 3:21 PM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 3:21 PM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Honestly with this Supreme Court I'm surprised we don't have companies racing into accessibility lawsuits just to get them appealed up to where the laws can be gutted...
posted by jason_steakums at 3:25 PM on June 14, 2023
posted by jason_steakums at 3:25 PM on June 14, 2023
The accessibility /ada problem should be separate from the API issue.
It's being included with the API issue because it is an example of how Reddit has said one thing, refused to do another. As well as how many of the apps that make reddit more accessible need access to that API.
For now, reddit has said that they will allow apps that are being used by people with disabilities primarily for accessibility and they won't charge additional fees, but only after users pushed back on their API fee announcement. My understanding is they apparently didn't consider this use case before disable users were like "um, hey, guy, what about us?"
Reddit is required under the ADA to provide these capabilities.
Yup. And as someone who has worked in web design and development, companies will do their damnedest to ignore accessibility and the ADA as long as possible. AND SO MUCH IS SO EASY TO IMPLEMENT. Half would work if people just followed web standards on how a lot of code is meant to be used. But that requires people that care, and a culture to educate employees that don't already know what web accessibility is.
Heaven help you if something that is accessible won't work with the new hotness. Or worse, will work with the new hotness, but it's going to take more time to make it be both accessible and new hotness.
[/petpeeve]
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:34 PM on June 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
It's being included with the API issue because it is an example of how Reddit has said one thing, refused to do another. As well as how many of the apps that make reddit more accessible need access to that API.
For now, reddit has said that they will allow apps that are being used by people with disabilities primarily for accessibility and they won't charge additional fees, but only after users pushed back on their API fee announcement. My understanding is they apparently didn't consider this use case before disable users were like "um, hey, guy, what about us?"
Reddit is required under the ADA to provide these capabilities.
Yup. And as someone who has worked in web design and development, companies will do their damnedest to ignore accessibility and the ADA as long as possible. AND SO MUCH IS SO EASY TO IMPLEMENT. Half would work if people just followed web standards on how a lot of code is meant to be used. But that requires people that care, and a culture to educate employees that don't already know what web accessibility is.
Heaven help you if something that is accessible won't work with the new hotness. Or worse, will work with the new hotness, but it's going to take more time to make it be both accessible and new hotness.
[/petpeeve]
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:34 PM on June 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
Would Reddit count as a "business open to the public" in the way that it would fall under enforceable ADA web accessibility guidelines under Title III?
Probably: "This phrasing has become central to the understanding of web accessibility within the U.S. Two notable court cases related to this issue include Robles vs. Domino’s Pizza LLC and National Association of the Deaf et al. vs. Netflix, Inc. Both of these cases were ruled in favor of the plaintiffs (i.e. people with disabilities). The rulings detail that companies must provide accessible features in online applications and web-based businesses."
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:44 PM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Probably: "This phrasing has become central to the understanding of web accessibility within the U.S. Two notable court cases related to this issue include Robles vs. Domino’s Pizza LLC and National Association of the Deaf et al. vs. Netflix, Inc. Both of these cases were ruled in favor of the plaintiffs (i.e. people with disabilities). The rulings detail that companies must provide accessible features in online applications and web-based businesses."
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:44 PM on June 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yup. And as someone who has worked in web design and development, companies will do their damnedest to ignore accessibility and the ADA as long as possible. AND SO MUCH IS SO EASY TO IMPLEMENT. Half would work if people just followed web standards on how a lot of code is meant to be used.
And the other half is just general good clear design! It's crazy how hard people make it out to be.
posted by jason_steakums at 4:13 PM on June 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
And the other half is just general good clear design! It's crazy how hard people make it out to be.
posted by jason_steakums at 4:13 PM on June 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
The DOJ has said they are covered under title 3.
For these reasons, the Department has consistently taken the position that the ADA’s requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web.
posted by interogative mood at 4:16 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
For these reasons, the Department has consistently taken the position that the ADA’s requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web.
posted by interogative mood at 4:16 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I stopped by to check out a weekly post on a health sub today, and on the main page, most of the activity was from AskReddit, Baseball, CFB, and Soccer. I'm subscribed to a lot more subs than that, but a bunch are dark.
posted by azpenguin at 4:49 PM on June 14, 2023
posted by azpenguin at 4:49 PM on June 14, 2023
Details about admins messing with mods and subs available here on r/subredditdrama…..with screenshots. https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/149bvky/admins_have_taken_over_radviceanimals_reopened/
posted by bq at 5:21 PM on June 14, 2023
posted by bq at 5:21 PM on June 14, 2023
Meanwhile on the /r/eagles (for nfl team not the band) when the mods reopened the sub the members complained that the mods were still heavily using Reddit while the blackout underway.
posted by interogative mood at 6:18 PM on June 14, 2023
Keep in mind, the mods here who made the sub blackout in protest of reddit were on reddit during the protest, talking about using vegetable oil as lube, breast implants, the CFL, and tons of other pressing matters that, for them, were greater than the protest. That is just on the accounts they use to moderate this sub. Who knows what else they did with other accounts, and how many times they lurked to see how crazy reddit was after they blacked out this sub.
All of that to say, if the people who are forcing this protest aren't even protesting, can we as a community stop taking it seriously? If you want to protest reddit, close your account, delete the app, but leave the sub here for the people who want to be here. This is the exact kind of behavior that makes changes that limit a mod's power a good thing, not a bad thing.
I feel like the joke "Mods are literally Hitler" is one of thes acorns (like "At least Mousillini made the trains run on time.") that have been repeated for so long that most people don't realize how ridiculous and sarcastic it was originally?
If users want an unmoderated forum, there are plenty to choose from. The FanSided or 247 message boards (or, hell /b/) are all open for whatever insane content you want to post.
posted by midmarch snowman at 7:31 PM on June 14, 2023
If users want an unmoderated forum, there are plenty to choose from. The FanSided or 247 message boards (or, hell /b/) are all open for whatever insane content you want to post.
posted by midmarch snowman at 7:31 PM on June 14, 2023
I don't think people want unmoderated forums, they want less moderated forums.
(Personally, I want more moderated forums, so it's not a position I'm agreeing with, but that's the vibe I get from people who complain about mods.)
posted by Bugbread at 8:04 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
(Personally, I want more moderated forums, so it's not a position I'm agreeing with, but that's the vibe I get from people who complain about mods.)
posted by Bugbread at 8:04 PM on June 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
> For now, reddit has said that they will allow apps that are being used by people with disabilities primarily for accessibility and they won't charge additional fees
Wasn't it the case that they would only do this if the apps themselves didn't charge their clients, or have they moved on from this (or I'm mistaken).
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:13 AM on June 15, 2023
Wasn't it the case that they would only do this if the apps themselves didn't charge their clients, or have they moved on from this (or I'm mistaken).
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 4:13 AM on June 15, 2023
All of that to say, if the people who are forcing this protest aren't even protesting, can we as a community stop taking it seriously? If you want to protest reddit, close your account, delete the app, but leave the sub here for the people who want to be here.By this logic, WGA and UAW members are supposed to not consume writing or drive cars and also leave their careers instead of picketing?
The point is to cause inconvenience by highlighting the essential nature of the undervalued labor (writing, auto manufacturing and content moderation) and force redress by the management. Whether some people want to not use the service in solidarity is a separate question, I’d say. The point of the strike isn’t to kill Reddit, it’s to make Reddit suck less.
posted by Cogito at 4:19 AM on June 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
The writer’s strike comparison I thought of similarly while scrolling Twitter. Plenty of great, funny writers tweeting (often about the strike) and being entertaining there. It’s a form of writing, a way of connecting with a broader audience. The mods on Reddit during the blackout isn’t a great look but the point is a two day subreddit blackout. Most suggested taking a break from using Reddit entirely - I have - but the purpose was messaging from the subreddits going dark.
posted by glaucon at 4:33 AM on June 15, 2023
posted by glaucon at 4:33 AM on June 15, 2023
It's funny what is the last straw for some people. Reddit is a cesspool as it is. Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like. And Reddit admins always back mods, and of course mods back mods. Just burn it to the ground and replace it
posted by MrBobaFett at 5:43 AM on June 15, 2023
posted by MrBobaFett at 5:43 AM on June 15, 2023
I don't hang out on Reddit myself, but I'm generally aware of it. I noted with interest this morning that a few Star Trek-oriented subreddits have taken their toys and collectively moved into the fediverse (which sounds like exactly the place a Star Trek fan should be, right?): startrek.website.
posted by adamrice at 6:06 AM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by adamrice at 6:06 AM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
A few of the subreddits I'm a member of have "gone private," and the way I imagined that would work is that the posts would no longer appear for people not logged into Reddit and people who aren't members of those subreddits. As in a private club, if you're in you're in. But I seem to be wrong, and private seems to mean even members of the subreddit can't see posts. So is "going private" the only way to effectively have a blackout in a subreddit?
posted by emelenjr at 6:36 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by emelenjr at 6:36 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
A few of the subreddits I'm a member of have "gone private," and the way I imagined that would work is that the posts would no longer appear for people not logged into Reddit and people who aren't members of those subreddits. As in a private club, if you're in you're in. But I seem to be wrong, and private seems to mean even members of the subreddit can't see posts. So is "going private" the only way to effectively have a blackout in a subreddit?
It does work as you describe, but not for just members of the sub, as anyone can join or leave at will, and membership is not required to view the sub. Mods have an additional list of users called "approved" if I remember correctly. The idea is to have an actual private community that mods manually allow people access to. If you're not on that approved list, you ain't coming in, basically. By setting it private with an empty approved list, only mods can access it - hence it being an actual blackout.
The alternative option is to put the sub as restricted, i.e. read only. Anyone can view the contents of the sub (member or not) but only mods can make new posts to it. This does allow e.g. google to send traffic there, and has less of an impact on reddit's advert income (since people can still browse existing posts etc), but it does allow the mods to put up a sticky post explaining what the situation is and make it less of a closed door.
It's funny what is the last straw for some people. Reddit is a cesspool as it is. Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like.
Reddit subs are not all alike; they're more like individual forum websites, each with its own individual set of moderators. While some subs are indeed run by martinets and total cesspools, others can be incredibly friendly and helpful, such as MomForAMinute. I've stayed in subs with good mods, and left ones with bad mods. Oddly enough, quite a few places with the worst mods are ones that have ignored the blackout.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
It does work as you describe, but not for just members of the sub, as anyone can join or leave at will, and membership is not required to view the sub. Mods have an additional list of users called "approved" if I remember correctly. The idea is to have an actual private community that mods manually allow people access to. If you're not on that approved list, you ain't coming in, basically. By setting it private with an empty approved list, only mods can access it - hence it being an actual blackout.
The alternative option is to put the sub as restricted, i.e. read only. Anyone can view the contents of the sub (member or not) but only mods can make new posts to it. This does allow e.g. google to send traffic there, and has less of an impact on reddit's advert income (since people can still browse existing posts etc), but it does allow the mods to put up a sticky post explaining what the situation is and make it less of a closed door.
It's funny what is the last straw for some people. Reddit is a cesspool as it is. Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like.
Reddit subs are not all alike; they're more like individual forum websites, each with its own individual set of moderators. While some subs are indeed run by martinets and total cesspools, others can be incredibly friendly and helpful, such as MomForAMinute. I've stayed in subs with good mods, and left ones with bad mods. Oddly enough, quite a few places with the worst mods are ones that have ignored the blackout.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
tigrrrlily: "Are they trying to bait Paramount?"
I wondered about that. I'd imagine that Star Trek fans serious enough to start a discussion forum know how far they can push, but yeah, not a domain name I would have chosen.
posted by adamrice at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2023
I wondered about that. I'd imagine that Star Trek fans serious enough to start a discussion forum know how far they can push, but yeah, not a domain name I would have chosen.
posted by adamrice at 7:22 AM on June 15, 2023
I think that a more apt analogy would be the Union calls a strike, everyone walks out but the shop stewards are seen crossing the picket line.
posted by interogative mood at 7:30 AM on June 15, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 7:30 AM on June 15, 2023
The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
I'm not even trying to use Reddit, but even with all of its problems, it has become the core place for a lot of discussion online.
The top search results for many things are:
- official page / press releases
- Fluff YouTube videos
- Reddit discussion
posted by meowzilla at 7:47 AM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm not even trying to use Reddit, but even with all of its problems, it has become the core place for a lot of discussion online.
The top search results for many things are:
- official page / press releases
- Fluff YouTube videos
- Reddit discussion
posted by meowzilla at 7:47 AM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
the members complained that the mods were still heavily using Reddit
Did you share that here because you thought it was funny, because you thought it accurately represented the facts at hand and the overall sentiment about it, because you thought it was snarky and implausible but you think it's worth sharing, or because you recognized a troll being a troll and you wanted to call attention to it?
Because the post you shared is just a troll being a troll. In these days when it's sometimes difficult to tell on the internet when someone is joking, and when there are actual government-sponsored trolling operations that take advantage of that, it's best not to be credulous when reading a comment like that. The whole point of that comment was to destabilize the system. I can't be sure if it's just some dude doing it for the lulz, somebody with an axe to grind because they were previously moderated in a way they didn't like, or if it's somebody getting paid to destabilize a platform that, in the absence of adequate moderation, could be leveraged in, say, a disinformation operation in support of a presidential campaign. In any of those scenarios, though, that is definitely not a comment made in good faith.
posted by fedward at 8:05 AM on June 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
Did you share that here because you thought it was funny, because you thought it accurately represented the facts at hand and the overall sentiment about it, because you thought it was snarky and implausible but you think it's worth sharing, or because you recognized a troll being a troll and you wanted to call attention to it?
Because the post you shared is just a troll being a troll. In these days when it's sometimes difficult to tell on the internet when someone is joking, and when there are actual government-sponsored trolling operations that take advantage of that, it's best not to be credulous when reading a comment like that. The whole point of that comment was to destabilize the system. I can't be sure if it's just some dude doing it for the lulz, somebody with an axe to grind because they were previously moderated in a way they didn't like, or if it's somebody getting paid to destabilize a platform that, in the absence of adequate moderation, could be leveraged in, say, a disinformation operation in support of a presidential campaign. In any of those scenarios, though, that is definitely not a comment made in good faith.
posted by fedward at 8:05 AM on June 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
Reddit subs are not all alike
Maybe, but most of them are awful. Also, they are all on Reddit and when admin blocks your account you lose access to all of Reddit, not just the bad subs. And admins are just as capricious and unaccountable as mods.
posted by MrBobaFett at 8:31 AM on June 15, 2023
Maybe, but most of them are awful. Also, they are all on Reddit and when admin blocks your account you lose access to all of Reddit, not just the bad subs. And admins are just as capricious and unaccountable as mods.
posted by MrBobaFett at 8:31 AM on June 15, 2023
Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like.
I briefly maintained an account in Reddit and I encountered my share of questionable mod decisions, but your comments are beginning to have more than a whiff of the axe-grinder
posted by elkevelvet at 8:34 AM on June 15, 2023 [21 favorites]
I briefly maintained an account in Reddit and I encountered my share of questionable mod decisions, but your comments are beginning to have more than a whiff of the axe-grinder
posted by elkevelvet at 8:34 AM on June 15, 2023 [21 favorites]
If an axe grinder is someone who has had bad experiences and shares them. Then, yes? Should I only share positive opinions?
posted by MrBobaFett at 8:39 AM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by MrBobaFett at 8:39 AM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
The comment I shared from the /r/Eagles was the top (most upvoted) comment in response to a post announcing the end of the blackout and appears to accurate reflect the behavior of the mods of that community. It appears to reflect the genuine sentiment of the poster, is topical and the positive response to the comment suggests it reflected the mood of the community. That isn’t trolling, it is just a comment you do not like/opinion you don’t share.
posted by interogative mood at 11:28 AM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 11:28 AM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I spent an hour trying to explain what was happening on Reddit to my best friend who is very much not technically inclined, just got out of a multi-day hospital stay, has a three week old baby and has covid fog brain. Explaining what an API and a screen reader are to someone who just wants to access the home decorating forums that are inexplicably missing took an hour and I think both of us lost brain cells in the process.
It was a helpful reminder that as much as people think that everything is adequately explained in the posts and infographics and comments, there are many many MANY people who just visit Reddit to plan weddings and trade baseball cards who are ignoring the whole thing not because they don’t care but because what seems like a 101 level explanation to the people organizing is a black box of made up words that might as well be in Martian. I contend there is neutral morality in being tech inclined or not, and that it’s worthwhile to consider that many people who really would care about issues like screen readers are not being obstinate or scabs for not understanding the issues and waving it off as having to do with rich techy types squabbling with each other about who gets to make more money.
posted by Bottlecap at 12:00 PM on June 15, 2023 [11 favorites]
It was a helpful reminder that as much as people think that everything is adequately explained in the posts and infographics and comments, there are many many MANY people who just visit Reddit to plan weddings and trade baseball cards who are ignoring the whole thing not because they don’t care but because what seems like a 101 level explanation to the people organizing is a black box of made up words that might as well be in Martian. I contend there is neutral morality in being tech inclined or not, and that it’s worthwhile to consider that many people who really would care about issues like screen readers are not being obstinate or scabs for not understanding the issues and waving it off as having to do with rich techy types squabbling with each other about who gets to make more money.
posted by Bottlecap at 12:00 PM on June 15, 2023 [11 favorites]
If an axe grinder is someone who has had bad experiences and shares them
"Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like" is a clearly categorical statement that does not read as personally anecdotal. If you're sharing your own personal bad experiences, it would be more clear in this forum to indicate that by such phrasing as "In my experience," or "I have had poor experiences with..." or etc. Assertions about all mods (or "most" mods) as a category should be qualified by something other than personal anecdote; otherwise, yes, it's axe-grinding.
posted by LooseFilter at 12:00 PM on June 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
"Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like" is a clearly categorical statement that does not read as personally anecdotal. If you're sharing your own personal bad experiences, it would be more clear in this forum to indicate that by such phrasing as "In my experience," or "I have had poor experiences with..." or etc. Assertions about all mods (or "most" mods) as a category should be qualified by something other than personal anecdote; otherwise, yes, it's axe-grinding.
posted by LooseFilter at 12:00 PM on June 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
I get so tired of couching everything I say to make sure exactly what is said is accurate to every ear on forums. I think we can assume interogative mood is talking about their own experience and not interrogate (ha!) their statements further, and not dismiss it with a phrase like "axe-grinding," which increasingly feels ironic the more it is used.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:06 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:06 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Is extrapolating ones individual experiences, in a small sample size, to the entirety of the population, and stating it as fact, sharing an opinion?
I think we can assume interrogative mood is talking about their own experience
--
Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like
Ridiculous. I ain't playing "you know what we meant when we asserted our opinion as objective fact." Say what you mean and root it in reality or stay tired.
posted by CPAnarchist at 12:13 PM on June 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
I think we can assume interrogative mood is talking about their own experience
--
Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like
Ridiculous. I ain't playing "you know what we meant when we asserted our opinion as objective fact." Say what you mean and root it in reality or stay tired.
posted by CPAnarchist at 12:13 PM on June 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
it is just a comment you do not like/opinion you don’t share
Except you don't know what I like or don't like, and some of it is presented as fact and not just opinion. I called it out as trolling, but that doesn't mean it didn't make me laugh. For that matter you can't know whether an upvote means "I agree with this" or "great joke, bro" or "I upvote this user because they are part of my in-group, even when I don't agree" or "I am part of the same coordinated campaign and the troll farm literally pays me to do this." It's a mistake to assign that sort of judgment to an upvote, any upvote, anywhere on the site. You may personally cast your own upvotes in that way, but you can't know if that's how anybody else is using them.
The (factual) claims in the first paragraph of that comment are pretty easily falsifiable, though. Did the mods actually post somewhere about using vegetable oil in that way? If so, where did they post it? Did they post it on a different subreddit for which they were mods, or were they acting (in effect) as private citizens doing private citizen things outside the scope of their (unpaid) work as moderators? Can you determine from the post why they posted it? I understand that in some subreddits the coordinated protest action was not to go private, but instead to post content that didn't belong in those subreddits and would normally would be moderated away. Can you verify that the claimed posts happened, and that they happened with the motivation being ascribed by that comment? Or do you just believe it because it's aligned with your own feelings about (temporarily) losing access to a forum you enjoy? ("Too good to fact check," as some people say).
The opinion being expressed seems to boil down to "I don't like this action taken by the mods whose unpaid labor makes possible my participation in this subreddit, and further I think there should be new mods potentially with less power to regulate behavior." And sure, ya got me, I'm more or less pro-mod and I disagree with that opinion.
Being a mod sucks. Being an unpaid mod sucks more. Being an unpaid mod fighting against a coordinated troll campaign (or even just one guy with an axe to grind) sucks even more than that. Being an unpaid mod fighting against trolls and axe grinders and having the best tools for doing that taken away from you because of private equity's poorly disguised profit motive, with no viable replacement for those tools in sight, is how you get coordinated mod protests.
posted by fedward at 12:16 PM on June 15, 2023 [11 favorites]
Except you don't know what I like or don't like, and some of it is presented as fact and not just opinion. I called it out as trolling, but that doesn't mean it didn't make me laugh. For that matter you can't know whether an upvote means "I agree with this" or "great joke, bro" or "I upvote this user because they are part of my in-group, even when I don't agree" or "I am part of the same coordinated campaign and the troll farm literally pays me to do this." It's a mistake to assign that sort of judgment to an upvote, any upvote, anywhere on the site. You may personally cast your own upvotes in that way, but you can't know if that's how anybody else is using them.
The (factual) claims in the first paragraph of that comment are pretty easily falsifiable, though. Did the mods actually post somewhere about using vegetable oil in that way? If so, where did they post it? Did they post it on a different subreddit for which they were mods, or were they acting (in effect) as private citizens doing private citizen things outside the scope of their (unpaid) work as moderators? Can you determine from the post why they posted it? I understand that in some subreddits the coordinated protest action was not to go private, but instead to post content that didn't belong in those subreddits and would normally would be moderated away. Can you verify that the claimed posts happened, and that they happened with the motivation being ascribed by that comment? Or do you just believe it because it's aligned with your own feelings about (temporarily) losing access to a forum you enjoy? ("Too good to fact check," as some people say).
The opinion being expressed seems to boil down to "I don't like this action taken by the mods whose unpaid labor makes possible my participation in this subreddit, and further I think there should be new mods potentially with less power to regulate behavior." And sure, ya got me, I'm more or less pro-mod and I disagree with that opinion.
Being a mod sucks. Being an unpaid mod sucks more. Being an unpaid mod fighting against a coordinated troll campaign (or even just one guy with an axe to grind) sucks even more than that. Being an unpaid mod fighting against trolls and axe grinders and having the best tools for doing that taken away from you because of private equity's poorly disguised profit motive, with no viable replacement for those tools in sight, is how you get coordinated mod protests.
posted by fedward at 12:16 PM on June 15, 2023 [11 favorites]
Uhhhh ok. If someone says something too broad, try this instead of harassing them into your preferred way of speaking: add, mentally, "in my opinion" to the beginning of the statement they said that is so offensive, and then...move on! Or disagree!
But I don't get telling people they said something in the wrong way when you simply don't like what was said. That's not disagreement, it's something more. And unnecessary.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:17 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
But I don't get telling people they said something in the wrong way when you simply don't like what was said. That's not disagreement, it's something more. And unnecessary.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:17 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Wow this is too much.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:18 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:18 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
(I'm trying really hard to engage on the merits and not just be piling on, so interogative mood if you think I'm piling on I'll happily stop trying to engage).
posted by fedward at 12:20 PM on June 15, 2023
posted by fedward at 12:20 PM on June 15, 2023
And I don't believe for one min if "in my opinion" was first that it would stop anyone from disagreeing so the outcome is the same..you still get to disagree whats the point. Sigh. This thread is toast for me at this point, sorry.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:20 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:20 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think we can assume interogative mood is talking about their own experience and not interrogate (ha!) their statements further, and not dismiss it with a phrase like "axe-grinding,"
Wait, back up. The comment that accused another user of "axe-grinding" wasn't directed at interrogative mood, but at another user who came late into this thread to accuse Reddit mods to say this and not much else:
I might disagree with a lot of what interrogative mood has said in this thread, but at they have been attempting to have a discussion about what is going on.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:53 PM on June 15, 2023 [23 favorites]
Wait, back up. The comment that accused another user of "axe-grinding" wasn't directed at interrogative mood, but at another user who came late into this thread to accuse Reddit mods to say this and not much else:
Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally likeThis isn't a serious attempt to discuss the good and bad of moderation on Reddit; it's just grievance and name-calling. I'll add that it's also pretty fucking rude when quite a few Reddit moderators are here, discussing their experiences and perspective. I debated responding to it earlier, and decided not to, but I feel like I have to point out that this comment is 100% axe-grinding about Reddit moderators and not a case of someone just failing to word their disagreement with the current protest carefully enough.
I might disagree with a lot of what interrogative mood has said in this thread, but at they have been attempting to have a discussion about what is going on.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:53 PM on June 15, 2023 [23 favorites]
Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At most recent newsletter titled Tech's Reckoning is another argument about the natural outcome of raising funds through the fun house mirrors of venture capital.
posted by zenon at 12:54 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by zenon at 12:54 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'll add that it's also pretty fucking rude when quite a few Reddit moderators are here
Said user is/was a Reddit mod also. Are you familiar with ACAB? It doesn't actually mean each individual who has worked within the police system is individually a bad person. It's a systemic claim.
posted by MrBobaFett at 1:16 PM on June 15, 2023
Said user is/was a Reddit mod also. Are you familiar with ACAB? It doesn't actually mean each individual who has worked within the police system is individually a bad person. It's a systemic claim.
posted by MrBobaFett at 1:16 PM on June 15, 2023
So you're saying "Mods are by and large narcissistic little micro- fascists who use mod tools to silence any dissent from their approved narrative or to harass users they don't personally like" is a systemic claim?
I've got no love for Reddit, but this seems like a failure of *under*moderation, rather than over.
posted by CrystalDave at 1:30 PM on June 15, 2023
I've got no love for Reddit, but this seems like a failure of *under*moderation, rather than over.
posted by CrystalDave at 1:30 PM on June 15, 2023
You're seriously trying to make a comparison to ACAB? Yikes.
The reason "ACAB" is a systemic claim is because it's shorthand for one: That it's impossible to be a good cop in the current system. The community has established this meaning.
What you said isn't shorthand for a systemic claim; it has no such community meaning. It's just a claim about the personal character and behavior of Reddit moderators. Also, any systemic meaning you now want to add to it is undercut by your own lack of commitment, as even you hedged the claim to allow for the existence of good moderators. I'm sure you're included in that group.
Anyway, my intention was not to talk to you about this, but to set the record straight on the thread about who said what to whom and why they said it. I'm not going to respond to you any further.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:49 PM on June 15, 2023 [13 favorites]
The reason "ACAB" is a systemic claim is because it's shorthand for one: That it's impossible to be a good cop in the current system. The community has established this meaning.
What you said isn't shorthand for a systemic claim; it has no such community meaning. It's just a claim about the personal character and behavior of Reddit moderators. Also, any systemic meaning you now want to add to it is undercut by your own lack of commitment, as even you hedged the claim to allow for the existence of good moderators. I'm sure you're included in that group.
Anyway, my intention was not to talk to you about this, but to set the record straight on the thread about who said what to whom and why they said it. I'm not going to respond to you any further.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:49 PM on June 15, 2023 [13 favorites]
ACAB?! Are mods killing people and ruining lives? If a cop is messing with me, I can't just tell the cop exactly what I think of them and then walk away, which is exactly unlike the situation with mods.
I'm not saying there aren't bad mods, but mod power is limited and contingent on the goodwill of the people they are moderating, which trends to limit the little Napoleons.
posted by surlyben at 1:52 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm not saying there aren't bad mods, but mod power is limited and contingent on the goodwill of the people they are moderating, which trends to limit the little Napoleons.
posted by surlyben at 1:52 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
As far as I can tell from the evidence presented here and elsewhere, the systemic tyranny etc comes from Reddit's admins and other employees (all the way up to the top), and that it's many of the volunteer moderators who encourage collective action, as happened here. Sure, there's probably a lot of backbiting and infighting, but the cops here are spez and the company he runs, not the people who are essentially the site's community organizers.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 1:52 PM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 1:52 PM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I did not fact check the post at the time and presumed it was accurate as no one on the thread was disputing the facts on that forum. However since you raised the issue I did a quick check on the comment history of the mods for that subreddit for the time in question.
I was able to locate the vegetable oil discussion. Although it was inside a discussion about seasoning cast iron with canola oil. The comment was in reply to a comment about sperm counts and using it for personal lubricant.
I was also about to identify numerous posts to turn College Football Subrerddit r/CFB Reddit. I assume this is what the poster meant by CFL.
I could not find the breast implant comment but there were lots of comments by the mods and during the time period on question. I didn’t read every one and it is possible the comment was deleted following the call out.
I hope this puts the question of the veracity of the claims on that post aside. I’m disagree with the argument upvotes do not signify some level of agreement with the comment. Especially after hearing from mods that upvotes for a blackout post signified agreement / support for plans to blackout a subreddit.
posted by interogative mood at 2:03 PM on June 15, 2023
I was able to locate the vegetable oil discussion. Although it was inside a discussion about seasoning cast iron with canola oil. The comment was in reply to a comment about sperm counts and using it for personal lubricant.
I was also about to identify numerous posts to turn College Football Subrerddit r/CFB Reddit. I assume this is what the poster meant by CFL.
I could not find the breast implant comment but there were lots of comments by the mods and during the time period on question. I didn’t read every one and it is possible the comment was deleted following the call out.
I hope this puts the question of the veracity of the claims on that post aside. I’m disagree with the argument upvotes do not signify some level of agreement with the comment. Especially after hearing from mods that upvotes for a blackout post signified agreement / support for plans to blackout a subreddit.
posted by interogative mood at 2:03 PM on June 15, 2023
Wow yeah please take my comments in the least charitable way possible. FFS.
Power corrupts, or is that too controversial of a take for you?
Mods are the little dictators, it's true. The Reddit admins are worse.
Reddit is a cesspool, sorry but I'll stick with that. It's time for it and others like FB and Twitter to fall and be replaced, like other services before them. MetaFilter is the only service I've used that continues to be generally excellent. I think there are a variety of factors behind that. But not getting too big is probably part of it.
Also one of the few places that seems to reasonably moderate. I am not sure how much of that is self moderation tho.
Maybe it's just the $5 door fee. :)
posted by MrBobaFett at 2:11 PM on June 15, 2023
Power corrupts, or is that too controversial of a take for you?
Mods are the little dictators, it's true. The Reddit admins are worse.
Reddit is a cesspool, sorry but I'll stick with that. It's time for it and others like FB and Twitter to fall and be replaced, like other services before them. MetaFilter is the only service I've used that continues to be generally excellent. I think there are a variety of factors behind that. But not getting too big is probably part of it.
Also one of the few places that seems to reasonably moderate. I am not sure how much of that is self moderation tho.
Maybe it's just the $5 door fee. :)
posted by MrBobaFett at 2:11 PM on June 15, 2023
Since there is some confusion. MrBobbaFett and I are different people with different views about mods. I lead a small team of mods for some related communities on discord, reddit and twitch. I think the role of mods is to be a community leader and facilitator of good discussions. I know some mods do go a bit power mad and behave badly. Unfortunately any position of even limited authority / leadership will attract little fascist jerks — youth sports coaches, priests, HOA presidents and even mods. It can be tough to screen those people out when attempting to keep enough volunteers to provide the needed community services on a consistent basis. At the same time for every shitty mod there are probably 100 jerks who show up shitpost/troll and grief the community /mods just becuse and then whine about their free speech.
posted by interogative mood at 2:40 PM on June 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 2:40 PM on June 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
this feels like such a derail but for the record:
Said user is/was a Reddit mod also.
are you a "narcissistic little micro- fascist who uses mod tools to silence any dissent from (your) approved narrative or to harass users (you) don't personally like" or are you one of the good ones
take my comments in the least charitable way possible
come in blazing, and paint mods in the least charitable light, and you may get that reaction, yes.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:57 PM on June 15, 2023 [8 favorites]
Said user is/was a Reddit mod also.
are you a "narcissistic little micro- fascist who uses mod tools to silence any dissent from (your) approved narrative or to harass users (you) don't personally like" or are you one of the good ones
take my comments in the least charitable way possible
come in blazing, and paint mods in the least charitable light, and you may get that reaction, yes.
posted by elkevelvet at 2:57 PM on June 15, 2023 [8 favorites]
Y'all are all being super silly.
I double-checked the meaning of having an "axe to grind," and it means either "having an ulterior motive" (that was new to me) or "having a grievance against someone" (which I'm more familiar with, and which seems to be the sense being used here).
So, yeah, MrBobaFett has an axe to grind. You know who else does? Almost every person in this thread, myself included. The difference is that MrBobaFett has an axe to grind with mods, and pretty much everyone else has an axe to grind with the admins/spez. This whole thread is about axe-grinding, and most of us are joining in the axe-grinding. MrBobaFett's just grinding a different axe.
It's also weird that people are taking interrogative mood to task for something that MrBobaFett said.
It's also weird that people are demanding they put "in my experience" in front of their opinion, while that demand wasn't made for comments like "It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls." or "there are many legitimate, viable communities on Reddit" or "Reddit's support for its own site has been, historically and presently, hot steaming garbage" or "The ratio of actual Putin bots to people that you find annoying or have different political views or ways of expression is... slanted" or "The HeGetsUs ads are relentless" or "Imgur has gotten super bloated but the built in reddit gallery is totally trash" or "Ownership wants to cash out and the process is destroying the Reddit that current Redditors enjoyed" or countless other statements that are obviously the opinions and experiences of the people who said them but which nobody demanded be prefaced with "in my opinion" or "in my experience" or the like.
Seriously, unless someone is claiming something that is obviously intended to be a statement of fact ("X subreddits went dark" "Spez said Y when talking to the owner of Apollo" "traffic is down by Z"), it should be obvious that what they're saying is their opinion.
And, just for reference, when I say y'all are all being super silly, I mean that in my experience, in my opinion, y'all are all being super silly.
posted by Bugbread at 3:08 PM on June 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
I double-checked the meaning of having an "axe to grind," and it means either "having an ulterior motive" (that was new to me) or "having a grievance against someone" (which I'm more familiar with, and which seems to be the sense being used here).
So, yeah, MrBobaFett has an axe to grind. You know who else does? Almost every person in this thread, myself included. The difference is that MrBobaFett has an axe to grind with mods, and pretty much everyone else has an axe to grind with the admins/spez. This whole thread is about axe-grinding, and most of us are joining in the axe-grinding. MrBobaFett's just grinding a different axe.
It's also weird that people are taking interrogative mood to task for something that MrBobaFett said.
It's also weird that people are demanding they put "in my experience" in front of their opinion, while that demand wasn't made for comments like "It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls." or "there are many legitimate, viable communities on Reddit" or "Reddit's support for its own site has been, historically and presently, hot steaming garbage" or "The ratio of actual Putin bots to people that you find annoying or have different political views or ways of expression is... slanted" or "The HeGetsUs ads are relentless" or "Imgur has gotten super bloated but the built in reddit gallery is totally trash" or "Ownership wants to cash out and the process is destroying the Reddit that current Redditors enjoyed" or countless other statements that are obviously the opinions and experiences of the people who said them but which nobody demanded be prefaced with "in my opinion" or "in my experience" or the like.
Seriously, unless someone is claiming something that is obviously intended to be a statement of fact ("X subreddits went dark" "Spez said Y when talking to the owner of Apollo" "traffic is down by Z"), it should be obvious that what they're saying is their opinion.
And, just for reference, when I say y'all are all being super silly, I mean that in my experience, in my opinion, y'all are all being super silly.
posted by Bugbread at 3:08 PM on June 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
TBF Bugbread I have an axe to grind with both the Admins and the Mods. They are parts of the same power structure. The admins are probably the bigger bastards but yeah. There is a lot of silliness.
posted by MrBobaFett at 3:21 PM on June 15, 2023
posted by MrBobaFett at 3:21 PM on June 15, 2023
double-checked the meaning of having an "axe to grind," and it means either "having an ulterior motive" (that was new to me) or "having a grievance against someone" (which I'm more familiar with, and which seems to be the sense being used here).
This guy is trying to make a third meaning happen.
posted by box at 3:36 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
This guy is trying to make a third meaning happen.
posted by box at 3:36 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Power corrupts...
And petty power corrupts pettily.
posted by y2karl at 3:42 PM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
And petty power corrupts pettily.
posted by y2karl at 3:42 PM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
Sounds like MrBobaFett got up on the wrong side of the sarlacc pit this morning.
posted by interogative mood at 3:58 PM on June 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 3:58 PM on June 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
I'd be cranky after waking up from being slowly digested for thousands of years, too.
posted by Jarcat at 4:16 PM on June 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Jarcat at 4:16 PM on June 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
For all I may disagree with your take on this discussion, interogative mood, I admire your persistence and am happy to see your sense of humor is intact
posted by Cogito at 4:18 PM on June 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Cogito at 4:18 PM on June 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Update from Reddit admins just reposted to r/ModCoord. TLDR they are going to poll the mod teams and if any of the active mods want to end the shutdown they will be put in charge of the forum.
Edit: Sorry original post is here
posted by interogative mood at 4:23 PM on June 15, 2023
Edit: Sorry original post is here
posted by interogative mood at 4:23 PM on June 15, 2023
This Verge article certainly makes Reddit management look shortsighted.
posted by sagc at 4:40 PM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by sagc at 4:40 PM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
that people are demanding they put "in my experience" in front of their opinion, while that demand wasn't made for comments like "It's overrun with incel Nazis and Russian trolls."
That's an interesting use of the term "demanding." For my part, after several broad-brush comments in the thread along the lines you mention, I finally responded to one of those kinds of comments, simply encouraging clarity when characterizing the behaviors of actual, real people. Are 'demand' and 'request' synonyms now?
it should be obvious that what they're saying is their opinion.
I guess I think it's unfair to tell people that they should understand what I mean, even if what I'm actually saying is not clear to them; I would rather try to communicate more clearly than assign blame for miscommunication. This is a text forum, we don't have context clues or vocal inflection or facial expressions or body language to properly understand the full spectrum of regular human communication. So maybe say what you actually mean instead of hyperbolic bullshit, like telling people they're "demanding" conformity to specific behavioral standards when actually a request for more thoughtful clarity when broadly categorizing something was what was made.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:41 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
That's an interesting use of the term "demanding." For my part, after several broad-brush comments in the thread along the lines you mention, I finally responded to one of those kinds of comments, simply encouraging clarity when characterizing the behaviors of actual, real people. Are 'demand' and 'request' synonyms now?
it should be obvious that what they're saying is their opinion.
I guess I think it's unfair to tell people that they should understand what I mean, even if what I'm actually saying is not clear to them; I would rather try to communicate more clearly than assign blame for miscommunication. This is a text forum, we don't have context clues or vocal inflection or facial expressions or body language to properly understand the full spectrum of regular human communication. So maybe say what you actually mean instead of hyperbolic bullshit, like telling people they're "demanding" conformity to specific behavioral standards when actually a request for more thoughtful clarity when broadly categorizing something was what was made.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:41 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
And, just for reference, when I say y'all are all being super silly, I mean that in my experience, in my opinion, y'all are all being super silly.
Also, mockery is never a tool for further engagement, so I'll peace out from this thread before it gets personal. Because that was an asshole comment right there.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:46 PM on June 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also, mockery is never a tool for further engagement, so I'll peace out from this thread before it gets personal. Because that was an asshole comment right there.
posted by LooseFilter at 4:46 PM on June 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
Good point, you weren't saying those comments must have the caveat that they're the experience of the poster, but that they should have said caveat. I disagree that you were requesting it, though. "You should X" is definitely weaker than "You must X" (a command), but it's definitely stronger than "Please X" (a request). But, indeed, you made no demands, and I apologize for mischaracterizing your comment.
posted by Bugbread at 5:05 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 5:05 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Huffman/spez doubles down on disempowering mods.
posted by humbug at 5:08 PM on June 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by humbug at 5:08 PM on June 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
I'm a reddit mod! I moderate a nearly zero-traffic sub about a musical topic that I enjoy a lot.
There's a story that many people tell variations of when they first go hunting for game birds (like my high school English teacher), or rabbits (in famous French chef Thomas Keller's case).
It's when they kill the animal and have to go pick it up, that they are suddenly confronted with the horribleness of death. My English teacher said after that experience, he could never go hunting again. Thomas Keller wrote, if you can't kill, gut, and butcher your own rabbit, then cooking that kind of French food "from head to tail to table" is not something that can work for you.
I never went hunting, but when I took over the tiny nearly-zero-traffic sub, one day I was confronted with a racist, sexist post. It was at that moment when I realized how much power and control I had over another human being in that shared space: I could ban their comment and their post. I literally experienced the surge of endorphins, the sheer thought of the choice at my dispoal, and this experience happened without even my having decided to delete the comment yet or not.
It was that day that I decided that moderation was not for me. I was not interested in having that kind of power.
So when someone compares social media social control to ACAB or whatever, it does not offend me in the least. Mods, reddit or discord or whereever else, enlightened mods, would see any kind of that comment and take it in stride, introspectively, and empathically. Because that is the only correct way for any authoritative role to handle a power imbalance relationship.
posted by polymodus at 5:12 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
There's a story that many people tell variations of when they first go hunting for game birds (like my high school English teacher), or rabbits (in famous French chef Thomas Keller's case).
It's when they kill the animal and have to go pick it up, that they are suddenly confronted with the horribleness of death. My English teacher said after that experience, he could never go hunting again. Thomas Keller wrote, if you can't kill, gut, and butcher your own rabbit, then cooking that kind of French food "from head to tail to table" is not something that can work for you.
I never went hunting, but when I took over the tiny nearly-zero-traffic sub, one day I was confronted with a racist, sexist post. It was at that moment when I realized how much power and control I had over another human being in that shared space: I could ban their comment and their post. I literally experienced the surge of endorphins, the sheer thought of the choice at my dispoal, and this experience happened without even my having decided to delete the comment yet or not.
It was that day that I decided that moderation was not for me. I was not interested in having that kind of power.
So when someone compares social media social control to ACAB or whatever, it does not offend me in the least. Mods, reddit or discord or whereever else, enlightened mods, would see any kind of that comment and take it in stride, introspectively, and empathically. Because that is the only correct way for any authoritative role to handle a power imbalance relationship.
posted by polymodus at 5:12 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
It seemed that the gamble Reddit is taking is that the community will side with Reddit management over the mods in the lockout. I think that will be hit or miss. I do think it’s going to be very difficult to implement a mod elections scheme when there is so much brigading, sock puppets, bots and non-community participants. At the same time allowing one person to be absolute dictator by right of calling dibbs over a community with tens of thousands or more members isn’t working. I predict the crazy time shit show will continue.
posted by interogative mood at 5:46 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 5:46 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Seems like the blackout must not have been the minor bump in the road for Reddit that some people were painting it as and actually hurt on some level if they're going scorched earth with mods... which means keep pushing if you still want to make some change, really. Apparently the mods and users have plenty of leverage.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:48 PM on June 15, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 5:48 PM on June 15, 2023 [15 favorites]
Interesting. As a mod, if I see someone make a racist and sexist post, I ban them, all the while wondering if they're going to get other racist and sexist people to harass me or the place that I mod for doing so.
As an aside, I think that the objection people have to the ACAB comparison is that 1. mods aren't killing people, 2. mods don't have systemic power networks that encourage corruption, and 3. mods don't have any meaningful power aside from some probably-insignificant place they mod.
posted by No One Ever Does at 5:48 PM on June 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
As an aside, I think that the objection people have to the ACAB comparison is that 1. mods aren't killing people, 2. mods don't have systemic power networks that encourage corruption, and 3. mods don't have any meaningful power aside from some probably-insignificant place they mod.
posted by No One Ever Does at 5:48 PM on June 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
jason_steakums: "Seems like the blackout must not have been the minor bump in the road for Reddit that some people were painting it as and actually hurt on some level if they're going scorched earth with mods..."
Interesting. I kind of see it as the opposite: if reddit was now taking a conciliatory stance toward the mods, I would think "oh, this has had some sort of an impact on them and changed their vector." The fact that they're not doing that feels, to me, like reddit seeing this as nothing more than a minor bump in the road.
From the start, my guess was that reddit would just see the mods that took a long-term hardline stance as annoyances and get rid of them, like a boss whose position is "if you don't like it, get the hell out, I'll have you replaced by tomorrow." (I'm not saying it actually would be that easy, but I guess that this would be reddit's approach). So being hardline matches the scenario I imagined if reddit saw the protests as having little impact.
We'll see. I'm certainly not saying "and, therefore, I am certain that nothing will change!" Maybe lots of mods will quit in July and we'll see really dramatic changes that far exceed the protests. Maybe new mods will come in and largely take up the slack. Maybe reddit will lose a lot of potential valuation, but still be highly valuated, so in the IPO spez will make $X00 million instead of $Y00 million. Maybe a competitor will appear and everyone will jump ship. I can't predict the future, I'm just saying what I think reddit's view is of the present.
posted by Bugbread at 6:03 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Interesting. I kind of see it as the opposite: if reddit was now taking a conciliatory stance toward the mods, I would think "oh, this has had some sort of an impact on them and changed their vector." The fact that they're not doing that feels, to me, like reddit seeing this as nothing more than a minor bump in the road.
From the start, my guess was that reddit would just see the mods that took a long-term hardline stance as annoyances and get rid of them, like a boss whose position is "if you don't like it, get the hell out, I'll have you replaced by tomorrow." (I'm not saying it actually would be that easy, but I guess that this would be reddit's approach). So being hardline matches the scenario I imagined if reddit saw the protests as having little impact.
We'll see. I'm certainly not saying "and, therefore, I am certain that nothing will change!" Maybe lots of mods will quit in July and we'll see really dramatic changes that far exceed the protests. Maybe new mods will come in and largely take up the slack. Maybe reddit will lose a lot of potential valuation, but still be highly valuated, so in the IPO spez will make $X00 million instead of $Y00 million. Maybe a competitor will appear and everyone will jump ship. I can't predict the future, I'm just saying what I think reddit's view is of the present.
posted by Bugbread at 6:03 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's such a wild power grab that's blatantly against the ethos Reddit tries to make their image (regardless of how little they actually followed that ethos in the past), so it feels like a desperation move to me. I don't know that there's a world where they'd act conciliatory to mods at all, I figured if the blackout didn't hurt them it they would make a point of not reacting at all to give the clear impression that it was nothing. This is certainly a reaction!
posted by jason_steakums at 6:13 PM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 6:13 PM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
If I were a person who had contributed content that Reddit seems to be claiming the (more or less) exclusive right to monetize, I would sure be thinking about deleting all the content I’d created for free.
posted by fedward at 6:31 PM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by fedward at 6:31 PM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
jason_steakums: "I figured if the blackout didn't hurt them it they would make a point of not reacting at all to give the clear impression that it was nothing. This is certainly a reaction!"
Ah, that makes sense.
It'll be really interesting to see how this works out, because I think spez has a proper understanding of some of the site's dynamics but doesn't understand other aspects. Specifically:
I think he's right that the average redditor really doesn't care about what's going on. The place has 430 million unique monthly visitors, and there's no way (in my opinion) that even 100 million people have strong feelings about the API issue.
However, NBC says spez wants to "pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular", and I think that's where spez's understanding is a bit short -- sure, the average redditor may not care about the API issues, but the kind of redditor who is motivated enough to vote on mod removal issues isn't the "average redditor."
The big surprise for me was seeing what happened when /r/nottheonion ran a poll on whether to reopen, reopen-but-close-on-Tuesdays, or stay closed.
I really had no idea what the poll results would be. /r/nottheonion isn't a super pro-spez subreddit, or a super anti-spez reddit. It's just a bunch ofpeople who have literally no idea what Onion headlines are like and think that "true stories that that you could have sworn were from The Onion" means "any kind of unusual news story" people who post unusual news stories.
The current tally is 7,183 for return-to-normal, 7,114 for close-on-Tuesdays, and 88,600 for stay-in-blackout. That's a big margin.
I think spez may be surprised to see that, although some shut-down subs may boot their mods and re-open, it won't be nearly as universal as he seems to be expecting, because the average redditor and the average voting-on-modding-related-issues voter are pretty different.
posted by Bugbread at 6:45 PM on June 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
Ah, that makes sense.
It'll be really interesting to see how this works out, because I think spez has a proper understanding of some of the site's dynamics but doesn't understand other aspects. Specifically:
I think he's right that the average redditor really doesn't care about what's going on. The place has 430 million unique monthly visitors, and there's no way (in my opinion) that even 100 million people have strong feelings about the API issue.
However, NBC says spez wants to "pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular", and I think that's where spez's understanding is a bit short -- sure, the average redditor may not care about the API issues, but the kind of redditor who is motivated enough to vote on mod removal issues isn't the "average redditor."
The big surprise for me was seeing what happened when /r/nottheonion ran a poll on whether to reopen, reopen-but-close-on-Tuesdays, or stay closed.
I really had no idea what the poll results would be. /r/nottheonion isn't a super pro-spez subreddit, or a super anti-spez reddit. It's just a bunch of
The current tally is 7,183 for return-to-normal, 7,114 for close-on-Tuesdays, and 88,600 for stay-in-blackout. That's a big margin.
I think spez may be surprised to see that, although some shut-down subs may boot their mods and re-open, it won't be nearly as universal as he seems to be expecting, because the average redditor and the average voting-on-modding-related-issues voter are pretty different.
posted by Bugbread at 6:45 PM on June 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
Sorry to be commenting so much (not sorry enough to stop, but sorry enough to feel bad as I do it), but:
I'm amused to see the divide between spez arguing that the decision process should be more democratic, with a sub's users being able to kick out the sub's mods, with this: "If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users."
There's no issue if the users support the reopening of the sub, but how exactly is this supposed to work when the users support the closing of the sub, like /r/nottheonion?
10 Mods ask users if they want to close sub →
20 Users say yes →
30 Mods close sub →
40 Admins replace mods with new mods and reopen subs →
50 If new mods decide to decide policy based on user votes, GOTO 10, else GOTO 60
60 Mods run sub as normal, open sub →
70 Users vote to eject mods →
80 GOTO 40
It kinda feels like the freeze-or-get-down scene.
posted by Bugbread at 7:08 PM on June 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
I'm amused to see the divide between spez arguing that the decision process should be more democratic, with a sub's users being able to kick out the sub's mods, with this: "If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users."
There's no issue if the users support the reopening of the sub, but how exactly is this supposed to work when the users support the closing of the sub, like /r/nottheonion?
10 Mods ask users if they want to close sub →
20 Users say yes →
30 Mods close sub →
40 Admins replace mods with new mods and reopen subs →
50 If new mods decide to decide policy based on user votes, GOTO 10, else GOTO 60
60 Mods run sub as normal, open sub →
70 Users vote to eject mods →
80 GOTO 40
It kinda feels like the freeze-or-get-down scene.
posted by Bugbread at 7:08 PM on June 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
if any of the active mods want to end the shutdown they will be put in charge of the forum
As seen on Tumblr, imagine scabbing for free...
posted by cheshyre at 7:35 PM on June 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
As seen on Tumblr, imagine scabbing for free...
posted by cheshyre at 7:35 PM on June 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
They poll in r/nottheonion was based on asking people to upvote one of 3 comments. For a decision this charged I would not trust those vote tallies at all. It is too easy to hack upvotes with bots and other tricks.
posted by interogative mood at 8:45 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 8:45 PM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sure, but the same could also be said of other voting mechanisms, like mod removal voting, so the issue still remains.
posted by Bugbread at 9:05 PM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 9:05 PM on June 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
u/spez has tied his waggon to this change - he's the sort of person that once they've made a decision, no matter how braindead, any attempt to warn about the consequences or push back just makes him angrier and more determined that he's right and everyone else is wrong.
So the protests are working in that they've pissed off spez; and they're not in regards to getting him to actually change his mind.
Reddit force removing the mods who are protesting was always predicted as one of the most likely outcomes, and what the users want (either way) was never going to matter in that decision. I've seen a lot of mods saying they plan to quit once their apps stop working anyway, on June 30th.
In one of my favourite subs, one mod I've talked to quite a bit in the last few days is going. They created the sub, and have nutured and grown it to 65k users over 10 years. They're the only remaining active mod. Come the end of the month, unless spez has a (extremely unlikely) change of heart, they're stepping down, and leaving reddit because they hate the native app and the new site design, and losing RIF is the last straw. The community is split; a narrow majority want to take further action (but split over what), but the largest single vote is to stay open with no moderator. Some people are actively salivating at being able to post rule-breaking stuff (copyright infringing). Some are really, really irritated that they were cut off for 2 days. Quite a few think it's pointless drama, someone else will take over and everything will go back to normal. I've been one of the few voices trying to explain why this issue matters, and what the likely consequences of going unmoderated will be like (fill with spam, locked for being unmoderated, then someone can volunteer for free to clean up the trash and get the hate, with crap tools, and who we get is going to be pretty random) and my comment vote totals have been fluctuating up and down like crazy.
Will this sub continue? Pretty likely. Will someone else eventually go through the reddit admin process to adopt the sub? more likely than not. (the current mod has no interest in giving even more free time to vet a new mod, and hand over all their work to someone else who doesn't appreciate it, though no-one has volunteered yet anyway).
Will it be the same place it was, in a few weeks? No. Many people in the sub don't recognise what they're losing, because they were a good mod, who cared deeply about the subject matter and wasn't a martinet or a power tripper, but kept it safe from spam, and nazis, and DMCA takedowns. The dismissal of the value of that by quite a few users has been hard to see, and they've said that it has only cemented their decision to step down.
For me, it's kinda irrelevent that spez is going to force takeover subs to force keep them open. The damage will be done on June 30th when so many experienced moderators are going to walk. I admire the ones that are willing to still keep fighting, but the wave of new moderators is coming, and the sort of people who will want to take over the big subs in these conditions are going to be the worst kind who should never get that kind of power.
Reddit will continue, but it will not be the same reddit. I fully expect to see a substantial swing towards what twitter is becoming (and r/the_donald was), along with further squeezing of the users to maximise the enshittification to make the graph go up just before the IPO. I for one won't be there to see it.
About the only benefit is that reddit is now visibly in charge of what subs exist and who the moderators are. They can try to dress up their action how they like, but it definitely removes any fig-leaf that they're not responsible for the shittiest subs, the harassment of others and other destructive behaviour from the right-wing fucktards. And I hope spez and his shitty IPO fucking choke on it.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 12:18 AM on June 16, 2023 [25 favorites]
So the protests are working in that they've pissed off spez; and they're not in regards to getting him to actually change his mind.
Reddit force removing the mods who are protesting was always predicted as one of the most likely outcomes, and what the users want (either way) was never going to matter in that decision. I've seen a lot of mods saying they plan to quit once their apps stop working anyway, on June 30th.
In one of my favourite subs, one mod I've talked to quite a bit in the last few days is going. They created the sub, and have nutured and grown it to 65k users over 10 years. They're the only remaining active mod. Come the end of the month, unless spez has a (extremely unlikely) change of heart, they're stepping down, and leaving reddit because they hate the native app and the new site design, and losing RIF is the last straw. The community is split; a narrow majority want to take further action (but split over what), but the largest single vote is to stay open with no moderator. Some people are actively salivating at being able to post rule-breaking stuff (copyright infringing). Some are really, really irritated that they were cut off for 2 days. Quite a few think it's pointless drama, someone else will take over and everything will go back to normal. I've been one of the few voices trying to explain why this issue matters, and what the likely consequences of going unmoderated will be like (fill with spam, locked for being unmoderated, then someone can volunteer for free to clean up the trash and get the hate, with crap tools, and who we get is going to be pretty random) and my comment vote totals have been fluctuating up and down like crazy.
Will this sub continue? Pretty likely. Will someone else eventually go through the reddit admin process to adopt the sub? more likely than not. (the current mod has no interest in giving even more free time to vet a new mod, and hand over all their work to someone else who doesn't appreciate it, though no-one has volunteered yet anyway).
Will it be the same place it was, in a few weeks? No. Many people in the sub don't recognise what they're losing, because they were a good mod, who cared deeply about the subject matter and wasn't a martinet or a power tripper, but kept it safe from spam, and nazis, and DMCA takedowns. The dismissal of the value of that by quite a few users has been hard to see, and they've said that it has only cemented their decision to step down.
For me, it's kinda irrelevent that spez is going to force takeover subs to force keep them open. The damage will be done on June 30th when so many experienced moderators are going to walk. I admire the ones that are willing to still keep fighting, but the wave of new moderators is coming, and the sort of people who will want to take over the big subs in these conditions are going to be the worst kind who should never get that kind of power.
Reddit will continue, but it will not be the same reddit. I fully expect to see a substantial swing towards what twitter is becoming (and r/the_donald was), along with further squeezing of the users to maximise the enshittification to make the graph go up just before the IPO. I for one won't be there to see it.
About the only benefit is that reddit is now visibly in charge of what subs exist and who the moderators are. They can try to dress up their action how they like, but it definitely removes any fig-leaf that they're not responsible for the shittiest subs, the harassment of others and other destructive behaviour from the right-wing fucktards. And I hope spez and his shitty IPO fucking choke on it.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 12:18 AM on June 16, 2023 [25 favorites]
I appreciate 99% of your comment, Absolutely No You-Know-What, but the epithet after “right-wing” in the last paragraph is really distracting. I think the r-word and its derivatives are worth removing from our discourse and I hope you will consider making that change in the future.
posted by Cogito at 1:47 AM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Cogito at 1:47 AM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
Fair enough. I consider my word distinct from that root, i.e. more a synonym for arsehole, but I can see how it may not come across that way given the etymology and I won't use that again, given I definitely wouldn't use the r word.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:30 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:30 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
For sure reddit (just like twitter) will resume business as usual, and for sure this could be rose-tinted glasses, but after setting up my own threadiverse account (my main fedi one did just fine as commenter and participant but i wanted less friction in the reddit-like functionalities), what's struck me is the general tone of redditors who are trying out any of the Lemmy and kbin instances seems so different than the twitterati.
Yes, there's confusion, there's hesitation, the news of defederation also caused no end of worry, but people seem to be settling and enjoying what they have compared to the mastodon waves. It's possibly the combination of culture and functionality (notably even in the microblogging space, it's Calckey and Misskey-driven instances that are dominating active usage nowadays over Mastodon - whose roadmap is finally now showing functionalities that other protocols already have or having e.g better user controls and community-specific tools like native quote tweeting). But it's striking.
For example, the thread I'm reading now, on kbin.social (but it's pulling messages from all over). I don't expect decentralized socmed to be an overnight success but lived experience is one of the best demonstrative tools one can have, and this is pretty persuasive in the long run.
posted by cendawanita at 3:40 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yes, there's confusion, there's hesitation, the news of defederation also caused no end of worry, but people seem to be settling and enjoying what they have compared to the mastodon waves. It's possibly the combination of culture and functionality (notably even in the microblogging space, it's Calckey and Misskey-driven instances that are dominating active usage nowadays over Mastodon - whose roadmap is finally now showing functionalities that other protocols already have or having e.g better user controls and community-specific tools like native quote tweeting). But it's striking.
For example, the thread I'm reading now, on kbin.social (but it's pulling messages from all over). I don't expect decentralized socmed to be an overnight success but lived experience is one of the best demonstrative tools one can have, and this is pretty persuasive in the long run.
posted by cendawanita at 3:40 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
cendawanita: it's Calckey and Misskey-driven instances
I've never heard of these. I'd be interesting in learning more, if you'd be up for commenting about them (and/or making an FPP?)
posted by clawsoon at 4:14 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've never heard of these. I'd be interesting in learning more, if you'd be up for commenting about them (and/or making an FPP?)
posted by clawsoon at 4:14 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Search on fedi + my memory being what it is, i wasn't able to quickly find the posts tracking the growth metrics, but for a dry description of what Calckey (and Misskey) is, here's the wiki entry (and I must note these aren't offshoots of Mastodon at all - I've learned Misskey is actually a little older but it is big in Japan which might be why anglophones discounted it.)
Calckey is a *key fork not too long after that, that got a real boost once the explorers in the recent mastodon waves really seriously looked at what's available in other featuresets (and why maybe gargron have been slow/disinterested in adopting some of them), and just by dint of their own excitement and migration, calckey.social for example, just... exploded. My initial mutuals list were practically all on masto builds or at least a fork, but these days it's a good quarter that's on a *key build or even the other ones (usually Akkoma/Pleroma with Lemmy being a distant one until this Reddit wave just happened). I know there's one called Bonfire that's still not even past alpha that I'm curious about because they're committed on developing tiered access (similar to G+ circles).
Like, this is a post by a WordPress developer about a month ago, who moved from Mastodon and doing a roundtable on his new calckey.social account. And since then the instance (which is the main instance of the Calckey dev team) had to close registration again, as well as because the speed of their dev is leading them to decide to rebrand/name the protocol.
And kbin, to come back to topic, it's not even a month old.
But I wonder if this might be a good resource? Certainly someone, feel free to do an FPP with this: Don't tell people "it's easy", and six more things Kbin, Lemmy, and the fediverse can learn from Mastodon
posted by cendawanita at 5:05 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Calckey is a *key fork not too long after that, that got a real boost once the explorers in the recent mastodon waves really seriously looked at what's available in other featuresets (and why maybe gargron have been slow/disinterested in adopting some of them), and just by dint of their own excitement and migration, calckey.social for example, just... exploded. My initial mutuals list were practically all on masto builds or at least a fork, but these days it's a good quarter that's on a *key build or even the other ones (usually Akkoma/Pleroma with Lemmy being a distant one until this Reddit wave just happened). I know there's one called Bonfire that's still not even past alpha that I'm curious about because they're committed on developing tiered access (similar to G+ circles).
Like, this is a post by a WordPress developer about a month ago, who moved from Mastodon and doing a roundtable on his new calckey.social account. And since then the instance (which is the main instance of the Calckey dev team) had to close registration again, as well as because the speed of their dev is leading them to decide to rebrand/name the protocol.
And kbin, to come back to topic, it's not even a month old.
But I wonder if this might be a good resource? Certainly someone, feel free to do an FPP with this: Don't tell people "it's easy", and six more things Kbin, Lemmy, and the fediverse can learn from Mastodon
posted by cendawanita at 5:05 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Thanks!
...and it appears that we have Metafilter'd your kbin.social link, since it is now returning server errors. I think it might've been me clicking through to the second page that did it. I'm sorry.
posted by clawsoon at 5:21 AM on June 16, 2023
...and it appears that we have Metafilter'd your kbin.social link, since it is now returning server errors. I think it might've been me clicking through to the second page that did it. I'm sorry.
posted by clawsoon at 5:21 AM on June 16, 2023
Don't worry, that poor instance have been going through it this whole week, lmao.
posted by cendawanita at 5:38 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 5:38 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I do think it’s going to be very difficult to implement a mod elections scheme when there is so much brigading, sock puppets, bots and non-community participants.
The Nazis and incels are already gloating about how easy it will be to abuse spez's mod elections to force mass migrations of marginalized users and destroy their subreddits.
At the same time allowing one person to be absolute dictator by right of calling dibbs over a community with tens of thousands or more members isn’t working.
It seemed to be working fine, especially considering many communities have more than one mod. It's certainly a better idea than spez's blatant transfer of power to the bigots and trolls.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 5:41 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
The Nazis and incels are already gloating about how easy it will be to abuse spez's mod elections to force mass migrations of marginalized users and destroy their subreddits.
At the same time allowing one person to be absolute dictator by right of calling dibbs over a community with tens of thousands or more members isn’t working.
It seemed to be working fine, especially considering many communities have more than one mod. It's certainly a better idea than spez's blatant transfer of power to the bigots and trolls.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 5:41 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
I'm enthusiastic about federated alternatives to monolithic corporate-owned social media sites. I hope the Reddit exodus finds federation host software designed by someone whose head is not lodged firmly up their ass. On the other hand, without Eugen toting up his truly remarkable number of mistakes and missteps, I'm not sure ActivityPub as a whole would be anywhere as far along as it is. Like all pioneers, there's a bit of good and bad about him.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:06 AM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:06 AM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
If a sub reopens and the mods are not active / leaving the sub un-modded then it will be suspended by reddit. After that anyone can go to /r/redditrequest and offer to moderate the sub to open it back up. That is a longstanding process for dealing with the problem of mod abandonment.
posted by interogative mood at 6:32 AM on June 16, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 6:32 AM on June 16, 2023
Seems believable, and not ripe for exploitation.
posted by sagc at 6:46 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by sagc at 6:46 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
there are a lot of people who retreat into certain Reddit spaces for comfort and refuge
meatspace is not safe, for some people
this will result in a loss of comfort and refuge, tell me I'm wrong
posted by elkevelvet at 7:30 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
meatspace is not safe, for some people
this will result in a loss of comfort and refuge, tell me I'm wrong
posted by elkevelvet at 7:30 AM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
Lots of reports popping up of Reddit's users' deleted posts/comments reappearing atm.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 8:08 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 8:08 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I just don't words for this missive sent to mod teams of protesting subs making it clear those subs will be open with or without the current mod team.
I'm so sad. I became a regular redditor during covid. The communities that I became part of 3 years ago to help cope with the isolation, they mean a lot to me. I've looked at the alternatives and joined a few but they feel, and honestly are, empty. Many of the niche communities I love don't exist on the alternatives yet.
It's just so sad to see the people who helped make reddit great be treated so abominably and so many vibrant communities be decimated so fast.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:16 AM on June 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
I'm so sad. I became a regular redditor during covid. The communities that I became part of 3 years ago to help cope with the isolation, they mean a lot to me. I've looked at the alternatives and joined a few but they feel, and honestly are, empty. Many of the niche communities I love don't exist on the alternatives yet.
It's just so sad to see the people who helped make reddit great be treated so abominably and so many vibrant communities be decimated so fast.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:16 AM on June 16, 2023 [11 favorites]
I also keep trying (in as much as I can) to tell people to get the hell off Discord but of course no one listens.
When that one reaches for an IPO there is going to be a cataclysmic amount of social damage.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:31 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
When that one reaches for an IPO there is going to be a cataclysmic amount of social damage.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:31 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm also pretty unconvinced about the anti-mod narrative being the norm. My small sub (focused around an OSS game) is open right now so that we can figure out what to do next, and response has been overwhelmingly in favor of not returning to business as usual, and overwhelmingly anti-corporate-reddit.
I do wonder if it goes by topic to some degree - I've been looking around to gauge the temperature, I've seen a lot of angry anti-mod talking points on the city subs I'm on that are open right now. Perhaps it's also that, overwhelmingly, people who are in favor of continuing the blackout aren't posting much on reddit right now (cherry-picked scab narratives in this thread aside). I certainly am not engaging outside of the one sub I'm responsible for.
Another tricky issue: there are definitely some past banned trolls who would be excited to play up the abandoned sub thing and take this particular sub over (in fact there's one in particular who has a bit of a history of doing / attempting to do this with other communities).
posted by advil at 8:57 AM on June 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
I do wonder if it goes by topic to some degree - I've been looking around to gauge the temperature, I've seen a lot of angry anti-mod talking points on the city subs I'm on that are open right now. Perhaps it's also that, overwhelmingly, people who are in favor of continuing the blackout aren't posting much on reddit right now (cherry-picked scab narratives in this thread aside). I certainly am not engaging outside of the one sub I'm responsible for.
Another tricky issue: there are definitely some past banned trolls who would be excited to play up the abandoned sub thing and take this particular sub over (in fact there's one in particular who has a bit of a history of doing / attempting to do this with other communities).
posted by advil at 8:57 AM on June 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
Another tricky issue: there are definitely some past banned trolls who would be excited to play up the abandoned sub thing and take this particular sub over (in fact there's one in particular who has a bit of a history of doing / attempting to do this with other communities).
If only we'd seen this sort of Forum Drama play out before and the inevitable outcomes were obvious. If only there were prior experiences to learn from and knowledgeable people who'd lived through them. It's too bad this has never happened in the history of the internet, though.
posted by fedward at 9:39 AM on June 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
If only we'd seen this sort of Forum Drama play out before and the inevitable outcomes were obvious. If only there were prior experiences to learn from and knowledgeable people who'd lived through them. It's too bad this has never happened in the history of the internet, though.
posted by fedward at 9:39 AM on June 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
It's too bad this has never happened in the history of the internet, though.
and where in history have we seen the wealthy elite get in bed with the very worst people and literal fascists, thinking it's all a lark and they can control things?
but no, we'll focus on the mods' behaviour
posted by elkevelvet at 10:20 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
and where in history have we seen the wealthy elite get in bed with the very worst people and literal fascists, thinking it's all a lark and they can control things?
but no, we'll focus on the mods' behaviour
posted by elkevelvet at 10:20 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
If only we'd seen this sort of Forum Drama play out
Sorry, but could you explain your rhetorical point without the sarcasm and a bit more directly?
posted by advil at 10:28 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sorry, but could you explain your rhetorical point without the sarcasm and a bit more directly?
posted by advil at 10:28 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sorry, but could you explain your rhetorical point without the sarcasm and a bit more directly?
For a visceral example, try watching season 9, episode 22 of the Simpsons, Trash of the Titans.
For a recent, literal example, check out Twitter under its new ownership, and how the Trust & Safety team was gutted, longstanding rules were ignored or made friendlier to fascists, and how previously banned accounts were allowed (perhaps even invited) to return.
posted by fedward at 10:35 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
For a visceral example, try watching season 9, episode 22 of the Simpsons, Trash of the Titans.
For a recent, literal example, check out Twitter under its new ownership, and how the Trust & Safety team was gutted, longstanding rules were ignored or made friendlier to fascists, and how previously banned accounts were allowed (perhaps even invited) to return.
posted by fedward at 10:35 AM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
And I'm realizing now my intent may not have been clear: advil, I was emphasizing your point and not trying to mock it or undercut it. The scenario you describe happens a lot. I didn't notice who was asking for clarification and didn't put together why, and I would like to apologize for the snark in my response to the question.
posted by fedward at 11:06 AM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by fedward at 11:06 AM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Thanks! (Yes, I totally agree that there's a lot of past internet lessons that are getting ignored by people in charge of reddit, and for that matter, lots of others; was just trying to figure out if I was one of them.)
posted by advil at 11:17 AM on June 16, 2023
posted by advil at 11:17 AM on June 16, 2023
Reporting back from one of the organizing venues for this. People are pissed about Huffman's comments Thursday and his simping for Elon; the list of blacked-out/restricted subs is still hovering at nearly 5,000. And though people are concerned about the threats to retaliate against mods, some are taking their protest in some new and creative directions. Many are discussing taking the site guidelines as read and designating their subs as NSFW/18+ if they discuss any of these broad themes (note: NSFW subs are age-gated and can't display ads).
For example, this recent announcement from /r/pics (30 million subscribers):
On the other end of the spectrum, there's the latest announcement from porn sub /r/horny (742,000 subscribers):
posted by Rhaomi at 1:35 PM on June 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
For example, this recent announcement from /r/pics (30 million subscribers):
POLL: Decide on the future of /r/Pics!
Hello, /r/Pics subscribers!
Boy, what a whacky time we've all had lately, huh? Reddit decided to kill off third-party applications, a protest got planned (and possibly exploited by bad actors), the site showed up in the news, various communities started opening back up, others decided to stay inaccessible, and then the CEO of Reddit implied that a bunch of moderators would be removed from their positions!
Crazy, right?
Anyway, we – the so-called "landed gentry" – definitely want to comply with the wishes of the "royal court," and they've told us that we need to run the subreddit in the way that its members want. To that end, we figured that the only reasonable thing to do was directly ask how you'd like things to progress from here.
Which of the following should we do?
- Return to normal operations
- Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy
To be clear, if people choose the second option, screen-grabs from videos will be allowed (provided that there aren't any visible logos, inserted graphics, or other digital elements present). You could – if you wanted to – look through episodes of Last Week Tonight on YouTube, find moments featuring John Oliver at his sexiest, then post images of those moments here.
It's entirely up to you! Whatever the /r/Pics community decides is best, we'll respect!
Vote, friends! Vote now!
(You can vote by upvoting either of the comments in the thread below.)
On the other end of the spectrum, there's the latest announcement from porn sub /r/horny (742,000 subscribers):
📢 Important Announcement: Embracing Change on Our Christian Minecraft Server! 🌟If Reddit dies, it's going out guns blazing.
Dear Beloved Community,
We gather here today on our transformed Christian Minecraft server, and we have some news to share. Our mod team has made a difficult decision, one that may come as a surprise to some. Brace yourselves, for we are bidding farewell to our NSFW content.
Why, you ask? Well, let us shed some light on the matter. The winds of change have blown across the vast Reddit landscape, and the terrain has become treacherous. Alas, our valiant mod team can no longer ensure the safety and well-being of our members while navigating the realms of NSFW content. Fear not, dear friends, for this decision was not made lightly. We hold our community's best interests close to our hearts.
We understand that many of you have reveled in the spicy delights of our NSFW offerings, but worry not! We remain committed to fostering a vibrant and wholesome environment, one that embodies the spirit of this Christian Minecraft server. Together, we can embark on a new chapter filled with joy, laughter, and delightful SFW (Safe For Work) content.
We implore you, our cherished members, to embrace this change with open arms. Let us channel our creative energies toward crafting entertaining, funny, and uplifting posts that will warm even the coldest of creepers' hearts. Our mission remains unchanged: to create a safe haven for all, where respect, kindness, and good vibes thrive.
Though we bid farewell to our NSFW past, let us not dwell on what has passed, but rather look forward to what lies ahead. We stand united, ready to build an even stronger community, one that will bring smiles to faces far and wide.
Thank you, dear friends, for your understanding and unwavering support. Together, let us journey into this new era of our Christian Minecraft server and forge unforgettable memories. Praise the mods, praise the admins (maybe just a little), and let the SFW festivities commence!
With love and gratitude,
Moderators of the Christian Minecraft Server
posted by Rhaomi at 1:35 PM on June 16, 2023 [19 favorites]
Man, apologies if my comments about people's feelings about moderation were a derail. I'm again a little surprised how many people want less moderation.
It reminds me of an analogy I first heard on John and Hank Green's podcast about the supposed tension between "freedom of expression" and moderation of online communities. In general, the free speech absolutist will compare online forums to a public town square but that comparison falls apart very quickly, and perhaps a better comparison is someone's home. If you built a forum and invite people to participate, its like inviting people into your home. And just like, if you host a game night and one person is being obnoxious then you can invite them to leave, if a user of your forum is breaking the rules or norms you've established then by all means ban or kick them from the forum. Some events or homes or more restrictive or may have different rules, and that's fine, it just means you might be limiting you communities but that's a call your get to make.
Pissing off the mods, regardless of your feelings about their possible affinity for small scale despotism, also just seems like a dumb thing to root for... because... well... the shittier you make a job, the shittier the average person who wants to do it will be. I'll skip the real world examples I can think of because there's already been enough derails.
posted by midmarch snowman at 1:49 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
It reminds me of an analogy I first heard on John and Hank Green's podcast about the supposed tension between "freedom of expression" and moderation of online communities. In general, the free speech absolutist will compare online forums to a public town square but that comparison falls apart very quickly, and perhaps a better comparison is someone's home. If you built a forum and invite people to participate, its like inviting people into your home. And just like, if you host a game night and one person is being obnoxious then you can invite them to leave, if a user of your forum is breaking the rules or norms you've established then by all means ban or kick them from the forum. Some events or homes or more restrictive or may have different rules, and that's fine, it just means you might be limiting you communities but that's a call your get to make.
Pissing off the mods, regardless of your feelings about their possible affinity for small scale despotism, also just seems like a dumb thing to root for... because... well... the shittier you make a job, the shittier the average person who wants to do it will be. I'll skip the real world examples I can think of because there's already been enough derails.
posted by midmarch snowman at 1:49 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'll skip the real world examples
I'm sure people here know a few.
posted by jessamyn at 1:56 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm sure people here know a few.
posted by jessamyn at 1:56 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm also reminded of how my opinions towards refs have changed as I have aged. When I was young, it always seemed like a shitty thing for baseball umps to kick out a parent or a coach who was protesting an obviously bad call. Then I got a little older and slowly realized half of the little league umps were high school kids and the high school umps were people trying to support youth sports who were making about 45 bucks night. For 45 bucks a night you're just trying to be fair and keep the game moving so the next team can get on the field... so I can absolutely understand kicking out a parent who is making it harder to do your job. I mean seriously... if your an adult yelling at someone at a kid's athletic event, and you think the point isn't about giving people the chance to participate, its about you being right? And you're going to stop everything so you can yell at someone in an effort to ruin their night? N'ah GTFO, who cares about how right you are.
Anyways... yeah... my opinions on mods have changed a bit in the time that has passed since I was being routinely kicked out of AOL chat rooms when I was kid.
posted by midmarch snowman at 2:06 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
Anyways... yeah... my opinions on mods have changed a bit in the time that has passed since I was being routinely kicked out of AOL chat rooms when I was kid.
posted by midmarch snowman at 2:06 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
I'm again a little surprised how many people want less moderation.I think it's probably similar to the "Reddit is totally infested with Nazis" thing: It's taking some knowledge of some events in some of the shittiest subreddits and assuming all of Reddit is like that, ignoring (or not even realizing) that subreddits are extremely diverse amongst themselves in many ways.
Specifically, yes, there are lots of subreddits where moderation is done well, and if those are the ones you're familiar with, it might be surprising to hear that a lot of people want less of it. But there are also a lot of subreddits -- including some very popular ones -- where the moderation team as a whole is effectively a knee-jerk resentful petty tyrant, and not a particularly bright one. The team may include good moderators, but if your comment happens to catch the eye of one of the... less-good, it's not terribly uncommon to get a DM from a mod saying "Your comment was removed because (insert fundamentally absurd interpretation of it here)". Then if you reply to the DM to explain the situation, you may very well then get a "You have been banned" DM in response.
Furthermore, such mod teams tend to be essentially totally unaccountable; the dumbass decision of one single dumbass mod stands, presumably because the other mods often don't really investigate beyond "Got a mod mail, looks like someone already took care of it, cool, cool."
posted by Flunkie at 2:09 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
To be clear, I'm definitely on Team Blackout, and the recent "Fuck You, Team Blackout" has moved me a lot closer to Team No, Fuck You, Reddit.
Before the start of the blackout, I had decided to seriously cut back on my Reddit visits during the blackout itself, and the only times I've gone there have been during it were (A) a couple times to check on the state of the blackout and (B) muscle-memory-fueled time-wasting web browsing, with (B) being by far the most common. I then removed Reddit from my bookmarks so that muscle memory could no longer take me there.
But the recent Fuck You has made me decide to extend this at least until the API cutoff, and unless some reasonable changes are made before that time, I'm thinking my own little personal boycott might be permanent (or at least indefinite and long-lived). I feel very bittersweet about this, because for all the shittiness of some parts of Reddit, there are a lot of other parts that are really pretty great. But oh well.
posted by Flunkie at 2:34 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Before the start of the blackout, I had decided to seriously cut back on my Reddit visits during the blackout itself, and the only times I've gone there have been during it were (A) a couple times to check on the state of the blackout and (B) muscle-memory-fueled time-wasting web browsing, with (B) being by far the most common. I then removed Reddit from my bookmarks so that muscle memory could no longer take me there.
But the recent Fuck You has made me decide to extend this at least until the API cutoff, and unless some reasonable changes are made before that time, I'm thinking my own little personal boycott might be permanent (or at least indefinite and long-lived). I feel very bittersweet about this, because for all the shittiness of some parts of Reddit, there are a lot of other parts that are really pretty great. But oh well.
posted by Flunkie at 2:34 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
- Only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy
This option, of course, won by a landslide. The new content on r/pics is something to see indeed, and exactly what the users voted for. Phenomenal.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 4:48 PM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
This option, of course, won by a landslide. The new content on r/pics is something to see indeed, and exactly what the users voted for. Phenomenal.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 4:48 PM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
An interview with Steve Huffman was broadcast today on NPR's Morning Edition. He was well-prepared and scripted.
'Christ, what an asshole' came to and stayed in mind all the way up to the final Thank you, Steve...Thank you, Steve.
posted by y2karl at 5:11 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
'Christ, what an asshole' came to and stayed in mind all the way up to the final Thank you, Steve...Thank you, Steve.
posted by y2karl at 5:11 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I really don't get what's so hard about "I don't think you answered the question", over and over. I mean, I understand that it may make some potential interviewees reluctant to appear, but if so... fine? Go on Jim Cramer's Chair-Throw-O-Rama if you want. You don't get to be on NPR.
posted by Flunkie at 5:18 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Flunkie at 5:18 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
There have been claims of brigading on /r/tennis’ poll to remain closed. Screenshots that supposedly showed a post on the RedDark discord were shown online claiming to show mods brigading their own poll for “the good guys”. Reddit admins have apparently stepped in and new mods are now in charge with the sub reopened.
posted by interogative mood at 5:37 PM on June 16, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 5:37 PM on June 16, 2023
This option [sexy pics of John Oliver,] of course, won by a landslide. The new content on r/pics is something to see indeed, and exactly what the users voted for. Phenomenal.
Oh, that happened while Last Week Tonight is on hiatus due to the writer's strike. When the show comes back they'll have so much to cover.
posted by JHarris at 6:06 PM on June 16, 2023
Oh, that happened while Last Week Tonight is on hiatus due to the writer's strike. When the show comes back they'll have so much to cover.
posted by JHarris at 6:06 PM on June 16, 2023
/r/gifs (21 million subscribers):
From now on, only GIFs of John Oliver may be posted in /r/GIFs!
From now on, only GIFs of John Oliver may be posted in /r/GIFs!
Hello, /r/GIFs subscribers!posted by Rhaomi at 8:29 PM on June 16, 2023 [15 favorites]
As many of you are aware, we recently held a poll to decide on the future of the subreddit. This initiative was prompted by statements from Reddit's CEO, who suggested that the desires of the platform's everyday users were being eclipsed by those of moderators.
We – the so-called "landed gentry" – appreciate that Reddit is made great by its users. Uncompensated contributors populate the platform's many communities with their content, just as volunteer moderators keep spam and bigotry at bay. Since neither we nor Reddit would be here without you, it was only fair to let you determine what /r/GIFs should include... and you overwhelmingly chose to feature only GIFs of John Oliver.
The final tallies were as follows:
-1,851 votes in favor of returning to normal
13,696 votes in favor of featuring only GIFs of John Oliver.
As a result, /r/GIFs will feature only GIFs of John Oliver.
There are a few things to keep in mind:
For the time being, "John Oliver" will refer only to the British comedian who hosts Last Week Tonight.
All of /r/GIFs' other rules will remain in effect.
"Cookie Monster" is not a letter of the alphabet.
Thank you, everyone, for ensuring that /r/GIFs is truly a subreddit of the people!
"Cookie Monster" is not a letter of the alphabet.
THEY LIE
posted by JHarris at 10:10 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
THEY LIE
posted by JHarris at 10:10 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
John Oliver must be both absolutely delighted by this and yet SO FRUSTRATED HE CAN'T DO A VIDEO ON IT at the same time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:38 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:38 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
Interesting couple of articles* on the 'trust thermocline'.
In large bodies of water, the temperature drops slowly the deeper one dives. That change can, if the descent is slow enough, feel almost imperceptible. Yet at a certain point, the water temperature drops sharply and alarmingly. This point is the thermocline—a near-physical barrier where warm water meets cold. The shift between the two is sudden and dramatic.
For trust, it's that every bad decision you make erodes customer trust, getting you closer to their thermocline, and that effect lasts for a long time. Instead of trust being a linear cause-and-effect (if we make this change and complaints go up, but sales only drop a small amount or stay steady, then everything is fine) it instead is non-linear; eventually you reach a tipping point of cumulative unpopular changes, and customers can abandon you in droves for even a seemingly minor change - and more importantly, once lost, even reversing that change will not bring them back until a looong period of time has passed, because the accumulation of lost trust has similarly built up over decisions long since passed by that you thought they'd forgotten about.
So 'shrinkflation', excessive price rises, worse service, a website being overrun by bots, the enshittification process etc etc all get you closer to the thermocline - and one particular bad decision can then prompt a massive exodus as lots of people breach their personal thermocline and are prepared to jump through the hoops needed to leave.
If you have an entire customer retention department, then you're probably already close to it and just trying to paper over the problem. If you have enough reserves and alternative products, you can survive one collapsing; if it happens to your main product you can be totally screwed.
"One of the first cloud-based note services, Evernote once boasted over 220 million users. Starting with the removal of its free tier in 2016, a series of poor decisions on pricing, device restrictions, and privacy eventually led to a rapid decline in users at a time when the firm still seemed unchallengeable in the marketplace. Despite reversing a number of those changes, Evernote never recovered... At the time of this writing, Evernote does not even feature in the top 100 productivity apps chart for iOS."
Digg of course went through a similar process, and we're seeing the same now with the ongoing collapse of twitter. Netflix too seems to be getting dangerously close to theirs. And we may well see reddit follow the same path; even if this particular furore isn't enough, it will absolutely bring them a lot closer to a point where many users will finally have had enough.
* the 2nd article is by the original John Bull on twitter which attracted a lot of interest with the initial tweet.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:13 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
In large bodies of water, the temperature drops slowly the deeper one dives. That change can, if the descent is slow enough, feel almost imperceptible. Yet at a certain point, the water temperature drops sharply and alarmingly. This point is the thermocline—a near-physical barrier where warm water meets cold. The shift between the two is sudden and dramatic.
For trust, it's that every bad decision you make erodes customer trust, getting you closer to their thermocline, and that effect lasts for a long time. Instead of trust being a linear cause-and-effect (if we make this change and complaints go up, but sales only drop a small amount or stay steady, then everything is fine) it instead is non-linear; eventually you reach a tipping point of cumulative unpopular changes, and customers can abandon you in droves for even a seemingly minor change - and more importantly, once lost, even reversing that change will not bring them back until a looong period of time has passed, because the accumulation of lost trust has similarly built up over decisions long since passed by that you thought they'd forgotten about.
So 'shrinkflation', excessive price rises, worse service, a website being overrun by bots, the enshittification process etc etc all get you closer to the thermocline - and one particular bad decision can then prompt a massive exodus as lots of people breach their personal thermocline and are prepared to jump through the hoops needed to leave.
If you have an entire customer retention department, then you're probably already close to it and just trying to paper over the problem. If you have enough reserves and alternative products, you can survive one collapsing; if it happens to your main product you can be totally screwed.
"One of the first cloud-based note services, Evernote once boasted over 220 million users. Starting with the removal of its free tier in 2016, a series of poor decisions on pricing, device restrictions, and privacy eventually led to a rapid decline in users at a time when the firm still seemed unchallengeable in the marketplace. Despite reversing a number of those changes, Evernote never recovered... At the time of this writing, Evernote does not even feature in the top 100 productivity apps chart for iOS."
Digg of course went through a similar process, and we're seeing the same now with the ongoing collapse of twitter. Netflix too seems to be getting dangerously close to theirs. And we may well see reddit follow the same path; even if this particular furore isn't enough, it will absolutely bring them a lot closer to a point where many users will finally have had enough.
* the 2nd article is by the original John Bull on twitter which attracted a lot of interest with the initial tweet.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:13 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
"the original John Bull on twitter "
That would be Mefi's own garius.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:22 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
That would be Mefi's own garius.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:22 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Ah, I have blocked twitter on my devices thanks to the Muskening, so I couldn't check that source. Thanks!
(How does Elon Musk make a million dollar company? He buys a billion dollar one)
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:25 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
(How does Elon Musk make a million dollar company? He buys a billion dollar one)
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 3:25 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
(Skeet by Dare Obasanjo): A key part of the enshitification cycle is when a platform permanently takes away user value for itself. Examples include Amazon & Google deciding ads were more important to show as top results and Twitter going to war with 3rd party clients in 2012.
Reddit crosses that line this year.
posted by Wordshore at 7:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [12 favorites]
Reddit crosses that line this year.
posted by Wordshore at 7:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [12 favorites]
The truth thermocline works as an analogy, but when it comes to trust what is being described is more like hysteresis. I cancelled my local newspaper subscription because Paul Rivett became part owner. Paul Rivett is no longer part owner. So do I have a subscription again? Well no. It may take a lot more than just reversing the api charges decision to convince the mods, app developers, and users that have moved on from reddit to come back: that history is going to have an ongoing impact.
posted by mscibing at 9:15 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by mscibing at 9:15 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
NYMag: Reddit and the End of Online ‘Community’ / A standoff between the site and some of its most devoted users exposes an existential dilemma.
Meanwhile, on /r/Memes (26 million subscribers):
- continue current operations - restricted to only one image/meme at a time.
- return to normal operations.
- feature only Medieval / Landed Gentry themed memes, with the addition of Feudal user flairs.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:19 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Meanwhile, on /r/Memes (26 million subscribers):
HEAR YE, HEAR YE! Poll regarding the future of r/MemesOptions:
It hath commeth to our attention following comments spoken by thy High Council, that we landed gentry (moderators) have failed to yield democracy during thine time of protests opposing our Royalty's API changes (see here for more information regarding how the policy change affects 3rd party applications, accessibility and moderating).
Alas, giveth the current array, we shall hold a vote amongst the noble country people of r/Memes to determine the course for which we shall follow.
Cast thy votes in the comments below!
Good morrow,
-Landed Gentry of the House of Memes
- continue current operations - restricted to only one image/meme at a time.
- return to normal operations.
- feature only Medieval / Landed Gentry themed memes, with the addition of Feudal user flairs.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:19 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Vice: The Reddit Protest Is a Battle for the Soul of the Human Internet
Thousands of subreddits representing hundreds of millions of users have gone dark in what is likely the largest moderator-coordinated protest in the history of social media. The protest brings Reddit’s business model and operating strategy into focus by highlighting the power of its moderators and the site’s reliance on unpaid labor.posted by Rhaomi at 10:35 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
How the situation is resolved will determine the direction of one of the last good social media sites and will impact how people interact with it. A complex argument over the specifics of API pricing is, actually, a battle for the soul of the human internet, and an important labor dispute that will partially determine whether people or corporations control the internet.
But the recent Fuck You has made me decide to extend this at least until the API cutoff, and unless some reasonable changes are made before that time, I'm thinking my own little personal boycott might be permanent (or at least indefinite and long-lived).
For whatever it's worth, this is my take as well. I'm done with reddit. And that's kind of sad, since there has been some genuinely interesting and worthwhile stuff over there.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 12:35 PM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
For whatever it's worth, this is my take as well. I'm done with reddit. And that's kind of sad, since there has been some genuinely interesting and worthwhile stuff over there.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 12:35 PM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
The mood on ModCoord seems to be a gradual acceptance that the protest is winding down. Reddit has managed to split enough mod teams or bring in power mods / Pinkertons to break the strike. On top of it there have been significant outrage on local subs like r/Baltimore and big sports /fan communities like r/NBA that Reddit is winning the argument with at least enough of their users to keep those communities alive after the mods are replaced.
posted by interogative mood at 1:16 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 1:16 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I predict the next wave of madness on Reddit will be an attempt to mimic what Elon Musk has done with verification. They will grant privileges to reddit premium members and restrict free accounts and spin it as a means to control bots.
posted by interogative mood at 2:50 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 2:50 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
interogative mood I wouldn't be surprised. The API price change is both clearly not enough to make reddit profitable, nor do I think that was its purpose. Reddit wanted to eradicate 3rd party clients and tools, changing the API price was their method, and the excuse was the IPO.
There is no possible way that reddit will make enough money from the API charges to be profitable, the math just doesn't work out.
Ads don't make it profitable.
API charges don't make it profitable.
Next step: charge the users and/or mods.
Given the contentious nature of the mod/admin relationship, I could see reddit charging a fee to be a mod before they charge fees to users. Or at least make it a "power user" package that includes mod privileges as part of being a power user.
Like echo target observed, it's like a farmer trying to charge bees for taking pollen. Preposterous, self destructive, and rooted in a voraciously capitalist mindset that is incapable of looking at a bigger picture or longer term.
On Twitter Musk killed off verification and replaced it with paid accounts, but he misunderstood the nature of the relationship. The verified users, the famous people, didn't need Twitter. But Twitter needs them because they attract regular users.
On reddit I feel confident that they'll kill off moderators because they too misunderstand the nature of the relationship.
posted by sotonohito at 3:39 PM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
There is no possible way that reddit will make enough money from the API charges to be profitable, the math just doesn't work out.
Ads don't make it profitable.
API charges don't make it profitable.
Next step: charge the users and/or mods.
Given the contentious nature of the mod/admin relationship, I could see reddit charging a fee to be a mod before they charge fees to users. Or at least make it a "power user" package that includes mod privileges as part of being a power user.
Like echo target observed, it's like a farmer trying to charge bees for taking pollen. Preposterous, self destructive, and rooted in a voraciously capitalist mindset that is incapable of looking at a bigger picture or longer term.
On Twitter Musk killed off verification and replaced it with paid accounts, but he misunderstood the nature of the relationship. The verified users, the famous people, didn't need Twitter. But Twitter needs them because they attract regular users.
On reddit I feel confident that they'll kill off moderators because they too misunderstand the nature of the relationship.
posted by sotonohito at 3:39 PM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
i deleted my reddit account today which also will probably help my bottom line by staying off all those "deals" subreddits
posted by glonous keming at 5:36 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by glonous keming at 5:36 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Reddit makes about 50 cents per year MAU (monthly active user). With over a billion MAU’s and annual revenues are rumored to be about $500 million at the moment. For comparison Facebook has 2 billion MAUs and gets over $10 a year per MAU. It seems to me that their ad business still has a lot of growth potential. Maybe not to Facebook levels but they ought to be able to at least double it. I think Reddit can probably run for less than a billion a year so they should be able to get some level of profitability before they run through their investor capital.
posted by interogative mood at 7:34 PM on June 17, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 7:34 PM on June 17, 2023
Deleted all of my posts and comments. Great work, Spez.
posted by FallibleHuman at 8:14 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by FallibleHuman at 8:14 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ahahaha, something about Peppermind’s “unimpressive snack food” comment gave me a brain itch, and then I remembered “Ultima Online Volunteer lawsuit”.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but IIRC, Origin systems eventually settled that lawsuit and wrote checks to the volunteer game guides.
The lawsuit argued that the in-game perks and physical goods Origin gave the volunteers as thank-yous for their efforts established an employee/employer relationship, and thus Origin was violating federal labor law by not paying them.
Rather than run the risk of a trial, Origin settled and wrote checks to the volunteers. Sure would be a shame if someone filed a similar suit on behalf of Reddit’s mods.
Again, I am not a lawyer, but a shoebox of unimpressive snack food sent to mods sure sounds similar to me.
posted by FallibleHuman at 9:39 PM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but IIRC, Origin systems eventually settled that lawsuit and wrote checks to the volunteer game guides.
The lawsuit argued that the in-game perks and physical goods Origin gave the volunteers as thank-yous for their efforts established an employee/employer relationship, and thus Origin was violating federal labor law by not paying them.
Rather than run the risk of a trial, Origin settled and wrote checks to the volunteers. Sure would be a shame if someone filed a similar suit on behalf of Reddit’s mods.
Again, I am not a lawyer, but a shoebox of unimpressive snack food sent to mods sure sounds similar to me.
posted by FallibleHuman at 9:39 PM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Hah, AOL, sued similarly, settled.
posted by FallibleHuman at 10:16 PM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by FallibleHuman at 10:16 PM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
I will say one thing about Reddit: It's impressive how badly they are doing at ad sales. It seems like they should be working on that rather than alienating the people who make their platform (mostly) usable.
If they really are only making 50c/year/active user, though, I can see why someone lacking any sort of vision or plan to fix the problem decided that the right thing to do regarding API changes was to make it super expensive for AI scrapers and require those using it to enable alternative clients to show Reddit's ads to users who aren't paying Reddit for the privilege of not seeing ads. It would make sense from that perspective, but shows a shocking lack of faith in their ability to increase ad rates to something more closely approximating a reasonable number that other companies manage to get.
posted by wierdo at 5:37 AM on June 18, 2023
If they really are only making 50c/year/active user, though, I can see why someone lacking any sort of vision or plan to fix the problem decided that the right thing to do regarding API changes was to make it super expensive for AI scrapers and require those using it to enable alternative clients to show Reddit's ads to users who aren't paying Reddit for the privilege of not seeing ads. It would make sense from that perspective, but shows a shocking lack of faith in their ability to increase ad rates to something more closely approximating a reasonable number that other companies manage to get.
posted by wierdo at 5:37 AM on June 18, 2023
The "landed gentry" comment does strike me like Elon Musk's "lords & peasants" where the CEO becomes performatively concerned about the inequalities between two classes of non-CEO when one of them threatens the CEO's power.
posted by RobotHero at 6:40 AM on June 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by RobotHero at 6:40 AM on June 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
Given how specialized or focused most subreddits are, it's shocking that they can't use that to provide high-value eyeballs to advertisers, and make a fortune at it.
Idea for Google, Facebook, Reddit, any big commercial site with ads: as part of the free signup process, give me a survey or menu where I can indicate what ad categories I'm willing to accept, AND the categories I DO NOT want (eg pr0n, political, pharmaceutical, Franklin Mint)
It blows my mind that almost 30 years into the WWW, and with all the mined info they have on us... websites still serve up ads that offend or enrage me. Eg huge globs of earwax. wtf? Even if I click on ad feedback (eg AdChoice) to indicate that I do not want that ad.... up it pops 60 seconds later. Magazines seldom do this; when was the last time you picked up a magazine and saw in it an ad that was jarringly inappropriate or a complete turnoff?
/rant
posted by Artful Codger at 7:31 AM on June 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
Idea for Google, Facebook, Reddit, any big commercial site with ads: as part of the free signup process, give me a survey or menu where I can indicate what ad categories I'm willing to accept, AND the categories I DO NOT want (eg pr0n, political, pharmaceutical, Franklin Mint)
It blows my mind that almost 30 years into the WWW, and with all the mined info they have on us... websites still serve up ads that offend or enrage me. Eg huge globs of earwax. wtf? Even if I click on ad feedback (eg AdChoice) to indicate that I do not want that ad.... up it pops 60 seconds later. Magazines seldom do this; when was the last time you picked up a magazine and saw in it an ad that was jarringly inappropriate or a complete turnoff?
/rant
posted by Artful Codger at 7:31 AM on June 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
Rather than run the risk of a trial, Origin settled and wrote checks to the volunteers.
[...]
Hah, AOL, sued similarly, settled.
Spez seems like the kind of guy who would insist he's so obviously right that they should go to court, and at that point they either remove him from the job, force him to back down and settle, or run the risk of precedent that hurts the entire business model in the industry, so that's a lawsuit with more winning states than losing ones
posted by jason_steakums at 7:38 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
[...]
Hah, AOL, sued similarly, settled.
Spez seems like the kind of guy who would insist he's so obviously right that they should go to court, and at that point they either remove him from the job, force him to back down and settle, or run the risk of precedent that hurts the entire business model in the industry, so that's a lawsuit with more winning states than losing ones
posted by jason_steakums at 7:38 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh frog yes. There's this one Youtube ad it's served me twice that has a cartoon drawing of a woman, whose face indicates discomfort, then the video switches to a cross-section of her digestive tract and a cartoon turd is pushing its way out of her colon, and I close the tab immediately and say, aloud, Google, is it really too much money to pay someone to reject an ad like that?? Animated biological shit porn? I actually don't know what the product is, because I get so viscerally disgusted every time it happens, and yet someone paid Youtube to show that, to destroy their user experience.
Also, I would absolutely love it if Youtube ads would stop fucking telling me about Honkai Star Rail. I never hopped onto the Genshin Impact bandwagon, and I don't want to ride it to its next destination.
posted by JHarris at 7:39 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, I would absolutely love it if Youtube ads would stop fucking telling me about Honkai Star Rail. I never hopped onto the Genshin Impact bandwagon, and I don't want to ride it to its next destination.
posted by JHarris at 7:39 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
What I actually meant to say is that if Reddit had any confidence in their ability to sell ads at a more reasonable price, they'd only be charging for API access for certain users like AI scrapers and would not be jacking up the price on the creators of alternate clients. At most they'd make them show Reddit's ads. However, at only 50c/user/year, it would probably cost more to make it possible for third party apps to show the ads than they'd ever make.
Let's just say I would never consider investing in a company whose leadership were so bearish on their own prospects. This episode has made it abundantly clear that they lack any ideas for how to fix the actual problem they're facing or worse, they don't even understand what the problem really is.
Don't comment while distracted, kids. You just end up with a confusing mess.
posted by wierdo at 9:48 AM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Let's just say I would never consider investing in a company whose leadership were so bearish on their own prospects. This episode has made it abundantly clear that they lack any ideas for how to fix the actual problem they're facing or worse, they don't even understand what the problem really is.
Don't comment while distracted, kids. You just end up with a confusing mess.
posted by wierdo at 9:48 AM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
If I'm remembering it properly there's an aside in Infinite Jest that describes the collapse of broadcast TV networks in the book's alternate history. As the networks lost viewers to satellite and cable, they'd been forced to gradually reduce advertising rates. This continued for a time until rates sank low enough that much smaller advertisers were able to afford commercial slots. An infamous heavy-rotation prime time commercial for a tongue scraper product, with graphic and disgusting footage, sent viewership off a cliff and the networks never recovered.
There are more than a few online ads I see where I think tongue scraper.
posted by figurant at 10:07 AM on June 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
There are more than a few online ads I see where I think tongue scraper.
posted by figurant at 10:07 AM on June 18, 2023 [14 favorites]
It blows my mind that almost 30 years into the WWW, and with all the mined info they have on us... websites still serve up ads that offend or enrage me.
Facebook. They know my birth date and gender. Literally everything I have ever posted on there is a video or photo of me playing an acoustic guitar. And yet I still get recruiting ads from the US Army in my feed every day. Like, the Army wants 51-year-old female folk singers now? This is my taxpayer dollar well spent?
posted by Daily Alice at 10:54 AM on June 18, 2023 [18 favorites]
Facebook. They know my birth date and gender. Literally everything I have ever posted on there is a video or photo of me playing an acoustic guitar. And yet I still get recruiting ads from the US Army in my feed every day. Like, the Army wants 51-year-old female folk singers now? This is my taxpayer dollar well spent?
posted by Daily Alice at 10:54 AM on June 18, 2023 [18 favorites]
Same here, Daily Alice. Facebook ads believe my chief interests are:
- Customizable storybooks for small children, or
- Paranormal erotica
So I guess I have the browsing habits of a diligent mom whose private needs are not being met
posted by Countess Elena at 11:25 AM on June 18, 2023 [8 favorites]
- Customizable storybooks for small children, or
- Paranormal erotica
So I guess I have the browsing habits of a diligent mom whose private needs are not being met
posted by Countess Elena at 11:25 AM on June 18, 2023 [8 favorites]
FB is terrible with ads. Because I'm a woman I've gotten so many ads for things related to having children or menstrual products. I had a hyster a few years ago, and I've never had or wanted children. With all the info fb has on me, and they still couldn't figure that out. The opt out of ads system isn't great, but at least it exists and does eventually seem to take the hint.
Reddit is also terrible with ads. One particularly annoying ad on Reddit was for He Gets Us, a multi-million dollar campaign to "promote Jesus." (I linked to NPR's coverage of the campaign.) I have no interest in giving my eyeballs to a campaign funded by the founder of Hobby Lobby. But there was no way to opt out of it! And that's what drove me to an ad blocker for Reddit.
posted by miss-lapin at 11:32 AM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Reddit is also terrible with ads. One particularly annoying ad on Reddit was for He Gets Us, a multi-million dollar campaign to "promote Jesus." (I linked to NPR's coverage of the campaign.) I have no interest in giving my eyeballs to a campaign funded by the founder of Hobby Lobby. But there was no way to opt out of it! And that's what drove me to an ad blocker for Reddit.
posted by miss-lapin at 11:32 AM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think that only impressions (getting the ad before eyeballs) matter. Not whose or whether it results in a click. Perhaps there are a higher priced service tiers which guarantee impressions from more accurately targeted viewers.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 11:34 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 11:34 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
For a while, I was constantly getting ads for car dealerships. I wasn't in the market for a car, but I guess they don't know that and it doesn't really matter anyway; ads for cars are probably often intended at least in a large part for people who aren't planning on buying one soon. But the weird thing: I was getting them for dealerships all over the US and Canada. Like, "Visit Stoblotzkovitz Ford in Sacramento!" and "Purchase your dream car at Burpenheimer's Acura in Atlanta!", back to back.
Facebook knows exactly where I live.
posted by Flunkie at 5:22 PM on June 18, 2023
Facebook knows exactly where I live.
posted by Flunkie at 5:22 PM on June 18, 2023
I wouldn't doubt that they don't even think it's necessary. They'll reach far more people with their all-Reddit ad campaign. r/HeGetsUs only gets seen by people who subscribe to it and a few others who might get shown it on their feeds. The math is still solidly on their side unless something on r/HeGetsUs goes viral, and it sounds like that's unlikely to happen.
posted by JHarris at 6:17 PM on June 18, 2023
posted by JHarris at 6:17 PM on June 18, 2023
Magazines seldom do this; when was the last time you picked up a magazine and saw in it an ad that was jarringly inappropriate or a complete turnoff?
Oh, I have a whole damn list.
Luxury cars on open roads without any traffic, ads with unrealistic and totally artificial standards of beauty, any time I see a feel good ad from a fossil fuel company or, worse, an aerospace arms maker, prescription drug ads with totally unhinged appeals to emotion... I mean there's a whole damn list of things in mainstream print media that's only innocuous and inoffensive if you don't reflect on what it is they're actually selling or trying to cover up.
I remember going through National Geographic or other natur mags when I was a kid and being totally jarred by some petrocompany running ads about the future of green energy when there's like a front page article about an oil spill, but most aren't that obvious.
But I guess this is a matter of perspective and what kind of eyes you used to view the world with.
posted by loquacious at 7:04 PM on June 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
Oh, I have a whole damn list.
Luxury cars on open roads without any traffic, ads with unrealistic and totally artificial standards of beauty, any time I see a feel good ad from a fossil fuel company or, worse, an aerospace arms maker, prescription drug ads with totally unhinged appeals to emotion... I mean there's a whole damn list of things in mainstream print media that's only innocuous and inoffensive if you don't reflect on what it is they're actually selling or trying to cover up.
I remember going through National Geographic or other natur mags when I was a kid and being totally jarred by some petrocompany running ads about the future of green energy when there's like a front page article about an oil spill, but most aren't that obvious.
But I guess this is a matter of perspective and what kind of eyes you used to view the world with.
posted by loquacious at 7:04 PM on June 18, 2023 [7 favorites]
That sounds about right; and as weird a semiprivate bureaucracy as DNS is, cybersquatting can be challenged through established protocols.
I haven't looked to see if there's precedent, but there's some potential a subreddit like that could draw a trademark dilution suit. My instinct is that Reddit would probably just close it down, which is a good way to avoid generating such precedent.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:51 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I haven't looked to see if there's precedent, but there's some potential a subreddit like that could draw a trademark dilution suit. My instinct is that Reddit would probably just close it down, which is a good way to avoid generating such precedent.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:51 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh, I have a whole damn list [of print ads]
Luxury cars on open roads without any traffic, ads with unrealistic and totally artificial standards of beauty, any time I see a feel good ad from a fossil fuel company or, worse, an aerospace arms maker, prescription drug ads with totally unhinged appeals to emotion... I mean there's a whole damn list of things in mainstream print media that's only innocuous and inoffensive if you don't reflect on what it is they're actually selling or trying to cover up.
I was referring mainly to aesthetics and targeting of ads; ie the suitability of the ad to the user and to the publication. You're referring to morality. Moral advertising is an oxymoron. "Values" if any, are as directed by the client.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:11 AM on June 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
Luxury cars on open roads without any traffic, ads with unrealistic and totally artificial standards of beauty, any time I see a feel good ad from a fossil fuel company or, worse, an aerospace arms maker, prescription drug ads with totally unhinged appeals to emotion... I mean there's a whole damn list of things in mainstream print media that's only innocuous and inoffensive if you don't reflect on what it is they're actually selling or trying to cover up.
I was referring mainly to aesthetics and targeting of ads; ie the suitability of the ad to the user and to the publication. You're referring to morality. Moral advertising is an oxymoron. "Values" if any, are as directed by the client.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:11 AM on June 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
Some popular work-safe subreddits have reopened, but are continuing to protest by tagging all content as NSFW, because in order to keep their advertisers happy, Reddit doesn't run ads on NSFW content.
One enterprising OnlyFans creator took the opportunity to post a video of herself on one of the more popular general interest subs, and as a result her bouncing bosoms were the top post on /r/all for quite some time.
Now the whole sub is being flooded with porn, and the unpaid mods are just sitting back and putting their feet up.
posted by automatronic at 11:33 AM on June 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
One enterprising OnlyFans creator took the opportunity to post a video of herself on one of the more popular general interest subs, and as a result her bouncing bosoms were the top post on /r/all for quite some time.
Now the whole sub is being flooded with porn, and the unpaid mods are just sitting back and putting their feet up.
posted by automatronic at 11:33 AM on June 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
New post from Christian Selig, the developer behind Apollo:
I want to debunk Reddit's claims, and talk about their unwillingness to work with developers, moderators, and the larger community, as well as say thank you for all the support
posted by nathan_teske at 1:47 PM on June 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
I want to debunk Reddit's claims, and talk about their unwillingness to work with developers, moderators, and the larger community, as well as say thank you for all the support
posted by nathan_teske at 1:47 PM on June 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
I was referring mainly to aesthetics and targeting of ads; ie the suitability of the ad to the user and to the publication.
I think you're underestimating how absolutely disturbing and disgusted I feel when I look at an oversized SUV whether it's an advertisement where it's perched on the top of some rugged cliff and placed there by a helicopter or in person crowding me off the road on my bicycle.
I mean I'd honestly rather get spammed with goatse and find it less gross because that's just some internet weirdo's gaping butthole that I've seen before, and I'm now inoculated and immune to that kind of internet shock meme, but the SUVs problems with car culture just keep getting worse.
Mostly kidding and being dramatic for the comedy... but also not really. Car culture viscerally grosses me out, but I know I'm a weirdo.
posted by loquacious at 1:54 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think you're underestimating how absolutely disturbing and disgusted I feel when I look at an oversized SUV whether it's an advertisement where it's perched on the top of some rugged cliff and placed there by a helicopter or in person crowding me off the road on my bicycle.
I mean I'd honestly rather get spammed with goatse and find it less gross because that's just some internet weirdo's gaping butthole that I've seen before, and I'm now inoculated and immune to that kind of internet shock meme, but the SUVs problems with car culture just keep getting worse.
Mostly kidding and being dramatic for the comedy... but also not really. Car culture viscerally grosses me out, but I know I'm a weirdo.
posted by loquacious at 1:54 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Christian Selig continues to double down on his “I didn’t try to extort them and they apologized” bullshit. The transcript comes across as a pretty clear threat/ offer to go away quietly for $10 million. Then they challenged him and he backed down claiming they misunderstood what he meant and they dropped the matter apologizing for the misunderstanding. It comes across like “Lots of fires in this neighborhood, be a shame if your store burned down”. “are you threatening to burn my store down if I don’t pay up?” “Of course not, you misunderstand. Are you calling me an arsonist”. “I’m sorry misunderstood”.
posted by interogative mood at 4:14 PM on June 19, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 4:14 PM on June 19, 2023
I think ads, and their general failure to actually be as targeted as you'd think they should be, reflects the wider perception of business in general as being guided by rationality, cost benefit analysis, studies to determine optimal outcomes, and all that stuff.
Naah.
Business is run by gut feelings not studies and science. A business succeeds or fails more by luck than anyone is comfortable admitting.
And we see this in ads. In theory there COULD be genuinely targeted advertising. And in practice there isn't. Sure, you get the occasional thing that really does pop up due to targeting, but mostly the ad people seem to just be buying at random and not bothering with any real analysis or thought.
I'd also note the decline and fall of cola ads as a sign of business taking an absurdly long time, and spending preposterously huge quantities of money, to realize something that's obvious to everyone: cola ads don't have any significant impact on cola consumption.
Most of America has a clear preference for Coke or Pepsi, no amount of advertising will change that preference.
Similarly people buy soft drinks because they feel thirsty, or they've got the habit of it, or whatever. No one has ever been thirsty, wondered what they might drink, and decided on a Coke, or whatever, because they saw an ad for it.
Yet Coke and Pepsi spent BILLIONS on their respective ad campaigns and it lasted decades before finally fading out as someone finally ran the numbers and realized it was a total waste of money.
So yeah, I'm not surprised that ads aren't very well targeted. It's one of the things that gives me hope we might be able to avoid a corporate dominated future: corporations aren't actually all that good at doing things.
posted by sotonohito at 4:22 PM on June 19, 2023
Naah.
Business is run by gut feelings not studies and science. A business succeeds or fails more by luck than anyone is comfortable admitting.
And we see this in ads. In theory there COULD be genuinely targeted advertising. And in practice there isn't. Sure, you get the occasional thing that really does pop up due to targeting, but mostly the ad people seem to just be buying at random and not bothering with any real analysis or thought.
I'd also note the decline and fall of cola ads as a sign of business taking an absurdly long time, and spending preposterously huge quantities of money, to realize something that's obvious to everyone: cola ads don't have any significant impact on cola consumption.
Most of America has a clear preference for Coke or Pepsi, no amount of advertising will change that preference.
Similarly people buy soft drinks because they feel thirsty, or they've got the habit of it, or whatever. No one has ever been thirsty, wondered what they might drink, and decided on a Coke, or whatever, because they saw an ad for it.
Yet Coke and Pepsi spent BILLIONS on their respective ad campaigns and it lasted decades before finally fading out as someone finally ran the numbers and realized it was a total waste of money.
So yeah, I'm not surprised that ads aren't very well targeted. It's one of the things that gives me hope we might be able to avoid a corporate dominated future: corporations aren't actually all that good at doing things.
posted by sotonohito at 4:22 PM on June 19, 2023
interogative mood The only reason I care in the slightest about the Selig thing is because I hate the reddit admin team and I wish he'd succeeded in getting money out of them. If he was blackmailing them then I approve.
posted by sotonohito at 4:23 PM on June 19, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by sotonohito at 4:23 PM on June 19, 2023 [7 favorites]
Christian Selig continues to double down on his...
Recognizing that from your perspective most of us must be tainted by motivated reasoning on this in not quite seeing what you're seeing, what I don't understand about your angle, interogative mood [whose name I keep wanting to 'correct' the spelling of!], is what's the fire you're saying he's in theory threatening them with? It can't just be the general mod/user unrest, since buying out his one app isn't going to quell the others, right? (My take from reading the original but not following along with any updates since, is probably that, sure, he was probably willing to be bought out, and the 'joke' aspect was in that number being anywhere remotely plausible, but there wasn't any 'threat' -- it was just floated as, like, a decent thing they could do instead of just flat out putting him out of business. They could add ads!)
In separate news, supposedly a hacking group is "threatening to release confidential data stolen from Reddit unless the company pays a ransom demand – and reverses its controversial API price hikes." (It looks like this is a criminal group who usually just demands money from its victims, not a gray-hat activist thing.)
posted by nobody at 5:17 PM on June 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
Recognizing that from your perspective most of us must be tainted by motivated reasoning on this in not quite seeing what you're seeing, what I don't understand about your angle, interogative mood [whose name I keep wanting to 'correct' the spelling of!], is what's the fire you're saying he's in theory threatening them with? It can't just be the general mod/user unrest, since buying out his one app isn't going to quell the others, right? (My take from reading the original but not following along with any updates since, is probably that, sure, he was probably willing to be bought out, and the 'joke' aspect was in that number being anywhere remotely plausible, but there wasn't any 'threat' -- it was just floated as, like, a decent thing they could do instead of just flat out putting him out of business. They could add ads!)
In separate news, supposedly a hacking group is "threatening to release confidential data stolen from Reddit unless the company pays a ransom demand – and reverses its controversial API price hikes." (It looks like this is a criminal group who usually just demands money from its victims, not a gray-hat activist thing.)
posted by nobody at 5:17 PM on June 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
Christian Selig continues to double down on his “I didn’t try to extort them and they apologized” bullshit.
Jesus actual christ my dude, you do not have to give up rolling around in this bizarre interpretation but please stop making everyone else watch.
posted by cortex at 7:19 PM on June 19, 2023 [29 favorites]
Jesus actual christ my dude, you do not have to give up rolling around in this bizarre interpretation but please stop making everyone else watch.
posted by cortex at 7:19 PM on June 19, 2023 [29 favorites]
It comes across like
It comes cross more like, "here's the logical rejoinder to your nonsensical claim; want to put dollars on it, or is that quantification actually horseshit?"
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:26 PM on June 19, 2023 [16 favorites]
It comes cross more like, "here's the logical rejoinder to your nonsensical claim; want to put dollars on it, or is that quantification actually horseshit?"
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:26 PM on June 19, 2023 [16 favorites]
If Selig had any leverage whatsoever, I could see how it could be taken as blackmail, but given the power dynamics, I just don't understand it. Like, what is the threat being implied here? "Pay me $10 million to shut down or I will shut down for $0 due to your new high API prices"?
How is that blackmail?
posted by Bugbread at 8:32 PM on June 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
How is that blackmail?
posted by Bugbread at 8:32 PM on June 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
I'm not trying to pile on, interrogative mood — I've been going back and forth on how to understand Selig's part in the recorded conversation. There are two elements that are ambiguous in how they could be interpreted:
1. "That's mostly a joke"
2. "Quiet down"
If you're reading from the angle of skepticism towards Selig, then the "go quiet" part seems like a sinister "I can make your problem go away, or I can make your problem bigger" threat, and the "mostly joking" seems like a way of downplaying the threat. And that understanding could be reinforced by Selig then being the face of the 3PA developers to the Redditor public. Look, he made good on his threat — he rallied users against the admins!
On the other hand, Reddit did acquire Alien Blue, a different 3PA. Companies acquire products and smaller companies all the time. It would have been very reasonable for Reddit to have acquired Apollo for half of what it's costing them per year, if it is costing them that much. And it would have avoided all of this bad publicity. When Selig says:
"And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months."
It is kind of difficult to read "quiet down" as referring to its API usage. Let's say he did originally mean it as "go away", and then backed down on that particular phrase. The "six months" in that last sentence is pretty clearly referring to the relative cost. I just don't think he meant "quiet down" as an alternative to "I'll go public with this and turn your users against you." Nobody has outright accused him of that, but it's the only way it could really make sense as a threat. But he didn't go public with anything until after Reddit started spreading around that he was blackmailing them. He said "have Apollo quiet down," not "have me quiet down." If you look at it from a lens sympathetic to Selig, or at least assume good intentions on his part, then the "mostly joking" reads as him having no expectation of them taking him up on this, or sincerely angling for it — he's mostly joking because the best case outcome he seriously hopes for is them giving him more time and/or lowering the cost of the API so that he can find some way to make this work without having to shut down his app.
Ultimately, I just don't think he took himself to be making a threat. I think he was pointing out that if his app really costs them $20 million a year, then it would be totally reasonable for them to just buy it for half that and solve the problem permanently in a way that's better for everyone. It wasn't clear to him yet that getting rid of 3PAs was the point, and that Reddit didn't care about maintaining good relationships with anyone. He was "mostly joking" because he still thought there was a resolution possible that let him keep maintaining the app without it being bought/him getting a payday; he thought that because he was still under the impression that Reddit was discussing this in good faith.
posted by cosmic owl at 8:39 PM on June 19, 2023 [10 favorites]
1. "That's mostly a joke"
2. "Quiet down"
If you're reading from the angle of skepticism towards Selig, then the "go quiet" part seems like a sinister "I can make your problem go away, or I can make your problem bigger" threat, and the "mostly joking" seems like a way of downplaying the threat. And that understanding could be reinforced by Selig then being the face of the 3PA developers to the Redditor public. Look, he made good on his threat — he rallied users against the admins!
On the other hand, Reddit did acquire Alien Blue, a different 3PA. Companies acquire products and smaller companies all the time. It would have been very reasonable for Reddit to have acquired Apollo for half of what it's costing them per year, if it is costing them that much. And it would have avoided all of this bad publicity. When Selig says:
"And that's a yearly, apparently ongoing cost to you folks. If you want to rip that band-aid off once. And have Apollo quiet down, you know, six months."
It is kind of difficult to read "quiet down" as referring to its API usage. Let's say he did originally mean it as "go away", and then backed down on that particular phrase. The "six months" in that last sentence is pretty clearly referring to the relative cost. I just don't think he meant "quiet down" as an alternative to "I'll go public with this and turn your users against you." Nobody has outright accused him of that, but it's the only way it could really make sense as a threat. But he didn't go public with anything until after Reddit started spreading around that he was blackmailing them. He said "have Apollo quiet down," not "have me quiet down." If you look at it from a lens sympathetic to Selig, or at least assume good intentions on his part, then the "mostly joking" reads as him having no expectation of them taking him up on this, or sincerely angling for it — he's mostly joking because the best case outcome he seriously hopes for is them giving him more time and/or lowering the cost of the API so that he can find some way to make this work without having to shut down his app.
Ultimately, I just don't think he took himself to be making a threat. I think he was pointing out that if his app really costs them $20 million a year, then it would be totally reasonable for them to just buy it for half that and solve the problem permanently in a way that's better for everyone. It wasn't clear to him yet that getting rid of 3PAs was the point, and that Reddit didn't care about maintaining good relationships with anyone. He was "mostly joking" because he still thought there was a resolution possible that let him keep maintaining the app without it being bought/him getting a payday; he thought that because he was still under the impression that Reddit was discussing this in good faith.
posted by cosmic owl at 8:39 PM on June 19, 2023 [10 favorites]
Christian Selig continues to double down on his “I didn’t try to extort them and they apologized” bullshit. The transcript comes across as a pretty clear threat/ offer to go away quietly for $10 million.Are you at least on board with the idea that this "pretty clear" interpretation of yours is not even remotely clear to a lot of people in this discussion? I'm not sure, but maybe even to no one but you? Even after you've espoused it here many times?
Honestly, no offense, but my personal reaction is that Selig is not the one seeming to be doubling down on bullshit here.
posted by Flunkie at 8:48 PM on June 19, 2023 [18 favorites]
cortex: "Jesus actual christ my dude, you do not have to give up rolling around in this bizarre interpretation but please stop making everyone else watch."
Oh, come on. I think his interpretation is unreasonable, too, but it's not like every one of his comments isn't getting like four or five opposition comments. We're all sitting here watching one dude make what appear to us to be unreasonable interpretations, he's sitting here watching a whole passel of people make what appears to him to be unreasonable interpretations. If he can deal with it, we can deal with it.
posted by Bugbread at 9:10 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, come on. I think his interpretation is unreasonable, too, but it's not like every one of his comments isn't getting like four or five opposition comments. We're all sitting here watching one dude make what appear to us to be unreasonable interpretations, he's sitting here watching a whole passel of people make what appears to him to be unreasonable interpretations. If he can deal with it, we can deal with it.
posted by Bugbread at 9:10 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's a plausible interpretation if you aren't aware that companies are often very happy to pay $5 million to make a $10 million expense, much less a $10 million a year expense, go away. For obvious reasons.
If anything, he was calling them on their bullshit figures. It's another example of Reddit having zero confidence in their business. If API calls are costing them anywhere near what they are implicitly claiming they do, they have to have the most poorly optimized SQL queries in existence and no belief in their ability to fix the underlying problem.
Knowing what we now know thanks to this stupid tantrum, you'd have to be a complete idiot to invest in Reddit. Either that or be willing to replace the vast majority of the team with people capable of doing the job they were hired to do.
I doubt the technical team or even the ad sales folks are as bad as it seems like they'd have to be for what Reddit is saying to be true. The problem is almost certainly shit management, whether that be incredibly poor prioritization or overworking the teams to the point they can't even half ass their jobs.
posted by wierdo at 9:18 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
If anything, he was calling them on their bullshit figures. It's another example of Reddit having zero confidence in their business. If API calls are costing them anywhere near what they are implicitly claiming they do, they have to have the most poorly optimized SQL queries in existence and no belief in their ability to fix the underlying problem.
Knowing what we now know thanks to this stupid tantrum, you'd have to be a complete idiot to invest in Reddit. Either that or be willing to replace the vast majority of the team with people capable of doing the job they were hired to do.
I doubt the technical team or even the ad sales folks are as bad as it seems like they'd have to be for what Reddit is saying to be true. The problem is almost certainly shit management, whether that be incredibly poor prioritization or overworking the teams to the point they can't even half ass their jobs.
posted by wierdo at 9:18 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Several comments removed. Please stick to the subject of the post, instead of making comments about other users, thanks.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:07 AM on June 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:07 AM on June 20, 2023 [7 favorites]
I understand that in this community there are many who disagree with my interpretation of Selig’s comments. Would you at least concede that Reddit’s initial understanding of his comment about quieting down was that he was making a threat and that they challenged him on that?
posted by interogative mood at 9:11 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:11 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Would you at least concede that Reddit’s initial understanding of his comment about quieting down was that he was making a threat and that they challenged him on that?
I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling at this point
Can someone tell me how these recent developments at Reddit differ substantially from changes effected by Musk when he acquired Twitter? And a request to the mods: do we need to discuss the he said/he said aspect of whether someone made a threat to Spez/Reddit, I just don't see how this is salient.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:46 AM on June 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling at this point
Can someone tell me how these recent developments at Reddit differ substantially from changes effected by Musk when he acquired Twitter? And a request to the mods: do we need to discuss the he said/he said aspect of whether someone made a threat to Spez/Reddit, I just don't see how this is salient.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:46 AM on June 20, 2023 [8 favorites]
I'm honestly not sure if you're trolling at this point.
Personally, all my anti-sea lion protocols have been activated for the foreseeable future.
posted by FallibleHuman at 12:25 PM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Personally, all my anti-sea lion protocols have been activated for the foreseeable future.
posted by FallibleHuman at 12:25 PM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Would you at least concede that Reddit’s initial understanding of his comment about quieting down was that he was making a threat and that they challenged him on that?Categorizing something like that as a "concession" from me is inaccurate and misleading. Of course they did.
And then they apologized to him for having misunderstood it as one.
And then they had in-house discussions wherein they accused him of it anyway. And then they publicly accused him of it anyway.
And then they learned that the conversation had been recorded.
posted by Flunkie at 12:58 PM on June 20, 2023 [18 favorites]
Mod note: folks, seriously, please stick to the subject of the post, instead of making comments about other users, and move on from this. Thank you.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:55 PM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:55 PM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
conversations that I assume probably happened under an NDA.
That's a very big assumption.
perhaps I’ve missed a comment and if so please tell me
I'm not a reddit mod (or even user) or whatever its needed to view it, but there are lots of reports that spez made the claim in a post on r/partnercommunities, which is where Selig then posted the transcripts in response.
posted by Dysk at 4:50 PM on June 20, 2023
That's a very big assumption.
perhaps I’ve missed a comment and if so please tell me
I'm not a reddit mod (or even user) or whatever its needed to view it, but there are lots of reports that spez made the claim in a post on r/partnercommunities, which is where Selig then posted the transcripts in response.
posted by Dysk at 4:50 PM on June 20, 2023
I don't understand why everyone moves everything to discord, trying to force it to be lots of stuff it isn't. It's basically IRC updated for gen Z. Good for fast-ish moving conversation, decent for slow conversation, but ultimately for conversation, for chat. I've seen communities move their fucking documentation to discord, as well as their support and forums. Madness.
posted by Dysk at 5:09 PM on June 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 5:09 PM on June 20, 2023 [9 favorites]
Discord recently forced everyone to standardize usernames across sites creating total chaos. Personally I vote we ditch it all and go back to Usenet and IRC. The web was a mistake, time to scrap it for proven technologies.
posted by interogative mood at 5:20 PM on June 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 5:20 PM on June 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
From The Verge, "Reddit starts removing moderators behind the latest protests:
posted by mhum at 6:37 PM on June 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
According to a post in r/ModCoord (moderator coordination), moderators of r/MildlyInteresting moved forward on Tuesday with changing the sub to NSFW after a user vote. In making that change, r/MildlyInteresting followed the steps of other subreddits that went NSFW recently, including r/interestingasfuck and r/TIHI (Thanks I Hate It).Surely this will tame the unruly masses.
However, according to the now-former r/MildlyInteresting mod that wrote the post, just after they switched the subreddit over, they were logged out of their account and locked out. It quickly became clear that Reddit-employed administrators (as opposed to the mods, who don’t work for Reddit) were involved:Following this, another mod posted our update instead. Right after, the u/ModCodeofConduct [a Reddit admin account] account removed the post and flipped the sub back to restricted instead of public. Then, the second moderator was also logged out of their account and locked out. Other mods tried to re-approve the post, one of them was promptly logged out and locked out as well.After that, according to the former r/MildlyInteresting mod, the entire mod team was removed from the subreddit. As I write this, r/MildlyInteresting, which has more than 22 million subscribers, says it is currently unmoderated. The mod says the entire team received a 7-day suspension.
posted by mhum at 6:37 PM on June 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
Hmm. looking at it, it looks like 27 mods (some of which are bots) were added one hour ago. The posts are all ordinary posts (all safe for work), but when I opened the subreddit literally two minutes ago, every post was flagged as "NSFW". However, I just refreshed it and the "NSFW" flag has been removed from all the comments except for, strangely, a picture of two matches fused together.
posted by Bugbread at 7:10 PM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Bugbread at 7:10 PM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
the "NSFW" flag has been removed from all the comments except for, strangely, a picture of two matches fused togetherthat's hot
posted by Flunkie at 8:13 PM on June 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
So it looks like perhaps the mods of /r/mildlyinteresting were all deleted by accident and then reinstated?
If I'm understanding this right, you had/have subs that have been posting a lot of actually NSFW content, and other subs that have been posting SFW content but labeling it NSFW content. The admins did a sweep of subs of the mods in the former camp, but /r/mildlyinteresting was in the latter camp and got hit by accident. Presumably this is because of its similarity to /r/interestingasfuck, which is in the former camp, and whose mods have all been kicked and not replaced.
Reddit then restored all the mods but removed the NSFW tags on SFW content.
posted by Bugbread at 9:28 PM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
If I'm understanding this right, you had/have subs that have been posting a lot of actually NSFW content, and other subs that have been posting SFW content but labeling it NSFW content. The admins did a sweep of subs of the mods in the former camp, but /r/mildlyinteresting was in the latter camp and got hit by accident. Presumably this is because of its similarity to /r/interestingasfuck, which is in the former camp, and whose mods have all been kicked and not replaced.
Reddit then restored all the mods but removed the NSFW tags on SFW content.
posted by Bugbread at 9:28 PM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Platformer: What we’re learning from the Reddit blackout
posted by cendawanita at 9:44 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 9:44 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Been following this the last few hours. What a shitshow.
So after Reddit started sending stern form letters to private subreddits telling mods to re-open or be removed, the idea of opening subs but turning them NSFW via Old Reddit settings started gaining traction. Reddit's own Content Policy defines "NSFW" broadly:
Regrettably, a lot of big subreddits took it too far and embraced the hornier interpretation of NSFW. Millions-strong communities started voting explicit porn up the ranks. One enterprising user promised and delivered a photo of his own butthole to the top of Reddit's front page.
All in good fun, but this was an extreme step and invited an extreme response. Five of the ringleader subs were purged of their mods and archived until replacements could be found, which had a chilling effect on the NSFW push. It's not all bad news though.
For one thing, the admin account doling out threats seriously screwed up in the initial phase of the crackdown, opting to quietly turn one protesting subreddit back to SFW mode. Doing this was a blunder for several reasons -- not only did flipping back to SFW potentially expose advertisers and minors to whatever adult content was posted in the interim, but by taking direct editorial control of the sub Reddit is arguably jeopardizing its Section 230 "safe harbor" defense for hosting user-generated and -moderated content. Up till now admins have only enforced sitewide rules and left all other decisions to volunteeer mods; ousting those who disagree and forcing them to administer a particular vision of a community (even when the community itself has voted to protest) opens them up to legal liability for those content decisions.
Additionally, one of the five targeted subreddits (/r/mildlyinteresting) actually saw its purge reversed, and its mod team restored with an apology (though their permissions were stripped shortly afterward). According to a leaked admin message, the sub was targeted by mistake -- it was the only one of the five to go NSFW without allowing porn. Point being, subs that go NSFW for non-porn reasons are still tolerated for now, which leaves it as the best remaining option for subs forced out of blackout. That said, the Content Policy page has mysteriously vanished, suggesting that the admins are preparing to rewrite their own rules to quash what has proven to be the single most effective protest tactic tried so far -- one that hits them squarely in the pocketbook.
It remains to be seen how many other subs will take up the NSFW tactic after the limited crackdown, or how the admins will try to rejigger their longstanding content policy to deal with it. But in the meantime, fed-up veteran mods with stories to tell are reaching out to various media outlets who have been covering this debacle. Stay tuned for more drama down the pike.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:25 PM on June 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
So after Reddit started sending stern form letters to private subreddits telling mods to re-open or be removed, the idea of opening subs but turning them NSFW via Old Reddit settings started gaining traction. Reddit's own Content Policy defines "NSFW" broadly:
NSFW (Not Safe For Work) contentSo any subreddit that allows cursing (i.e., all of them) is fully justified in marking themselves NSFW under Reddit's existing rules. Note: NSFW subreddits cannot run ads and do not generate revenue for Reddit, Inc. Seems like an ideal solution -- open the sub to mollify addicted users, deny Reddit money for continuing to operate it, and do it by not-so-subtly encouraging users to indulge in a little spicy language.
Content that contains nudity, pornography, or profanity, which a reasonable viewer may not want to be seen accessing in a public or formal setting such as in a workplace should be tagged as NSFW. This tag can be applied to individual pieces of content or to entire communities.
Regrettably, a lot of big subreddits took it too far and embraced the hornier interpretation of NSFW. Millions-strong communities started voting explicit porn up the ranks. One enterprising user promised and delivered a photo of his own butthole to the top of Reddit's front page.
All in good fun, but this was an extreme step and invited an extreme response. Five of the ringleader subs were purged of their mods and archived until replacements could be found, which had a chilling effect on the NSFW push. It's not all bad news though.
For one thing, the admin account doling out threats seriously screwed up in the initial phase of the crackdown, opting to quietly turn one protesting subreddit back to SFW mode. Doing this was a blunder for several reasons -- not only did flipping back to SFW potentially expose advertisers and minors to whatever adult content was posted in the interim, but by taking direct editorial control of the sub Reddit is arguably jeopardizing its Section 230 "safe harbor" defense for hosting user-generated and -moderated content. Up till now admins have only enforced sitewide rules and left all other decisions to volunteeer mods; ousting those who disagree and forcing them to administer a particular vision of a community (even when the community itself has voted to protest) opens them up to legal liability for those content decisions.
Additionally, one of the five targeted subreddits (/r/mildlyinteresting) actually saw its purge reversed, and its mod team restored with an apology (though their permissions were stripped shortly afterward). According to a leaked admin message, the sub was targeted by mistake -- it was the only one of the five to go NSFW without allowing porn. Point being, subs that go NSFW for non-porn reasons are still tolerated for now, which leaves it as the best remaining option for subs forced out of blackout. That said, the Content Policy page has mysteriously vanished, suggesting that the admins are preparing to rewrite their own rules to quash what has proven to be the single most effective protest tactic tried so far -- one that hits them squarely in the pocketbook.
It remains to be seen how many other subs will take up the NSFW tactic after the limited crackdown, or how the admins will try to rejigger their longstanding content policy to deal with it. But in the meantime, fed-up veteran mods with stories to tell are reaching out to various media outlets who have been covering this debacle. Stay tuned for more drama down the pike.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:25 PM on June 20, 2023 [11 favorites]
Doing this was a blunder for several reasons -- not only did flipping back to SFW potentially expose advertisers and minors to whatever adult content was posted in the interim, but by taking direct editorial control of the sub Reddit is arguably jeopardizing its Section 230 "safe harbor" defense for hosting user-generated and -moderated content.
Nah - that ship sailed a long time ago with Batzel, which said that direct editorial control does not preclude 230 protections. Not to mention that moderation is also explicitly indemnified in 230 - hence why Reddit could not only turn a blind eye to the continued abuse of women via the release of stolen nude images, but literally argued that the policy of doing so was the "virtuous" choice - up until one victim noted her images were taken while underage, exposing Reddit to actual liability and switching their position to "nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:59 PM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nah - that ship sailed a long time ago with Batzel, which said that direct editorial control does not preclude 230 protections. Not to mention that moderation is also explicitly indemnified in 230 - hence why Reddit could not only turn a blind eye to the continued abuse of women via the release of stolen nude images, but literally argued that the policy of doing so was the "virtuous" choice - up until one victim noted her images were taken while underage, exposing Reddit to actual liability and switching their position to "nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:59 PM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I run a meta sub. It has no original content and I am almost the only one who ever posts anything. Most posts get 3 or 4 comments. About 14,000 readers and growing. Is there any reason I shouldn’t start a blog, transfer all my content there, and link to the blog posts from the sub?
posted by bq at 8:43 PM on June 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bq at 8:43 PM on June 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
bq, based on past experience, the majority of your people are unlikely to follow you to a new platform. But of course, that depends on how motivated and loyal they are.
posted by Zumbador at 9:07 PM on June 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Zumbador at 9:07 PM on June 21, 2023 [1 favorite]
Whither the butthole ringleaders...
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:36 PM on June 22, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:36 PM on June 22, 2023
Primary developer and founder of the Moderator Toolbox for Reddit quits the project and is phasing out their presence on Reddit altogether.
posted by miss-lapin at 2:17 AM on June 23, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by miss-lapin at 2:17 AM on June 23, 2023 [8 favorites]
Reddit management decides to take a page from the Musk School of Public Relations:
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:07 AM on June 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
According to Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, “We’ll no longer comment on hearsay, unsubstantiated claims, or baseless accusations from The Verge. We’ll be in touch as corrections are needed.”While DARVO is a PR strategy, it is not always a successful one.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:07 AM on June 26, 2023 [8 favorites]
That isn’t DARVO and tbh it’s pretty terrible how terms that describe specific behaviors of the perpetrators of sexual violence/harassment are increasingly used this way. Reddit issuing a terse / angry no comment reply isn’t even remotely close to a rapist denying they raped anyone and then claiming it was their victim who actually raped them.
posted by interogative mood at 12:38 PM on June 27, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 12:38 PM on June 27, 2023
Uh, DARVO has always referred to behavior perpetrated by all kinds of abusive people, sexually or otherwise.
posted by tavella at 1:28 PM on June 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by tavella at 1:28 PM on June 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Jennifer Freyd is generally credited with the concept, and here's her page on it. You'll note it includes such things as attacking whistleblowers, as well as the familiar use of it against victims of sexual abuse.
posted by tavella at 1:50 PM on June 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by tavella at 1:50 PM on June 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
This is absolutely applicable as Reddit is presenting themselves here as the victims of a smear campaign rather than addressing the myriad of valid concerns the community has. It's about reversing the victim/abuser relationship, which is not at exclusive to perpetrators of sexual abuse.
posted by miss-lapin at 3:04 PM on June 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by miss-lapin at 3:04 PM on June 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
That isn’t DARVO
It's textbook DARVO.
Reddit isn't just saying "no comment" - they are rather bluntly stating The Verge's reporting on all this biased, unsubstantiated hearsay designed to unfairly attack Reddit, and as such they are refusing to respond and are taking control of communication from here on out. That is a perfect example of the principle because they:
* deny the content of The Verge's reporting, calling it unsubstantiated and hearsay,
* attack The Verge for their reporting with the terms they use, insinuating that the reporting is intentionally false and misleading, and
* work to reverse the victim and offender by claiming that they are the ones being harmed by the promotion of "falsehoods".
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:25 PM on June 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's textbook DARVO.
Reddit isn't just saying "no comment" - they are rather bluntly stating The Verge's reporting on all this biased, unsubstantiated hearsay designed to unfairly attack Reddit, and as such they are refusing to respond and are taking control of communication from here on out. That is a perfect example of the principle because they:
* deny the content of The Verge's reporting, calling it unsubstantiated and hearsay,
* attack The Verge for their reporting with the terms they use, insinuating that the reporting is intentionally false and misleading, and
* work to reverse the victim and offender by claiming that they are the ones being harmed by the promotion of "falsehoods".
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:25 PM on June 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
The thing to remember is that while it was coined in the context of sexual abusers trying to control how people view them by "flipping the script", so to speak, DARVO is ultimately a form of narrative control and manipulation which is applicable to a much wider range of situations.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:32 PM on June 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:32 PM on June 27, 2023 [6 favorites]
Challenging the definitions of terms is also a tactic often used by disingenuous debaters.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:41 PM on June 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:41 PM on June 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm really not ok with one user derailing this thread twice.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:22 PM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by miss-lapin at 6:22 PM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
How is The Verge a victim here? From the article it sounded like the Verge sent a collection of negative reddit comments regarding the Mod Tools / Accessibility road map posts and asked for a response to those comments. Have you see the comments on these posts.
The post the Verge cited in the article includes these wonderful responses:
The post the Verge cited in the article includes these wonderful responses:
- Either you really suck at your job or your bosses are morons. I'm not discounting both being possible.posted by interogative mood at 6:32 PM on June 27, 2023
You can't possibly be this tone deaf.
- How do you expect me to believe you when the admins have been lying about improving the mod tools the entire decade I’ve been on this site?
- Oh they do not have an accessibility team, they just have people who have accessibility stapled to their job title with or without qualifications and no actual organized system for doing anything.
Someone says something you don’t like or disagrees with your and its a derail. That’s ridiculous
posted by interogative mood at 6:37 PM on June 27, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 6:37 PM on June 27, 2023
I'm leaning towards "performance art"
posted by Flunkie at 6:47 PM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Flunkie at 6:47 PM on June 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes, Reddit basically said thay they plan to pull a unicorn out of their ass - specifically, they claimed that they would have accessibility features ready for the 7/1 deadline despite having shown no work towards this and having a long history of treating accessibility poorly (hence the growth of third party clients focusing on accessibility) - and in response people are now (unsurprisingly) asking for proof that this is actually real and not Reddit corporate FUD intended to dodge genuine concerns about accessibility. Needless to say, the response has made it abundantly clear that the latter is the case.
Someone says something you don’t like or disagrees with your and its a derail. That’s ridiculous
And here's the bad penny of bad faith arguments. People are not calling your arguments a derail because they "disagree" - they're doing it because you continue to give Reddit leadership credulence even after they have repeatedly been caught out in their lies, trying to argue that they are the victim even when the evidence is against you. As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts, and part of free speech and discourse is that people get to point out the gaping holes in your arguments.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:54 PM on June 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
Someone says something you don’t like or disagrees with your and its a derail. That’s ridiculous
And here's the bad penny of bad faith arguments. People are not calling your arguments a derail because they "disagree" - they're doing it because you continue to give Reddit leadership credulence even after they have repeatedly been caught out in their lies, trying to argue that they are the victim even when the evidence is against you. As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts, and part of free speech and discourse is that people get to point out the gaping holes in your arguments.
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:54 PM on June 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
Did you actually think about what your claim that DARVO is only for victims of sexual abuse mean for people victims of emotional and psychological abuse? Did you take one breath to think about how invalidating what you said is to people who were abused? Seriously can we get a mod in here?
posted by miss-lapin at 7:25 PM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by miss-lapin at 7:25 PM on June 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mod note: A few deleted. Left some comments standing for clarity. Please do not comment to further contribute to the derail above. Let's get the thread back on track! Please also refrain from arguing with other users and be mindful of the space you may be taking up.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:58 PM on June 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:58 PM on June 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
I'm curious about whether the reddit admins are ACTUALLY trying frantically to come up with some semblance of accessibility tools by 7/1 so they can point to the slapped together crapware and declare that there are reddit approved accassibility tools so therefore no need for 3rd party stuff.
Or
Are the admins just bullshitting and 7/1 will go by without even a kludge that doesn't work but rather vague handwavy promises that they'll be ready "soon".
posted by sotonohito at 7:17 AM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Or
Are the admins just bullshitting and 7/1 will go by without even a kludge that doesn't work but rather vague handwavy promises that they'll be ready "soon".
posted by sotonohito at 7:17 AM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
If history is anything to go by it will be the latter
posted by jason_steakums at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 7:22 AM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
So this article from Campaign Asia claims that the protest did impact advertising on Reddit and is something to watch as we get closer to July 1st.
In terms of Reddit's accessibility tools, r/blind has a pinned post from 3 days ago describing Reddit's most recent attempts to support the community. From that post:
Reddit has invited r/blind mods to “partner” with them to test the announced accessibility improvements. The mod team expects the company to follow industry standard practices and conduct this testing internally, by their own trained professionals, and through their accessibility audit vendor, at the same time. In so much as user testing is a valuable step in developing accessible software, a moderator has asked for information and terms, working under the assumption that this invitation is, as is industry standard, an offer for contract work. As this would constitute a potential conflict of interest for this mod, they encouraged the Reddit representative to provide details as soon as possible, to other mods who may be available. Given the timing and asynchronous nature of this exchange, we don’t expect to have feedback before start of business on Monday, Pacific time.
We will continue to work with Reddit, for our community, but their actions, as an organization, and the insight gleamed from our private meetings and communication don't provide enough confidence in the organization's ability to make due on their promises, in the long term.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:57 AM on June 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
In terms of Reddit's accessibility tools, r/blind has a pinned post from 3 days ago describing Reddit's most recent attempts to support the community. From that post:
Reddit has invited r/blind mods to “partner” with them to test the announced accessibility improvements. The mod team expects the company to follow industry standard practices and conduct this testing internally, by their own trained professionals, and through their accessibility audit vendor, at the same time. In so much as user testing is a valuable step in developing accessible software, a moderator has asked for information and terms, working under the assumption that this invitation is, as is industry standard, an offer for contract work. As this would constitute a potential conflict of interest for this mod, they encouraged the Reddit representative to provide details as soon as possible, to other mods who may be available. Given the timing and asynchronous nature of this exchange, we don’t expect to have feedback before start of business on Monday, Pacific time.
We will continue to work with Reddit, for our community, but their actions, as an organization, and the insight gleamed from our private meetings and communication don't provide enough confidence in the organization's ability to make due on their promises, in the long term.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:57 AM on June 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
Or
maybe they'll buy whichever of the cheapest 3rd party apps passes as accessible and takes a lowball offer since the protests ended as they did, and integrate its code.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:43 PM on June 28, 2023
maybe they'll buy whichever of the cheapest 3rd party apps passes as accessible and takes a lowball offer since the protests ended as they did, and integrate its code.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:43 PM on June 28, 2023
since the protests ended...Hey, I'm still protesting!
... as they didHow was that? My typical source for such information would be Reddit, but as mentioned, I'm still protesting!
posted by Flunkie at 5:40 PM on June 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Hey, I'm still protesting!
More power to you, but the effort appears to me to be largely over; and Reddit is plowing ahead with its plans. So the protest wasn't successful; though Reddit may not be either, on the other side of this thing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:50 PM on June 28, 2023
More power to you, but the effort appears to me to be largely over; and Reddit is plowing ahead with its plans. So the protest wasn't successful; though Reddit may not be either, on the other side of this thing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:50 PM on June 28, 2023
There is a list of Lemmy communities that people have set up to migrate people off of Reddit. I don't know if it'll last, but I also don't want to tear them down. I was never a big Reddit user, but I find these interesting? Whether this results in a substantive reduction of Reddit traffic or not, it definitely gives people pause and an excuse to reevaluate the services they devote time to, and that's a good thing.
posted by JHarris at 6:22 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 6:22 PM on June 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
the effort appears to be largely over
According to Reddit's Mod-Coord there will be a renewed protest starting July 1st. Over 2,000 subs remain private.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:49 PM on June 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
According to Reddit's Mod-Coord there will be a renewed protest starting July 1st. Over 2,000 subs remain private.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:49 PM on June 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
Reddit has around 140K subs (per a quick search). So, 1.4% before getting into the relative popularity of those remaining shuttered or otherwise on hiatus.
Not looking for an argument; but realistically this did not work out as hoped. Even the comments in the 'renewed protest' thread are pretty resigned.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:29 PM on June 28, 2023
Not looking for an argument; but realistically this did not work out as hoped. Even the comments in the 'renewed protest' thread are pretty resigned.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:29 PM on June 28, 2023
Ah, but are you taking into account what percentage of Reddit's traffic is due to me personally?
posted by Flunkie at 7:34 PM on June 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Flunkie at 7:34 PM on June 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
I don't know snuffleupagus, but what it is, at least, is a crack in Reddit's armor. Also, Reddit is so popular because a lot of people who find and know interesting things post them there. It is exactly these sorts of people who are the types who would be likely to jump ship to other services, or just stop using Reddit all together. Most users may not care, but it's not most users who make Reddit an interesting place to be. The people who are protesting and leaving, sometimes involuntarily, are the kinds of people that made Reddit popular in the first place. That will probably have an effect, though it may be one that's difficult to see from the outside.
posted by JHarris at 11:21 PM on June 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 11:21 PM on June 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
the 3pa I've been using for years, Bacon Reader, pushed it's "final" update out to Android.
https://www.reddit.com/r/baconreader/comments/14lmc9s/baconreader_android_6141458_released_to_google/
posted by glonous keming at 9:21 AM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
https://www.reddit.com/r/baconreader/comments/14lmc9s/baconreader_android_6141458_released_to_google/
posted by glonous keming at 9:21 AM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I deleted my reddit account last weekend.
I had only been on it about 10 months, and only to read/discuss a very few specific technical categories, but I happen to be a subject matter expert on some of it, and was generally helpful even to most n00bs. My karma was pretty good.
But damn it was a timesuck! It was my goto whenever I had a few idle minutes. And the amount of chaff, or the same lame, lazy questions 3x a week that even a non-expert could have Googled up in like 10 min. The wheat:chaff ratio was never that great.
So, thanks spez, for the inspiration to quit reddit. That's quite a lot of time you've given back to me.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:45 AM on June 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
I had only been on it about 10 months, and only to read/discuss a very few specific technical categories, but I happen to be a subject matter expert on some of it, and was generally helpful even to most n00bs. My karma was pretty good.
But damn it was a timesuck! It was my goto whenever I had a few idle minutes. And the amount of chaff, or the same lame, lazy questions 3x a week that even a non-expert could have Googled up in like 10 min. The wheat:chaff ratio was never that great.
So, thanks spez, for the inspiration to quit reddit. That's quite a lot of time you've given back to me.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:45 AM on June 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
Minecraft Subreddit Loses Support From Devs Who Disapprove Of Reddit Changes
The official Minecraft subreddit, r/minecraft, a community that at time of posting has 7.4 million members (making it one of the site’s largest), has announced that it will no longer be supported by developers Mojang and that, having served as an incredibly useful place not just for discussion but for tech support and changelogs as well, will now be asking users to contact them directly on their website (or social media) instead.posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:18 PM on June 29, 2023 [11 favorites]"As you have no doubt heard by now, Reddit management introduced changes recently that have led to rule and moderation changes across many subreddits. Because of these changes, we no longer feel that Reddit is an appropriate place to post official content or refer our players to."
Reddit will remove mods of private communities unless they reopen [The Verge]
Reddit has informed moderators of protesting communities that are still private that they will lose their mod status by the end of the week, according to messages seen by The Verge. If a moderator tells Reddit they are interested in “actively moderating” the subreddit, the company says it will “take your request into consideration.”posted by glonous keming at 9:45 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Reddit has informed moderators of protesting communities
How does Reddit not fall afoul of labor laws with their reliance on unpaid labor, including giving what sounds like rules and regs to the people doing their work for them?
posted by maxwelton at 12:28 PM on June 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
How does Reddit not fall afoul of labor laws with their reliance on unpaid labor, including giving what sounds like rules and regs to the people doing their work for them?
posted by maxwelton at 12:28 PM on June 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've seen reports that third party clients have started breaking, now that it's July 1 in UTC.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:23 PM on June 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Pronoiac at 6:23 PM on June 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, RIF went down a couple hours back. Looks like the dev is working on a Tilde app now and there's a Lemmy sub (or whatever the terminology is?) to commiserate.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:29 PM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 6:29 PM on June 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Are tech sites going to be putting up Reddit alternatives stories like they did for Twitter? I personally find Reddit less indefensible than Twitter used to be, it's easier for me to go elsewhere. However, it's also a bit harder to use Fediverse Reddit-likes, you can read communities other than those on the instance your account is on, and you can post to them, but it requires a couple of extra steps, that involve a text search from your home instance.
posted by JHarris at 8:03 AM on July 1, 2023
posted by JHarris at 8:03 AM on July 1, 2023
No, the mediasphere hasn't turned its day job into paraphrasing its Reddit feed as with Twitter.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:07 AM on July 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:07 AM on July 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think the content from Reddit generally gets ripped off for listicles and YouTube videos more than general media, although it does kind of have a pathway into that if something from Reddit gets popular enough, but yeah generally there isn't that culture-distorting "a writer had a deadline and saw five people on Twitter are upset about something and wrote a hot take on why 'people are talking about ____' and now it's all the opinion shows on cable are outraged about" pipeline
posted by jason_steakums at 9:38 AM on July 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by jason_steakums at 9:38 AM on July 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
The Future of IAmA
To our users, AMA guests, and friends,posted by Rhaomi at 10:56 AM on July 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
You may have noticed that, in spite of our history of past protests against Reddit's poor site management, this subreddit has refrained from protesting or shutting down during the recent excitement on Reddit.
This does not imply that we think things are being managed better now. Rather, it reflects our belief that such actions will not make any significant difference this time.
Rather than come up with new words to express our concerns, I think some quotes from the NYT Editorial we wrote back in 2015 convey our thoughts very well:Our primary concern, and reason for taking the site down temporarily, is that Reddit’s management made critical changes to a very popular website without any apparent care for how those changes might affect their biggest resource: the community and the moderators that help tend the subreddits that constitute the site. Moderators commit their time to the site to foster engaging communities.Amazing how little has changed, really.
Reddit is not our job, but we have spent thousands of hours as a team answering questions, facilitating A.M.A.s, writing policy and helping people ask questions of their heroes. We moderate from the train or bus, on breaks from work and in between classes. We check on the subreddit while standing in line at the grocery store or waiting at the D.M.V.
The secondary purpose of shutting down was to communicate to the relatively tone-deaf company leaders that the pattern of removing tools and failing to improve available tools to the community at large, not merely the moderators, was an affront to the people who use the site.
We feel strongly that this incident is more part of a reckless disregard for the company’s own business and for the work the moderators and users put into the site.
So, what are we going to do about this? What can we change? Not much. Reddit executives have shown that they won't yield to the pressure of a protest. They've told the media that they are actively planning to remove moderators who keep subreddits shut down and have no intentions of making changes.
So, moving forward, we're going to run IAmA like your average subreddit. We will continue moderating, removing spam, and enforcing rules. Many of the current moderation team will be taking a step back, but we'll recruit people to replace them as needed.
However, effective immediately, we plan to discontinue the following activities that we performed, as volunteer moderators, that took up a huge amount of our time and effort, both from a communication and coordination standpoint and from an IT/secure operations standpoint:Moving forward, we'll be allowing most AMA topics, leaving proof and requests for verification up to the community, and limiting ourselves to removing rule-breaking material alone. This doesn't mean we're allowing fake AMAs explicitly, but it does mean you'll need to pay more attention.
- Active solicitation of celebrities or high profile figures to do AMAs.
- Email and modmail coordination with celebrities and high profile figures and their PR teams to facilitate, educate, and operate AMAs. (We will still be available to answer questions about posting, though response time may vary).
- Running and maintaining a website for scheduling of AMAs with pre-verification and proof, as well as social media promotion. Maintaining a current up-to-date sidebar calendar of scheduled AMAs, with schedule reminders for users.
- Sister subreddits with categorized cross-posts for easy following.
- Moderator confidential verification for AMAs.
- Running various bots, including automatic flairing of live posts
Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we'd be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.
Thanks for the ride everyone, it's been fun.
Sincerely,
The IAmA Moderator Team (2013-2023)
Absolutely scathing update from the moderators of /r/Blind:
They finally did it: Reddit made it impossible for blind Redditors to moderate their own sub
They finally did it: Reddit made it impossible for blind Redditors to moderate their own sub
Since the latest "accessibility" update to the Reddit app, the amount and magnitude of new accessibility related bugs has made it virtually impossible for blind mods to operate on mobile.posted by Rhaomi at 11:14 AM on July 1, 2023 [17 favorites]
We have done absolutely everything we could to work with Reddit and have given them every opportunity. When they offered to host a demo of the update, we understood how little they understand about accessibility: they did not respond to a request to use the app with screen curtain on. The only fair conclusion is that they cannot use it without sight, but expect us to.
The update introduced various regressions and new bugs. This is entirely within the expectations of the mod team, given how rushed it was and how Reddit continues to demonstrate how underprepared they are to deal with accessibility.
But what about the "accessibility apps?"
They may not work. At this time, it is impossible to log into RedReader.
They shouldn't have to work. Reddit made a business decision to effectively remove users' access to third-party apps and must assure that access by its own means.
What now for r/Blind?
The subreddit will continue operating under the care and stewardship of its visually impaired and sighted moderators.
Let us be clear: r/Blind cannot be moderated by blind people.
Reddit has a single path forward
As u/rumster, founder of r/Blind and a CPWA Certified Professional of Web Accessibility, told Reddit admins in our first meeting, Reddit needs to hire a CPWA. It has been patently obvious that the company does not have the know-how to address these accessibility issues, as we explained on the update on the second meeting.
To build the required internal structure and processes, and create an accessible platform, they must:Disability is a social issue and software must be tested
- Create and fill the position of "Chief Accessibility Officer." This role must have oversight over development as well as the ability to set internal and public Reddit policy. This person should have the ability to halt any corporate strategy or initiative within Reddit as a company and/or any feature, update, etc. to the Reddit website and/or apps until they believe the impact on accessibility for disabled redditors by said strategy, initiative, feature, update, etc. has been fully addressed, implemented, ensured, and/or mitigated. The person filling this role should have both development and managerial experience and hold at least the Certified Professional of Web Accessibility (CPWA) certification as issued by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). This person should also be disabled and an active Redditor and must coordinate communication with disabled users and their communities.
- Reddit must commit to ensuring training and certification of all developers responsible for accessible and inclusive design. Lead developers must be trained and certified at least to the level of Web Accessibility Specialist (WAS) as issued by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), but ideally should hold the "Certified Professional of Web Accessibility (CPWA)." Fully implement an alternative text (alt text) function for photos and videos in which posters can compose descriptions for blind and visually impaired users.
- Implement a closed-captioning system for videos, thus allowing deaf and deafblind Redditors full access to the audio content of videos.
- Implement a single dedicated point of contact for accessibility and disability issues in the form of an email address: accessibility@reddit.com.
- Ultimately and crucially, commit to comply with the WCAG at level AA and ATAG standards.
As u/MostlyBlindGamer explained to Reddit admins in modmail, "disability" is an interaction between a person's physical or mental characteristics and society's barriers. Your website's barriers. You are making people disabled by breaking your website and apps. Your organization's unwillingness and/or inability to hire actual experts is what's making people disabled. We're not disabled, because we can't see like you can: we're disabled, because crunching developers, who don't have the necessary training and experience, for a week, predictably, caused regressions. If I don't test my code, people die. When you don't test your code, because you don't know how to, you make people disabled.
If Reddit Inc wants to deny service to disabled people, they must make that statement
As u/DHamlinMusic said, this update made no functional changes beyond the add/remove favorites button in the community's list being labeled and changing state properly, yet it added dozens of new issues, made moderating significantly harder and should never have been released to start. If Reddit's intention is to just not have disabled users on reddit come out and say it instead of pulling this landlord trying to empty a rent controlled building bullshit.
Disabled redditors will not accept being quietly whisked away, nor will the broader Reddit community. People make Reddit and people can break Reddit.
(From my comment above, I just noticed: when I said less indefensible, I had meant to type less indispensable. Whether Reddit is less indefensible than Twitter is largely an academic argument, they're both pretty awful now.)
posted by JHarris at 11:22 AM on July 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 11:22 AM on July 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't think the constructive employment angle has any legs, but an ADA suit brought by curbed /r/blind/ mods might get some attention.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:41 AM on July 1, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:41 AM on July 1, 2023
Yeah I think when I get back from my vacay I’ll begin the process of transitioning my content off Reddit. I’ll keep reading, but I can’t justify driving readership to them.
posted by bq at 12:30 PM on July 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by bq at 12:30 PM on July 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just in time for Disability Pride Month, Spez.
I'm just so disgusted. Reddit promised this support for YEARS and never provided it. They treated their disabled users like crap. Third party apps gave those users support and now Reddit takes that away.
I'm sorry I try not to be so blatantly vulgar but fuck Reddit. I'm so god damned tired of ableism.
posted by miss-lapin at 5:41 PM on July 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
I'm just so disgusted. Reddit promised this support for YEARS and never provided it. They treated their disabled users like crap. Third party apps gave those users support and now Reddit takes that away.
I'm sorry I try not to be so blatantly vulgar but fuck Reddit. I'm so god damned tired of ableism.
posted by miss-lapin at 5:41 PM on July 1, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think it is probably more productive for the /r/blind community to work with an organization like The National Federation for the Blind and to file complaints with the Department of Justice on possible ADA violations. When a complaint is filed you get a complaint #. If the DOJ doesn’t act then take those complaint numbers to local member of Congress and ask them to have their constituent services staff involved.
posted by interogative mood at 7:56 PM on July 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 7:56 PM on July 2, 2023 [3 favorites]
It’s such bad timing for those of us who enjoy watching the Reddit trainwreck that this happens on the same weekend that Twitter DDOS’d itself.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:06 AM on July 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:06 AM on July 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think it is probably more productive...
Why? A bureaucratic complaint window, whatever its merits, is rarely more productive than direct access to the courts and a judge empowered to issue injunctions.
Especially if the DOJ process, if it goes all the way, just results in the DOJ suing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:48 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why? A bureaucratic complaint window, whatever its merits, is rarely more productive than direct access to the courts and a judge empowered to issue injunctions.
Especially if the DOJ process, if it goes all the way, just results in the DOJ suing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:48 AM on July 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
(The tricky bit is that the circuits are split and many are undecided as to whether online-only enterprises are covered by the ADA. Ninth circuit said no, so in California website accessibility cases are generally brought under state protections.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:56 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:56 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Good news though, there's an entirely organic, not-at-all-fake-looking surge in five-star reviews for the official Reddit app.
I immediately went to the app store to check this, and the top review is from a year ago about how the new app is broken and awful, but with five stars.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:35 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Setting up an organization, raising money and vetting attorneys to file the lawsuit and then to prevail is extremely complicated, expensive, and faces long in court. Especially when the courts are currently split on the matter. If the DOJ files a lawsuit it costs the victims nothing and the odds of a settlement are much more likely because no company looking to file and IPO wants to have to declare active litigation with the Department of Justice in the S1 filing.
posted by interogative mood at 10:24 AM on July 3, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 10:24 AM on July 3, 2023
A pending private suit (which are typically not financed by ADA plaintiffs) might also cause problems for an IPO; but it does make sense that a DOJ suit would have a stronger effect—if that moves fast enough. Forming an organization might not be necessary, but I'm not read up on class actions under the ADA.
I hope something further happens; I expected Reddit to plunge ahead this way, but I'd love to see it blow up in their face.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:28 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I hope something further happens; I expected Reddit to plunge ahead this way, but I'd love to see it blow up in their face.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:28 AM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
ADA issues can be reported to the DOJ OFC at this link.
I assume that legal assistance might be useful for drafting a complaint.
Google your local member of Congress and senators with the terms “constituent services” or “help with a federal agency” to find the right contact info. If they have a local office and you can make an appointment do that.
If you want to organize some collective action you’ll want to collect all case #s and reporter info some where and then give them some boilerplate text to use for the complaint and the communications to the member of Congress. Then train your people on how to interact with the DOJ when they call or the member of Congress constituent services people.
Remember with courts nothing is fast. It is a process that takes months and years with lots of time waiting around. So have a plan to keep your group engaged and set expectations accordingly.
posted by interogative mood at 12:05 PM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I assume that legal assistance might be useful for drafting a complaint.
Google your local member of Congress and senators with the terms “constituent services” or “help with a federal agency” to find the right contact info. If they have a local office and you can make an appointment do that.
If you want to organize some collective action you’ll want to collect all case #s and reporter info some where and then give them some boilerplate text to use for the complaint and the communications to the member of Congress. Then train your people on how to interact with the DOJ when they call or the member of Congress constituent services people.
Remember with courts nothing is fast. It is a process that takes months and years with lots of time waiting around. So have a plan to keep your group engaged and set expectations accordingly.
posted by interogative mood at 12:05 PM on July 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Reddit Gives Final Warning to Subreddits Using NSFW Protest Tactic [PCMag]
“While we're obviously aware that Reddit is a for-profit company, the recent weeks have made it very clear that Reddit is not a website that allows people to host communities for its members, but rather a company that allows people to maintain communities for them and for their profit," a r/JustNoMil moderator wrote.posted by glonous keming at 9:34 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
The Cyberpunk subreddit has really taken the NSFW protest to heart (playing up the inherently NSFW content in the game, with some mod assistance) in response to these threats.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:38 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:38 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
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I've been in the ModCoord Discord server all night last night switching between working on this post and prepping my subs to go dark. It was dicey for awhile because some had absentee top mods who were needed to turn the switch off, but they came in clutch at the last minute. Was dismayed to find that the admin who helped us rescue /r/PresidentialRaceMemes from a manipulation campaign was layed off recently (along with the site's entire accessibility team, apparently). Props to /u/Blank-Cheque, who provides crucial bots to literally hundreds of subreddits (like the point-rewarding bot in Q&A sub /r/tipofmytongue) but pulled the plug after her favorite app was shut down.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:36 AM on June 12, 2023 [55 favorites]