Don't feel bad for the Moderators of Reddit
Don't feel bad for the Moderators of Reddit
I should begin by mentioning that I am (was) a moderator of three subreddits: one large subreddit, one NSFW subreddit and a medical-related subreddit. After u/spez's calamitous AMA, I joined Lemmy and haven't looked back. I am really enjoying the Lemmy/KBin vibe. It is very much an alpha (almost beta) product and the ad free, corporate free, decentralized nature of the fediverse has a thrill of its own.
Over the past couple of months, Reddit has done everything it can to show its moderators that they are low-value and easily replaceable. They've done this by removing technical tools, killing off third party applications, crippling API changes and jaw-droppingly bad public relations. Heavily used products like /r/toolbox are no longer being actively developed. When Reddit API implements a breaking, non-backwards compatible change, that tool will also die.
Yet the moderators of Reddit continue to moderate. They stay and help Reddit build Reddit. They continue to work for free; to allow Reddit to make money off of their work despite being abused. When I see things like the comment section on this post, I no longer feel sorry for the Reddit moderators still on the site. I see them as a sad, sorry group who cling to the false hope of a corporate turnaround. They could leave Reddit. They should leave Reddit.
These moderators are in an abusive relationship with Reddit, Inc. I might understand the argument, "we built this community, we can't just abandon it". But would you give the same advice to someone else in an abusive relationship? I get that the analogy between the mods and the corp is an imperfect one, yet it is similar enough to be valid, in my opinion.
Moderating is really hard. It is hard and thankless and never-ending. Finding good moderators who can handle the marathon nature of the gig is incredibly difficult. If Reddit moderators were to delete their moderating bots, downgrade their automod "code" and dial back their modding efforts to 5 min/week or less, it would materially hurt Reddit as a product.
The sunk-cost fallacy is a real thing. If the Reddit mods understood this, they'd take their talents elsewhere. But as long as they continue to help Reddit build Reddit, one shouldn't feel sorry for them.
They could leave. I did and I've never been happier.
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Honestly I stopped feeling bad for mods as soon as I saw a majority of them fold like a soggy napkin upon the first threat from the admins saying they'd remove mods who keep their subs private.
If I were a mod I would have kept it private until Reddit removed me. If all mods actually did that, Reddit would have been in big trouble since they'd effectively have to find new mods all at once for the entire site. Instead, most mods basically did Reddit a favor and lessened the impact substantially. Thanks mods!
I also don't feel bad for most Reddit users. Way too many of them were too ignorant to even understand what the protests were about. And a majority of them were yelling at mods to reopen and saying the protest was stupid just because they were okay with using the official mobile app
Unbelievable all around honestly. The entire thing was fucking embarrassing. We had one actual chance to win and everyone blew it.
I know it sounds pretentious as hell, but the majority of people are just idiots that can't be bothered to learn and educate themselves on anything....
Again, sounding pretentious and the ones smart enough to see the reddit bullshit and figure out lemmy are here now!
I sound like a prick, but it do!
You're not a prick or pretentious or doing anything wrong. Part of the propaganda matrix is to shame people into not checking or calling each other out for not having basic knowledge they should have. It's how they keep people uneducated
One of the things that clinched it for me to leave reddit for good was when one of my favorite subs' (r/entwives) mods caved after "protesting" (going private) for the standard 48 hours, then laid down like pathetic losers after said "protest" and stating they'd remain open like normal instead of permanently staying "private." It was fucking deplorable, and these sad sack mods' reasoning for it was "well if we stay private, someone will create a duplicate of this sub and it won't be the same welcoming environment as this one 🥺🥺🥺🥺" man, that made me see red...it was blatant that they were desperate to hold onto the pathetically small amount of power they had, ultimately terrified of losing their user base.
As soon as I saw that the so called "protest" was only supposed to last a pathetic 48 fucking hours, I knew it was going to fail. The goal should have been to go dark for as long as it took. The entire thing was set up to fail. Absolutely fucking useless.
Top mods of subs can delete them iirc, they should have just done that upon being threatened with replacement- delete all the css, unban anyone banned or alternatively ban as many people as possible and all the known admins, remove all the rules and spam filters, then delete it- so if they do resurrect it from the bin it'll be as messed up as possible as the biggest F u to the admins you possibly can.
People don't have courage, integrity or principles anymore and it shows.