Hey everyone we're trying to keep the reddit threads centralized in technology in beehaw. I'm not locking this one because there's a lot of discussion, but consider moving the chat over to https://beehaw.org/post/576904

Everyone needs to realise it doesnt matter. Enough people already came to lemmy for us to carry on without reddit. Now we just do the normal long haul work - help users who need help so people start searching lemmy for tech solutions, post our normal content here so there is a reason to stay, upvote and comment others work so there is engagement. The rest will follow as this grows and grows. We have already won. Lemmy is no longer a fringe interest.

Good luck with that! I'm excited to see the fireworks as their brand-new mod teams use their brand-new mod tools right as they go public. Should be quite a show.

Funny how he repeatedly uses phrases such as “the extent that they were profiting off of our API” but has never used the phrase “the extent that we rely on freely provided content and freely provided moderation. If it weren’t for the tens of millions of people who are giving us free stuff we wouldn’t even exist.”

Simply replacing all the mods sound like a good way to kill a subreddit, Reddit probably has no way to pick good mods... Mods will need some connection with the topic, and you don't want to pick random users with no experience for large subreddits.

I can’t say I’m shocked, but I am disappointed. But at the same time - Lemmy/Kbin is the answer. This is the way.

Its probably going to end up like facebook.
A big lumbering thing, still heavily populated but ad choked and overrun by bots and bad actors, indoctrinating unsuspecting users. Even if it stays big, hopefully its reputation will suffer enough to keep most new users away.

Can't wait to watch the most entertaining stage of enshittification...

I doubt anyone is actually surprised by this. reddit owns the site, and (according to their TOS) they have rights to everything posted on their site (while they at the same time take zero responsibility for anything posted). I'm only surprised it's not happened sooner.

I'm also not surprised that this came about from someone that wants to take over one of the privated subs. Most likely to stroke their own egos.

I can’t believe the amount of people I see that are supporting Reddits decision not only with the API pricing and changes, but in removing mods like this.

The whole reason for the blackouts is a protest against Reddit and their new policy. Now they’re threatening to come in and remove mods with their own appointed ones to force subs to open? And they’re for this?

I…just…wow.

These definitely sound like the actions of a company that is in no way threatened at all not even a little bit.

/s

What's endlessly fascinating to me is how quickly Reddit (spez) dug this hole for itself. I'm (or was) an Apollo user, but didn't pay close attention to the finer technical points of app use, and was only half paying attention when the API changes were announced. In a matter of about two weeks, I went from not having particularly strong feelings (like a shrug personified) to be vehemently anti-Reddit and Steve Huffman. And it has literally all been based on the things Reddit (spez and his mouthpieces) have said and done. In other words, there hasn't been any "persuasive propaganda" that swayed me. Just them, in all their idiocy, taking me from neutral to bury them in an incredibly short period of time. The level of incompetence is truly impressive.

Yes, I got the "message" from the Reddit CEO, and decided to pre-empt that, and I spent a few hours today manually deleting each and every post I made in my subreddit. The content is already anyway on my blog, on The Internet Archive, and on the Fediverse. So my subreddit now looks like this (he is welcome to let someone else take it now):

OK, third time trying to post this comment after my previous two never went through 🥲

I've seen a lot of people predict that this would be their next move if the blackouts continued. It's sad to see them actually begin with the threats though :/

I'm wondering if this is a sort of desperation move because of advertisers looking at removing spending from reddit if things continue. Particularly where they say they would start thinking about that if things stayed dark for a couple of weeks.

I don't know, I'm heading to bed, rewritten this three times and I'm not a good speaker, so apologies for it not being very coherent! 😅

Anyway, still many shames on reddit. I hope the blackouts continue so that advertisers leave. Booooo reddit booooo.

It feels right to be reading this from the comfort of Lemmy.

Glad I left Reddit tbh, so far Lemmy/the Fediverse seems to be way better.

I'm treating the blackout like a strike, and I don't cross picket lines, and neither should anyone else. No scabs. No one should be agreeing to moderate a sub that has lost all of its moderators to forcible removal.

They can’t keep their story straight. First the protest is “noise” that will “blow over”. Now they’re forcing subs to re-open.

Look, even if the protest “fails”, they stick to the API pricing, and forcefully re-open subs, some things will be obvious and for everyone to see that weren’t before:

• spez is lying and isn’t trustworthy
• reddit cares more about IPO positioning and money than the health of the community
• people are willing to explore alternatives like this fediverse

Reposting a comment that applies here:

Yeah, moderating a large sub isn’t as shake-and-bake as the admins seem to think. They might “hire” scabs, but the scabs are probably going to slack off pretty hard and might not even understand the tools and procedures that can make it effective but not stifling to content.

This is literally a copy and paste from another article with Huffman posted TODAY:

While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout

From NBC News interview :

“If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders,” he said. “And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”

Eat sand /u/spez.

The enshittification only continues..

...and the subreddit rebellion has been foiled. The remaining locked subreddits will be hunted down and defeated!

The attempt on my credibility by the Apollo dev has left me scarred, and deformed. But I assure you: My resolve... has never been stronger!

In order to ensure the profitability and continuing advertising...

REDDIT, WILL BE REORGINIZED...

INTO THE FIRST...

GALACTIC ADVERTISING PLATFORM!

FOR A SAFE, AND PROFITABLE WEBSITE.

— u/spez to potential investors. Maybe. Probably. Might be slightly paraphrased.

Stop giving thus self righteous, money hungry dickwad a voice, The Verge. Jesus christ. The more he talks, the dumber and more like Elon Musk he looks.

When r/WorkReform sprang up overnight and proposed to elect moderators, Reddit's admins threatened to ban the subreddit for that

Fuck Spez. Fuck Reddit. Build kbin.

Alright! Time to Boaty McBoatface this thing.

Steve Huffman should resign.

So much for moderators being "free to run their communities as they choose" as this article outlines

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204533859-What-s-a-moderator-

It's pretty obvious they're given free reign until they happen to disagree with admins and then it's "they're holding subreddits hostage", "they're just Stewarts" etc

Reddit admins will legitimately say and do anything to frame this as not their own fuck up

I know I'm just nitpicking the headline but leave it to the apple community publication to make this about their app.

I swear Reddit is not only not learning from history but purposely trying to repeat it again thinking oh the previous guys were just too weak....

The cops are moving in with tear gas and rubber bullets...

/r/ModCoord is polling subs, a lot of support still for indefinite blackout

How many people think any such "election" Reddit holds will be a sham?

If you put people in charge who don't know / care about particular communities in charge, there could be huge trouble.

You know.... like the legal advice subr×ddit being moderated by cops. Which it is.

Was rather foreseeable but seals the deal for me. I will will waste my time here.

As of now, more than 80% of our top 5,000 communities (by DAU) are open

I'm a bit paranoid that this could be a technical truth because the communities still closed have dropped in DAU.

Edit: Checked the blackout tracker, of the ones listed 205 are still closed or restricted, so it's probably an accurate claim, though it seems about half of the participating subreddits are still closed.

the idea that a cabal of mods were going to take things in a good direction was always unsound

Hahaha you know before this many people didn't think of reddit as corporate corporate. They scewed themselves and ruined their goodwill

Reddit is already dead. Old.reddit will be removed soon.

They already removed some mods, it's not a threat it's Spaz being a jerk and awful person.

Well, you could stay private and continue to moderate as if it would always be a private sub, just have a few authorized users and a few posts a day to moderate...

Union busting 101 - claiming the organizers are lazy and trying to skirt work and fire them asap

Spez “this isn’t impacting our bottom line” surely is acting like it is. Let the fire begin. Turn off all mod tools, all spam filters. Let the website turn into a shithole.

With WHO? Who's gonna take over that wasn't already part of the mod teams?

I knew this is what they would do. :) OpenAI hired Kenyans at 2$/hr to train their AI chatbot. This is what Reddit will do. Hire Africans at 2$/hr to moderate the most popular sub and generate traffic, than try and recruit new volunteer mods, all the while going for the IPO.

I mean, yes, ofc they are going to eventually do this. The team at Reddit isn't going to just let their popular subreddits shutdown indefinitely. They just kick the mods out, moderate themselves or bring some other scabs in to do it.

I think it's the very problem of Reddit. Too much power at the top in a centralized way and too much power to mods of large subreddits with....more subscribers than countries have population.

I think the fediverse is just more the answer top to bottom for more community control.

The least they could do is make it less obvious who they will replace the mods with. I expect this kind of blatant takeover attitude from a place with less legal department. Like twitter.

What the hell lmao, literally 2 posts down on my feed is the Verge article from today which states:

While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that; more than 80 percent of the top 5,000 communities by daily active users are now open

?????

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout

allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular. He said the new system would be more democratic and allow a wider set of people to hold moderators accountable.

blinks loudly What could go wrong? 🤣

"we will not force communities to reopen"

But

"we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users"

@bird Expected. They own the website, they do what they want.

Reddit has informed the moderators of those subreddits that it has plans to replace resistant moderation teams to keep spaces "open and accessible to users."

Honestly entirely predictable. Should really be a wake up call to moderators and communities that haven't gone dark that Reddit, Inc is not trustworthy (just like how spez has been willing to edit posts).

Good luck to Reddit trying to moderate 5000 new communities and not devolve into Twitter 2.

Goodbye Reddit.

They are getting desperate.

I feel like normie fed-based socials need to start going live like bluesky so people can finally get off these shitty platforms. We need a leader in the federation space.

Guess it's time to back up certain subreddits off of Reddit and then perhaps... delete them entirely? If it isn't hosted on Reddit anymore, Reddit can't do anything about it.

This would be a job for some data hoarders, though.

Really digging their heels in

What we need to do is work with Reddit mods on niche / civil subs to encourage their user base to move here before reddit starts using scabs / censoring content

Well, removing the abusive, ban-prone mods of /r/Firefox wouldn't be a bad idea.

Why can't "the community" just make another subreddit and then pick it up from there? Oh right, because they want to sell our data.

the fuckening just doesnt stop. u/Spez lost complete touch with the platform itself.

But hey, they own the joint. they can make their own decisions.

I think the mods should open up-and only use the official app to mod. If anything would scare future investors away, it would be giant mess reddit would become.

Didn't they already do that on /r/tumblr? Why threaten what you already did?

I thought if the community agreed that they could be private.

I also thought that the black out didn't really matter for Reddit.

Guess they are starting to sweat.

I would think (hope) that any of the good, decent moderators have already begun the migration over and the replacements are just going to be awful. Many moderators of the big subs have been doing it for some time. Thats a lot of brain drain. I wouldn't want to invest in a company that wants those in supervisory roles to be bodies rather than quality contributors.

@bird I had a feeling that was going to happen...

@bird
Wow! took them this long to do that?

@bird

Can people just start moving to kbin or tildes now that we know the protests won’t change anything