Reddit CEO Pushes Back Against Blackout—Will Consider Letting Users Vote Out Moderators

www.forbes.com

17 comments

How about letting redditors vote out CEOs?
- How about letting redditors vote that CEOs shouldn't get a golden parachute?
  How about shareholders sacking a paedophile CEO for gross misconduct with no golden parachute?
  One can only dream.
The way this is unfolding is like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
All lies, they‘ve straight up been removing mods like they want to cleanse them from the website and forcibly reopen their subs, NO voting on it! It‘s "reopen of gtfo", that‘s the message they are sending.
This moral appeal to democracy is transparent and laughable, they must think Redditors are completely brainless to swallow that turd, and maybe he is right seeing those who cheer for this.
- I mean, a vote to get rid of mods is basically the same as "reopen or gtfo". The people who feel strongly about the blackout have already left, the only people voting would be those who just want to be able to scroll again
Notice that they circumvented democratic decision-making between moderation teams to force subreddits open. 1/10 mods wants it open = open. Why would they not do the same here with users, whom they respect even less?
I suspect they will do one or more of the following:
selectively honor results based on when the users of subreddits opt to open them.
never open voting in subreddits where mods choose to open the subreddit
set voting window to align more closely with timezones with demographics that will favor opening.
use their powers from hosting the platform to fuck with results (i.e. voting only working from new reddit or official app, shadowbans, fucking with login/voting of anyone who has posted the word "lemmy", etc.)
All of the above.
This should be a lesson on how corporations embrace democracy within a system that they ultimately control to let people believe they have some form of self-determination.
EDIT: Markdown formatting
- Honestly, they're just using the democracy thing to look like the good guys. But employees have already been quoted saying "we'll force reopen subreddits if we have to, to save the company." They seem to believe that's justified. Plus, who is gonna vote against reopening? The users still active didn't care enough to boycott or switch platforms, so the majority of active users probably do want to reopen. So I doubt they'd mess with results; most votes will be in their favor, and their rationalization for using force will resonate with the remaining users.
As a mod, the users demanded we blackout. Some tech groups didn't want to and the users argued them into it.
The biggest middle-finger to him would be if really all "restive" subreddits agree on re-electing their respective mods.
- The biggest middle-finger to him would be if really all "restive" subreddits agree on re-electing their respective mods.
  This is the main reason why I won't go scorched earth and delete my account there. If there are polls on this, I want to be part of it. All the people who cared enough about the blackout to leave and delete their accounts last week are dead to Steve, he can't monetize them anymore.
  Although that's not to say the blackout has had no effect on me. I'm here now, after all, and will probably end up splitting my attention here even if Reddit rethinks things.
Well, lemmy already taking Reddit Traffic, so why bother again... just let it rot!
In China people call it
LET IT ROT
I feel like having people vote on moderators would be an improvement but how can you complain about the lack of democracy when you are literally Reddit.
- I really disagree, moderators need to make unpopular decisions sometimes to keep communities intact. Online polls are notoriously easy to game as well.
  
  If the users want to kill their own community with bad decisions, that is their right. A mod shouldn't get to stop it.
He's saying the same talking points at every interview and handling this situation like Chris Licht did before he got fired at CNN, had some ideas for change that people weren't necessarily against but shove it down their throats with out any finesse or flexibility or fairness and everyone is unhappy and it exposed the true motive. Licht \ CNN was being forced to the right by the owner and billionaire investors, and Reddit is just plain forcing out 3rd party apps (that helped build reddit in the first place, and have been open to paying a reasonable amount for api access) to try and boost revenue. My favorite take on all this is from Arstechnica:
But Reddit's biggest asset is its community. Charging for its API may be a necessary evil to survive an uncertain future, but Reddit's attitude against its own community isn't. Reddit is burning bridges on its quest for cash without showing an ounce of sympathy.
- Yeah, spez is treating striking mods like spoiled toddlers, but insisting on making money himself while making their unpaid work harder. It's eroding their good will to volunteer, for what future? Paid mods?
  
  for what future? Paid mods?
  No way, they'd need to pay 3 millions a year or so to replace all moderator work in the platform.
  They're trying to optimise the company for the IPO, showing stuff like "you can sell this data to Google for LLM! It's self-moderated! No third party apps eating your adbux!". It's just that it's backfiring... badly.