Comment by pierat
2 years ago
So... why have the feature of "Public, Restricted, Private" if you punish people for using a feature you all put in place? If they don't want private subs, then convert them to public and turn that feature off.
What all this seems like is a bad psy-op campaign to force people to do the settings the admins want, and make it "feel" its the moderators doing it. Similar how Twitter forces you to remove bad content rather than just auto-do it
This is leftpad all over again: the intersection of publicly accessible namespaces, control over those namespaces, and what people in charge of the namespace are allowed to do by the platform when their protest actions are seen as harmful by the platform.
There's a 3-way social contract between the platform (Reddit/npm), the nominal person in charge (mods/module authors) and the users. If the person in charge does something that is sufficiently disruptive to users', or platforms interests, the platform will step in. We can argue about where the line is, but beyond that point, platform intervention is inevitable.
Edit: Thought experiment: would it have been acceptable had the author of leftpad put up a poll for downloaders to vote before taking the module down in protest?
There's a huge difference between taking down an entertainment source and taking down software build pipelines across the world.
> If they don't want private subs, then convert them to public and turn that feature off.
I can understand the sentiment, however users of Reddit employ private subreddits for a variety of reasons. Top of the list is in order to facilitate safe discussions, secure from prying eyes. For Reddit Inc it is a benefit, since it encourages moderator groups and communities to remain within the platform. e.g.
> r/ArmyofScience
> A private community for the comment moderators of /r/science to organize and discussion moderation of the subreddit.
If such private communities were forced open, it would require moderator groups, or those other private communities, to join the exodus to other platforms.
There are also some more personal collections on the site, without a doubt. Switching those to public would constitute a huge violation the trust which users have placed in Reddit and only further erode the company's image within communities that make their home on the site as well as with the public at large.
Lastly, there are over 3 million subreddits in existence [0], so even changing this manually would be a sizeable task.
[0] https://www.businessdit.com/how-many-subreddits-are-there/
People are given power with the expectation that they wield that power responsibly. The purpose of the visibility feature is to allow moderators to create private communities, not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.
If a cop shoots an unarmed suspect, they will get punished too. Would you defend the cop by saying “why give a cop a gun if you punish him for using it”? The cop is given a gun with the understanding that they only use it to shoot dangerous suspects; a cop that violates that expectation will have their gun taken away.
> If they don't want private subs, then convert them to public and turn that feature off.
The more reasonable solution would be to disallow moderators from changing the protection level after creating a sub (but allowing it by petitioning the admins). Would that make you happy?
> People are given power with the expectation that they wield that power responsibly. The purpose of the visibility feature is to allow moderators to create private communities, not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.
For a decade, reddit's message to mods was that this was our community. And we could institute rules as we see fit. If the system allowed it, we could do it.
That was obviously just propaganda and a blatant lie.
> If a cop shoots an unarmed suspect, they will get punished too. Would you defend the cop by saying “why give a cop a gun if you punish him for using it”? The cop is given a gun with the understanding that they only use it to shoot dangerous suspects; a cop that violates that expectation will have their gun taken away.
The fuck? Are you seriously comparing state sanctioned violence to a online glorified bulletin board? Just wow.
No that was just moderators slowing getting high on their own powertrips. Sure, Reddit inc basically let them do what they wanted but the original intent was actually that mods are part of a community, not some sort of petty tyrants. I guess it is truly reddit's fault for letting a bunch of... very online (I'm trying to be kind) and very very often severely maladjusted group of people establish their little fiefdoms.
... Also, one of the least diverse group (racially, religiously, culturally, politically and pretty much everything else) of people you could think of having such a control over """the front page of the internet"" (lol) lead to it turning into an insanely boring and one of the cringiest places on the internet. Twitter is downright refreshing compared to the average subreddit, which is saying a lot
The sad part is that I won't see the results of that rebalance of power, since I've only ever used Reddit on third party apps lol.
1 reply →
> For a decade, reddit's message to mods was that this was our community.
I think that era died with Aaron Swartz, which is more than a decade past. In the past decade Reddit admins have been banning thriving communities for not toeing the party line.
Where were you when Reddit banned /r/the_donald and all the lesbian subs? Probably cheering them on for enforcing a political agenda you agree with? Then what made you think you would be spared from the admin's wrath when you turned against them?
It sounds like a typical case of “I can't believe the leopards would eat my face!”
> The fuck? [..] Just wow.
Stop it with the rhetorical pearl clutching. If you have something intelligent to say, make a rational, coherent, dispassionate argument. Nobody benefits from this type of emotional outburst. Imagine I would respond in kind, saying: “Omg! Wow! Wow! Wow! I canNOT belIEVE you would SAY something like this! What the fuck??? Wow! Geez! Golly!" This is just meaningless word vomit.
> Are you seriously comparing state sanctioned violence to a online glorified bulletin board?
Do you seriously not understand what an analogy is?
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>The more reasonable solution would be to disallow moderators from changing the protection level after creating a sub (but allowing it by petitioning the admins).
historically speaking, some subs have gone private short term simply to control some crazy amounts of spam or harassment. And there's many more instances where subs went restricted for a while. So this isn't the only feature of privating communities.
>not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.
No tools are ever designed for use in protest, so this is a circular argument. That's part of what a protest is.