Comment by tyingq
2 years ago
OCR of the notice screenshot:
"We are aware that you have chosen to close your community at this time. Mods have a right to take a break from moderating, or decide that you don't want to be a mod anymore. But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active.
Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection.
Our goal here is to ensure that existing mod teams establish a path forward to make sure your subreddit is available for the community that has made its home here. If you are willing to reopen and maintain the community, please take steps to begin that process. Many communities have chosen to go restricted for a period of time before becoming fully open, to avoid a flood of traffic.
If this community remains private, we will reach out soon with information on what next steps will take place."
I hate to say it. From a PR move this is a well crafted email. I can support and relate to the argument. If the moderators are so crucial to the subreddit that they’re in charge of, their loss (and possible movement to another platform) will reflect that as community members also move on. That’s the real protest. Instead closing subs felt a lot like burning down your own house.
It's a basic "divide et impera" - the first thing you do to break a strike is trying to delegitimize the leadership's mandate.
Sure, the PR of people who never browsed reddit
If you read a bit deeper with the context of how reddit has operated:
>Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation.
No, subreddits always belonged to mods, and users complaining about power modding has fallen on deaf ears.They never cared about moderator antics outside of a few specific instances across 15 years.
>Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust.
This makes it sound like moderators are voted in, or hired. No, it's literally a factor of who has been a moderator the longest. Without admin intervention or the user deleting their account, the head mod of r/pics would be some 16YO inactive account. If they came back they can boot off everyone. Sure Admins would fix it, but why does a mod have that power if they are merely "stewards"?
their tools don't reflect their words.
>Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection.
Yes, and taking away 3rd party apps definitely definitely helps that reliance. Making the mobile website an unusable ad to the app helps that reliance. I'm sure one day old reddit will be gone and RES will be non-functional and they will send a similar message.
>Our goal here is to ensure that existing mod teams establish a path forward to make sure your subreddit is available for the community that has made its home here.
And that comes to today's topic: is some small subreddit really worth threatening? I've heard other subs as small as 20 subs getting this message. There is no real "community", and I'm guessing such a move will simply make a small sub unmoderated, and then banned as part of the global rules. Why does Reddit care about such small guppies?
This is one of the most important points IMO that does not seem to be on people's minds. Just because you were the first person to think of making a subreddit about some topic doesn't mean you should perpetually have the power to unilaterally make decisions about the community, its users, and its content.
I am happy this API drama has run the gamut and is now tackling what has always been the true issue head-on: anonymous, first-come first-serve moderators of user communities. I have been on reddit for 15 years. These users have the loudest voice, have historically placed more importance on themselves than there actually is, and have an unhealthy amount of power over the content.
If you've ever been on the wrong side of a power-trip by a moderator, you know what I mean. It's super frustrating to be banned or silenced from a sub because one of the mods didn't like what you said. Here I am, one of thousands of like-minded users wanting to participate in a sub about some topic, but my ability to do so is totally at the whim of this anonymous person who is just another user like me but doesn't have to answer to anyone.
We see time and time again that this power gets into the head of many moderators and they begin to exert personal control over the community. Mod drama on reddit is a taint. "But not all mods are like that." Yes they are, on long timescales. Generalization is useful. Many commenters, here included, miss the big picture. APIs/tools/UI will come and go. Reddit has a large cultural moat and that is a fact. Nitpicking details is petty.
In the context of an upcoming potential IPO, it makes sense for reddit to do the following:
Standardize the subreddits, the rules and terms of use, and consolidate control. Make the reddit experience predictable, not wildly variant at the whims of a handful of mods who control a vastly disproportionate amount of subreddits and content. Replacing mods with AI filters is a prime use case.
I will also look forward to a clampdown on nsfw subreddits. Sexuality is kryptonite to the stock market. And good riddance. Every time I start typing a word on the subreddit search, like 5 different variations of a nsfw sub for that word come up. It's frankly gross. An idea floating around is to jettison the nsfw subs into a separate business that can compete with OF. This is a fine idea.
spez gets a lot of shit for what he says, but at least he's putting his face and name next to his words and taking ownership of them. I don't see any mods or supporters of this 'protest' posting with their name and face. Tells you all you need to know.
This whole situation has been a giant rugpull from under users' feet. Users shouldn't have to worry about Reddit's IPO. They signed on to a platform with expectations that there was some autonomy with administering individual forums. That they could use their third party client. This all makes sense if all you care about is money and ignore what reddit was for the past 15 years.
This isn't about just moderators. There are a lot of people that are moving on simply because of the implication of having to use Reddit's own app. It's not out of spite like you seem to be painting this as, it's because Reddit has historically made terrible software and have relied on the very same people that gives them most of their value to even make "their" content browsable.
And no, spez isn't the only person putting his name next to his arguments - the Apollo developer he defamed also was.
Yup, this has been building up for a while. So many asked for features never realized. So many adjustments to be made to address some of the very things the above poster is complaining about (power tripping mods, mods not controlling an entire sub because they created it) fell on deaf ears for over a decade. Removing the few key personnel who did work to actually help out the moderators.
They've been user hostile for a very very long time. This isn't just about 3rd party apps profiting. This is the culmination of ignoring the user until they want to profit off of them. Shocker they aren't seeing eye to eye this time, time 1000th.
>Just because you were the first person to think of making a subreddit about some topic doesn't mean you should perpetually have the power to unilaterally make decisions about the community, its users, and its content.
Then why did reddit make modding hierarchies based on who has been the moderator the longest? They've had a half dozen issues where this happened and provided no changes to help alleviate this supposed antipattern.
>If you've ever been on the wrong side of a power-trip by a moderator, you know what I mean.
yea. And I think we both know what happened. You appeal to admins and admins do nothing. I'm sure some people can retrieve admin messages that say something to the tune of "it's the mod's community they can do what they want. Make your own".
So yea, I find it hypocritical and manupulative when suddenly the admins care about "community and belonging". You didn't care until it bit you in the ass. Again. This isn't the first time and at this point it's their fault they didn't change the rules in time for this.
>I will also look forward to a clampdown on nsfw subreddits. Sexuality is kryptonite to the stock market. And good riddance.
I look to it forward to Tumblr 2.0 as well. No faster way to kill a site that relied on porn to drive traffic than to suddenly take it away. They want to ride that easy train until it becomes difficult, and then drop it and expect everything to go on as planned. I don't think it matters how you feel about porn here, this is just a nasty tactic.
>but at least he's putting his face and name next to his words and taking ownership of them.
He's going public and being paid some X million dollars. Mods aren't.