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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Every other day, I get over how mad I was about the whole spez thing, and just focus on bettering our community and Lemmy in general.
But then they do something again that immediately remind me how much of an asshole he is. Last week, it was them taking out the coins and awards. Now this week, it’s introducing r/Places like nothing happened and we’re all friends again. Fuck him.
I’ve been on Reddit quite some years, but don’t understand what the fuss about r/places is about. Would you mind explaining it to me?
It’s just a way to get a whole subreddit involved in an activity and compete against other subreddits in a goodhearted way that doesn’t involve brigading or anything. In theory, it’s fine. Doing it right now is absolutely tone-deaf.
Imo it is also a way to offset some of the losses of engagement they’ve been experiencing and show potential shareholders that they can still drive traffic instead of being driven by it.
Oh I have no doubt of that. They want to look better for their IPO and they look terrible right now.
Doing it right now is absolutely tone-deaf.
Its mandated fun. “Users, you have been agitated in the last weeks. We hereby strongly suggest you participate in this thing we have chosen in order for you to have fun again.”
Reddit becomes stale as it goes through the motions when trying to hand out the member berries.
The beatings will continue until morale improves vibes
Precisely. I just saw that you have to be on .new or the official app to participate. Oh well…
I see, thanks!
removed by mod
Yep, they’re still overwhelming scumbags on power trips.
deleted by creator
Very true
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.
I already had a very low opinion of unpaid internet janitors, but this made me think even less of them lol.
Enough sense to be angry but not enough to leave
Really. The linked thread has so much, “If you don’t do these x things, we’re going to be really upset.”
Come on. Cut the fucking cord.
Not the point. Some mods bad, some mods good, and without mods entirely online spaces would be full of crap.
Same here.
After the infamous AMA, I made a post in my subreddit basically saying “peace out, I’m off to Lemmy. Good luck, everyone.” Lucky for them, I’d set up a pretty robust automoderator over the years so that’s still taking care of the majority of the moderating tasks I’d imagine.
I visited that post today and saw over 500 comments, each one by a mod and each one of them angry. Why they’re still there, I have no idea.
Most won’t even consider changing their browsing habits due to the trouble involved in acclimating to anything new. There’s inertia.
I look at Reddit from time to time to check on the state etc but I deleted my account / comments etc … must say It is hard to break year long habits
I ended up deleting the reddit app from my phone homescreen and replaced it with Memmy. Once I subbed to a bunch of communities I’m interested in, I barely even notice I’m not on reddit anymore. I just go on, scroll and interact for about 20 minutes, and then I’m done.
I guess If you were used to using reddit for hours a day then it might be hard to find the same amount of content, but then also, maybe reddit is sending you a message to pick up a new hobby. I’ve gotten back into reading, and loving it.
This is just the start. Once Reddit IPOs and we hear how many tens of millions spez made off the backs of mods and power users, more will start to question why they are doing unpaid labor just to make spez rich. There is a fundamental problem with trying to make bank on volunteer labor, and we’re just starting to see it begin.
Spez will have his millions then and not care one jot about those who, post his big payday, “question why they are doing unpaid labor just to make spez rich”.
For him there will literally not have been any “fundamental problem with trying to make bank on volunteer labor” as he will have pulled it of and come out of it filthy rich. For any sucker that buys Reddit stock at the public IPO price, that will be different, but Spez himself wil have won.
So the only way to actually punish him for his actions and deter other sociopaths from doing the same thing in the future is to damage the brand well before any IPO.
He’ll still have plenty of stock and CEOs get paid in stock options. But anyway, spez doesn’t have to care, my point was that Reddit mods will question and many will.
This is precisely why I quit. I’m still on reddit because the conversation volume on Lemmy is not yet high enough to keep me on top of a few select subjects I follow.
I only moderated one (significant) community - about 30k. All I really do is maintain the bot to control spam. But, I quit. I’m still there, I just refuse to do anything to make the experience any better than it is, and it will slowly degrade over time from my inaction.
Capitalism is great in that it creates great things. Capitalism sucks because it ultimately, inevitably destroys every great thing it creates.
I haven’t felt sorry for mods since the mods of a sub I’ll not mention decided to stop the protest after some of them got banned, because “we don’t want the sub to fall into the hands of randoms”.
Spineless behavior. Just move and rebuild the community elsewhere. It has been more than a month and the ship has sailed. Even if Reddit decides to backpedal for now, they’ll try again in the future.
Totally they could just say “we are moving to X” and continue the work there. How hard is it? It’s time consuming but as a team it’s doable
.
You want to hear something fucked up? After nearly 10 years in Reddit, one day I suddenly started receiving daily death threats and HEAVY bot spamming on this tiny little sub I was moderating. So naturally I reached out to the mod support sub for help. Then this bot/spammer started flooding my post on their sub which actually felt great—they were getting a taste of what I had been dealing with. The post ended up with well over 500 comments from this piece of shit. So instead of help me out, you know what they did? They banned me from the mod support subreddit.
I had a conversation with one of the admins who basically told me they don’t care about death threats. Furthermore, this spammer had also admitted to murdering people. Again the admin didn’t care. Till the day I left they were unable to stop this one person from creating hundreds, maybe even thousands of accounts and spamming tons of people including myself. A billion dollar company can’t even control their own product. The bots literally own Reddit. Lol. Fuck them, all of them who stayed.
Here some proof: https://imgur.com/Hofqdh8 https://imgur.com/gallery/vJhZlwX
There was this guy, I think he called himself “killallwomen” with changing numbers. I received a death threat followed up by pictures of animal porn and gore. I actually didn’t care that much. I understand your concerns and nobody should have to deal with this kind of shit. But I got so many death threats on Reddit over the years. Death threats from nazis, death threats from conspiracy theorists, death threats from CCP slaves, death threats from russian bots, death threats from trumpian cultists, death threats from a guy who thought I want to punch him for some reason, death threats from incels, OH THE INCELS! There are so many of them on Reddit.
I couldn’t care even if I wanted. But not everyone feels the same and things I might find almost funny, could disturb others. So this killallwomen guy kept doing what he was doing and the counter got higher and higher. To the point he almost became a meme in some communities.
Did the admins care? Did they do anything to stop this behavior on their site? Of course they didn’t.
I wonder how many of the people on lemmy that bitched about getting banned on reddit, how its an an echo-chamber and how you’re not allowed to have a different opinion there, are believers in “alternate facts,” or spread misinformation, or are otherwise culpable for bad behavior. I once got banned from /r/TwoXChromosomes because I got insultingly personal in criticizing someone for their rabid misandry. But you know what? Even if that other redditor was in the wrong, so was I for a lack of civility. I messaged the mods, explained specifically what happened, what rule I broke, my intention to refrain from doing that in the future, etc. And I was unbanned. One person’s “echo chamber” is 10,000 people’s enjoyable space.
In the last month or two before the Great Migration, I started noticing a hard right shift all over reddit that seemed extremely suspicious. Comments expressing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments and other so-called “social conservative”/regressive comments getting tons of upvotes. On a scale I had never seen before with brigading etc. They’d eventually get downvoted into oblivion but what the hell was going on, I have no idea.
Elections are coming up. I remember the time around 2016. Nothing new under the sun.
They don’t even require email validation. I made dozens of burner accounts with the same email over the years. It’s wild. They are like actively against controlling the bots. It’s like Twitter, the bots inflate the numbers so they don’t want to go after them.
I want revenge.
I suggest you make a bot for that.
It crossed my mind. I know I could write some insidious code. Ultimately I don’t have time for that nonsense.
I agree, well said. Shame on Reddit for what it did, but shame on them for putting up with it.
I loved Reddit but it was slowly getting worse, then suddenly way worse. My time with Reddit died with Apollo.
Lemmy isn’t Reddit, but it definitely itches that scratch for me. Like fuck if I ever give Reddit any traffic myself anymore. Bridge burned, I have no problem walking away.
I think the reality isn’t that they’re hoping for a corporate turnaround, but rather that they don’t want to lose the power and control they have. I mean Reddit is a huge community and having control of that, I’m sure, can get to ones head. Enough to do it for free
Ive never felt sorry for them. My experience with them, the few times Ive needed to interact with them, is that they’re so absorbed into their power that they see themselves as infallible. They judged you as a wrong doer and there’s no way it was a mistake or inflexible interpretation of their own made up rules.
I was also a mod on Reddit, for about six years.
There are people as you describe. The rest of us hated them, too, because not only did we have the same grievances as normal users but, on top of that, they made all mods look bad by association and started (or perpetuated) a lot of the stereotypes users across the internet still have about internet mods.
Those people weren’t all mods, though. Even among those left at Reddit that won’t leave, I think a lot of mods just don’t care one way or the other and think they can keep moderating as they always have as the place starts to fracture. I think they’re wrong, which is why I left. Certainly all the worst powermods and terminally online folk won’t leave, for the reasons you do outline, but even now I don’t think it’s right to paint everyone with that broad a brush.
well put, I have also found a home here in the fediverse and I actually enjoy it more than reddit, I wish more mods would have done the same thing
I’ve never modded but have been on Reddit 15yrs 11mo as of the Apollo shutdown. At this point I’m in the 16yr club. It’s wild how badly they are acting toward mods.
Frankly I’m not a mod lover or hater, with the exception of AskHistory. It was so clear how the mods there truly made the community. Haters will say they had a heavy hand, but it kept the quality remarkably high.
I’m middle age so I’ve seen a full decade of forum shitposting and flamwars before Reddit even existed. The fact that Reddit can’t see the value of the community that build “their platform” is beyond tonedeaf, it’s just straight up arrogant.
I’m sure Reddit will stay far bigger than lemmy for a long time, but that’s fine. Maybe better. The old forums were microscopic by modern social media standards but in hindsight the conversations with active users were more real and not just some random username that might as well have been anon.
Jumped ship when Spez wasn’t caving to the protests. I was mostly a lurker on Reddit and posted a little but now with the state of our social media it’s better to get out and have a voice. And this place is nice
