I think it’s funny that in response to this people are STILL insisting that it’s easy to find new mods. TIHI, interestingasfuck, and shittylifeprotips have been closed for over a week because they have no mods. Before TIHI mods got banned, they offered multiple users complaining the option to take over moderating the sub and they said no.
How does any of this point to it being easy to replace mods? Delusional
In for a penny, in for a pound I guess.
I didn’t think Spez would literally drive his platform to ashes, I thought there was a middle ground, but nope he is going straight to the logical conclusion to all this.
TIHI was a fairly large sub, with almost multimilion level of subscribers. If reddit wanted to increase traffic and get more eyes on ads, they’re doing quite a terrible job of it so far.
Once you have enough of it to live a comfortable life, money just becomes about power. So, what we have is some spoiled rich asshole who is used to having influence and power being shown that most of that was a gift. That gift has been recinded, and so the only control he has left is money.
He’s spending some of Reddit’s current and future earnings on stepping on necks. Because that’s what the cash was going to be used for, in one way or another, anyway.
Reddit’s stance has just been so bizarre.
So they want people to pay to not see ads? They literally sell that as a product, Reddit Premium. Why not tie API access to premium subscriptions? It’s not even unprecedented; Spotify does this.
This is literally the only reason I would pay for Premium access.
If they had come out of the gate with that being the change, I would probably have paid for Reddit premium. Now though, not a chance.
Being a cheapass, I would probably have made the switch to using their horrid app. But, it would have been my own decision to be a cheapass so I would’ve been fine using it.
I can understand that line of thinking. In this instance, I think I’m w/ @bionicjoey on this one. If it was a choice of use their app or pay, I’d have paid. I refused to use New Reddit on the PC. I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that’s ok. Their choice and all that.
I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that’s ok. Their choice and all that.
IMO this is the reason why boycotts don’t really work in the age of the Internet. It seems like there are just so many people with access and either too apathetic to try and make change or are simply just ignorant to the situation, whatever it may be.
I’m so fucking tired of this line. Redefine success and you’ll find most boycotts are actually quite successful - if you include every individual who changes their habits as a success. It took almost 20 fuckin years to get reddit to where it is, to think it was gonna burn in a day is foolish. The fall of Rome (I know I’m being hyperbolic) took what, 250 years?
boycotts have always been very difficult to pull off and fail virtually every time.
For pros and cons a good place to start is Rules for Radicals, published in 1971 by the great community organizer Saul Alinsky. He has many stories to illustrate but in summary writes regarding boycotts:
Once the battle is joined and a tactic is employed, it is important that the conflict not be carried on over too long a time. …There are many reasons of human experience arguing for this point. I cannot repeat too often that a conflict that drags on too long becomes a drag. The same universality applies for a tactic or for any other specific action.
Among the reasons is the simple fact that human beings can sustain an interest in a particular subject only over a limited period of time. The concentration, the emotional fervor, even the physical energy, a particular experience that is exciting, challenging, and inviting, can last just so long — this is true of the gamut of human behavior, from sex to conflict. After a period of time it becomes monotonous, repetitive, an emotional treadmill, and worse than anything else a bore. From the moment the tactician engages in conflict, his enemy is time.
BTW Alinsky (b.1909) wrote this book to try to stop baby boomers from being dumb and fouling everything up. I am not a huge fan of the intergenerational model of class conflict but I think it is interesting.
It’s not about the ads. It’s about the telemetry you can get on user behavior from a mobile app. Reddit wants to leverage that as part of its ad sales package.
At this point, it’s not about what is logical or sensible. Huffman would rather burn the place down than admit he was wrong.
So what was TIHI anyway?
TIHI stood for Thanks, I Hate It. I never browsed but figure it was a meme sub on things to dislike.
It was more than a sub to meme on things you/to dislike, it was more like Oh Gosh Why Would This Exist Thanks I Hate It!
Have you ever imagined a bird with teeth? What about a gif of a needle going into an eye? Or maybe a nice chocolate milkshake in a butt-oriented sex toy.
Why do these things exist? Thanks, I hate it.
Thanks I hate this comment and the images you put into my head. Excellent description
I’m sorry, you’re welcome.
I appreciate it exists, or at least used to, but that is definitely a sub I would have avoided if I knew it existed.
It had occasionally funny posts, more worth checking once every few months for a laugh rather than being subscribed to.
To all the folks saying that reddit couldn’t replace the mods, that it was too big an effort, that they couldn’t run a big sub all by themselves, I have only one thing to say to you.
You were right.
Thanks, I hate being right.
Ever since Victoria got sacked, reddit doesn’t seem to have anyone competent enough to run community relation anymore. They probably can’t figure out how to vet new mods if they were to hire some.
I’m sure users will step forward if they care. Otherwise, it’s just a campaign optimization at work. Limit the breadth of organic content to deepen the brand-friendly content and push more paid media into the feed.
Yes they most definitely will…but increasingly such things likely will not happen on the Reddit platform, moving forward. There are actual reasons that the mods left - e.g. to moderate a sub of millions of subscribers takes effort, which needs tools to make that happen - and those reasons still exist.
I’m sure users will step forward if they care.
This is the part I didn’t quite get. Like I am sure that there were users who requested this sub in r/redditrequest after r/TIHI became unmoderated.
For some reason I don’t understand, these requests did not pan out and it ended up getting shut down instead.
At the very least, users stepping forward doesn’t seem to be enough on its own.
If I had to guess, there are too many users who would become appointed as moderators, then just shut down the subreddit again. The admins need time to filter through the applications to find the genuine bootlickers.
From the one time I tried requesting a sub there, they don’t just let someone have a sub if they ask and it’d be banned otherwise, they probably won’t give it to you if you don’t have mod experience for example (the reason I didn’t get the niche sub I was trying to revive, which is reasonable enough), or if they feel that what experience you do have isn’t enough that you’d likely be able to handle the particular sub. TIHI is a big sub, so they’d not just be looking for any random volunteer, it’d have to be someone experienced with moderating sizable subs, probably. And those people are, well, exactly the kind of people angry with reddit right now.
Reddit gave the snackexchange subreddit to someone who had no mod experience and hadn’t participated in the sub for years. The person claims they didn’t even ask for the position and only asked for the head mod to be removed. Reddit removed the top mod and made the person top mod.
Reddit is really on their way to become the next facebook.
Thanks, I love it.
I personally never browsed TIHI. It was always one of those where linking it was more of a meme than actually browsing it in my mind. Similar to how a lot of people would comment “/r/unexpectedjohnmulaney” but very few people were actually subbed to /r/unexpectedjohnmulaney. Because who the heck wants a bunch of pictures of comments referencing John Mulaney jokes in their feed? It’s the old “subreddits as hashtags” bit.
All that being said, it sucks because I know TIHI actually had more of a community than most “hashtaggy” subreddits. My understanding is it was a bit like a blend of ATBGE, MildlyInfuriating, CursedImages, or DIWhy.
Reddit is killing real communities, and killing their own history in the process. All those comments throughout the ages linking “/r/TIHI” now link to a dead sub. As much as I may have found those comments annoying, there were people out there who would click that link and go browse or maybe even subscribe to TIHI as a result of those comments.
The thing about TIHI, interestingasfuck, SLPT are that they regularly made r/all. Content hitting the front page means views for Reddit. So it’s less about the sub’s specific userbase, and more that those “main” subs have broad user appeal that brings people to Reddit in the first place.
And currently they’re all shuttered. Which means less content on r/all, which decreases the general audience appeal of Reddit.
Quality management 👍
It’s only a matter of time until more subs start meeting the same fate. I’m glad to have found a new platform to move to. After reading the posts from the Apollo dev, it seemed like the writing was on the wall about Reddit
This is what “to cut off your nose to spite your face” means. To the letter.
So having all the mods quit is actually a viable way to protest? (writes down notes)
I thought they would just take over or replace the mod list. Guess I was wrong
And who are they going to have take over mod responsibilities (for free) in all of these communities at once? This is why mods need to call their bluff and force them to try to replace them.
Saw someone complaining about the protest in a thread where the top mod was offering up the sub to whoever wanted it. I suggested they (person complaining) go ahead and step up and ask to be a mod. They replied something like, “I don’t wanna be an E-jannie…[blah blah].”
These people assume that there’s plenty of other people who will step-up and take over. We’ll see I guess.
Whenever people say “Somebody should do something!” they very rarely ever add “and the somebody is me”
Fucking dumb to force them to reopen and then when mods say fuckit ban the sub. This is some bad parenting.
But I thought millions of people depended on the communities involved and that’s why they had to reopen.
Doesn’t banning the community just fully go against their stated reasoning?
We are under no obligation to pretend that’s not a tissue-paper thin disguise for getting the moderators to act how Reddit wants here.
Yeah this is the dumbest move possible. I can only assume they’re trying to scare other mods into alignment because they can’t replace the moderators effectively. Well, I’ll cheers to their stupidity!
