I’ve seen some here openly despair that leaving reddit didn’t do anything.
Spez, CEO of Reddit and former mod of the r/jailbait subreddit losing his shit very publically for days proves otherwise.
…And it’s also a reminder that the reddit community we loved has already been destroyed by ownership, anyone returning would be returning to a shadow that disdains its own users and works to disempower them with every update. They’re even undeleting user’s deleted posts. If they can’t respect users enough to be able to delete their own content, why enrich them?
Back in the olden days of reddit, mods didn’t need to accept their position. So, it was a troll tactic to promote people to moderator of a controversial sub and then take a screenshot. I have no knowledge of spez’s moderating history, but I imagine this is the most likely scenario.
That may be what happened but Reddit management definitely knew about what was going on because they created a special “Pimp Daddy” trophy just for that one mod as a kind of public reward for his work. Reddit was complicit to some degree.
If I let a bunch of crackheads live in my house and endlessly defended their presence until I was forced by public pressure to reluctantly send them away the shit they got up to in the interim was at least partially my fault in my opinion.
Maybe. On the other hand, Reddit wouldn’t be the first major social media platform that got its start focusing on sexualization and sexual harassment if he was…
The real crime was how he didn’t do anything about it once he knew about it. Same with many other questionable subs, perhaps he enjoyed them or maybe he didn’t, but he sure tolerated them being around polluting the waters. They brought in traffic, aka money, and that’s all he cares about.
Even if the protest fails to produce capitulation from Reddit, it still effectively drove a fuckton of traffic into the Fediverse, which is a goal worth pursuing in itself. If corporations won’t comply, then building workable alternatives is option 2.
I really wish users, who are the only ones that bring real value to a site like Reddit, could vote out the CEO. I guess we are voting with our feet, but it’s a shame that we have to go through this stupid lather/rinse/repeat cycle with every user contribution site.
The implication here that the blackout was mods on a power trip when in my experience, most subreddits were already put to a vote, and the users voted for this.
Meh. “Fascism”? That tactic is used in politics all the time against most prominent leaders and groups, no matter where they come from. They’re both inept and totally powerful and Machiavellian.
It’s the whole thing about “will bear them with humor and ridicule” but also “look at their evil actions”.
A lot people here have been saying similar stuff. Dedicated mods being replaced by scabs isn’t gonna do any good for those communities…but maybe their degradation is a good thing.
Unless there is some kind of cooldown time (but even then), mods will constantly change…
Group A votes Mod B off and places Mod A there.
Group B doesn’t like that and votes Mod A off and places Mod B (or a similar) back.
The longer that goes on, the more users (and even Mods) will get annoyed and leave that sub. There will probably the be originalsub, splitsubA, splitsubB. All of these subs will be weaker than the originalsub was before.
So basically the same what we see in current politics. Instead of finding a solution together, it just creates larger gaps between the members.
It feels less like democracy but more like temporary dictatorship that oscillates between opinions.
A better solution would be to have multiple mods with different opinions finding consensus together. But that’s easier said than done…
I can already hear the voices of mods wishing him good luck moderating reddit on his own (in fact, I was certainly able to hear my own saying so before I de-listed myself as a mod).
I am impressed at how badly they are managing something that was initially merely “not the best idea” and now has become a true shitshow.
RIP reddit, you may very well survive this, but you’ll never again be “the front page of the Internet”.
Damn it. I already made my Revenge of The Sith Emperor’s speech joke on another post… oh well. I don’t have much of a snarky comment to make, this depressing and frustrating situation really speaks for itself, doesn’t it?
If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders
This comparison is so stupid; is spez gonna send me an ID or something? Will I need to hand Reddit my birth certificate or anything in order to keep using it and sign a contract with them or something? Where is that contract gonna be registered?
Anyone would be able to look for any place where there is a vote, then join the community, vote whatever they want and then casually walk away. Or you could follow all subreddits or a bunch of them that you want to influence (say any pro-ukrainian ones). Then you’d cast a vote to whoever you’d like and walk away.
It is almost like we can’t trust a for-profit owned social media site to have our interests as their first priority. I don’t know what this CEO is doing but it’s hard to see a bright future for Reddit in any case. Its too bad for the community but it is really too bad for those working there.
Really, it’s totally in the category “when you’re getting something for free, you’re not the audience, but rather the product.”
When people failed to buy in very deeply to the tchotchkes to “pay” for Reddit, it was the last gasp of any effort other than wholesaling the dataset to advertisers and anyone willing to pay for the content.
My break from Reddit wasn’t driven by any one single act, but rather the continued (and organized) sanitization of the Internet to appease conservative, Christian investors who make demands on the morality of the content of a site.
This whole thing is a shame and I still am going through a morning period about it. Reddit will persist in some diminished state. I can only hope the quality communities and people move here, and that Lemmy rapidly improves (though it is very usable now). The trends so far are good. The value of social media lies in the user base.
Let this be a lesson to all who produce and manage content (that’s us users and mods). Don’t use platforms that are destined to monetize your data at your expense.
Interesting that he mentions that CEOs can be removed by their shareholders, which is quite similar to how reddit currently works-mods can be removed by reddit itself. The “users voting mods out” analogue in the business world would be employees having to power to vote out and replace their CEOs.
Person with power: CEO::mod
Those who make money off of them: shareholders::reddit
Those who provide the content: workers::posters/commenters
End users: customers::advertisers
Sounds to me like spez just made a pretty compelling aruguement that his employees should be able to vote him out!
There is a company in switzerland (i think?) that does it. So the employees vote on whos gonna be boss for the next year and whos gonna get hired and all that stuff, not just voting out.
I have seen a documentary about it and they all were VERY happy to work in that enrivonment
Funny. That is a feature I wanted for a long time. Question is how in the world will it be implemented. Probably going to pull another Elon and only allow Reddit premium members to vote. Kinda shows the blackout is working and he is trying to find a ‘good’ PR way to weasel his way out.
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Ah, so the blackout isn’t as “unsuccessful” as he wants people to believe it to be…
I’ve seen some here openly despair that leaving reddit didn’t do anything.
Spez, CEO of Reddit and former mod of the r/jailbait subreddit losing his shit very publically for days proves otherwise.
…And it’s also a reminder that the reddit community we loved has already been destroyed by ownership, anyone returning would be returning to a shadow that disdains its own users and works to disempower them with every update. They’re even undeleting user’s deleted posts. If they can’t respect users enough to be able to delete their own content, why enrich them?
Holy shit was he seriously a mod of that subreddit? Good lord…
Back in the olden days of reddit, mods didn’t need to accept their position. So, it was a troll tactic to promote people to moderator of a controversial sub and then take a screenshot. I have no knowledge of spez’s moderating history, but I imagine this is the most likely scenario.
That may be what happened but Reddit management definitely knew about what was going on because they created a special “Pimp Daddy” trophy just for that one mod as a kind of public reward for his work. Reddit was complicit to some degree.
If I let a bunch of crackheads live in my house and endlessly defended their presence until I was forced by public pressure to reluctantly send them away the shit they got up to in the interim was at least partially my fault in my opinion.
Maybe. On the other hand, Reddit wouldn’t be the first major social media platform that got its start focusing on sexualization and sexual harassment if he was…
The real crime was how he didn’t do anything about it once he knew about it. Same with many other questionable subs, perhaps he enjoyed them or maybe he didn’t, but he sure tolerated them being around polluting the waters. They brought in traffic, aka money, and that’s all he cares about.
Even if the protest fails to produce capitulation from Reddit, it still effectively drove a fuckton of traffic into the Fediverse, which is a goal worth pursuing in itself. If corporations won’t comply, then building workable alternatives is option 2.
I really wish users, who are the only ones that bring real value to a site like Reddit, could vote out the CEO. I guess we are voting with our feet, but it’s a shame that we have to go through this stupid lather/rinse/repeat cycle with every user contribution site.
reddit is the means of production, but all of the value produced comes from the users, who are unremunerated
well maybe not - if we move to not-for-profit platforms, there’s no enshittification cycle.
The implication here that the blackout was mods on a power trip when in my experience, most subreddits were already put to a vote, and the users voted for this.
Not for nothing, but a key feature of fascism is that you’re “enemy” is both weak and strong at the same time.
So the blackout is not a big deal AND the mods coordinating the blackout are too powerful…
ACAB - All CEOs Are Bastards
Meh. “Fascism”? That tactic is used in politics all the time against most prominent leaders and groups, no matter where they come from. They’re both inept and totally powerful and Machiavellian.
It’s the whole thing about “will bear them with humor and ridicule” but also “look at their evil actions”.
A fascist tactic that is used in politics all the time.
My point is that I don’t know what’s specifically “fascist” about it if virtually everyone uses it.
“Fascist” is an adjective. Like “green.”
A bad example: l don’t know what’s specifically green about it if virtually all plants look that way.
Everyone is using a fascist tactic. It doesn’t become a benevolent tactic because everyone uses it. It’s still fascist.
Edit: here is one of the better known essays on fascism, which might be of more use than my clumsy attempt https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html. Humans have been rollicking around brutalizing each other since before we climbed down out of the trees, and using fascist tactics long before we had a word for it.
So what will happen is that mods who enforce unpopular rules in a subreddit, such as “no NSFW”, will get voted out. This can’t possibly go wrong. /s
A lot people here have been saying similar stuff. Dedicated mods being replaced by scabs isn’t gonna do any good for those communities…but maybe their degradation is a good thing.
Unless there is some kind of cooldown time (but even then), mods will constantly change…
Group A votes Mod B off and places Mod A there. Group B doesn’t like that and votes Mod A off and places Mod B (or a similar) back.
The longer that goes on, the more users (and even Mods) will get annoyed and leave that sub. There will probably the be originalsub, splitsubA, splitsubB. All of these subs will be weaker than the originalsub was before.
So basically the same what we see in current politics. Instead of finding a solution together, it just creates larger gaps between the members.
It feels less like democracy but more like temporary dictatorship that oscillates between opinions.
A better solution would be to have multiple mods with different opinions finding consensus together. But that’s easier said than done…
@AllonzeeLV at this point mods who are staying on Reddit are just prisoners waiting to get castrated
I can already hear the voices of mods wishing him good luck moderating reddit on his own (in fact, I was certainly able to hear my own saying so before I de-listed myself as a mod).
I am impressed at how badly they are managing something that was initially merely “not the best idea” and now has become a true shitshow.
RIP reddit, you may very well survive this, but you’ll never again be “the front page of the Internet”.
Damn it. I already made my Revenge of The Sith Emperor’s speech joke on another post… oh well. I don’t have much of a snarky comment to make, this depressing and frustrating situation really speaks for itself, doesn’t it?
@AllonzeeLV
This comparison is so stupid; is spez gonna send me an ID or something? Will I need to hand Reddit my birth certificate or anything in order to keep using it and sign a contract with them or something? Where is that contract gonna be registered?
Anyone would be able to look for any place where there is a vote, then join the community, vote whatever they want and then casually walk away. Or you could follow all subreddits or a bunch of them that you want to influence (say any pro-ukrainian ones). Then you’d cast a vote to whoever you’d like and walk away.
It’s so ridiculous!
It is almost like we can’t trust a for-profit owned social media site to have our interests as their first priority. I don’t know what this CEO is doing but it’s hard to see a bright future for Reddit in any case. Its too bad for the community but it is really too bad for those working there.
Really, it’s totally in the category “when you’re getting something for free, you’re not the audience, but rather the product.”
When people failed to buy in very deeply to the tchotchkes to “pay” for Reddit, it was the last gasp of any effort other than wholesaling the dataset to advertisers and anyone willing to pay for the content.
My break from Reddit wasn’t driven by any one single act, but rather the continued (and organized) sanitization of the Internet to appease conservative, Christian investors who make demands on the morality of the content of a site.
This whole thing is a shame and I still am going through a morning period about it. Reddit will persist in some diminished state. I can only hope the quality communities and people move here, and that Lemmy rapidly improves (though it is very usable now). The trends so far are good. The value of social media lies in the user base.
Let this be a lesson to all who produce and manage content (that’s us users and mods). Don’t use platforms that are destined to monetize your data at your expense.
Interesting that he mentions that CEOs can be removed by their shareholders, which is quite similar to how reddit currently works-mods can be removed by reddit itself. The “users voting mods out” analogue in the business world would be employees having to power to vote out and replace their CEOs.
Person with power: CEO::mod
Those who make money off of them: shareholders::reddit
Those who provide the content: workers::posters/commenters
End users: customers::advertisers
Sounds to me like spez just made a pretty compelling aruguement that his employees should be able to vote him out!
*edited for formatting
I adore the way you think, sincerely. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world, where employees could vote management/leadership out of their positions?
What a fantastic idea.
Again, sincerely, no sarcasm!
There is a company in switzerland (i think?) that does it. So the employees vote on whos gonna be boss for the next year and whos gonna get hired and all that stuff, not just voting out.
I have seen a documentary about it and they all were VERY happy to work in that enrivonment
Funny. That is a feature I wanted for a long time. Question is how in the world will it be implemented. Probably going to pull another Elon and only allow Reddit premium members to vote. Kinda shows the blackout is working and he is trying to find a ‘good’ PR way to weasel his way out.
blowing up their site expected with people being friends with elon musk