this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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That’s a recent quote from Reddit’s VP of community, Laura Nestler. Here’s more of it: This week, Reddit has been telling protesting moderators that if they keep their communities private, the company will take action against them. Any actions could happen as soon as this afternoon.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (10 children)

Reddit will die off in stages. Slowly.

First the power users are leaving now. These are the mods and the major content creators (think Minecraft leaving)

Eventually they will piss people off again and the more common content creators will leave.

Then after reddit has worse and worse content, the users who just comment will leave.

After that there will be nothing worthwhile for the lurkers and they will leave too.

Reddit will then be a wasteland.

This will all take quite a while. Even Digg took time to die off.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (18 children)

I think the growth of Lemmy over the last few weeks is a clear indicator that Reddit is in decline. I have deleted Apollo and my reddit bookmark and have only gone back when a Google search provided the information I needed. I won't be going back and I think a lot of people are of the same mind.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As a person who really gets stuck in his ways and hates having to change things if I don't have to, here I am on Lemmy. I'm ready to settle in.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah Digg didn’t die in a day. It takes time. I joined lemmy today, but I looked into it a few weeks ago first. It wasn’t worth the effort then, it is now. Having an Apollo-like app is a big help too.

Every previous major exodus had the problem that it was the people everyone was better off without leaving. Maybe you hated Reddit in 2015 and were pissed at their decisions, but the alternative was a place dedicated to mocking fat people and saying slurs.

Comparatively lemmy just kinda has a similar vibe to Reddit. Like I need to look for equivalents to some spaces I miss, but it’s not the people we said good riddance to

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's been fascinating to watch the corporate web ecosystem that rose in the late 2000s slowly start to collapse.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 years ago (3 children)

After being a Lemmy lurker for a few weeks, I submitted a request for an account on an instance that manually approves accounts earlier this week. Just checked and confirmed that my account was approved. This was based on calls for engagement to help grow the community. While I've been here for a bit, here's my first participation. Ayo!

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 years ago (1 children)

“That’s why we’ve spent the past few weeks threatening and strong arming them. Now please, shut up and get back to work.”

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

Also: we're still not going to pay you, but treat you worse. And if you quit, and the people after you keep quitting... we're going to have to replace you with PAID moderators... and if you play your cards right and we forget who you are, you might be one of those paid mods, so uh... shut up and get back to work for free!

[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Reddit CEO calls unpaid moderators' concerns "noise"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOm_UKGyrZg

This is abusing volunteers. If there are 140,000 active subreddits and if 10% of the moderators hang up their aprons, then Reddit has 14,000 unmoderated subreddits. They can close the subreddits, pay someone to moderate, try to pawn them off on a new sucker, or have bots run the subreddits. The question is, in the meantime, will the spammers abuse Reddit like their mods are being abused by Reddit? Let Reddit deal with these problems. If you're a mod, why are you giving your time away for free to a company that doesn't care about you?

If you're a mod, I get that you care about your subreddit, but why waste your talent on someone who thinks your concerns are just noise?

The Minecraft Devs left Reddit:

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/minecraft-devs-leave-subreddit-due-to-controversial-reddit-changes/

Leave Reddit? To quote Din Djarin, "This is the way."

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

if 10% of the moderators hang up their aprons, then Reddit has 14,000 unmoderated subreddits

Not exactly. Most subs have more than 1 moderator.

[–] priapus 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Plus tons of mods moderate many subreddits. It'd be a much more complex statistic

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Moderators need to understand that Reddit doesn't care if you've been in charge of your /sub for 10 years. They have, can and will tell you how to run it. There's nothing for you to "negotiate." As far as Reddit management is concerned, it's "my way or the highway."

Part of ending a toxic relationship is figuring out that it's time to let go.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I love how their CEO believes - is absolutely convinced - that launching a crusade against his product's users and mods to be a winning strategy.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

I don't think he knows what he's doing.. in his mind he's running the last meter of the finish line to the IPO when all these "problems" are cropping up for "no reason" and he just wants to finish the race

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I love how their CEO believes - is absolutely convinced - that launching a crusade against his product ~~s users and mods~~ to be a winning strategy.

FTFY.

The users are the product being sold to the advertisers. Framed that way, it makes it even more clear how idiotic driving away users is.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (3 children)

If they’re that important then pay them.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (4 children)

One of the comments on the Verge article, that I agree with:

There's nothing wrong with the mods being volunteers. Reddit just needs to respect them (and the other users) more. In fact if the mods were paid employees there'd just be even less standing in the way of these administration deuchebag moves. And I think that if they were paid hires there'd be less assurance that the mods were truly interested in the subject matter of their subs - I'm just hypothesizing there. Anyway I don't think the volunteer model wasn't working. It's the admin layer outside the mods that's broken.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No one needs to pay them. Not being treated like garbage is sufficient.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (7 children)

If the company is treating you as an employee, they are required to pay you. There is precedent for this.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I completely understand Reddit wanting to be as profitable as possible, however it's the approach to the users, developers, and blatant lack of care, respect and transparency that got my back up - suspect a lot of people may be the same. Communities always move and change, no platform is too big to fail.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

All they had to do was allow Reddit premium users to access the site using third-party apps.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

The sad thing is that the masses that are still on Reddit at this point dgaf and will likely stay on Reddit forever. There's a real problem of Apathy in today's culture when people are just jonesing for their fix of daily content/memes, or at the very least nothing that disrupts the status quo. They don't give a fuck about "ideals" or what corporations do or farm from them so long as their instant gratification and daily intake of said content remains unchanged.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Reddit will REALLY be good when those apathetic users are all that's left to produce content and moderate subs! /s

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

People just need to change their attitude for how they interact with Reddit now. Gone are the days of good faith and honest interaction. I'll happily lurk and absorb content and provide no interaction back, not wasting my time curating / generating content for them anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

A lot of Mods might be looking at all the work they have put into their communities over the years and think "I can't leave all of this." Which at this point, given Reddit Corp's behavior, is a sunk cost fallacy.

It's time to jump ship, or learn to live with the new reality. Which is really the same as the old reality, the thin veneer of civility has just been stripped away. This is Capitalism and it always turns out this way. Just look at how many products have been ruined, because someone, somewhere decided they needed more money. Anyone familiar with Hasbro's heavy handedness with Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons knows what I am talking about.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Man i really hope Reddit dies and people move onto decentralized networks, in time I'm sure we can figure out how to index a decentralized network for search engines completely replacing Reddit.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Kinda sad but platforms come and go.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The only thing that makes me sad is we cannot take the years of knowledge stored in reddit with us. Some of those co tributors who posted valuable contributions are not active anymor or some has quietly passed away irl.

If reddit decides to wall their site, unviewable to non paid subscribers, then it will be like an end of a small scale civilization where poeple go back to basic living,

I hope in time we can rebuild the same kind of knowledge here.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

For me, the loss of AskHistorians was/is/will be the worst. There's so just much important knowledge there, they've changed how I see the world (and I assume that's true for others as well). I really hope they figure out a way to save some of that, but it won't be surprising if it just fades away... Just heart breaking.

I hope we can rebuild some things here, but AskHistorians definitely felt special.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

Verge should give up on Reddit like we all did. It's a waste of energy.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Damn right. The admins I've worked with over at Reddit understand this, but spez seems to think he can get out of this without causing an entire mass exodus... and just let his communities bleed off and die. The community team at reddit understands how important both the users and the mods are, why doesn't spez?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (5 children)

My theory is he's heard Musk brag about how he's made Twitter profitable, and only lost bots and scammers - the users and advertisers all came crawling back (without releasing numbers)

No way that's true, but every owner of social media seems to have paid attention. They want to believe it - there's growing pressure to turn a profit now, so when someone tells you "the users might get mad, but they'll come crawling back if you stand firm" they pay attention

It's pretty easy to convince someone of something so convenient

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

It seems like it's a common blind spot for all tech bro types, they have no idea how communities work, both online and IRL. That's also why they want to get rid of government.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

I take issue with the next part of the quote: “it’s a symbiotic relationship”. No, it is not. Reddit gets value from the moderators, but the community the moderators have on Reddit could be anywhere.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Digg still exists as of today. The lack of moderators and content creators will probably lead to a bot / meme / political agenda factory.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (17 children)

I'll never understand the people who are hell bent on trying to get reddit back. No matter what they won't have a say in anything that happens, own anything, or even have a voice. I'm glad people are finally moving to an open source alternative.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Anyone else read the headline in a Tommy Wiseau cadence?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

As soon as the threat was made all the mods should have quit. An unmoderated reddit would collapse in hours. It would have been glorious.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Reddit is going full Twitter and it's not going to end well for them.

They are going to lose a lot of good people and be much worse for ware over it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Reddit can't run without its moderators and it can't monetize without data. I encourage everyone who's defected to Lemmy from Reddit to wipe their old Reddit account using Redact. I just wiped my old account of 15 years worth of comments and post history.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I’d dare say that reddit cannot survive without its content!

https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite works great for backing up, then editing, then deleting your content from reddit.

I’ve used it on a few of my accounts and I’ve noticed the following:

  • You have to baby sit it as occasionally it’ll display an error box you have to click on.
  • You definitely have to run it a few times, across a few days, to catch everything.

It seems that (at least for my accounts, keep in mind) you have to edit the comment, then delete it. That way spez’ world of woe backs up the edit, not the comment.

EDIT: Oh! It’s a javascript that runs from the old site so it can be a bit funky at times. With macOS and Safari I’ve (as instructed) added the link to my bookmarks and sometimes I need to click it a couple of times before the UI comes up.

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