Reddit goes dark

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Mr Bean
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Reddit goes dark

Post by Mr Bean »

For those of you in the unaware, popular social media site Reddit has decided that the thing to do before going public is piss off their userbase and kill all 3rd Party apps. Despite Reddit tale of success directly being based off Digg.com pissing of it's userbase it can't happen twice can it they say as they prepare to go for an IPO.

More from Engaget
Engaget wrote:The Reddit community’s mass protest over the company’s controversial API changes has started. Thousands of subreddits have “gone dark,” setting their communities private and making their content inaccessible to anyone not already subscribed.

Some of the site’s most popular subreddits, including r/Music, r/funny, r/aww and r/todayilearned — each of which has millions of followers — have joined the effort, along with thousands of other communities. The movement has grown significantly in the last few days following CEO Steve Huffman’s AMA with users in which he defended the new policies, which will result in popular third-party apps like RIF and Apollo shutting down for good.

As of last week, the number of participating subreddits was just over 3,000. But by Monday morning, the number had climbed to more than 6,200 communities, according to a Twitch stream tracking the protest. With the blackout, participating subreddits have posted brief messages alerting users that they are protesting the company’s planned API changes. Most have committed to a 48-hour blackout, but at least 60 subreddits say they plan to protest “indefinitely” until the company walks back its changes. Many are also urging users not to browse Reddit at all. Some have also set up Discord servers to encourage subscribers to stay off of Reddit.

The backlash against the company’s new API policy kicked off after Christian Selig, the developer behind Reddit client app Apollo, shared that Reddit’s new pricing would cost him as much as $20 million a year to keep his app going. The company further angered Apollo fans by claiming that Selig had “threatened” the company, which the developer promptly refuted with an audio clip of a phone call with a Reddit employee. Huffman then doubled down on the criticism in his AMA last week.

“As the subreddit blackout begins, I wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to the Reddit community and everyone standing up,” Selig wrote in a post on Twitter. “Let's hope Reddit listens.”

Reddit’s users aren’t only upset about the company’s treatment of Selig and Apollo, though, They are also frustrated with losing moderation and accessibility features only available via third-party apps. In a message to users, moderators of r/blind said the native Reddit app was so lacking in accessibility that a sighted user had to switch the subreddit private.

If Reddit was a restaurant third party apps are franchises. We can get a burger from Reddit directly or from a franchise. The official Reddit location is at the top of a cliff. Disabled people can't get there. Reddit is charging franchise fees so high nobody else can afford to offer burgers. We, with thousands of other subreddits, have gone dark for 48 hours. We will be back on June 14. Our Discord server remains open. Thank you for understanding; app so bad, vision required to go dark

Reddit’s moderators — who are often quick to point out that they are unpaid volunteers — shared similar. “In many cases these apps offer superior mod tools, customization, streamlined interfaces, and other quality of life improvements that the official app does not offer,” moderators wrote in an open letter. “The potential loss of these services due to the pricing change would significantly impact our ability to moderate efficiently, thus negatively affecting the experience for users in our communities and for us as mods and users ourselves.”

For now, it's unclear whether the protest will be able to influence Reddit's leaders. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but has previously defended the new API policy, citing the rise of generative AI companies taking advantage of its data. “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” Huffman said last week in his AMA.


You can track the progress here to see which Subreddit are still active and which have gone dark.

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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by EnterpriseSovereign »

Well that explains why I wasn't able to view the Far Cry one when I Googled the weapons for 6.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Solauren »

Interesting.

Now, the question is - what effect does this have on their traffic? Yes, several thousand subreddits are down. Okay. But, how many users have left?
I've been asked why I still follow a few of the people I know on Facebook with 'interesting political habits and view points'.

It's so when they comment on or approve of something, I know what pages to block/what not to vote for.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Rogue 9 »

And yet we endure. :D
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by bilateralrope »

API pricing protests caused Reddit to crash for 3 hours
Thousands of subreddits going dark broke Reddit's website, mobile app.
SCHARON HARDING - 6/13/2023, 9:20 AM



It took less than 11 hours for Reddit to feel the impact of widespread protests of its API fees. Over 7,000 subreddits became private in order to "go dark" and resist Reddit's controversial API pricing hike, which caused some instability for the site, and it was down from about 10:25 am ET to 1:26 pm today.

Amid the outage, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt told The Verge:
A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue.
As of this writing, 7,856 subreddits have joined the protest, according to a counter on Twitch, and 8,191 have said they will do so. Some of the subreddits going dark have tens of millions of subscribers. But with the outage, the protests have already affected users who don't use a protesting subreddit.

During the outage, I couldn't use Reddit's site, which showed a main feed with the note, "Something went wrong. Just don’t panic" and a pop-up saying, "Sorry, we couldn’t load posts for this page.” TechCrunch reported that users couldn't view threads on Reddit's app either. According to The Verge, "some" subreddits loaded during this time. There were 45,887 reports of outages at the problem's peak, per Downdetector.

Thousands of subreddits unified in going private or read-only starting June 12 (some began their protests earlier, though, and some say they'll protest indefinitely) through June 14 to revolt against how much Reddit will charge to access its API, which used to be free. Some believe the changes announced in April are an intentional death knell for third-party Reddit apps, similar to how Twitter virtually eliminated third-party apps with its API price hike in February.

iOS app Apollo, which set the controversy into overdrive when it said the new pricing scheme would require it to pay $20 million a year to keep functioning, said it would shutter on June 30. Apollo is the most popular third-party Reddit app and not the only one preparing for the end.

And while the three-hour outage may feel like a win for the little guy, Reddit has yet to show any signs of relenting.

In an uncomfortable Q&A on the matter on Friday ahead of the protests, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman was unyielding on pricing, saying in his initial post that "Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use."

"We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable," Huffman responded when asked about concerns "that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement."

Reddit is giving a free pass to apps that "address accessibility needs," Rathschmidt told The Verge last week, and some, like RedReader and Dystopia, confirmed receiving exemptions.
But beyond that, Reddit has insisted it should be "fairly paid" to support third-party apps. The company seems to be on a quest for cash, which included reported layoffs and hiring freezes last week. Reddit filed for an initial public offering in late 2021, and The Information reported in February that it wants to go public this year.

Reddit denied trying to end third-party apps, but skepticism persists, especially considering the pricing scheme. Reddit will charge $0.24 per 1,000 requests or $12,000 for 50 million. For comparison, Imgur charges $500 per month for 7.5 million requests per month or $10,000 monthly for 150 million requests per month, and Twitter charges $42,000 for 50 million tweets.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.
I wonder how much this outage cost them.

As for wanting to be "fairly paid" for third party apps, how do the fees compare to the advertising revenue Reddit loses from not being able to server ads through the API ?
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Mr Bean »

So latest update
The Verge
The Verge wrote:In an internal memo sent Monday afternoon to Reddit staff, CEO Steve Huffman addressed the recent blowback directed at the company, telling employees to block out the “noise” and that the ongoing blackout of thousands of subreddits will eventually pass.

The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, is in response to popular subreddits going dark this week in protest of the company’s increased API pricing for third-party apps. Some of the most popular Reddit clients say the bill for keeping their apps up and running could cost them millions of dollars a year. More than 8,000 Reddit communities have gone dark in protest, and while many plan to open up again on Wednesday, some have said they’ll stay private indefinitely until Reddit makes changes.

Huffman says the blackout hasn’t had “significant revenue impact” and that the company anticipates that many of the subreddits will come back online by Wednesday. “There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well,” the memo reads. “We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.”

Huffman also warns employees about wearing Reddit items in public, saying the anger directed at the API pricing changes could make them “the object of [users’] frustrations.”

Are you a current or former Reddit employee? I’d love to hear from you. Contact me at mia@theverge.com, and I’ll share my Signal.

Reddit first announced it would be changing its API pricing in April, positioning the changes as a way to make money from companies using Reddit data to train artificial intelligence tools. But over the last couple weeks, it’s become clear that changes could come at a major price to third-party app developers, too, and the makers of apps like Apollo for Reddit and rif is fun for Reddit have announced that they will have to shut down on June 30th — one day before the new pricing is supposed to go into effect. Outraged users organized the widespread subreddit blackouts, which briefly crashed the site on Monday.

Read the full internal memo from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman below:

Hi Snoos,

Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we’ll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.
So official response is lets just ride it out and ignore them, naturally with this memo leaking over at /Modcoord a subreddit the thousands of subreddit mods are using to coordinate various things people are starting to post about Reddit alternatives including Kbin, squabbles a few others which have seen massive (1000% + ) traffic increases and people look for the next Reddit already.

It's still is amzing that Reddit who success came from Digg's failure seems convinced it can't happen to them. Your company history Chapter 1 is about another website pissing of it's userbase and them all leaving...

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Re: Reddit goes dark

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Reddit is shit and getting shitier.

Try Lemmy. It's an open source decentralised alternative.

Go to Join-Lemmy.org

Join Lemmy.World and get the Jerboa for Lemmy App.

See the Lemmy starting guide.

I have been mucking around with it and liking it.

Still early days and they are trying to upscale their various federated servers.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by bilateralrope »

Of the subreddits I visit that took part in this blackout, one is still private. The rest have polls on if they should go dark again, stay up, or go dark every tuesday.

That last one sounds most likely to keep the protest going in a meaningful way.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by LadyTevar »

bilateralrope wrote: 2023-06-14 12:29am Of the subreddits I visit that took part in this blackout, one is still private. The rest have polls on if they should go dark again, stay up, or go dark every tuesday.

That last one sounds most likely to keep the protest going in a meaningful way.
What about the rumors that Reddit Mods were being defrocked, and their reddits resurfacing without their knowledge or permission?
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by LadyTevar »

bilateralrope wrote: 2023-06-14 12:29am Of the subreddits I visit that took part in this blackout, one is still private. The rest have polls on if they should go dark again, stay up, or go dark every tuesday.

That last one sounds most likely to keep the protest going in a meaningful way.
What about the rumors that Reddit Mods were being defrocked, and their reddits resurfacing without their knowledge or permission?
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by bilateralrope »

LadyTevar wrote: 2023-06-14 08:51am
bilateralrope wrote: 2023-06-14 12:29am Of the subreddits I visit that took part in this blackout, one is still private. The rest have polls on if they should go dark again, stay up, or go dark every tuesday.

That last one sounds most likely to keep the protest going in a meaningful way.
What about the rumors that Reddit Mods were being defrocked, and their reddits resurfacing without their knowledge or permission?
I haven't heard those rumors.

Probably best to ignore them unless someone can name specific mods and subreddits where this happened. Then you have details to check.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by madd0c0t0r2 »

bilateralrope wrote: 2023-06-14 09:16am
LadyTevar wrote: 2023-06-14 08:51am
bilateralrope wrote: 2023-06-14 12:29am Of the subreddits I visit that took part in this blackout, one is still private. The rest have polls on if they should go dark again, stay up, or go dark every tuesday.

That last one sounds most likely to keep the protest going in a meaningful way.
What about the rumors that Reddit Mods were being defrocked, and their reddits resurfacing without their knowledge or permission?
I haven't heard those rumors.

Probably best to ignore them unless someone can name specific mods and subreddits where this happened. Then you have details to check.
My sub is dark (locked private) and remaining so. We set up three alt communities and posted links to about 20 more. Nothing coming down grapevine about defrocking yet
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by LadyTevar »

bilateralrope wrote: 2023-06-14 09:16am
LadyTevar wrote: 2023-06-14 08:51am
bilateralrope wrote: 2023-06-14 12:29am Of the subreddits I visit that took part in this blackout, one is still private. The rest have polls on if they should go dark again, stay up, or go dark every tuesday.

That last one sounds most likely to keep the protest going in a meaningful way.
What about the rumors that Reddit Mods were being defrocked, and their reddits resurfacing without their knowledge or permission?
I haven't heard those rumors.

Probably best to ignore them unless someone can name specific mods and subreddits where this happened. Then you have details to check.
I saw it on FB, so it's probably just a rumor then.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

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The reddit admins have threatened the moderators to take back the subreddits.

I don't think these guys actually use reddit and realise how much unpaid work the moderators do.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Formless »

The CEO is officially tonedeaf.
Business Insider wrote:Reddit CEO says the mods leading a punishing blackout are too powerful and he will change the site's rules to weaken them
  • Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says the site's mods are too powerful.
  • He said he planned to change the rules so users could vote them out of subbreddits.
  • He said Reddit's current system was "not democratic" and compared it to a "landed gentry."
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says the site's mods are too powerful. In an interview on Thursday, he told NBC that he planned to change the rules so users had the power to vote the moderators of subreddits out.

He said the current system — where mods can only be removed by themselves, higher-ranking mods, or Reddit itself — was "not democratic" and compared it to a "landed gentry."

"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," he told NBC. "And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic."

Huffman's comments followed a 48-hour blackout that close to 3,500 subreddits took part in on Monday and Tuesday to protest Reddit's new pricing policy.

Reddit implemented charges for third-party apps using its application-programming interface, or API, which used to be free.

The iOS app Apollo, for example, which has been using the API for eight years, said it would cost $20 million to continue under the new pricing guidelines. Rather than pay, the app's developer, Christian Selig, said it would be closing down on June 30, Ars Technica reported.

"I don't see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable," he said, per Ars Technica. "I hope it goes without saying that I don't have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card."

Reddit mods hold a lot of power, which many believe is earned from the amount of unpaid labor they put into the site. Researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Northwestern University estimated in a study last year that the number of hours worked by Reddit mods in 2020 was worth $3.4 million.

Huffman didn't appear worried that another rule change would result in more protests. He told NBC that it was "really important" to ensure "protests, now or in the future, are actually representative of their communities."

"And I think that may have been the case for many at the beginning of this week, but that's less and less the case as time goes on," he said, suggesting that the support for mods may be wavering.

While around 80% of subreddits are accessible again, some large ones, including r/aww, r/videos, and r/AskHistorians, remain inaccessible, and mods wrote in a recent post titled "The Fight Continues" that their "core concerns still aren't satisfied."

"Reddit has budged-microscopically," the organizers wrote. "Reddit has been silent since it began, and internal memos indicate that they think they can wait us out."

The Verge reported earlier this week that Huffman warned employees in an internal memo not to wear Reddit-branded clothing in public and wrote: "Some folks are really upset, and we don't want you to be the object of their frustrations."

"There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen," he added, per The Verge. "Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well."

Huffman told NBC that there was no set timeline for his proposed changes and said he wouldn't have paid Reddit staff to become more involved in subreddit moderation.

"What I'm suggesting as a pathway out is actually more democracy," he said. "We've got some old, legacy decisions on how communities are run that we need to kind of work our way out of."
Riiiiiiiight. Any CEO comparing others to "gentry" is rich with irony. When the Mods are literally not payed for what they do and you are payed a CEO's salary, you have no right to compare them to aristocrats, reality will soon show you that you cannot defrock thousands of mods without your site crumbling to dust. This is Elon Musk level of stupid arrogance.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by bilateralrope »

He gets stupider:

Reddit CEO praises Elon Musk’s cost-cutting as protests rock the platform
Steve Huffman said in an interview that Elon Musk's cost-cutting at Twitter was inspiring and that the two have chatted "a handful of times."

June 17, 2023, 7:51 AM NZST
By David Ingram


Twitter owner Elon Musk may have had an influence on Reddit’s CEO ahead of changes to the website that have resulted in a user-led rebellion on the platform.

In an interview Thursday with NBC News, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman praised Musk’s aggressive cost-cutting and layoffs at Twitter, and said he had chatted “a handful of times” with Musk on the subject of running an internet platform.

Huffman said he saw Musk’s handling of Twitter, which he purchased last year, as an example for Reddit to follow.

“Long story short, my takeaway from Twitter and Elon at Twitter is reaffirming that we can build a really good business in this space at our scale,” Huffman said.

“Now, they’ve taken the dramatic road,” he added, “and I guess I can’t sit here and say that we’re not either, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity here.”

Musk shocked Silicon Valley peers with his deep-cost cutting at Twitter and began his ownership of the company last fall by axing most of the company’s employees in a chaotic series of decisions that left some people doubting whether Twitter would be able to stay online.

Huffman is trying to turn Reddit profitable after decades as a money-losing website punching above its weight in internet culture.

This week, influential volunteer moderators who manage the communities that make up the site walled off large parts of Reddit, making them inaccessible to most users as part of their demonstration. The protest is a response to part of Huffman’s business plan, which includes potentially charging other tech companies large fees for access to Reddit data.

Huffman said there’s one concrete area where Musk’s example has been clear: job cuts. He said he had often wondered why Twitter under its previous management had struggled to be profitable on a consistent basis despite revenue in 2021 of $5.1 billion.

“As a company smaller than theirs, sub-$1 billion in revenue, I used to look at Twitter and say, ‘Well, why can’t they break even at 4 or 5 billion in revenue? What about their business do we not understand?’ Because I think we should be able to do that quite handsomely,” he said.

“And then I think one of the nonobvious things that Elon showed is what I was hoping would be true, which is: You can run a company with that many users in the ads business and break even with a lot fewer people,” Huffman said.

Musk ended up hiring some employees back, but corporate headcount has remained well below where it was before the acquisition. Musk has also imposed other severe cost-cutting measures, such as not paying some of Twitter’s bills including rent, leading to an eviction order in Colorado.

“They had to do some pretty violent changes and violent surgery to get there,” Huffman said.

It is not clear if Twitter is profitable because some advertisers have left, cutting into revenue, but Huffman said the lesson was on the other side of the ledger.

“People are talking about a lot of things on Twitter, but I think that’s the part that’s the most interesting from my point of view as a business person, is that there actually are good businesses at this scale,” he said.

Reddit’s recent layoffs have been far more modest than Twitter’s. The company said June 6 that it was laying off about 5% of its workforce, or 90 employees.

Huffman did not say how often the chats with Musk have taken place or where they’ve happened.

Twitter and Reddit are both headquartered in San Francisco, and the privately held companies both share Fidelity as an investor. Reddit is majority-owned by Advance Publications, the parent company of Conde Nast, according to CNBC.

Musk’s representatives at Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Huffman said that many ordinary people do not realize that there are “two classes of company” in the world of consumer-facing tech businesses: There’s internet heavies such as Google and Facebook, and then there are much smaller but still well-known companies such as Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit.

“From a user’s point of view, you’re like, ‘Oh, they’re just as big. They’re just as successful. You know, maybe a little less so,’” Huffman said.

“But you wouldn’t realize that it’s like a 20, 30x difference in revenue. And, you know, not really profitable — maybe a quarter here or there,” he said.

Twitter had $5 billion in revenue in 2021, the year before Musk’s acquisition. Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, reported revenue that year of $117.9 billion. Alphabet, the owner of Google, reported revenue that year of $257.6 billion.

Huffman said he has not adopted Musk’s thinking across the board.

“There’s a lot of other things where our platforms are just different — how they think about moderation versus us,” he said.

He didn’t cite examples. A Reddit spokesperson Friday declined to cite any specifics but said Reddit is different in multiple ways, including that ordinary users have the power to upvote and downvote posts.

One specific difference is their handling of former President Donald Trump and his supporters. While Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account, which prior management had suspended after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Reddit has kept in place its ban on the subreddit r/the_donald, a gathering spot for Trump’s supporters.

Elsewhere in the interview with NBC News, Huffman criticized the organizers of this week’s blackout, saying he wanted to pursue rules changes that would allow ordinary Reddit users to vote them out. He compared the long-tenured, difficult-to-oust moderators as “landed gentry,” and some moderators fear Huffman may force them out.
How does someone look at Twitter and think that it will end well ?

Especially with the EU Digital Services Act kicking in on August 25. Where major platforms will need to moderate content or face fines that are percentages of global revenue.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Broomstick »

It's CEO arrogance.

As Formless noted.

Huffman has somehow convinced himself - or is trying to frame the situation - as out of control moderators "taking over" Reddit when I think a substantial portion of the userbase are supportive of the protests. It's not just alt-right people and conspiracy theorists living in a bubble, executives can do so, too, living in an echo chamber of their own, limited viewpoints. This is a clumsy plundering of the company: "profit-driven until profits arrive". Um... I'm not convinced that's how it works in reality.

Huffman has forgotten it's the users' contributions in the form of posts that are the value here, and the value-generation behind his company. Sure, the advertisers are the ones sending money to Reddit but the advertisers are only there because the users are there to see the ads. The users can always go elsewhere. Reddit doesn't and can't control them. Huffman can't obligate anyone to use Reddit but he sure can discourage and drive them off.

Huffman doesn't like that third-parties can profit off Reddit? Guess what - the userbase of reddit might not like that he's making millions a year off their contributions, for which they are receiving no money whatsoever. And he wants to make even more money off them.

It may be that there are business models for internet communities that can't be made wildly profitable. There may be models that used to be viable and aren't any longer. I'm sure there used to be very fine companies making excellent buggy-whips, but that's no longer a viable business for the most part and what remains is a very tiny niche and I guarantee the owner of a buggy-whip making business today is not a millionaire.

We've got some high-level tech-bros operating out of a "if you build it, they will come" mindset. Musk, Zuckerberg and now Huffman are convinced that whatever they do the "user base" will shell out bucks, as if there aren't alternatives out there. And when the users don't come they look for a scapegoat - the unpaid moderators, "woke", whatever - rather than admit they, the CEO's, made a mistake. They misread the room.

And a lot of this comes from not listening. From surrounding themselves with yes-men and firing anyone who dares to do less than worship their, the CEO's, vision. Hell, I'm seeing this in my own company that is making what I think are some counter-productive decisions. And I believe a lot of it is driven form those at the top not wanting to share profits with those who actually do the daily work to make the business run, wanting to extract more and more without understanding that at some point people are going to notice that someone else is profiting from their work more than they are. Also, being unwilling to pay human beings to do some of the work of running a business (like moderation, or keeping a site safe and secure behind the scenes). Sorry, AI isn't there yet. ChatGPT is a very fun toy to play with, and it has some real uses, but it's not actually "intelligent". It doesn't understand anything it says which is why it generates some morally appalling results at times. It's not a human being and it doesn't understand human beings for all that it can sound like one.

Then there is the issue of pricing themselves out of the market: charge to much for advertising and suddenly people start buying ads elsewhere. Make it too expensive for the third parties to continue to exist, the ones that support and make your site more usable, and they go away. It's no different than a manufacturer squeezing their suppliers to the point said suppliers can no longer exist and >poof< they disappear. No company is an island. They need other companies and they need to deal with them equitably.

Huffman doesn't get that him, a CEO, calling unpaid moderators "landed gentry" is ironic to the point of being offensive. He's a king trying to enlist the support of the peasants (to extend the metaphor) against his barons but he doesn't grasp that the peasants have no reason to love him, either.

I am, on a certain level, sad to see the passing of companies like Twitter and Reddit, just as I'm sad that message boards such as this are fading away, but nothing lasts forever. I lived just fine before those things existed and should they disappear entirely I will live just fine. Huffman has forgotten the number one rule of business: you need your customers more than your customers need you. They can always go elsewhere, and if elsewhere doesn't exist yet there's always some fresh, new up-and-comer willing to take a chance and build it. People can live without Reddit, but Reddit can't exist without people who use it.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Lonestar »

Double post
Last edited by Lonestar on 2023-06-17 08:20am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Lonestar »

The subreddit I mod(lesscredibledefence) went dark and it extraordinary how many "let me be an approved admitter" modmail messages we're getting, and when you click on their accounts they all post on sinophile subreddits. It's really adding credibility to claims of rampant wumao warriorism in the subreddit, IMO.

As this weekend began we started getting more terse and threatening modmails. Jesus I think I'm going to say "keep it closed for forever" just on principle.

I remain un-sold on federated services. I started a Mastodon account when Musk took over bird app, and while I still frequent it, it seems clunky as hell.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
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Solauren
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by Solauren »

Would anyone want to start a Reddit, with the risk of the users voting them out?

WHat if the reddit was to post your own artwork or similar?
I've been asked why I still follow a few of the people I know on Facebook with 'interesting political habits and view points'.

It's so when they comment on or approve of something, I know what pages to block/what not to vote for.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by bobalot »

The moderators of /r/pics and /r/gifs (and there are more joining) have re-opened but only allow "sexy" pictures of John Oliver.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by bobalot »

Broomstick wrote: 2023-06-17 04:17am ...

I am, on a certain level, sad to see the passing of companies like Twitter and Reddit, just as I'm sad that message boards such as this are fading away, but nothing lasts forever. I lived just fine before those things existed and should they disappear entirely I will live just fine. Huffman has forgotten the number one rule of business: you need your customers more than your customers need you. They can always go elsewhere, and if elsewhere doesn't exist yet there's always some fresh, new up-and-comer willing to take a chance and build it. People can live without Reddit, but Reddit can't exist without people who use it.
I'm hoping the internet becomes less centralised again with many different message boards and people actually "surfing the internet" (wikipedia browsing style) and actually discovering niche communities and boards.

The centralisation by google, Facebook, reddit, etc. has led to the enshitification of the internet.

I'm really enjoying lemmy. It's basically a decentalised open source reddit where people host their own subs. These subs combine together into federations. I browse lemmy.world, whose user base has skyrocketed.

If anybody is interested, here is a really good beginner's guide.
"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi

"Problem is, while the Germans have had many mea culpas and quite painfully dealt with their history, the South is still hellbent on painting themselves as the real victims. It gives them a special place in the history of assholes" - Covenant

"Over three million died fighting for the emperor, but when the war was over he pretended it was not his responsibility. What kind of man does that?'' - Saburo Sakai

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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by His Divine Shadow »

The internet nowadays really sucks I gotta say. Everything is turning into various walled gardens run by a few huge corporations. I read a great phrase elsewhere, it's the enshittening of the internet, and so many other things. With AI's and them also feeding of competitors AI's taking over the internet is turning into one big ouroboros of crap.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by bilateralrope »

After porn-y protest, Reddit ousted mods; replacing them isn’t simple
Replacement volunteers have big shoes to fill.
SCHARON HARDING - 6/22/2023, 8:49 AM


After threatening to do so last week, Reddit has now removed the moderators of some of the subreddits that were protesting Reddit's new API pricing scheme. Some of these subreddits have new mods in the protesters' place, while other affected subreddits have been left unmoderated. Still others, oddly, saw their moderators reinstated.

Reddit claims the moves are a response to mods breaking its Moderator Code of Conduct by allowing "not safe for work" (NSFW) content in previously "safe for work" subreddits. However, moderators who spoke to Ars Technica believe Reddit's actions are designed to silence their protests over the new fees.

Mod status revoked

Various Reddit moderators reached out to Ars Technica this week, informing us that mods for r/Celebrities, r/interestingasfuck, r/mildlyinteresting, r/self, r/ShittyLifeProTips, and r/TIHI have been removed. Other subreddits are reportedly affected, too, including r/toyota, r/garmin, and r/IllegalLifeProTips. All of the communities recently started allowing NSFW content as a form of API pricing protest.

Reddit can't sell ads on NSFW content, and Redditors have accused the company of covertly switching some subreddits back to SFW.

Ars Technica asked Reddit if a Reddit admin had switched NSFW communities back to SFW, and spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt responded by saying, "It’s not OK to show people NSFW content when they don’t want to see it. In line with our Moderator Code of Conduct, we’ll remove moderators and restrict communities where moderators are engaging in malicious conduct, like allowing rule-violating behavior or encouraging the submission of sexually explicit content in previously safe-for-work spaces."

He added that mods "incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct."

Reddit's Content Policy has a rule that says: "Ensure people have predictable experiences on Reddit by properly labeling content and communities, particularly content that is graphic, sexually explicit, or offensive." Rathschmidt also directed us to Rule 4 of the Moderator Code of Conduct, which says that mods must "Be Active and Engaged."

As of this writing, some of the subreddits whose mods were removed remain unmoderated. Other subreddits have new mods. One example, r/Celebrities, has already seen resistance from community members, claiming the new mods "don't represent" them and that these mods weren't active in the community before the protests.

Meanwhile, the feeling around the general mod community is one of disgust, while some are seriously considering abandoning their volunteer posts or have already done so.

"We put up with a lot as Reddit mods—death threats, doxing, sorting through lewd and even illegal material (that Reddit continually ignores)—and deserve to be treated with basic respect," a Reddit moderator, who asked to be referred to only as Jess for privacy reasons, said regarding the removal of some mods. The mod has started erasing their account and has resigned as a moderator.

"I have no desire to be associated with a company that conducts itself in such a manner," Jess said.

Confusingly, the moderators of some of the subreddits, including r/mildlyinteresting, were restored.

Reddit didn't answer Ars Technica's questions about why mods for the aforementioned subreddits were removed or why some mods were restored.

Third-party apps are mod tools, too

Since the beginning of the controversy, moderators have been at the forefront of the API pricing protests, with most arguing that the new pricing will eliminate the tools that let them moderate effectively. Reddit has made a lot of noise lately about how new pricing won't impact moderator tools; however, many "moderator tools" are just standard third-party reader apps.

Jim Salter, an Ars staff alumnus and a moderator for r/zfs, told Ars that the apps he hears mods worrying about the most are Apollo and RIF. The companies behind both apps plan to close when the new API pricing takes effect, with Apollo famously announcing that Reddit's new fees would cost it $20 million per year.

"I don't know of anyone at all using a 'third-party moderation tool only' client that [Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman would be exempting. The third-party mod tools are built into all-in-one clients, and their use as mod tools isn't getting them exempted," Salter said.

Jess relies on RIF for moderating work and described the app as "incredibly simple and intuitive" while Reddit's own mobile app is "prohibitively slow and clunky."

Jess said, "I am happy to see that Reddit has recently added a significant number of mod tools on their app, but it’s too little, too late, in my opinion. I’m not going to use an app I don’t like in order to do volunteer work."

A mod, who asked to be identified as Omar for privacy reasons, told Ars that the ongoing protests aren't just about mod tools, saying that the protests have gone well beyond that.

"The core issue at hand is that the behavior of Huffman has been hostile to the people that have contributed to his platform for free. A 30-day window to adjust your business is not something that should ever become industry standard for an API," Omar said.

He added, "The question isn't about if these tools are impacted by the API. There is a large amount of uncertainty about if that will change and a hostility by Huffman that makes it hard to take promises at face value."

Huffman recently told The Verge that Reddit has been considering new API fees since at least 2015, so the need for the speed of the current changes isn't clear. Huffman has also said that he's open to negotiating with developers, but Reddit didn't answer Ars Technica's questions about which developers it is still working with.

Reddit's Rathschmidt told Ars that Reddit sees its Developer Platform as a potential future resource of mod and accessibility tools but declined to share details on when it would exit beta. However, interest in the platform, which has its own limitations (like siloed data) has waned since the API battle, with devs unsure of how Reddit might treat the platform in the future.

"Given Reddit's history of app development, I don't exactly have high hopes for [the Developer Platform]," Salter said. "It's worth remembering that the current Reddit app is the result of Huffman purchasing Alien Blue and immediately making it tremendously *worse* than it was when he bought it. It's also worth noting that 'the new thing is in beta' is not the best time to destroy 'the old thing that actually works.'"

Thousands of subreddits remain dark

Although the initial subreddit protest blackout period was from June 12 to 14, 3,038 subreddits are still dark as of this writing, according to the Reddark_247 tracker. On Thursday, however, Reddit claimed that over 80 percent of its top 5,000 communities, based on daily average users, are open.

Last week, Huffman did a round of interviews in which he expressed a strong desire for the protests' end. He told NBC News that he was considering changes to Reddit's rules that would make it easier for community members to vote out mods.

On Friday, a Reddit admin posting in the r/ModSupport subreddit said, "If mods disagree about how to moderate their community, we will reorder the moderator list to grant top slots to mods that want to keep their communities active and engaged," adding, "If a top mod wants to stop moderating but keep the community private indefinitely, they will be bumped down the list so a more active moderator can step in."

Reddit's Rathschmidt told Ars that Reddit is "not replacing protesting moderators" and claimed instead that Reddit is responding to violations of the Be Active and Engaged moderator rule.

"We are not removing moderators because they are protesting, nor are we taking over subreddits for participating in the blackout," Rathschmidt said.

"We have a unique system of checks and balances, (including our Moderator Code of Conduct), and we respect the communities' right to protest. Any actions we are taking are because of rules (Code of Conduct, primarily Rule 4) being broken, not for protesting," he added.

Still, Reddit's latest porn-induced headache seems somewhat self-inflicted. Coaxing mods into opening private subreddits can encourage protesters to drum up new, creative ways to protest Reddit's API pricing... and creative they were. In addition, mods Ars spoke with all pointed to Huffman's recent interviews as riling up protesters further.

Recent developments are just another indication of the power struggle happening between Reddit and its most dedicated users. Reddit needs free content and moderation to exist, yet it doesn't want to give those critical players real control of site policies, even though they are largely responsible for much of the site's content and value. In the protests, these volunteer content creators and moderators are trying to showing just how much influence they can have on the Reddit experience.

A good mod is hard to replace

Reddit has said nothing about the numerous subreddits left unmoderated. Meanwhile, new moderators are taking over some subreddits with removed mods, but slipping into the moderator's seat isn't easy.

The free work Reddit moderators do has been valued at $3.4 million annually, and as detailed on the r/hentai subreddit, the work mods do is both complex and extensive. Reddit itself calculated that manual mod removals represented 30.9 percent of content removed in 2022. Reddit would be a different website, one perhaps incapable of functioning, without the tens of thousands of volunteers it uses to keep content safe, enjoyable, relevant, and valuable. Relying on volunteers saves the unprofitable company plenty of money.

Reddit is encouraging users to request modding responsibilities for subreddits that have gone dark. But this approach fails to account for the amount of skill it takes to become, and continue wanting to be, a successful Reddit mod.

"Wholesale replacing a mod team with a community vote is not something that will go over great without something in place to help them get spun up or without an experienced moderator ready to step in," Omar said. "This is a lot harder to find than you would expect. Just because someone is willing to moderate now doesn't mean they are capable of handling a large community, and that's before we even start considering moderator burnout."

Since last week, some moderators have re-opened dark subreddits out of fear of having them "opened for us," while other moderators have simply quit.

"Not many people are interested in becoming a community moderator, as it is a very demanding task both in terms of time and mental health," a Reddit user who goes by u/Scratch-N-Yiff and is a mod for r/unitedkingdom, told Ars. In terms of Reddit ousting mods, "I imagine they would have a hard time understanding what is best for a community they do not participate in."

There are also subreddits with advanced moderation rules that don't apply across different subreddits. If enough experienced moderators are replaced with newcomers, Reddit faces the massive risk of making subreddits far less valuable, entertaining, engaging, helpful, and relevant.

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.
Looks like Reddit doesn't want this protest to end.
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Re: Reddit goes dark

Post by LadyTevar »

Looks like they're going to find out the same way that AOL did how much work their Volunteer Mods did for them.
I never did get a fair price for my time as a AOL Mod, even with the class action suit.

HEY! Maybe that's what Reddit Mods need to do!! Start a Class Action Suit for Unfair Business Practices.
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