Are they? Assuming they all go dark for 48 hours, then come back online, and business continues as usual... wouldn't that somewhat prove that Reddit doesn't have to worry too much? What if certain subreddits go dark for extended amounts of times, multiple weeks, maybe even a month. And then new copycat subreddits pop up, what do you think will happen?
Reddit will be fine, the vast majority of the end-users doesn't care or doesn't even know, it's the powerusers and moderators that care a lot.
(FWIW, I absolutely think the protests are justified and Reddit's pricing is insane, but I'm cynical and don't see them being affected by this all that much)
If they enable the subreddits without moderation, they'll die very soon. They really need moderation and users often don't realise how much crap they're protected from until it's too late.
For the most part, nothing. The new subreddits will likely be ghost towns.
The idea that this action can’t possibly hurt Reddit I keep seeing is amazing to me. It absolutely will hurt Reddit. Even if it’s not an existential blow. Reddit took a long time to get to where it is. Simply saying it can absorb all this like it’s nothing is myopic.
And FWIW, I’m glad most people aren’t as cynical as you, and willing to attempt to change things.
I could see them doing this for the most popular subreddits like r/videos, but if you start doing this for even medium sized subreddits it’s going to have even more severe consequences.
People aren’t stupid, and they aren’t as docile as you think.
These theoretical questions to me are the equivalent of “Why didn’t the US just kill every person they encountered in Vietnam that was a male of fighting age instead of fighting against an insurgency?
Well, they could have. They had the ability to. And it probably would have resulted in a different outcome. But it would had some pretty severe consequences.
I doubt that. But it's fine to disagree about such things, the mods are actually showing reddit that they are a risk factor themselves and you can bet that counter insurgency planning is underway. The 'vocal minority' is a minority. I don't think reddit would be above killing of a few hundred (or even a few thousand) accounts that they consider to be trouble makers (whether or not that is true is something else).
People have a very short attention span and a very low level of commitment if they're not directly impacted. Remember the outrage about Musk on Twitter? It's all but died down. Or the various attempts to create some alt-right social networks.
People don't have an obvious other place to go, and the majority of the community of /r/whatever will just go to /r/whatever-else.
I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic, I am not going to not do something that could help my business for ideological reasons), but I will no longer be using it on a daily basis or contributing comments/posts unless they back away from this.
However, all users aren't the same. While I did not moderate any subreddits, I contributed substantially to several small ones in the way of posts, upvotes and thoughtful content. That's the stuff that really brings value to Reddit - it's the long tail. And even if the percentages are right, if the 5-10% that leave are some of the most valuable users of the site it will have a HUGE effect.
There are things about Reddit that are not widely known - the often thrown around stat of a small number of accounts moderating a huge number of subreddits is the tip of the iceberg. There's also a subreddit that you only get invited to if you have over 100k comment karma, called the Century Club. That's been around for a long time. Reddit knows it needs power users, not lurkers that add no value but advertisement impressions.
If they are trying to pivot to just become a site where you can infinite scroll memes and focus on the big subreddits, then they're directly positioning themselves to compete with Facebook and TikTok which seems pretty bad strategically IMO. It definitely doesn't bode well for the next decade of Reddit.
...
ok
> I am keeping my account, because I might need it to promote my business (it still has utility in that area and I am pragmatic
ok, so you're not leaving. Everybody else will be just as pragmatic and the rest won't care. Realize that you just pretty much proved the point of everybody here that believes that this likely will have very little impact. If you were principled you would leave.
I think it's disingenuous to say that someone who only posts to Twitter twice a year, to announce that they are on tour but does not browse Twitter regularly or use it aside from that is an active Twitter user.
>Everybody else will be just as pragmatic
My intention is to only utilize my account to promote my business on subreddits I think are relevant, whereas before I commented regularly several times a week. If everybody makes a similar change, Reddit would lose a lot of commentors.
>If you were principled you would leave.
The multiple threads you and I are going at it in all boil down to the same basic thing: what each of us thinks will be the result of Reddit's changes to allowing API access. What subreddit moderators will do, what Reddit as a company will do in response, how users as a whole will respond, etc...
At this point, I think we have both fleshed out what we think is going to happen in multiple ways and it's clear we disagree so further discussion on that front is pointless.
I will say that I don't feel I have been making an argument that people will (or should) leave on principle. Or that I myself am leaving on principle. I am choosing to leave Reddit because I don't want to use their terrible web application or mobile application.
If that changes, and I'm able to use Apollo again then my stance will change. Because I am pragmatic. I don't think there's going to be some Mastidon alternative that pops up. I think convincing Reddit to change course is the best path forward than trying to get an alternative going.
All I can say is that subreddits are built on the idea of autonomy - it's not just that they have their own mods. It's that this is a semi autonomous community. If you look at a lot of the subreddits that decided to go dark, their moderation held polls/voting about it and asked for community input.
Reddit admins are there as a safeguard - in the case of a subreddit doing something illegal or so unsavory it poses a larger threat to the site.
In the past over the last 10 years, this model has mostly worked. Even the subreddit r/the_donald, during the lead up to it being banned the moderators there described having discussions with the administration about what they would have to do to avoid being banned. Just because Reddit has always had the ability to be more forceful doesn't mean they've exercised it.
The action people keep suggesting here - a hand wave and all of a sudden these subreddits are "nationalized" (for lack of a better term) like a South American dictator taking over an oil company would completely shatter the trust that has been built, and it would have a lot of effects on the site. Just like when the South American country starts nationalizing companies. Capital flees.
They might not even be visible right away, and it probably wouldn't result in Reddit itself closing down but I am confident it would ultimately harm Reddit substantially (as opposed to many of the comments in this thread claiming it would have no adverse effect.)
Using Twitter as an example when the acquisition isn't even a year old isn't valid, in my opinion. Talk to me in 2 years.
On the illusion of autonomy.
> Using Twitter as an example when the acquisition isn't even a year old isn't valid, in my opinion. Talk to me in 2 years.
Then why join this debate in the first place?
This is the part that your side doesn't get - having power to do something and not using it doesn't mean you're giving off an "illusion".
Everybody who runs a subreddit is fully aware that Reddit admins have the power to shut them down if necessary, but the precedent that has been set is that there would be a lot of communication or they'd have to be doing something flagrantly illegal for that to happen.
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand conceptually - because it's how the international community works. Countries generally get sanctioned, not invaded.
Yes, it's not a perfect system. Yes, countries like the United States stage coups and regime changes, but it is better than the old way of invading and trying to rule a country like they're a colony.
>Then why join this debate in the first place?
Because the goalpost I keep seeing put in place to frame this discussion is that if Reddit doesn't immediately collapse after shutting down third party apps, then all the protests made no difference and clearly nothing has changed. My point is that it might take multiple years before we see how hollowed out the site has truly become. And it might still be a very popular website from a traffic perspective, but I believe it will have lost the core "engine" that makes it work.
Also I have a lot of work to do that I don't want to do and commenting on here is a way that I procrastinate.
Whether or not you believe that the moderators are what makes reddit or that the users do so is only a subtle shift but it makes all the difference. If moderators flex their power they will stop being moderators because clearly the no longer seem to have the ordinary users interests at heart. This is why this is such a dumb play. You either have a 'batna' or you don't. Reddit holds the cards, and this is pretty much begging for them to show that they do so. Worse has happened and it never made a difference, as long as ordinary users aren't impacted to a degree that makes a difference to them things will stay as they are.
And a 'look at what you made me do' defense won't hold water, the users will blame the moderators because they can't get their fix, not reddit.
Reddit will die like every other community: through attrition, not because the moderators throw a fit over something that they may well see as important but which does not offend others.
Moderators ARE users of Reddit. Drawing a line between "moderator" and "user" isn't the line that matters. The line that matters is "lurker/regular user" and "power user"
Moderators are power users. They're part of the small percentage of users that contribute a way outsized amount to Reddit by curating portions of it.
If the rule of thumb of online communities that 90% only lurk, and only 10% contribute, they're part of the 10%. That 10% is what makes Reddit work, period. Moderators use third party apps to aid in moderation, but a lot of power users just use third party apps because they are a lot less shitty. This ban ultimately targets all power users - the entire 10%.
>This is why this is such a dumb play.
I think the "play" you are referring to here is the idea of temporarily or permanently shuttering a subreddit.
But it's actually the opposite - if Reddit exercises their power resurrect subreddits (I think they could get away with the biggest ones like r/videos, but anything medium size and smaller no way) they lose, BIG TIME. And so many of these subreddits are participating they'd have to do it for hundreds of subreddits just to juke KPIs for their fail to launch IPO.
The idea that the users will just blame the mods is silly, as I said most of these blackouts were discussed at the subreddit level and the overall community sentiment is positive. And some of these people have been moderating these communities for years. You can't just replace them with randoms and expect the experience not to deteriorate.
Here is an example on a subreddit with 50k subscribers:
Initial thread discussing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/13zou5n...
Mod thread announcing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/142hhy3...
It's difficult enough to find anyone willing to actually put the hard yards in to moderation as it is, let alone when all of the resources and tools currently at moderator disposal get shut down.
You decide rules and shape the "culture" of the subreddit. Yes, there are absolutely people who are moderators and on insane power trips. That's always been a thing, for every form of online community I've ever known of (IRC, forums, etc...) But there are also many who view the role differently. That's why moderators of subreddits like r/programmerhumor, a meme subreddit that is also a place for programmers (specifically newer programmers) to blow off steam and joke about things they're stressed out about believe they have the power to shut down the subreddit permanently and Reddit will not "bring it back."
If Reddit crosses that line and brings subreddits back, installing puppet leaders who on earth is going to invest time into building a community on Reddit again? Knowing it can be yanked from them at an arbitrary whim - not even for breaking moral rules, but for threatening profits. This is a much more delicate balance than the commenters are painting it as. They clearly don't understand why Reddit works and seem to think it's pure network effect that has consolidated things away from independent forums.
When people talk about googling something and adding "reddit" as a keyword, it's because they want to read authentic discussion from real people about a topic - and sometimes a topic that is somewhat obscure - not an SEO optimized landing page that's going to ask for their email and try to sell them something.
That only exists in communities that are curated and participated in by people who care about them. Removing that removes the core of Reddit's being.
I don’t see how having bad mods not willing to put in the work and is just taking the role for the power is good for the subreddit and Reddit as a whole.
Great example, that one already has a possible replacement at programminghumour.
and the pinned post is saying they need moderators so back to square one. creating a new one isn't a problem but scaling users and finding people to run it well is
I'm not sure. I've seen several subreddits where they've done polls about going dark and they've overwhelmingly supported going dark. For example, r/AcademicBiblical is currently around 80% in favor of going dark and that's not a subreddit I would think is just chalk full of Reddit power users.
This whole thing is a nice illustration how when you use someone else's website for your community you don't actually own the community.
So "brigading" and such weren't really much of an issue (and the issue has always been people barging into a community, knowing nothing about it, pontificating on some post/issue, and promptly leaving).
Forums still exist, but you need a slightly strange sort of person to continue to put the effort into them when Reddit is "free and easy".
Reddit is easier because you already have an account, but creating an account on a random site has never been easier to do or manage, so it's not that much harder (and importantly, people already do it because not everything is on reddit so it's not "new" to learn how to create an account somewhere).
Just giving a subreddit away fits right into that ethos of temporary ownership.
It was a small sub and we were all well behaved so there wasn't really any need for moderation, and we didn't want some random outsider coming in and taking it over as part of his supermod powertrip or whatever. We organized against it and the Reddit admins ultimately denied the request.
It goes by the "last activity" timestamp of your creator/modlist, so even if you are actively moderating your subreddit (like attending to the mod queue), your subreddit can still get taken over if you aren't posting.
The system is so, so stupid.
* If you search the takeover requests subreddit you could even see that we weren't even stealing the subreddit from the original owners who did all the work to grow the subreddit, but rather from other takeover bots.
If those mods were anywhere near serious about this they should just roll their own reddit and attempt to migrate their communities. I'm pretty sure that would elicit an immediate response from reddit but that would be a much harder fire to put out than this one.
I'm pretty sure the average/more casual Reddit user either: doesn't use 3rd party apps, or doesn't care and will just use the official one.
It's Twitter all over again "omg everyone will leave it now that Elon's in charge". Yeah, that hasn't happened. At. All.
Now, knowing how us fleshy meatbags work, you're probably thinking I'm in favour of Reddit/Twitter/Elon or whatever. That is not the case.
All I'm doing is reiterating that humans gonna human and that no meaningful change will come from a few hardcore users when the average user couldn't give a shit.
48 subreddits going dark for 1 day is more of a statement than 1 going dark for 48 days.
The mods know many people rely on their communities for a multitude of reasons - mental health support, technical support, mentoring, etc.
I don't think the direct losses of the 48 outage will be what matters here.
Rumors are that Reddit wants to IPO later this year. This blackout will put the spotlight on two issues: - Reddit is extremely dependent on the goodwill of the community, especially the moderators who provide an essential service for free. - Reddit is out of touch with its own community, and keeps pissing off the very people their existence depends upon.
If I were planning to invest in Reddit, this would make me think twice.