Reddit Ousted Mods After Subreddits Filled With Porn To Protest API Pricing Scheme (arstechnica.com) 121
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: 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.
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.
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 spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said in a statement: "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."
Ars notes that replacing Reddit moderators isn't so simple. "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," reports Ars. "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."
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.
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 spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said in a statement: "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."
Ars notes that replacing Reddit moderators isn't so simple. "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," reports Ars. "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."
It's just like Microsoft's XBox1 launch (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate Reddit's not backing down. This is about selling user data to AI firms and other big data companies. They have to lock the API down if they're gonna charge for it, and there's a *ton* of money to be made (or they think there is) selling all that juicy user data.
It's the enshitification of the internet, where services are made available, owners want to do an IPO and cash out for fat sacks of cash, but investors aren't going to settle for a bit of profit, so you need to monetize user data and engagement in increasingly nasty was.
Facebook got it down to a science and now every website copies them. Everybody jonesing to be the next Zuckerberg billionaire.
Me? I say when you get to say, $100 million net worth you're banned from earning any more money or owning anything else. Instead you get a little trophy that says "you won capitalism".
And yeah, I stole that idea, but hey, that's capitalism right? I'm well on my way to that trophy!
Re:It's just like Microsoft's XBox1 launch (Score:4, Insightful)
There's only going to be a ton of money to be made from it if there's a ton of data to siphon. And there is only going to be a ton of data to siphon if there's a lot of users, and whether there are a lot of users will depend on the quality of moderation, or, rather, on whether the moderation is to the liking of the users (that's not the same believe it or not).
The value of Reddit is in the eyeballs it gets. Now, those eyeballs are not directly tied to the mods, some would say a lot of moderation is actually detrimental to getting eyeballs (and I would be in that group), but then again, I'm one person, not the mass that the investors want. The problem here is, though, that the former mods already drove people like me away and I sure as all hell won't return. Unless the new mods work the same way the old ones did, they might lose another load of users.
In the end, what will determine the fate of Reddit is whether they manage to appease enough users to be interesting enough to investors.
Re: (Score:1)
I definitely left for greener pastures, as the old saying goes, but I believe Reddit has probably done their due diligence and knows a large chunk of the site literally doesn't give a shit and just wants to be able to look at cute animal photos and videos. When I last looked, it seemed like they've gained 40% of their current userbase after the site redesign in 2017. Most o
Re:It's just like Microsoft's XBox1 launch (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be so, but Reddit was pretty much born out of Digg making the same exact same mistake. Digg within a space of months went from *the* news-forum site on the net to a dying husk of a site because their bungled attempts at screwing with the site and refusal to acknowledge that the the site was being flooded with commercial and political interests trying to game the system was making it *deeply* unpopular with the userbase, so everyone packed up shop and moved to Reddit.
Theres nothing in history to suggest this cant and wont happen again.
In other words, Reddit is killing their own business by ignoring the interests of the only people capable of making it profit, the users.
And there are absolutely new sites looking to pick up the exodus if it continues, many of which are built on the Fediverse and thus beyond the reach of this User-as-product instead of User-as-consumer mentality
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of companies are trying to make money off content that their users provide for free. Those companies need to understand they aren't selling a product they created themselves. Most of their value comes from the users, so they'd better take really good care of those users. The site is a collaboration between the company and the users. If the users decide the company isn't a good collaborator anymore, they'll go somewhere else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the value
Re: (Score:1)
No, the value of Reddit is the information it contains.
Not to invested.
You've made the mistake of confusing the users with the customers. They are the product.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the value it has to you.
But since you don't pay for that, you don't count.
What counts is the money your interest generates.
And that money comes from someone else.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the value of Reddit is the information it contains. It's a lot like a very unstructured Wikipedia, but it's enough so that you can Google something and a Reddit link will be in the top 10 because it was already discussed there.
Not remotely. People landing on Reddit after Googling a problem are a tiny minority compared to the half a billion active monthly users who engage in conversation on a platform.
If anything Reddit's information is partially worthless for anything that isn't a) highly specific that a Google search can unambiguously direct you correctly to the problem, or b) so common that there's a weekly thread on it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's just like Microsoft's XBox1 launch (Score:5, Insightful)
The old data on Reddit is the valuable stuff. Because it's going to be free of LLM generated content. You only get to scrape the internet for your LLMs exactly one time. After that, it starts being tainted by content generated by LLMs. And if a LLM ingests content made by another LLM it starts getting high on its own supply. Or a better description would be it's like a prion disease. It's only a problem if you start feeding cow brains to cows. And then everybody gets Mad Cow [wikipedia.org] and goes insane.
Keeping the data you feed your LLM free of LLM data is going to get progressively harder. Making any data generated before LLMs increasingly valuable. It's like how scrappers will harvest steel from pre-1945 shipwrecks to use in radiation detectors because it's not tainted with fallout from nuclear tests.
Reddit can be saved (Score:2)
Reddit will suck more and more as long as the only way it can really make money is ad revenue.
The current API-access kerfluffle is definitely an attempt to get money out of large language model builders.
I suggest the following as a way out for Reddit:
* API access is limited to Reddit Premium members
* API access is rate limited by default - high-speed and high volume API access costs what Reddit says it wants to charge now
* Moderators get API access to their subreddits
This could herd the large language model
Re:It's just like Microsoft's XBox1 launch (Score:4, Informative)
If you look at the tax codes before Reagan took office, that's basically what the Feds said. Although it was a higher number, anything above I think 500k was taxed anywhere from 75-95%
Re: (Score:2)
Income tax doesn't stop the problem of generational wealth concentration. Our economic system is a game of Monopoly - the more you have, the more easily you accumulate more, and it snowballs.
We need a wealth tax so that staying wealthy means continual work to do so. Wealth should not be able to generate wealth on its own to the point someone can make enough to have them and their entire family live off investment income for generations.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The yard sale model is an interesting thought challenge, but nothing more. It doesn't account for wealth creation that a capitalist society generates. Remember that the monetary system isn't a finite resource. If you provide goods and services you generate wealth.
Re: (Score:2)
If you provide goods and services you generate wealth.
Lots of services don't generate any wealth. They produce little profit and their effects are transitory. A good example is mowing lawns. You're just going to have to do it again in a week. Putting in sod in the first place is producing wealth, in the form of a lawn, but then it's also incurring a recurring liability...
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a recurring liability for the one doing the mowing for pay. You could argue that generating income isn't the same as generating wealth, but I would disagree. There's an amount of input work that will still get you there, but it would ruin your life.
You're right that there's a direct relationship between work put in and money made in that case where rent-seeking businesses have to do little but collect the money because they already have the resources (e.g. commercial and residential landlords).
Re: (Score:2)
Wealth should not be able to generate wealth on its own to the point someone can make enough to have them and their entire family live off investment income for generations.
If it's generating wealth, it is income. If you tax it right, the rich have to spend some of their capital investment. Tax rates should be snowballing as you go up too - like they used to.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: It's just like Microsoft's XBox1 launch (Score:2)
... making us all poorer.
Talking with people who espouse these kinds of ideas, that seems to be the goal.
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps Elon musk being too rich to start Tesla
He didn't start it in the first place!
Re: (Score:2)
Follows from my Blowjob Theorem-
It cost around $130 - $160 million to have continuous blowjobs from age 15 to 75 (at least as when I calculated it).
When you have enough resources to have something indistinguishable from slavery, it's no longer "you won capitalism" but an active threat.
Re: (Score:2)
The internet became "enshitified" sometime between AOL connecting to USENET and the release of smartphones running made-for-the-unwashed-masses OSes, depending on who you ask. It was all a little better when getting online came with the prerequisite of being at least minimally computer literate.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Me? I say when you get to say, $100 million net worth you're banned from earning any more money or owning anything else. Instead you get a little trophy that says "you won capitalism".
That's a cute utopia, but it doesn't work that way. Then as soon as you would reach $100 million, you would kinda spend part of it (buy an expensive yacht or airplane for your spouse or kids) and then will be allowed to make more millions. Also, inflation is a thing, that $100 million limit would have to be increased continuously.
Re: (Score:2)
They're trying to figure out how much they can get away with before people bail on them.
People don't care. The way this is playing out is more like internal employees fighting while suggesting that customers will somehow bail on it.
Users are largely unaffected by this bickering, especially now that subs are up. And ultimately users are those who generate content.
Re: (Score:1)
And ultimately users are those who generate content.
ooh you mean
And ultimately users are those who repost content.
Re: (Score:2)
Another predictable move (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like watching dominoes fall, only you can't quite tell if the end of the line branches left or right. Each step so far has been brutally, and predictably obvious, but whether Reddit gets back to its status quo or the mob gets whipped up into action and migrates elsewhere I can't tell.
After all... who actually would want to take Reddit's place? It's not profitable enough to bother.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
who actually would want to take Reddit's place?
Or maybe there's no need for anyone to take "Reddit's place". There are plenty of PHPbb forums on the most varied topics. We don't need a central Corp handling online discussions across the board.
Re: (Score:3)
who actually would want to take Reddit's place?
Or maybe there's no need for anyone to take "Reddit's place". There are plenty of PHPbb forums on the most varied topics. We don't need a central Corp handling online discussions across the board.
Ooh I know, how about a Web 3.0 version of Reddit where everyone's posts are NFT's which are owned by, and traceable to, the person who posted it?
Such a cunning plan, it couldn't possibly fall prey to some kind of pump and dump MLM scam!
Re:Another predictable move (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a polished drop in replacement for reddit, but lemmy is looking better all the time. Folks can either create their communities ( subreddits if you like ) on public instances or host them on their own gear or VMs and everyone else can access them via federation on the other instances.
https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2023/06/11/lemmy-migration-find-subreddits-communities/ [michaelaltfield.net]
The userbase has been increasing at a pretty high rate since /u/spez initiated reddits suicide attempt.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
After using it for a week or so I haven't come across anyone that seems that nuts yet. Where do the crazies hang out?
Or there's all the rest of the Fediverse. (Score:2)
https://kbin.social/m/fediverse
Interpret censorship as damage and route around it.
Lemmy started as a tankie thing. But Lemmy isn't the whole shebang, Never forget that.
Re: (Score:2)
WTF?
Unless there's something nasty hidden in those walls of text, the first link amounts to a combination of: "Don't be an asshole." and "If you're an asshole, we'll warn and may ban you even if you try to rules-lawyer your way around the technicalities." It's a bit long-winded, but there's nothing alarming in there that I could see.
The second is a community that's specifically intended for marxists. OF COURSE there will be a political litmus test. And you lot are hardly the ones to talk on that point.
Re: (Score:2)
You can go to https://join-lemmy.org/instanc... [join-lemmy.org] and find an instance to join. And since Lemmy is based on ActivityPub it's integrated with Mastodon, even further enhancing your online social experience. (Of course, depending on which instance you subscribe to.)
Hell, there's even a "the_donald" i
Re: (Score:2)
You must be new here! No, wait ...
Re:Another predictable move (Score:5, Interesting)
After all... who actually would want to take Reddit's place? It's not profitable enough to bother.
Turns out it's a lot of places depending on the subject matter, but Lemmy seems like it's turning into the best-fit solution. There's a site here [sub.rehab] to help people find alternatives to subreddits and Lemmy seems to represent the largest portion of those (I'm just guessing by eye).
That site is my favorite thing to come out of this whole mess. It doesn't have a huge number of options right now, but I'm really looking forward to seeing that grow. Having a convenient searchable database for topical forums is great.
Re: (Score:2)
The article in your signature is hilarious. "The "woke" wont talk to me! Boohoo!".
And then the projection, oh the wonderful projection! One of their points is that "the woke thinks the system is rigged against them" when I see conservatives making this claim all the time about themselves. It's literally how 2/3rds of Republicans justify their continued belief that Trump won the last election.
Meanwhile we have debates on Slashdot all the damn time nowadays between people conservatives on the site call woke a
Re: (Score:2)
It's like watching dominoes fall, only you can't quite tell if the end of the line branches left or right.
The uncertainty is because you are not taking a large enough view of the situation. It will fall left as is evidenced by the change in nature of communication over the past several years on that site. Ineffective moderation has turned that site into a series of echo chambers where little of value is discussed. The API changes may just end up being the killing blow, but maybe not. It is irrelevant as the inspired creators and knowledgeable personnel have all been slowly silenced over the years by the mods. T
There is a difference between mods and users (Score:3)
Reddit, and investors, don't care about mods. They care about eyeballs. The "mass" of users. What will determine the fate of Reddit is whether the change in moderation is going to piss off the users.
Re: (Score:2)
But if subreddits end up filled with off-topic content and trolls due to insufficient content vetting, users will stop coming.
Re: (Score:2)
Reddit, and investors, don't care about mods.
That is like a professional race car driver saying that they don't care about their engine. It doesn't take a genius to see how THAT race will turn out over the long run. A lack of objective thinking is REALLY fucking us up. I do not recall so many adults having objectivity problems when I was younger. WTF is happening and WHY?
Reddit cares about who now? (Score:2)
The arbitrary moderation is a problem - for users - that Reddit could have addressed any time they wanted to. They never did.
My guess is they never will.
Oh, and... they actually require public subreddits to have moderators. Yes, they enforce that.
Seems not that bad, but real number much greater (Score:1)
Honestly 30% of content removed by mods seems kind of low. I could easily live with that much more junk in most feeds I follow on Reddit.
However lost in that figure is how much user blocking comes into play, in terms of blocked users no longer able to post anything that needed to be removed to begin with.
I think user blocking is a much mire key factor even than content removal, so I wonder how much of that is done by Reddit vs. mods.
This might clear things up (Score:3)
The upcoming IPO [imgur.com] made him do it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, a deal hath been done. These concerns were most certainly brought up by the lower levels long ago and they were yeah, yeahed and platituded in to being quiet while that what they knew would happen does before their eyes.
It went before the board and they were glossed on the problems that wouldn't occur. Business had to be done and will be. And in reality all these concerns are secondary to the IPO and the potential increase in wealth that needs to occur here to show success. Hehe.
What's
Re: (Score:2)
Yep - wreck the product right before the IPO. I hope investors are smarter than that.
They keep fighting... Why? What are they expecting (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I just deleted my account and left but no. Reddit owns internet discussion and if they can’t be good stewards they need to have a bite taken out so the internet has enough wandering posters to breathe new life into something else. The site will continue to live as a lame shithole though,
Re: (Score:2)
If only more people were like this, instead many stay just to burn the place down
If the place has become a net negative, they're just being responsible internet citizens, looking out for the interests of other users. The faster reddit dies, the faster its replacement grows, and the better for everyone but reddit.
People and specifically the moderators recently forget they are guests on someone else's platform.
The people running the platform recently forget[sic] they are dependent on users, especially the moderators who perform the unpaid labor of keeping the trolls from destroying their site.
Re: (Score:2)
responsible internet citizens
In the real world this would be called vandalism being done by vigilantes. But it is on the internet so hey it is completely moral and a-ok, right?
I have always thought one should act the same everywhere, ie respectful. But the internet allows people's true nature to come out - it isn't a good look.
Re: (Score:2)
In the real world
Oh, you're one of those people. I remember people like you on irc. "Forget about it, this is just irc, it's not the real world." We called them trolls.
The internet is in the real world. The other people on the internet, except for the bots of course, are other humans.
this would be called vandalism being done by vigilantes.
Okay, no. First of all, vandalism is done by vandals. Second, vigilantism is where someone is "punishing" someone for a perceived crime through acts which are themselves criminal without due process.
But it is on the internet so hey it is completely moral and a-ok, right?
Stuff on the internet is different from stuff
That figure seems low (Score:4, Insightful)
The free work Reddit moderators do has been valued at $3.4 million annually...
I very seldom visit Reddit and have never posted there so I could easily be wrong. But it seems to me that replacing the moderators would cost a lot more than $3.4 million for a year. It's not as though you can send out an SOS to the head-hunting firms saying "We need a lot of experienced Reddit moderators, stat".
Sure, once you have those moderators on the payroll you could likely keep them for a figure in the low millions; but I think replacing even a large chunk of the existing ones would cost a lot more. In addition to procurement costs, there would be lost ad business while the subreddits spend a few months in turmoil with fewer posts and fewer eyeballs.
Re: (Score:2)
Erm moderating is not something you need experience in. Hell I'll go right out and say 100% of moderators got their gig without experience, and to be honest it shows on Reddit where moderating is generally a shitshow.
But ultimately there are plenty of would be dictators happy to line up to take a slice of a kingdom to rule over. It's not something Reddit would ultimately spend a cent on, much less 340 million cents.
Re:That figure seems low (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably all true, but I think of subreddits as being subcultures as well. The moderation is a key part of the culture, and bringing in new mods who don't know the players and the unwritten rules could result in member attrition. Especially so when lots of members are already pissed off with Reddit's bigwigs.
Reddit might just put moderators on the payroll - they're tightening the screws and may be willing to spend money now in order to gain the control they feel they need to get the investment they want. I'm sure they'd rather not do that, both because of the cost and because it sets an uncomfortable precedent. But they might feel they need to go there.
Re: (Score:2)
But ultimately there are plenty of would be dictators happy to line up to take a slice of a kingdom to rule over.
Yeah, I'm in a Facebook group like that. One supposedly for memes related to a particular kids TV show but actually full of far-right memes using the cartoon characters in disturbing ways. Mods even went as far as to invite hundreds of trolls to join the fun who had never seen said show.
An eager moderator is not always a good one. There needs to be a mutiny feature in these social media apps to overthrow mods.
If it's really only $3.4 million (Score:3)
That could work for existing subs, at least for the ones covering mainstream topics and the ones for which moderation doesn't require any specialized knowledge. That probably represents a large majority of what consumers actually look at on reddit. It doesn't allow for the creation of new subs though, and that's an awful lot of what makes reddit work and what allows it to grow and stay relevant.
But if they just want to keep things from collapsing until the IPO, and they don't care what happens after, then this seems like a viable option.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It seems like, every time Huffman opens his mouth, he insults his userbase, his for-gratis workforce, and digs his commercial grave even deeper.
I've seen a serious proposal to use GPT (Score:2)
At least, they didn't seem to be joking. But it was on Twitter I saw this.
LLMs can hallucinate and lie much more cost efficiently than humans can. It'll still be bad moderation, but it will be cheap. And from the company's point of view, much less drama.
Re: (Score:2)
Mods don't represent them. (Score:1)
Aren't Redditors cute. They think subreddits are democracies. Bless their little young naive souls.
First world problems (Score:1)
Imagine a world where as many people fought with that much energy for democracy or against world hunger as people fighting for what's right on an internet forum...
We are doomed with all that greed (Score:3)
Some small little password safe app developer tried to tell me it would just not be a sustainable business model, and never was, to be selling one time purchase licenses. So they absolutely HAD to switch to a subscription only model..
The insane greed of the hollow suits-n-ties is seriously ruining the few good things we have.
Re: (Score:3)
The insane greed
I love the general comment, but do you realise you're talking about a site that's not actually profitable right? It's hardly greed to want to balance books.
Re: (Score:2)
i thought so too, and there aren't any proper fiscal records, but according to most "business analysis" estimates reddit is actually quite profitable. ofc that might be all hogwash, but there's that.
and that would be just advertising + subscription models (marginal), not counting the value of the huge body of text they already own as source for llm mining which could be the real jackpot even if it were a one-off opportunity, so largely unaffected by whatever happens to the userbase now, and presumably the w
Re: (Score:2)
I think you might be underestimating the ability of an internet company to bleed money in astounding ways.
A couple of examples would include this gem 5 second superbowl ad [theverge.com] and planning to double their headcount in one year [theverge.com].
Fiscal prudence is not a common trait in .coms.
Re: (Score:2)
but according to most "business analysis" estimates reddit is actually quite profitable
Really? The only positive business analysis I've seen talks about potential for profit which is what Reddit's valuation is based on. Not profit itself. Kind of like how business analysts said Twitter had a potential for profit despite losing money every quarter for over a decade.
boring (Score:1)
..and yet NONE of this will stop ME from using ADBLOCK, rendering this ENTIRE situation moot.
Firefox + Adblock = BEND OVER AND FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It was a generic term. I am using UO currently.
Sir, their revolting! (Score:1)
Pay you mods? (Score:2)
Just another feudally-operated click farm. (Score:2)
sweet sweetness (Score:1)
this has cheered me up no end. entitled babies get a free website and they want paying for the favour
Re: (Score:2)
entitled babies wanted free moderators, i.e. they didn't want to pay for the favor
Now they're going to find out the true cost of not paying.
Re: (Score:1)
, i.e. they didn't want to pay for the favor
the favour was the free webspace on enterprise class servers with very little downtime and a lot of free traffic for your crappy little messageboard. you were always free to pay for your own setup, btw
Re: (Score:2)
the favour was the free webspace on enterprise class servers with very little downtime and a lot of free traffic
The favor was the free moderation services without which reddit cannot function. Discussions can happen without Reddit, they will simply go elsewhere. Reddit cannot happen without discussions.
Re: (Score:1)
go pay for your own webspace then
Re: (Score:1)
and pay people who use it because they "create the value"
Re: (Score:2)
I do pay, but I pay peanuts so it doesn't have modern PHP, ha ha. So I'm parking and using email until I get new hosting, which I plan to do pretty soon. And maybe I even will, but I need a new theme for my website first anyway.
But why would anyone need me to pay them to create content? If they have content worth paying for, they can probably already monetize it.
reddit not what it used to be (Score:1)
Feel like hosing your reddit account? (Score:2)
I'm trying it now on my 13+ year old account, and so far it's forced a reload of the page once while editing then deleting my comment history. (I've read that they can restore a deleted comment, but an edited comment removes the original from restoration.)
Use at your own pace...
Re: (Score:2)
After that, if you elected to save your history, a page renders with a button on it. Right-click the button and open in a new tab, and you're presented with a wall of
If reddit removes mods, whats the point of reddit? (Score:2)
It's one thing if the mods are breaking reddits TOU, but they're not in this instance. And the subreddits are generally behind the mods actions.
If reddit is just going to ham-fistedly remove mods of subreddits, of which the users of said subred
Re: (Score:3)
What agreements are the mods breaking?
Re:Don't poke the bear (Score:5, Informative)
Reddit admins sent subreddit owners veiled threats that they were defying the will of their users and if they didn't re-open their subreddits, they'd be replaced. In the spirit of democracy and following the will of the users (as reddit had directed), they re-opened, removed rules that some users might consider restrictive, and obeyed all sitewide rules.
Now reddit seeks to replace these mods for saying "NSFW content no longer requires a tag because the subreddit is tagged as NSFW" (which entirely is within site rules) under the bogus pretense that the change was "false" or not within site rules.
This is just reddit increasing the threats and bullying - either fall into line or we will take over your community by force. You can call that right or wrong morally, or legally, etc. but the subreddit owners who changed their rules in protest did not violate the terms of the site by doing so.
Re:Don't poke the bear (Score:5, Informative)
The subreddits that reddit admins nuked the admins on did neither. Subreddits marked NSFW go beyond being tagged as NSFW on post titles, they actually gain a consent prompt that "this subreddit is NSFW and 18+, do you want to continue?"... beyond that, the subreddits didn't encourage the submission of sexually explicit material. They merely noted that tagging individual posts as NSFW was no longer required (abides by site rules, which do not require individual submissions to be manually tagged as NSFW if the subreddit they are posted on is tagged NSFW on the whole).
Despite this PR statement, neither is mentioned in either of those terms.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
But if you are going to break the spirit of being a mod which is to keep a sub orderly, consistent, and on topic - you should be removed for just being a bad moderator.
Re: (Score:1)
But if you are going to break the spirit of being a mod which is to keep a sub orderly, consistent, and on topic - you should be removed for just being a bad moderator.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read that part of this api price increase problem was that mods used software that depends on Reddit api to do their modding. If so, that should also mean they're protesting a change that will break the orderly, consistent and on topic use of Reddit if they're not able to use their moderation software any more. Perhaps you think moderators should be pay for the privileged of keeping Reddit orderly, consistent and on topic?
I pretty much think any community that depen
The rules are all fake. (Score:2)
This is the only real rule, and the mods broke it. They did what they could not get away with.
Re: (Score:2)
Flash message traffic pending: prepare to copy.
Message follows.
Priority: FLASH
Topic: Reddit (www.reddit.com) site on World Wide Web
DTG: 21 JUN 23, 2058 Zulu Time
Message text:
Fuck Reddit for the fetid, grotesque dumpster fire it always was. Can't wait for them to go out of fucking business.
Message ends.
It's almost as if Reddit were something awful!
Re: (Score:2)
And remember that despite that, they still can't manage to turn a profit.