Minecraft's Devs Exit its 7 Million-Strong Subreddit After Reddit's Ham-Fisted Crackdown on Protest (pcgamer.com) 91
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you want official updates from the Minecraft dev team, you better not look on Reddit. A post from a Reddit user bearing the name sliced_lime and a flair indicating they are the Minecraft Java Tech Lead (almost certainly Mojang's Mikael Hedberg) announced yesterday that Mojang would no longer be posting official content to Reddit, in the wake of that platform's response to protests over changes to its API. "As you have no doubt heard by now, Reddit management introduced changes recently that have led to rule and moderation changes across many subreddits," read the post, before announcing that those changes have led Mojang to "no longer feel that Reddit is an appropriate place to post official content or refer [its] players to".
The events are only obliquely referred to in the post, but it seems the move has been sparked by Reddit's crackdown on protests against recent changes to its API that would, in essence, kill off third-party apps that let users access the site. Subreddit mods have spent the last few weeks mounting various campaigns against Reddit's corporate leadership, either "going dark" by turning the subreddits they oversee into private, invite-only communities or else marking them as NSFW, meaning Reddit can't sell ads on those pages. Reddit responded by pressuring disgruntled mods, and in some cases ousting and trying to replace them.
The events are only obliquely referred to in the post, but it seems the move has been sparked by Reddit's crackdown on protests against recent changes to its API that would, in essence, kill off third-party apps that let users access the site. Subreddit mods have spent the last few weeks mounting various campaigns against Reddit's corporate leadership, either "going dark" by turning the subreddits they oversee into private, invite-only communities or else marking them as NSFW, meaning Reddit can't sell ads on those pages. Reddit responded by pressuring disgruntled mods, and in some cases ousting and trying to replace them.
Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
I'd swear it was just yesterday we were hearing on Slashdot how the CEO was right and that waiting it out would work, but this seems to be a significant PR hit that could rile up the mob again.
I remain heavily invested in popcorn futures.
Re: Amazing (Score:2)
Valué. (Score:1)
And nothing of value was lost.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unlikely Apple is going to try and save two dying platforms at the same time. But it is Apple so you never know.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just moderators, Reddit is directly attacking their users now too.
People who have gone and deleted their own posts have found them being put back up by Reddit, and in some cases new posts made under their name that they didn't make.
Lookup the user "nucleocide", he recorded his whole ordeal.
Even submitted a CCPA request on his posts with his name, and instead of following the law reddit undeleted the post.
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Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it did. https://youtu.be/mfZKkUg8jgM [youtu.be]
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i used to like him but all it is now is just petty, bitter ranting
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Don't bother. The video states with a guy holding up a copy of the Epoch Times, the publication where Robert F Kennedy gets all his wackjob ideas.
he's wrong (Score:1)
Information created by a user is not CCPA "personal information." The definition of "personal information" is: information that "identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household." If you disassociate the user from the content it is no longer identifiable to the user, unless the user makes a habit of putting identifying information in his posts which most people don't for a million
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Fair enough, the dates he showed were recent posts, which I guess could be the private subs going public thing.
The one post that looks absolutely restored by staff was the CCPA requested one that contained his full name.
Other people making similar claims aren't posting much in the way of evidence.
That Spez had to publicly admit in the past to shadow editing peoples posts makes even the non-evidenced un-deleting claims completely believable.
I'm still not going to so easily dismiss them myself.
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If the mods aren't able to persuade Reddit to change course, what happens?
In all practicality, Discord. The kids are comfortable with the tech, it already has a widely accepted presence, reasonable functionality. It just needed this Reddit noise to give it the kick into being *the* mainstream communication platform
Re: Amazing (Score:2)
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Re: Amazing (Score:2)
As a non-Slack user that's my basic problem with Slack channels as well.
They're a stream of conversation but because there isn't really a conversation thread I find it hard to use retrospectively.
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See the article, "Twitterâ(TM)s ad business will bring in $2 billion less in 2023 than previously projected" at Insider Intelligence.
When are business going to learn that attacking customers is not smart?
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand why Reddit wouldn't just buy out the good quality apps and make them the official ones then. Seems strange.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the "good" apps are probably "good" because they strip out all the ads.
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At least from my perspective, I generally don't mind the ads. However reddit makes some... curious UI decisions that make using their official website (old or new) or official app awkward on my phone.
The official ads are still pretty unobtrusive and well marked. I wouldn't bother going third party app if it were just about the ads.
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The official app only allows you to block 1000 accounts. On a site with millions of users. They don't tell you clearly that's the reason; the app just gives an arbitrary error message in 99% of cases.
That's shitty design and operation intended to stop you from blocking all of their advertisers.
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Alas, that isn't the complete truth. Reddit's UI got some quirks, so many apps like Apollo make it much easier to moderate and view Reddit.
I've never used a Reddit client, and I don't understand how the UI works - it's too weird and quirky and I can never understand how an AMA could take place because it looks like a complete mess on the website. I would assume the fact that majority of Reddit users have clients that make the UI
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Then, they could add in the apps then! Yeah, it will suck for those who hate ads. :(
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
They Did [wikipedia.org]. They fucked that up too
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Interesting!
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2. If the mods aren't able to persuade Reddit to change course, what happens?
Nothing will happen. People here seem to be under the impression that Reddit is powered by being the official reporting house of important people, like Twitter (which legit wouldn't exist if news agencies couldn't get updates from people of significant interest).
The reality is quite different. Reddit is just an aggregation of content posted by whomever feels the desire to against any given sub. So Minecraft's dev is leaving Reddit. Congrats, Minecraft's sub is now officially ... the same as 99% of the other
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Re: Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Amazing (Score:2)
That may be true, time will tell.
However, it's entirely possible that it would've died a slow death anyway because it is likely facing the same problems as Facebook in growing or even sustaining its user base.
I don't think Reddit was that short on cash but I also can't see any world where it made its VCs a lot of money.
I think this whole kerfuffle is about investors looking for the exits. The buzz has moved on to AI and Reddit missed its big chance to monetize around that. Whatever spez actually thinks or f
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> The answer to (1) appears to be no. They've made their decision,
Let us be clear here: the decision has to do with monetization of the platform because the platform was running at a loss and they wanted to get a better (i)PO cash out. When your entire get-rich-quick plan is on the line, no matter how bad it might be, the sunk cost fallacy is going to be *overwhelming*.
So my feeling is that it doesn't matter that its a bad plan, its the plan and he's going to stick to it, just like Elon is sticking to se
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History is rife with examples of companies causing its customers to bitch and moan about how bad the company and product are, but whose customers ultimately bend over and ask for more please.
I'm still of the opinion that Reddit will suffer little long term harm, despite how cool it would be to see it crash and burn. Much like Twitter.
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Erh... Twitter's value dropped to about 1/3 of what it used to be?
And Twitter didn't want to IPO right at the moment its value went into the shitter.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but a drop in revenue and valuation is one thing when you don't have any debt. Twitter's debt is currently hovering around its total valuation. So, from a certain point of view, it's worth close to nothing (still probably a few billion, depending on what the real value is). When you actually look at the total difference between what Musk paid for it and the value now and keep the debt in mind, Twitter is basically worth far less than nothing. Now, Musk has plans for turning into the mega-uber-super banking, video and everything application that everyone uses for everything, but those plans don't mean it will happen. Those plans also probably would have made a lot more sense building something new from the ground up, as well. Basically, Musk has to build up enormous value just to break even on Twitter.
Re: Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
If I could mod this up I sure would. Musk's Twitter acquisition easily kept to the top of the list of dumb LBOs. Even if he had not fired a lot of their best tech and moderation talent, and had not taken a piss on brand safety, Twitter would be staggering under its debt load.
Their infrastructure may or may not degrade to the point of unusability in the next year or two, but unless they can renegotiate their debt I think they may have trouble just keeping people paid and data centers running.
The best take I've read (www.readmargins.com) is that Musk depended on Twitter for his merged personal/Tesla brand, and was genuinely worried that the SEC would shut off his account.
Successful LBOs usually involve someone who really understands the industry and a clear opportunity to capture value that the target is well positioned to go after.
Twitter was only barely starting to creep toward profitability and nobody that I know has identified what value it is uniquely positioned to capture.
I think part of the reason reddit is doing what they're doing is that the Twitter fiasco left their VCs spooked and out of patience now that it's obvious that there's no more megagrowth to be had in social media. The API changes are meant to support some bs revenue protections that their I-bankers can shop around to credulous IPO buyers. They don't care about what happens with the communities because they will be long gone.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter's value has gone down dramatically because it has lost a very large share of its advertisers, and its revenue. That has been the real mass exodus from Twitter, not the users.
Reddit doesn't seem to be in danger of losing its advertisers. I can only guess why Mojang is leaving, but my own takeaway from all this reddit crap is that reddit has exposed the false premise that it is a place where you can build a community. Anything that you do there belongs to reddit, and reddit only. This of course was always true, but that fact has never before been so clearly on display.
So I can see why it would be less appealing as an official forum or official channel of communication for any company.
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Yeah. But I remember several platforms that have just ... disappeared. Some of them hang one for years as shadow of their former selves. I'm thinking of Yahoo here. AOL on the other hand, just disappeared.
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Advertisers go where eyeballs go. If Reddit loses users, and worse, if Reddit gets sabotaged by disgruntled mods and users to make it a cesspool where advertising may well result in your brand suddenly being associated with promoting hatred and worse, advertisers are going to bail.
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Re: Amazing (Score:3)
If that's true - and this would neither be the first time Musk has stretched the truth nor that a social media company has stretched its metrics - clicks don't play the bills advertisers do, and their ad revenue has tanked. They weren't profitable without massive LBO debt and now they have less revenue and big debt service.
And to date nobody has built a social media unicorn on subscriptions.
I'll take the short position on Twitter, thanks.
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I got a lot of value from Twitter, and used it as the primary promotions site for a couple projects. But (echoes of Reddit here), the massive increase in API pricing cut off the site manager application I'd been using, so basically since May our posting went from 1/day to zero.
Personally I'm waiting for Bluesky to become publicly available to jump ship. From what I hear it basically works the same (contrast e.g. with Mastodon), and I could imagine a sizable exodus at that time. I'm a little puzzled why they
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I'm only staying on twitter to mock Elno and post anticapitalism memes, which these days are activities with almost 100% overlap
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If the users don't bail for another forum (Score:2)
At most it would mean announcements would show up on Twitter or something and reddit would continue to be used for discussion.
I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I think the CEO was right. The community over at reddit didn't have enough solidarity to shut down the site long enough.
reddit is not oxygen or water (Score:1)
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And that's still the case. So a developer isn't posting first party updates anymore. Whoop de fucking do. Most gaming subreddits don't have developers posting. Users simply cross post from Twitter / whatever other official channel is going on and the world will keep turning.
You're giving waaay too much credit to a small handful of reddit's 1million subs.
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It's just the lead Minecraft dev that's leaving Reddit. The subreddit will still exist and I am sure people will continue to post Minecraft news on the sub.
Herobrine (Score:2)
Damn, we'll never find out if Herobrine was removed in the next update.
News to me is that anything official is on reddit. (Score:1)
-The parties over.
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Microsoft's web sites always suck.
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No argument there. Had to add answers.microsoft.com to my blacklist. Never once found a worthwhile or useful piece of information there.
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They work perfectly fine on MSIE
Re:News to me is that anything official is on redd (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes. But if keeping up the forums required using tools have can't be maintained any longer... Well, what are the alternatives.
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Kind of ironic that the customers are now going to have to adapt to the whims of the developer department? Or worse a few third party moderators with an agenda to burn the place down.
Perhaps. But wherever the customers go to next (maybe Squabbles, Tildes, kbin/Lemmy, or whatever) is where they'll begin participating in the conversations. It's not necessarily ideal, but it's the logical next-step.
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Companies are learning to share information to WHERE THEIR CUSTOMERS ARE, rather than forcing their customers to adapt to the whims of their marketing departments.
Except Reddit rarely rolls like that. Most "official" announcements on Reddit are little more than cross posts from elsewhere on the internet. Very very few companies have any official presence on Reddit. Take r/oculus for example. There is an official Meta account that comments there. Comments. Never once has an official post appeared, despite Meta employees being on the sub. Take r/nintendo or r/nintendoswitch. During the last Nintendo direct 100% of posts on both those subs were nothing more than links t
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If they created the subreddit it allows them to do completely do whatever they want in terms of blocking/deleting shit they don't like just the same as if they owned it.
If they don't (I didn't check and don't care), it still gives them a reason to go try to do damage control at perceived slights against their corporate reputation. Either way means they have a reason to be there.
I have seen marketing departments on system admin subreddits trying to put out survey monkey surverys about what they can do bette
Thanos' Snap (Score:2)
I guess Reddit's behavior is better than the Thanos' snap.
oh noes (Score:1)
the only people who care about this "API crackdown controversy" are drama queens. only like 100 subreddits were affected anyway; if those 100 leave the platform, there's still 100,000 subreddits.
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you mean the free service you got has disappeared? easy come easy go
So where are they going? (Score:1)
It's one thing to leave Reddit because you disagree with policies there.
But, where are they actually going? Where can they go? Facebook groups?
The article itself only says "still, even if there are other avenues to reach Mojang," with no hint of what those other avenues are....
Even if you don't like what Reddit is doing, I feel like it does your customer base a great disservice to just fall back to email for contact, where you can't allow people to officially respond to changelings noting if a bug fix wor
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Discord
Minecraft Launcher
Twitter
Custom RSS feed
Thanks (Score:1)
Thanks, since it wasn't in the article I wasn't sure how long it would take to find the answer, and I am only curious - does not impact me personally.
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I've seen that several communities have moved to the Lemmy network.
To the user it works very much like Reddit, but the servers are decentralised.
https://join-lemmy.org/ [join-lemmy.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I feel like it does your customer base a great disservice to just fall back to email for contact
Virtually no companies rely exclusively on email. Virtually no companies have any official presence on Reddit. There are countless other venues they use to engage with customers. Reddit is where people go to debate shit pointlessly, not to talk to developers or corporations.
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Virtually no companies rely exclusively on email. Virtually no companies have any official presence on Reddit.
I disagree on this point - outside of this Minecraft thing, Horizon (Zero Dawn and Forbidden West) and Jedi Survivor releases patch notes on Reddit and respond to user input there. There is quite a bit larger presence than virtually none... and those are just the games I'm aware of. I didn't realize any companies did until I started looking for patch notes for those two games.
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It's one thing to leave Reddit because you disagree with policies there.
But, where are they actually going? Where can they go?
When it comes to social media, leaving doesn't necessitate going anywhere, because, odds are, they're already there. Indeed, Reddit was but one of many official community locations [minecraft.net] for Minecraft: a piece of the pie, not the pie itself. The only mention of Reddit on that page is an icon at the very end of a list of icons, at the very bottom of the page, after they talked or linked to the official social media presences Mojang currently maintains across YouTube [youtube.com], Facebook [facebook.com], Twitter [twitter.com], Discord [discordapp.com], Instagram [instagram.com], and many