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Reddit is Making Sitewide Protests Basically Impossible (theverge.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the once-bitten,-twice-shy dept.
Reddit has implemented new restrictions on moderators' ability to alter community visibility settings, the social media platform announced Monday. Moderators must now obtain admin approval before switching subreddits between public, private, or NSFW status.

The move comes in response to last year's widespread protests against API pricing changes, during which thousands of subreddits went private, disrupting platform accessibility. Reddit VP Laura Nestler stated the policy aims to prevent actions that "deliberately cause harm" and protect the site's long-term health.

Reddit is Making Sitewide Protests Basically Impossible More | Reply

Reddit is Making Sitewide Protests Basically Impossible

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  • Moderators must now obtain admin approval before switching subreddits between public, private, or NSFW status

    Seems OK. Its not quite fair to make a private conversation public without prior warning. Public conversations often need to be more elaborate due to low information readers. Such folks can misunderstand a conversation between individuals who have some specialized knowledge.

  • I don't use much in the way of social media, so I have no idea if this idea is likely or even possible. What are the chances that some moderators could just move to the Fediverse and set up a Reddit equivalent there? They could call it "Feddit" - a name which works on several levels.

    Getting enough people to host the content in a reliable fashion might be tough, but where there's a will there's probably a way. And the people running Reddit seem to be going out of their way to piss off the people who effectiv

    • That's called Mastadon (or Usenet if you prefer). If you've never heard of it... yeah.

    • Re:Just wondering... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @02:33PM (#64828927)

      There's no shortage of alternatives to Reddit, hell i bet what you are saying already exists either formally or as someones hobby project. As with all social media its the matter of taking the userbase with you, Reddit has big big network effects and tied directly to that is the convience of having the site being centrally managed, maintained, updated and admined.

      It's not a tech problem, it's more a psychological and financial issue. It's a good idea, in a better world Reddit already operates in that manner but much like Twitter has withstood many attempts to dethrone it, man, those network effects are powerful.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Digital Avatar ( 752673 )

      Several communities forked off of reddit over the last few years as a result of the admins' heavy-handed tactics. Granted, you might not think of WallStreetBets, /r/Drama, or /r/The_Donald as communities you'd want to visit, but they were (and are) large communities that brought a lot of traffic to reddit... traffic which is now happily congregating elsewhere. Obviously decamping to a new centralized website is not the same as joining the Fediverse, but to be perfectly frank the Fediverse is just one of a l

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward
        r/The_Donald was able to almost perfectly replicate reddit at patriots.win (to replace The Donald) and communities.win (for other communities to form). Good luck commmenting those domains on reddit though, the comments will be shadow-banned.

      • furries that drive away any potential new users with their antisocial behavior

        Hmm... we furries think of ourselves as extremely social. Granted, it's a different kind of sociability compared to normies'. But then, normies have this virulently irrational overreaction to harmless LGBT+ pron, even when there's some straight pron amidst it to make everyone happy, that one cannot but wonder who the antisocial side really is. Go figure.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Digital Avatar ( 752673 )

          It is not so much the content of your missives as the fact that they are unwanted and you're unable or unwilling to grasp that they are unwanted. To put it in simpler terms: Furries are regarded as spammers. You are not entitled to an audience. Accordingly, as long as the Fediverse is infested with furries, sensible people who don't feel like being spammed to death will stay far, far away. Enjoy your ghetto.

      • Also, the Fediverse is largely overrun with furries that drive away any potential new users

        Are we talking about the same Reddit? I follow the BoltEV sub and the other day someone posted a picture of themselves in their car while wearing a fursuit, and Redditors voted it up as if that's just a totally normal thing to do.

        There's even a few furries here on /. I get the impression they're trying to challenge vegetarians for the title of "Most likely to tell you something about themselves that you didn't ask".

        • The crucial difference is that furries are not a majority on Reddit, or alternatively, their content does not constitute a majority of traffic, nor is it promoted to the front page with any regularity. By contrast, the Fediverse is overrun with it, and pretending otherwise is part of the reason people avoid it like the plague.

          • I dunno, this Redditor [reddit.com] got downvoted pretty good for complaining about too many furries on Bluesky. It seems like on Reddit furries have successfully perpetuated the narrative that they're a marginalized group who shouldn't be discriminated against, rather than the reality that they're just people who have adopted a bizarre fandom by choice.

            Oh, and here's the post I was referring to earlier. [reddit.com] Furries are leaking into everything.

    • Voat was a reddit alternative. It primarily attracted spicy content and users, and was not the best as a news aggregator.

  • Re: (Score:3)

    by kurkosdr ( 2378710 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @02:15PM (#64828871)
    Reddit mods gradually realizing that they don't own their subreddits (even if they are the ones who created them), compared to the olden days, when if you created a forum/discussion board, you owned it.
    • They can still own/run things on their own - just create their own site/discussion board/discord, and they can do everything their way.

    • I mean, it is Reddit's website that you're on. At the end of the day you can still go setup your own discussion forum/bulletin board (and there are still a decent number of those active for niche interests - you see a lot of them for firearms content in particular since Reddit can be a bit heavy handed on those boards).

      I'd compare this more to the idea of Geocities back in the day, compared to hosting your own content. While Geocities was easy and quick, if they felt like they wanted to pull your page tha

  • Protest with Posts (Score:3)

    by Mr_Blank ( 172031 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @02:24PM (#64828893) Journal

    Protesting is completely possible. If there is a will to make a subreddit unusable as a sign of protest, then invite 'bad posts' and upvote them. When the many lurkers log in and see the same protest pictures & posts filling their feeds, the protest message will get out.

    Reddit relies on the uploads, likes, and shares of the masses. The attention of millions of people is filtered through the actions of relatively few moderators. If the mods are mad, then they can allow the feeds to funnel garbage. Without a complete redesign for how Reddit works the ability to direct the attention of the visitors will rest with the mods. That is power; political power..

    Reddit can solve their reliance on human mods by investing in robots. Reddit can solve the robot uprising another day; kick that resistance is futile can down the road.

  • Exiting Sitewide (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday September 30, 2024 @02:25PM (#64828901) Homepage Journal

    There is so much toxicity there that many entire communities have left for greener pastures.

    It used to be good but according to Nicole Shanahan Silicon Valley lost its mind when Hillary Clinton lost an election and Big Tech went to hell from there.

    Since their IPO all the incentives for a free discussion forum have gotten much worse.

    Maybe ML can make the Usenet spam problem manageable now?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ebunga ( 95613 )

      Reddit was never good. It was just a slightly more civilized 4chan.

  • protest (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Monday September 30, 2024 @02:43PM (#64828957) Homepage

    The Reddit protest was implemented in the worst way possible.

    What should have been done was make the subreddits read only, and provide a link to a successor community. Making a subreddit inaccessible does not help end users. With no successor community to direct visitors to, there is no place for the users to migrate to, and the protest becomes ineffective.

  • a platform for 100% free speech, you can say what you want providing the administration approves, pretty much most of social media is that way, with the exception of 4chan where you can say anything you want as long as it isn't outright illegal

  • No, you're not going to win. No, it's not going to get better. On the contrary, it's going to get worse.

    It's just a forum; everybody just leave. Do a Fediverse thing. No, it's not going to be as good as it used to be, not for a long while, maybe not ever. But it isn't going to be as good as used to be if you stay, either. You have to let go.

    • At one point, Reddit was the inferior alternative to Digg. Then Reddit got better because of the influx. Fediverse could have the same opportunity.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DewDude ( 537374 )

        But then came enshittification.

        And the fediverse already has that slathered over parts of it; but making it the hot popular replacement would only result in the same.

  • The next protest will be people actually leaving for good rather than staying and making changes. Good luck with that, Reddit.

    • The only way you can even survive there as a user is to basically not do anything. It's so easy to get an account """permanently suspended""" and it's ridiculous, and it's just gotten worse since the IPO. Lately the content on Reddit is getting thinner and thinner, I think people are already leaving.
  • I think you are seeing the problem with individual ownership and control. It doesn't matter whether the owner is an unaccountable government or an unaccountable corporation. They have no interest in promoting civilized discussion or any other positive human activity that doesn't serve their interests. And, because they aren't accountable to humanity at larger, there is nothing we can do about it.
  • It's not like Reddit's a better steward than Digg was before it.
  • Is there even anything of any real value there anymore?
  • It was decentralized, and no one person had complete control over it. But it was literally the "Wild West" of the internet, and this is what ultimately lead to it's downfall. Usenet still exists, but it's just a very pale shadow of it's former self
  • Next strike is likely to involve posting NSFW material.
  • ... for that company, Reddit will continue to do as they please with their unpaid serfs. In less virtual environments, I have seen volunteers jump ship quickly when e.g. amateur sport club leadership started making unfriendly demands towards volunteers the work of which the club relied upon.

    And yes, centralized platforms controlled by one company are not the right place to have discussions, anyway.

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