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dvdnet90 @lemmy.world

2y ago

Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else

www.theverge.com Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else

Reddit decides if a community is NSFW — not the moderators.

Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else

171 comments

Imagine threatening VOLUNTEERS. How does any mod with self respect not just quit?
- I turned all the communities I modded private and "basically" quit but I understand not completely quitting without thinking about it for a long time. I only modded for like 30K redditors but some of the communitites have millions and they got there with the unseen moderation. Mods love their communities and it's really hard to just turn your back on them after you've cultivated real friendships and so much information has been shared. I think it's a little more complicated than, "F reddit, I'm out". They'll get there though, it's just become sooo much harder to actually mod the community you started.
  
  @invno1 I have never moderated a community, but can absolutely see this! They moderated, because they loved the community and understood how to do it well. Maybe there are friends too, who you learn and discuss stuff with over the years. An angry user (like me) can "just" leave without many consequences. But a moderator also feels responsible to its community too. So I can understand those who have a hard time leaving. Maybe there was hope that Reddit will turnaround too.
- Little bits of power go to people's heads. Seriously, that's the only reason you'd continue to do volunteer work while being threatened for doing so.
  
  Maybe they just don't want to give up on a community in which they put so much time, effort, and passion to help shape.
  
  Yep, that's why the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is propaganda. Any tiny scrap of power will cripple the average person over time. Also you wont be allowed anywhere near absolute power without being approved by the absolutely corrupt first.
  I'm not agreeing that that's the reason why mods on reddit are still there, just my 10 cents on power.
- Reddit wouldn't have anyone to threat if every mod just quit all at once.
  There are hundreds of even thousands, newbies would take time to train and they would probably have to hire and pay for replacements to get up and running quick enough
- Because they aren’t really volunteers. They love the power they wield and would do anything to keep it.
  The real volunteers already quit.
  
  There probably are some that like the "power" but I don't believe it's the norm. Just like forum admins back in the day it's usually just the most active people that also care the most about the community.
- Have they not threatened the communities with scabs as well? Like "if you don't mod this, we will find someone who will". The whole thing just seems super toxic and I really feel for the mods who genuinely cared and cultivated their subreddits. A lot of time and effort to be put into something for it to be thrown in their face for the sake of money.
- Yes, the mods who spent years building a community, who gave up their free time, and care about what they do don't have any self respect. /s
  I really don't understand this attitude or why people call remaining mods power hungry as if the admins aren't doing anything wrong.
- Because many subreddits are moderated by shills who are getting paid to nudge brand awareness and sentiment for $$$

Reddit as a company is just so full of shit. "We're so threatened by the fact that we can't make money off of your subreddit that we're going to threaten you." Like?? All of this could have been avoided if they had just had reasonable pricing for their API. They're just driving themselves into the ground.
- Reddit's entire business model is based on convincing people to do 99% of the community management work for free by telling mods they can run their communities however they want. Then the moment those mods (who, again, are doing valuable work for zero pay) try to actually run their community however they want Reddit says "no, not like that".
  
  A lot of mods want to hold on to the little bit of power that being a mod gives them. Because if not, and if you could get mods to just stage a massive walkout, Reddit would be well and truly fucked without their slav— unpaired staff.
- I know right I don’t get it. Now they don’t even get a lower price income due to a lower price, they get nothing from 3rd party apps. And they are loosing a chunk of their community and traffic base.

Spez is out of touch.
He’s forgotten what internet users are.
We are an entire cultural shift away from rule following and shit giving, to a movement of non-compliant Boaty McBoat Faces who will happily bring the whole system down on top of ourselves.
- We don’t even need a cause. We would literally bring this down for a meme.
  
  We'd bring this down just because we already dropped 68 others and need one more to complete the set.
- I doubt he really cares. this whole thing looks like "maintain a minimum viable product" until IPO.
  he just wants to get paid, I cannot imagine he will care if reddit burns to the ground after the check clears.
  
  This is exactly what I think. He doesn't care if everything goes to shit, he's not going to give in.
  
  I don't like spez as much as the next guy but I don't think this is true, as CEO of a pre IPO start up a significant part of his compensation would be equity/equity options etc so he probably cares a bit more than after the check clears
- Imagine having that much money and refusing to pay attention.
- If only that was still true. Internet users used to be a niche counter-culture. Now they're just normal people.
  
  Normies have ruined our Internet! :(
- Yes he's burning his platform down
- Ya that's why both the moderator teams mentioned in the article quietly relented and removed the NSFW designation and the situation on reddit is more or less back to normal.
  
  This isn’t over by a long stretch, dude. There will be guerrilla shit going on for a long time. Mods who have returned are already half-assing their jobs, people are demanding pay, and the user base is fractured.
  Plus, this isn’t the end of Reddit’s bullshit. They’ll keep pumping out more ads and making more unpopular changes. Name the last big company that ever said, “Okay, that’s enough money made. We can go back to good service and a reliable product now.”

Even if reddit reverse all their decisions from last 3 months I'll still not go back to it.
- Yeah. I mean why would someone? This place is growing leaps and bounds.
  
  It's really impressive how Lemmy/kbin have totally replaced reddit for me pretty painlessly. Any time Ive checked reddit out of FOMO, the content is far worse, and the comments are horrid.
  
  The Memmy client on iOS convinced me, essentially same Apollo experience with a nicer and more informed community. Seems like everyone who actually participated on Reddit is moving here
- I just deleted my Reddit account today. Don't plan on ever going back, especially given how well Lemmy's community has grown.
- It wouldnt change anything, anyway. Theyd change it all back as soon as they got closer to the IPO

I removed myself as a moderator and left Reddit.
- Good on you.
  It was quite depressing seeing how many sub reddits ended their protests as soon as the mods were threatened with being removed from their unpaid positions.
  The power and control really does go to some people's heads.
  
  I think we need some rule or something here that limits the number of communities you can moderate
  
  Yeah, I stayed on the sub I used to moderate, and then when the community didn't want to keep up the protest I left them, I wouldn't really be able to do a good job anyway when the app I used for it when not sitting in front of the PC wouldn't work anymore, so it wouldn't make sense anyway, so rewrote and deleted all my comments, before I did the account itself, and my alt account as well.
- I didn’t remove myself as a moderator for the two subs I mod, but I haven’t been on Reddit since Apollo shut down. I use my phone a heck of a lot less these days lol
- Moderators remaining are already showing signs of exasperation. I was mass wiping all my account comments and received a week suspension for 'inciting hate' by an admin for a comment that moderators ignored (it was a comment in a post about an article quoting Putin "claiming the West wanted Russians to all kill each other"). The comment was 10 days old, but apparently editing to replace the original statement with "deleting - because Spez" triggered the admins.
  
  Oh you too? I was wondering why I got a 7 day suspension yesterday out of the blue, I was so confused
  Oh well, just stick a fork in reddit because it's done

And the results are hilarious. https://kotaku.com/reddit-app-news-cyberpunk-2077-protest-nudity-rpg-nsfw-1850611359
- “We’re not going to change it back, because this is a sexually explicit game, and also fuck them.”
  Lmfao I live for this quote.
  
  Fuck corpos and fuck Reddit.
- Awesome to the max
  
  https://tenor.com/bFzQP.gif

"We demand the unpaid volunteers that aren't listening to us to do as we say or we will find new unpaid volunteers who will replace you and spend their free time deleting posts and comments!"
- "Also ignore that fact that it's been two weeks and we still can't find unpaid volunteers for /r/interestingasfuck "
- The fact that some people are actually willing to take that offer is both hilarious and sad.
  
  I get why people do it, I don't get why people would do it to take over existing large subs in that mess.
  Wanting some control over a community you care about makes total sense. You put in the time, and you foster the kind of people and content you are interested in.
  Playing whack a mole in the current environment on reddit seems like a nightmare to me.

Let me get this straight. They do the work for free, and are upset you took their tools. You then tell them open the subreddits or we open them for you. So they do that, and change some rules, now you're upset and telling them how to moderate their subreddits. Like seriously Reddit. Why not just moderate the subreddits yourself?
You have people who have given you FREE WORK for decades, they have increased the value of your site, and they're justifiably angry, and all you're doing is shitting on them more.
What a fucking joke. I know this won't directly affect the IPO but I hope some companies are looking at this and realizing that Reddit admins have made all of this so much worse.
- At this point if I were a moderator I would just remove all NSFW tags and allow unmarked NSFW content, like just to fuck with spez, instead of John Oliver we just post NSFW content on every community and the mods do nothing
  
  instead of John Oliver we just post NSFW content
  The two are not mutually-exclusive.
  
  That's already happening!
  
  The problem is that's probably a site wide rule and will get admins to remove the users, (and potentially moderators removed).
  But I like how you're thinking.
- If every mod that didn't agree with Reddit simply quit at the same time, the site would go to hell.
  My advice to mods is to create a new community here and tell the community before Reddit nukes the mods. If the people know where to go, it won't be as hard on the community itself and lemmy gets more content.
- I think it's too early to tell how it will affect the IPO - with valuation already cut drastically by Fidelity earlier and very much ongoing contention from the community (just took a look at r/pics and r/interestingasfuck, wow), they aren't really going to be entering in the position they could have without these recent poor decisions.
  
  I hope you're right.... I hope it's true, I hope this hurts them, because this is what they deserve.
  But I also know share holders care about the money, so if they can show their decisions have made them more profitable, fuck the outrage, full steam ahead.
  And eventually the protests will stop somehow.

Or else what? Like give them their life back?
- Lol poor guys are not even getting paid. I would happily donate if they move to Lemmy and start an instance.
  
  I find it hilarious that the stereotypical reddit power hungry mod turned into the indentured servant hero standing up against a greedy corporation.
  
  We dont want those guys here

I'm sorry, but any mod that gets a message threatening them like that and stays on has zero self respect. It's a volunteer job for god's sake!
- The problem is if you leave, someone else comes in, takes it over and can't do anything to annoy the admins.
  At this point the mods are just tanking, and finding new ways to become problematic. Which hopefully people will see. The admins had an easy way to make this work and instead they are just struggling to keep up with this bullshit.
  
  The only option I see is for users to overwrite their comments and for mods to delete their subs if they don't come to an agreement.
  I'm still giving them time, but sooner or later I'll change my comments and delete my subreddits (even they're just small ones).
- It's not really about self-respect or they would have never started modding. It's something they felt was important at the time and likely still feel their contributors are worth sticking around for a while. It may take some a little longer to move their community over here but it will happen in the next few months. Reddit is making it very difficult to continue.
- Hoping any that are still staging protests are doing it to keep the mess visible to remaining users, current staff & potential investors. Reddit cannot retain any one of those without the other two.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Reddit pulled a tumblr and banned porn and other NSFW content and just made it a site wide policy that nothing can be NSFW.
- I'm pretty sure that was the plan all along.
  
  Yep, they can attract more investment if they don't have "icky" content for prudish investors to worry about. Forgetting that it's a huge reason the site is popular.
  
  I recall seeing some info coming out about porn and other stuff but after Tumblr and that shit show I figured they would be less likely to go forward with it or have some watered down policy that bans it but some things still get on the site anyways.
  
  @BustedPancake alwayshasbeen.jpg
- I have a feeling they saw what happened to tumblr. They're not stupid...
  Ok they're stupid, but they're not that stupid... yet.
  
  I dont think Spez cares about reddit at this point. He wants to IPO and cash out so he can hand it off to someone else to deal with.
- I'm hoping that is the outcome of this, would be very entertaining to watch
- They will likely ban NSFW content before they IPO.

It was a fun run but sadly Reddit Admins have the only thing that matters now.. power. They will ban everyone in their way and replace them with some puppet or someone who doesn't care about the api fiasco. Most of them will cave in. They have no choice, because they don't hold any real power to attempt a coup. You know who should quit? Users. But they obviously don't care about the cause enough. Imagine if everyone quit for a month ..
- I care. Charging for high API use wasn't an unreasonable move in principle, just, the details were bullshit and it got rolled out in a totally donkey brained way. But that wasn't necessarily a deal breaker for me in and of itself. I stopped using reddit because of the temper tantrum & threats that the admins threw at mods and their coordination efforts.
  And anyway it's death by a thousand cuts. Over time, all these little changes to the platform slowly make it worse for the user. The big social media companies have completely lost touch. They're more concerned with these abstract concepts like engagement and growth, instead of focusing on nurturing a good place for users to be. Well, what do they think? That the users are hostage? That we can't leave?
  
  I hope nobody forgets how the CEO of reddit tried to slander Apollo's creator saying he tried to blackmail them for millions of dollars, and then evidence was brought that showed he is a liar (didn't realize the call was recorded)
- It’s kind of reflective of the world right now - USA probably. Those in power are happily steamrolling the rights of disenfranchised people for money, while said people simply grumble but only change the channel. As long as there’s streaming, they stay in their lane.
  Should be out in the streets!
  
  All these people saying "who cares about Reddit" (or Twitter, or Threads, or whatever else) are also missing the fact that we live in a society and these platforms matter, politically speaking. If we allow them to become (or remain) fiefdoms for rich fucks to spread misinformation, that can have real-word detrimental effects for us no matter how much we try to ignore the platform. Don't forget that this shit is happening just before the 2024 US presidential election, for example. Do we really want to be tolerating a Reddit-turned-into-Voat right about now?
  It isn't enough just to leave Reddit; it needs to be destroyed, too.
- Imagine if everyone used something like https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite to edit, then delete, their comments first?
  Then ran it a few more times across a week or so, changing the edit message each time?
  
  Sorry if I'm being dense, but what would be the point of that?
- Realistically, if all of the TPA-users quit, Reddit would not notice such a huge difference. I came from Reddit and used RIF for like 10ish years, and not going back to Reddit now. Most users don't care about the API change other then that some of their subreddits where down for 2 days. TPA combined had like 15(?) million users (on android) and the official app had like 100++ million users?
  
  Seriously. At this point it's becoming delusional; the idea that TPA users have any impact on the outcome of the site as a whole is ludicrous.
  Be glad Lemmy exists and move the fuck on.

More and more of these communities are going to see the grass is actually greener on the other side once they’ve had enough of Reddits nonsense.
- When Apollo lost access I thought “I’ll try out lemmy” and I’ve been so happy with the change of mix of posts that I’m much happier here.
  Feels like when I started using Reddit a decade ago, in a good way. Reddit shifted subtly enough that I didn’t even realize how little I was enjoying the content.
  I wonder how many other people would have been relatively happy moderating communities, posting content and comments, had Reddit just not been evil.
  
  I agree 100%. I tried Lemmy and Mastodon not very long ago out of curiosity and now I'm in the process of deleting my other social accounts. I didn't realize how little I actually engaged with Reddit and Twitter until I started doing so here.
  
  Same experience. Jumped when Apollo stopped working and haven’t looked back
- I can't believe it's taking them this long.
  
  It's not really, most of the good ones are here already and some are here and finishing up on the other site.

What would happen if all of the NSFW subreddits removed theirs too?
I ended up removing the few mods I had, making the subreddit private and the removing myself. We only had like 30,000 people subscribed but still.

I just decided to abandon Reddit. It’s not worth it at this point with all the bs that’s happened in the past, and now this stuff too - what’s the point.
I’ve been having fun actually looking for new communities and new websites/technologies again. Made me feel like a kid again first discovering message boards

But if any investors are reading, this is not a big deal you guys. It's just a little, uh, it's gonna pass, you know. The company is worth zillions!

I have yet to be threatened for setting it on in 3 different subreddits with over 1million subs each. I'm pretty sure they don't have a simple way to log when a subreddit was changed from sfw to nsfw so they really don't know which subs have done it as protest vs which were like that before. It's only the top50 subscriber subs that seem to be getting any attention and it's because media and userbases are making shitloads of noise to alert the admins to it.
I expect they'll do some database queries or w/e eventually but they don't seem to know who to go threaten yet.
- They're definitely threatening the big dogs first, over time they'll come for the smaller subreddits, though 1 million subscriber subreddits probably aren't as important as the defaults.
- Our sub has 77k subscribers and we got the threat.
  
  Huh, weird. I wonder how they've been tracking this then. We essentially made no announcements and have said nothing about it. Just did it quietly.

I told them to get their heads out of their asses, in those words. We'll see how that goes. I bet they don't.

Respect mah authoritaah, lol

Seems like a healthy company that's ready for an IPO.

Or else I'll removed myself from Reddit

The tactic of just slacking on any actual moderation and doing a terrible job would have been better imo. Then they don't have anything concrete to complain about, just 'hmmm sure is a lot of spam and porn in this sub'.

@dvdnet90 So, where there should I dump my porn? For the cause, of course.

Regardless power tripping or not, i'm glad the mods are still giving problems to the admin

Hateful news, but upvoting this cause it's not the op's fault Reddit is being a b*...

171 comments