I should begin by mentioning that I am (was) a moderator of three subreddits: one large subreddit, one NSFW subreddit and a medical-related subreddit. After u/spez’s calamitous AMA, I joined Lemmy and haven’t looked back. I am really enjoying the Lemmy/KBin vibe. It is very much an alpha (almost beta) product and the ad free, corporate free, decentralized nature of the fediverse has a thrill of its own.
Over the past couple of months, Reddit has done everything it can to show its moderators that they are low-value and easily replaceable. They’ve done this by removing technical tools, killing off third party applications, crippling API changes and jaw-droppingly bad public relations. Heavily used products like /r/toolbox are no longer being actively developed. When Reddit API implements a breaking, non-backwards compatible change, that tool will also die.
Yet the moderators of Reddit continue to moderate. They stay and help Reddit build Reddit. They continue to work for free; to allow Reddit to make money off of their work despite being abused. When I see things like the comment section on this post, I no longer feel sorry for the Reddit moderators still on the site. I see them as a sad, sorry group who cling to the false hope of a corporate turnaround. They could leave Reddit. They should leave Reddit.
These moderators are in an abusive relationship with Reddit, Inc. I might understand the argument, “we built this community, we can’t just abandon it”. But would you give the same advice to someone else in an abusive relationship? I get that the analogy between the mods and the corp is an imperfect one, yet it is similar enough to be valid, in my opinion.
Moderating is really hard. It is hard and thankless and never-ending. Finding good moderators who can handle the marathon nature of the gig is incredibly difficult. If Reddit moderators were to delete their moderating bots, downgrade their automod “code” and dial back their modding efforts to 5 min/week or less, it would materially hurt Reddit as a product.
The sunk-cost fallacy is a real thing. If the Reddit mods understood this, they’d take their talents elsewhere. But as long as they continue to help Reddit build Reddit, one shouldn’t feel sorry for them.
They could leave. I did and I’ve never been happier.
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The abusive relationship is with Reddit, not the community they moderate. A more accurate analogy is tolerating the abusive person because you don’t want to completely lost contact with many other people you care about just because of that one guy who they’re still friend with. The answer then become less clear cut than just cut off the toxic person. It becomes a question of when the abusive person becomes toxic enough that even the prospect of keeping in touch with other people you care about isn’t worth it any more. That is going to be different for everyone and there’s no right answer as it completely depends on the person. It is still possible that someone misjudge and they’d be better off leaving earlier, but what that earlier point is still has to be decided first according to their own circumstances.
To illustrate my point. Some people believe it’s the right thing to do to leave Reddit much earlier than this year, such as when they let /r/the_donald operated freely. In this case here because you decided to stay until 1-2 months ago, you are also part of the problem that “stayed and helped Reddit build Reddit”.
I think this post simplified the situation in a way that misrepresented the motivation of some moderators.
It’s like the mods are divorcing parents who has to deal with the toxic ex to take care of their children.
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A more accurate analogy is tolerating the abusive person because you don’t want to completely lost contact with many other people you care about
Thing is: Communities also can leave. If the community cares about its mods in the same way the mods care about the community, a move toward an alterantive medium is not a problem.
Of course that’s not how it is. The communities at large to a good part don’t give a shit about the people who moderate. The relationship is often entirely one sided. A community which cares, leaves with the mods. A community which doesn’t give a fuck, stays.
The other people can also join Lemmy with very limited efforts compared to a real life situation that may be highly complex (housing, job).
You want to hear something fucked up? After nearly 10 years in Reddit, one day I suddenly started receiving daily death threats and HEAVY bot spamming on this tiny little sub I was moderating. So naturally I reached out to the mod support sub for help. Then this bot/spammer started flooding my post on their sub which actually felt great—they were getting a taste of what I had been dealing with. The post ended up with well over 500 comments from this piece of shit. So instead of help me out, you know what they did? They banned me from the mod support subreddit.
I had a conversation with one of the admins who basically told me they don’t care about death threats. Furthermore, this spammer had also admitted to murdering people. Again the admin didn’t care. Till the day I left they were unable to stop this one person from creating hundreds, maybe even thousands of accounts and spamming tons of people including myself. A billion dollar company can’t even control their own product. The bots literally own Reddit. Lol. Fuck them, all of them who stayed.
Here some proof: https://imgur.com/Hofqdh8 https://imgur.com/gallery/vJhZlwX
They don’t even require email validation. I made dozens of burner accounts with the same email over the years. It’s wild. They are like actively against controlling the bots. It’s like Twitter, the bots inflate the numbers so they don’t want to go after them.
I want revenge.
I suggest you make a bot for that.
It crossed my mind. I know I could write some insidious code. Ultimately I don’t have time for that nonsense.
There was this guy, I think he called himself “killallwomen” with changing numbers. I received a death threat followed up by pictures of animal porn and gore. I actually didn’t care that much. I understand your concerns and nobody should have to deal with this kind of shit. But I got so many death threats on Reddit over the years. Death threats from nazis, death threats from conspiracy theorists, death threats from CCP slaves, death threats from russian bots, death threats from trumpian cultists, death threats from a guy who thought I want to punch him for some reason, death threats from incels, OH THE INCELS! There are so many of them on Reddit.
I couldn’t care even if I wanted. But not everyone feels the same and things I might find almost funny, could disturb others. So this killallwomen guy kept doing what he was doing and the counter got higher and higher. To the point he almost became a meme in some communities.
Did the admins care? Did they do anything to stop this behavior on their site? Of course they didn’t.
I wonder how many of the people on lemmy that bitched about getting banned on reddit, how its an an echo-chamber and how you’re not allowed to have a different opinion there, are believers in “alternate facts,” or spread misinformation, or are otherwise culpable for bad behavior. I once got banned from /r/TwoXChromosomes because I got insultingly personal in criticizing someone for their rabid misandry. But you know what? Even if that other redditor was in the wrong, so was I for a lack of civility. I messaged the mods, explained specifically what happened, what rule I broke, my intention to refrain from doing that in the future, etc. And I was unbanned. One person’s “echo chamber” is 10,000 people’s enjoyable space.
In the last month or two before the Great Migration, I started noticing a hard right shift all over reddit that seemed extremely suspicious. Comments expressing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments and other so-called “social conservative”/regressive comments getting tons of upvotes. On a scale I had never seen before with brigading etc. They’d eventually get downvoted into oblivion but what the hell was going on, I have no idea.
Elections are coming up. I remember the time around 2016. Nothing new under the sun.
I shut down the my subreddit for old memes on Reddit and moved it to Lemmy. Then it blew up on Lemmy and the old ass memes spread to the other meme subreddits. (Sorry)
This is home now.
!antiquememesroadshow@lemmy.world is better than ever over here. Although it’s still full of stale ass memes.
YOU. You’re the reason I had to endure that unending two day borefest! /jk
If it makes you feel any better, my wife also moved over to Lemmy and she was chewing me out for several days because of it.
She was so annoyed that her feed was full of advice animals and dancing babies.
Thank god for Karma.
Real karma is much more meaningful than Reddit karma. ;)
This does raise an interesting point - subreddits that were not so popular in the old world could take advantage of the communities goldrush - ie, many users looking for communities they’re interested in, on lemmy instances.
When there are a lot fewer communities, with a lot less content, even niche communities have a pretty good chance of people subbing to them, if not for anything else, just to populate currently sparse selection of content.
Might also have something to do with Lemmy’s early adopters being a lot of Millennial and late Gen X folks. People seemed to enjoy the nostalgia.
But yeah, it’s a lot easier to gain traction with a new community on Lemmy. All you need is a silly idea, content, and the motivation to let people know it exists.
On your first point - I suppose you’re right. I don’t think it’s just the nostalgia though - I feel like newer generations are getting more and more computer illiterate, as corporate built software is architected to have the least learning curve, and the least amount of user debugging or customisation. The older generations in contrast grew up having to fix or Jerry rig computer stuff, simply because it wasn’t as polished back then as now.
I read an essay exploring this many years ago. If you’re interested, I’ll go dig up the source for you.
Same here.
After the infamous AMA, I made a post in my subreddit basically saying “peace out, I’m off to Lemmy. Good luck, everyone.” Lucky for them, I’d set up a pretty robust automoderator over the years so that’s still taking care of the majority of the moderating tasks I’d imagine.
I visited that post today and saw over 500 comments, each one by a mod and each one of them angry. Why they’re still there, I have no idea.
Most won’t even consider changing their browsing habits due to the trouble involved in acclimating to anything new. There’s inertia.
I look at Reddit from time to time to check on the state etc but I deleted my account / comments etc … must say It is hard to break year long habits
I ended up deleting the reddit app from my phone homescreen and replaced it with Memmy. Once I subbed to a bunch of communities I’m interested in, I barely even notice I’m not on reddit anymore. I just go on, scroll and interact for about 20 minutes, and then I’m done.
I guess If you were used to using reddit for hours a day then it might be hard to find the same amount of content, but then also, maybe reddit is sending you a message to pick up a new hobby. I’ve gotten back into reading, and loving it.
This is just the start. Once Reddit IPOs and we hear how many tens of millions spez made off the backs of mods and power users, more will start to question why they are doing unpaid labor just to make spez rich. There is a fundamental problem with trying to make bank on volunteer labor, and we’re just starting to see it begin.
This is precisely why I quit. I’m still on reddit because the conversation volume on Lemmy is not yet high enough to keep me on top of a few select subjects I follow.
I only moderated one (significant) community - about 30k. All I really do is maintain the bot to control spam. But, I quit. I’m still there, I just refuse to do anything to make the experience any better than it is, and it will slowly degrade over time from my inaction.
Capitalism is great in that it creates great things. Capitalism sucks because it ultimately, inevitably destroys every great thing it creates.
Spez will have his millions then and not care one jot about those who, post his big payday, “question why they are doing unpaid labor just to make spez rich”.
For him there will literally not have been any “fundamental problem with trying to make bank on volunteer labor” as he will have pulled it of and come out of it filthy rich. For any sucker that buys Reddit stock at the public IPO price, that will be different, but Spez himself wil have won.
So the only way to actually punish him for his actions and deter other sociopaths from doing the same thing in the future is to damage the brand well before any IPO.
He’ll still have plenty of stock and CEOs get paid in stock options. But anyway, spez doesn’t have to care, my point was that Reddit mods will question and many will.
Except for the veteran sub where I got perma banned for literally saying I don’t like fascism, I never had many paths cross with mods.
Where I lost respect for them is when Reddit started telling them to open up or get replaced and most of them complied. I’d have some more empathy if it was at work where getting canned meant scrambling to pay bills - but we’re talking about Reddit. They claim to stand for something but the second they’re asked to give up anything for that belief they cave.
Psuedo interwebs powers just trump morals and values these days.
I was a mod that walked away. The fact that so few mods had the balls to call Reddit on their bluff is disappointing but totally expected to me.
I’m not terribly surprised but I was excited at the potential of everyone going “fuck it replace me then” and Reddit trying to limp through an IPO with a whole army of noob mods with zero moderation tools 😂
Well, for what it’s worth I was a mod there – admittedly, of an extremely tiny sub that to the nearest decimal point, no one cares about. I walked away due to all the BS happening at reddit. Not just the API scandal, or throwing the Apollo dev under the bus, but also the general enshittification of the entire experience as well. For instance, I do enjoy a good internet argument now and again, but some of the stuff users in specific subs insisted on arguing with me about just tooth and nail devolved into being absolutely ridiculous. The place is a cesspit of its own making, and not just the administration but also the mods and some cross section of its user base. (I’m not going to speculate on how broad of said cross section. I don’t know; I don’t care.)
At the end of the day, you are correct. It’s just an internet forum that ultimately doesn’t matter. If someone’s only validation in life is wielding a small amount of petty authority over anonymous internet people, well. I don’t know what to tell you. I have no need for such a thing. I was only a mod of my sub because I enjoyed the topic, but I’m not turning it into a job and frankly, I don’t care to be A) lumped in by association with the “power mods” and capitulators/collaborators involved with this whole clusterfuck, and B) if reddit is also implicitly handing me a “fuck you” along with all the rest of the mods, then fuck 'em right back. I’m on the internet to look at cat pictures and talk about motorcycles. On that front, reddit is nowhere special.
Things come and things go. I guess it was nice while it lasted. (And if you want to talk about things going, I used to be a moderator on the Temple of the Screaming Electron forums. Now there’s some nostalgia for you. I’m not even sure that place qualified as The Web 1.0. That turned into a shitshow eventually, too, although for different reasons. It’s almost like history repeats, or something.)
I was only a mod of my sub because I enjoyed the topic,
These were the mods that I generally respected.
I think I recall hearing about TOTSE. Wasn’t it BBS?
It was, originally. It then mutated into a site on this newfangled World Wide Web thingamabob, which ultimately became a UBB driven forum. In what is now considered quite an oldschool style. Originally it was an archive of text files of questionable legality (and accuracy). Think along the lines of the old “Anarchist’s Cookbook” that circulated the early internet, and that sort of thing. A large portion of the text file archive was still available even well after the forum was the only reason anyone went there.
It had a facelift circa I want to say 2008? My recollection is a bit hazy. Which tried to make it look more “professional” and “Web 2.0,” but ultimately was the same old thing in a different skin that was less “l33t hack3r” but not much easier on the eyes. (Someone really, really liked the color blue.) That was kind of the beginning of the end, since after that the creator/admin “Jeff Hunter,” had apparently lost interest after presumably pupating into a productive member of society, and now the whole thing is gone.
Towards the end, Totse also had an inner circle of moderators of dubious sanity for its major forums, who pretty much just used their power to squash dissent and turn their subforums into their own private echo chambers. Sounds kind of familiar, once you think back on it. I, uh, won’t reveal which forums I was a moderator of. Such a thing might impact a person’s reputation.
Part of it is the sunk cost fallacy. They are/were heavily invested in the community and it’s hard to walk away from something that has been important to you. I don’t necessarily disagree with you as I walked away from Reddit and only recently logged in to give away all my coins but I do empathize some with those who haven’t yet.
Communities can be rebuilt, as we’ve seen. There really is no excuse at this point for those mods to not leave and start rebuilding somewhere like Lemmy.
Reddit will never reverse course. Maybe their goal used to be aligned with ours, but now they’re just a massive corporation chasing an ever growing profit.
Reddit will never reverse course.
Not only that, but now they know that they can do basically whatever they want with absolutely no consequences no matter how bad it is for the users, because 99% of the users just won’t care. They’ll continue using the official app and the horrible new website like they always have.
Reddits surrender to capital reminds Matrix with agent Smith becoming everything and everyone despite Neo.
There really is no excuse at this point for those mods to not leave and start rebuilding somewhere like Lemmy.
Oh they are. And they are just as toxic and controlling.
Start your own instance, with hookers and blackjack.
This whole ordeal reminds me of Thor Ragnarok.
Honestly I stopped feeling bad for mods as soon as I saw a majority of them fold like a soggy napkin upon the first threat from the admins saying they’d remove mods who keep their subs private.
If I were a mod I would have kept it private until Reddit removed me. If all mods actually did that, Reddit would have been in big trouble since they’d effectively have to find new mods all at once for the entire site. Instead, most mods basically did Reddit a favor and lessened the impact substantially. Thanks mods!
I also don’t feel bad for most Reddit users. Way too many of them were too ignorant to even understand what the protests were about. And a majority of them were yelling at mods to reopen and saying the protest was stupid just because they were okay with using the official mobile app
Unbelievable all around honestly. The entire thing was fucking embarrassing. We had one actual chance to win and everyone blew it.
I know it sounds pretentious as hell, but the majority of people are just idiots that can’t be bothered to learn and educate themselves on anything…
Again, sounding pretentious and the ones smart enough to see the reddit bullshit and figure out lemmy are here now!
I sound like a prick, but it do!
You’re not a prick or pretentious or doing anything wrong. Part of the propaganda matrix is to shame people into not checking or calling each other out for not having basic knowledge they should have. It’s how they keep people uneducated
One of the things that clinched it for me to leave reddit for good was when one of my favorite subs’ (r/entwives) mods caved after “protesting” (going private) for the standard 48 hours, then laid down like pathetic losers after said “protest” and stating they’d remain open like normal instead of permanently staying “private.” It was fucking deplorable, and these sad sack mods’ reasoning for it was “well if we stay private, someone will create a duplicate of this sub and it won’t be the same welcoming environment as this one 🥺🥺🥺🥺” man, that made me see red…it was blatant that they were desperate to hold onto the pathetically small amount of power they had, ultimately terrified of losing their user base.
it was blatant that they were desperate to hold onto the pathetically small amount of power they had, ultimately terrified of losing their user base.
This is unfortunately the majority of mods on there, especially the shitty ones that are ban happy and censorship happy. They love being able to silence whoever they want and hold power over people. Losing that “power” is not an option for them.
As soon as I saw that the so called “protest” was only supposed to last a pathetic 48 fucking hours, I knew it was going to fail. The goal should have been to go dark for as long as it took. The entire thing was set up to fail. Absolutely fucking useless.
Top mods of subs can delete them iirc, they should have just done that upon being threatened with replacement- delete all the css, unban anyone banned or alternatively ban as many people as possible and all the known admins, remove all the rules and spam filters, then delete it- so if they do resurrect it from the bin it’ll be as messed up as possible as the biggest F u to the admins you possibly can.
That would do nothing, they can just restore from a backup that is likely happening daily.
People don’t have courage, integrity or principles anymore and it shows.
I haven’t felt sorry for mods since the mods of a sub I’ll not mention decided to stop the protest after some of them got banned, because “we don’t want the sub to fall into the hands of randoms”.
Spineless behavior. Just move and rebuild the community elsewhere. It has been more than a month and the ship has sailed. Even if Reddit decides to backpedal for now, they’ll try again in the future.
Totally they could just say “we are moving to X” and continue the work there. How hard is it? It’s time consuming but as a team it’s doable
.
For me it was mostly about accessibility, because reddit essentially told disabled people they aren’t welcome. So … bye
But also the attempt at monetizing FUCKING EVERYTHING is pissing me off. I miss the internet where most things were free. I am not going to pay a subscription to read an aggregation of links. If I have to pay I am going to choose something more fun over social media.
This maybe a controversial opinion here but many of those moderators also suffer from a big problem of powertripping. They just don’t want to leave that position.
i’m on the Board of Directors of a nonprofit in a realm that has a lot of drama. I fucking hate it. The reason I stay is because leaving means the drama fucks won, to the detriment of all. Not saying my situation is identical to mods on reddit, just that people often have reasons for staying in leadership other than power.
Why not start your own competing non-profit, leave the terrible one and take the good people with you?
IDK why you’re being downvoted. It might not be feasible for op to do that but doesn’t mean its not worth doing or thinking about.
A lot of non-profits have truly dysfunctional leadership. They leech off the hard work of people who do genuinely care about the cause. My friend worked for one of them that was supposed to help underprivileged children. They ended up getting burnt out and leaving, though her former boss who did jackshit was fired shortly after.
Can’t really comment for certain on OP’s behalf, but they did say “in a realm that has a lot of drama”
“In a realm” makes it sound like it’s not just their non-profit that’s at fault, but is a common issue across all non-profits working in that same field/realm
🤔 I wonder how one would mitigate that, if they were starting their own non-profit or managing another.
This.
Well, some of those mods are here already, so good for them - they can powertrip here as much as they want! Though I prefer they stay there.
May they stay where they are then, so the rest of us can move on from them and be happy.
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This is absurd. Consider the idea that not every moderator is power tripping, and that there are many who manage communities because they want to see them grow, and want people to have a place to talk about a given topic.
When I used Reddit, I was on some smaller communities, maybe a few thousand people tops, with moderators who interacted with their community, were well known among the regulars, and were great to talk to. They don’t deserve disrespect just because you want to generalize all moderators under one giant blanket stereotype.
I have to agree with you. It’s like people who consider their career to be “management”.
Jumped ship when Spez wasn’t caving to the protests. I was mostly a lurker on Reddit and posted a little but now with the state of our social media it’s better to get out and have a voice. And this place is nice
Im so glad I left as soon as I recognised how much they don’t care about mods. I was a mod at several subs and fuck that. I’m happier here. Remember. Spez made it clear that so long it doesn’t hurt their revenue, he will do whatever he cares to do without listening to the clients.
I’ve never modded but have been on Reddit 15yrs 11mo as of the Apollo shutdown. At this point I’m in the 16yr club. It’s wild how badly they are acting toward mods.
Frankly I’m not a mod lover or hater, with the exception of AskHistory. It was so clear how the mods there truly made the community. Haters will say they had a heavy hand, but it kept the quality remarkably high.
I’m middle age so I’ve seen a full decade of forum shitposting and flamwars before Reddit even existed. The fact that Reddit can’t see the value of the community that build “their platform” is beyond tonedeaf, it’s just straight up arrogant.
I’m sure Reddit will stay far bigger than lemmy for a long time, but that’s fine. Maybe better. The old forums were microscopic by modern social media standards but in hindsight the conversations with active users were more real and not just some random username that might as well have been anon.
Y’know, I read that entire thread, and it really doesn’t come across as you’re representing it.
The mods are spitting rage over there. They’re outright insulting every aspect of reddit. I feel like focusing on the idea that because they made a post there they must still be active users is a stretch and unfair.
Of course, we know too many people still use the site. But it’s hard for me to get on board with a blanket “fuck the mods” based on that thread alone.
Yeah, mods don’t like Reddit either.
