Fuck yeah. This is the response I was hoping for. It's going to be obnoxious to lose control of r/modernart and r/snackexchange, but the website needs to burn and that requires instability. If the quality of the subreddits degrades and the users hate the scab mods they see as being responsible for that, mods that have to work with worse versions of the tools we currently have, that's a feedback loop of instability. I have only found like three people in the past five years who have been willing to actively moderate r/snackexchange for more than a couple weeks and they put in a lot of work to keep the subreddit functioning in spite of reddit.
Yeah, this is the beginning of the end for Reddit. They don't even realise yet, but this is all the admin team has left to do anyway.
Reddit is in contradiction with its moderators, and its moderators are in contradiction with its users. It's an unstable system that simply can't survive forever.
Mods get orders from the admins (who don't use the platform) about rules to follow, and then the mods have to enforce those on the users who see the mods as cops, essentially. But the admins and the users are not in contradiction because they never interact. However, mods perform free labour for Reddit so that the admins, who represent Reddit Inc, can get that ad money.
Now they're bringing in their own mods, but they are not solving the contradiction. I guarantee you that in a few months down the line these new mods are going to be asking to be formally employed by reddit, and then either get sacked and replaced with whoever will want to take the job afterwards. Or a handful of them will be employed and then required to moderate most subreddits. Overworked, they will disable the creation of new subreddits and you'll have to use just the few remaining approved ones.
Reddit is done either way, it only has a few years left at most. After that either it shuts down, or it will become so small that it'll be an insignificant website.
I can easily see it spiraling into something like that too. When a subreddit gets above like 10k users, that's a whole-ass customer service-ass job without set working hours. Above 100k, the mod team is pseudo-professionalised and it's insufferable. 1m+, let alone the 10-50m user subreddits, must have a massive mod queue requiring constant attention and bringing unending harassment. Swapping out the mods is a bandaid solution to one symptom of the problem while heightening all of its contradictions. Those mods are going to be seen as Spez's pinkertons at the exact moment he makes the website worse for the userbase. One of those three groups is bound to break under pressure.
Problem is he can swap them out once, twice, maybe thrice if we're being generous, but after that I don't think he'll find people to take the job willingly. He might start naming new mods without asking them, and they'll promptly tell him to fuck off and will not moderate anything. Once the scab mods realise they can organise together (like how they got the admins to finally do some baby steps towards reconciliating with them) and they can demand money for this, because they're already doing this job for reddit, then it's over for spez.
I'm not sure the scab mods will rebel. They are after all taking the job in the midst of a large scale protest. Clearly they care more about the "power" they wield than the cause of preserving API access. I will say that they may be overwhelmed and will almost certainly do a worse job given that they no longer have access to the custom mod tools that required the free API.
I don’t think he’ll find people to take the job willingly
When the subs are big, the number of professionalized power users and the market incentives for control of the sub are equally big. We're nowhere near a day in which there's not some serious incentive to moderate /r/politics, for instance. Nevermind /r/pics, /r/worldnews, or /r/movies. The sheer volume of HailCorporate alone on those sites...
Once the scab mods realise they can organise together
How many of these mods are in any position to organize? And how many are just professional social media accounts controlled by marketing teams?
You think the schlub intern at Conde Naste is interested in forming a solidarity coalition with the schlub interns at Ford Modeling Agency and the Washington Post?
Mods get orders from the admins (who don’t use the platform) about rules to follow, and then the mods have to enforce those on the users who see the mods as cops, essentially.
so what you're saying is that society can't last forever
Reddit is in contradiction with its moderators, and its moderators are in contradiction with its users. It’s an unstable system that simply can’t survive forever.
I mean... maybe? The subs that didn't close down seem to be as active as ever. And so much of Reddit is faux-participation anyway, what with the amount of bot activity that's been there practically since day one.
If every single active user were to walk away from Reddit for a year, I wonder how much of the site would even change?
I originally made it to challenge that "they're poisoning the Halloween candy" myth. In almost a decade there's never been a poisoning. Instead it's scams and to a much lesser extent doxxing. Maybe 5% of trades result in one person not sending a box. Once I had a case where this woman temporarily couldn't afford postage so her partner looked through her account history, found posts about wanting to leave her abusive husband, and blackmailed her for snacks after finding that husband's email address and threatening to forward the posts. Spent the night on the phone with the Viennese police trying to explain that I'm from the internet and this person I don't know is threatening suicide because she'll be killed if she goes home because an Austrian guy wants bad chocolate.
This is why I have 50 different accounts for every social site. 45 of them to shitpost, 4 of them to ask various IRL questions, and 1 account to conduct financial transactions
1 account for everything, 1 account for roleplaying as my dog's new agency so the illusion isn't broken by me referencing something in a different post. :screm-cool:
A fair number of my r/DPRS posts are self-effacing as the only member of the working class in Sashatown. He threatens me with secret police. It's absurd I have to live under these authoritarian conditions but that's tankies for you.
Spent the night on the phone with the Viennese police trying to explain that I’m from the internet and this person I don’t know is threatening suicide because she’ll be killed if she goes home because an Austrian guy wants bad chocolate.
Fuck yeah. This is the response I was hoping for. It's going to be obnoxious to lose control of r/modernart and r/snackexchange, but the website needs to burn and that requires instability. If the quality of the subreddits degrades and the users hate the scab mods they see as being responsible for that, mods that have to work with worse versions of the tools we currently have, that's a feedback loop of instability. I have only found like three people in the past five years who have been willing to actively moderate r/snackexchange for more than a couple weeks and they put in a lot of work to keep the subreddit functioning in spite of reddit.
Every subreddit should become r/Antiwork.
Yeah, this is the beginning of the end for Reddit. They don't even realise yet, but this is all the admin team has left to do anyway.
Reddit is in contradiction with its moderators, and its moderators are in contradiction with its users. It's an unstable system that simply can't survive forever.
Mods get orders from the admins (who don't use the platform) about rules to follow, and then the mods have to enforce those on the users who see the mods as cops, essentially. But the admins and the users are not in contradiction because they never interact. However, mods perform free labour for Reddit so that the admins, who represent Reddit Inc, can get that ad money.
Now they're bringing in their own mods, but they are not solving the contradiction. I guarantee you that in a few months down the line these new mods are going to be asking to be formally employed by reddit, and then either get sacked and replaced with whoever will want to take the job afterwards. Or a handful of them will be employed and then required to moderate most subreddits. Overworked, they will disable the creation of new subreddits and you'll have to use just the few remaining approved ones.
Reddit is done either way, it only has a few years left at most. After that either it shuts down, or it will become so small that it'll be an insignificant website.
I can easily see it spiraling into something like that too. When a subreddit gets above like 10k users, that's a whole-ass customer service-ass job without set working hours. Above 100k, the mod team is pseudo-professionalised and it's insufferable. 1m+, let alone the 10-50m user subreddits, must have a massive mod queue requiring constant attention and bringing unending harassment. Swapping out the mods is a bandaid solution to one symptom of the problem while heightening all of its contradictions. Those mods are going to be seen as Spez's pinkertons at the exact moment he makes the website worse for the userbase. One of those three groups is bound to break under pressure.
Problem is he can swap them out once, twice, maybe thrice if we're being generous, but after that I don't think he'll find people to take the job willingly. He might start naming new mods without asking them, and they'll promptly tell him to fuck off and will not moderate anything. Once the scab mods realise they can organise together (like how they got the admins to finally do some baby steps towards reconciliating with them) and they can demand money for this, because they're already doing this job for reddit, then it's over for spez.
I assume the new mods are getting paid, either by reddit or the security state
I'm not sure the scab mods will rebel. They are after all taking the job in the midst of a large scale protest. Clearly they care more about the "power" they wield than the cause of preserving API access. I will say that they may be overwhelmed and will almost certainly do a worse job given that they no longer have access to the custom mod tools that required the free API.
When the subs are big, the number of professionalized power users and the market incentives for control of the sub are equally big. We're nowhere near a day in which there's not some serious incentive to moderate /r/politics, for instance. Nevermind /r/pics, /r/worldnews, or /r/movies. The sheer volume of HailCorporate alone on those sites...
How many of these mods are in any position to organize? And how many are just professional social media accounts controlled by marketing teams?
You think the schlub intern at Conde Naste is interested in forming a solidarity coalition with the schlub interns at Ford Modeling Agency and the Washington Post?
so what you're saying is that society can't last forever
yes, and alas we live in it
I mean... maybe? The subs that didn't close down seem to be as active as ever. And so much of Reddit is faux-participation anyway, what with the amount of bot activity that's been there practically since day one.
If every single active user were to walk away from Reddit for a year, I wonder how much of the site would even change?
Perhaps I’m too paranoid, but is it wise to be buying consumables from reddit sellers :alex-aware:
I originally made it to challenge that "they're poisoning the Halloween candy" myth. In almost a decade there's never been a poisoning. Instead it's scams and to a much lesser extent doxxing. Maybe 5% of trades result in one person not sending a box. Once I had a case where this woman temporarily couldn't afford postage so her partner looked through her account history, found posts about wanting to leave her abusive husband, and blackmailed her for snacks after finding that husband's email address and threatening to forward the posts. Spent the night on the phone with the Viennese police trying to explain that I'm from the internet and this person I don't know is threatening suicide because she'll be killed if she goes home because an Austrian guy wants bad chocolate.
This is why I have 50 different accounts for every social site. 45 of them to shitpost, 4 of them to ask various IRL questions, and 1 account to conduct financial transactions
1 account for everything, 1 account for roleplaying as my dog's new agency so the illusion isn't broken by me referencing something in a different post. :screm-cool:
The corgi is a Maoist-Third Worldist and calls me a lib and tells me to read theory.
A fair number of my r/DPRS posts are self-effacing as the only member of the working class in Sashatown. He threatens me with secret police. It's absurd I have to live under these authoritarian conditions but that's tankies for you.
:data-laughing:
Sounds like a cool corgi
The best opsec is to have 50 different people using one account :very-smart:
"Hello police? I'm from the internet."
Pretty much verbatim that but in Google translated German.
Ich bin eine Internets. :jfk-gaming:
That brings back memeories
Pretty sure this is an Original Sentence.