Reddit Blackout Sees Majority of Site Offline

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#3091291 17-Jun-2023 22:15

michaelmurfy:
Reddit are building a feature to allow users to vote out mods.

Meanwhile, subreddits involved with the protest are getting creative to obey with the rules for example /r/pics now only allowing John Oliver pics: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/

If they deliver that feature then it’s an almost certain recipe for absolute chaos and bot brigading.

Sometimes it’s entertaining to watch Rome burn but it’s also pretty sad.

Canuckabroad

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Master Geek

#3091292 17-Jun-2023 22:23

Handle9:
michaelmurfy:

Reddit are building a feature to allow users to vote out mods.

Meanwhile, subreddits involved with the protest are getting creative to obey with the rules for example /r/pics now only allowing John Oliver pics: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/

If they deliver that feature then it’s an almost certain recipe for absolute chaos and bot brigading.

Sometimes it’s entertaining to watch Rome burn but it’s also pretty sad.

One would hope that they put some thought into it, and voting out mods would have restrictions to prevent bot brigading - then again they haven't done an awful lot to prevent that thus far. There's been far more priority given in making sure potential new accounts could be as active as possible than to ensuring new accounts aren't bots.

JimmyH

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#3091425 18-Jun-2023 14:25

tehgerbil:

In an escalation Reddit has reached out to Mods to basically ask any of those who mod a closed sub and disagree with it to backstab their team and get them removed in order to reopen the sub.

Atrocious behavior. Clearly the depths of Steve Huffmans moral depravity are yet to be plumbed.

Yeah, I have been following this saga with interest - I might have to send out for more popcorn. It's hard to see how you can characterise Huffman's behaviour as anything but arrogant and cack-handed, even the tone of his posts let alone the actual content really seems to really show a genius for annoying people and inflaming things, rather than calming them down which is what he should be trying to do. The shareholders will really want to put a lid on this as noise of this level could get in the way of their reportedly imminent IPO, and I suspect one of the things they could quickly and cheaply to to appease the userbase would be to summarily sack him, and put in someone who at least sounds conciliatory.

If I was a mod donating my time to Reddit, if I wasn't annoyed already then this post would have made me annoyed. Even if I had taken no part in the protests. I think the best thing for the mods to to force Reddit to the table would be organise the next stage of the protests. Something like:

Apparently cave to Reddit's pressure, and reopen all of the closed subs at the same time.
Change the mod settings to "allow all".
Stop moderating at all for a month.

We are talking about thousands of subs, including some of the most popular on Reddit. They would swiftly be overrun with bots, spam, extreme political invective, offensive images and more. I doubt Reddit would remotely have ether the staff resources, or a sufficient pool of competent mods-in-waiting, to deal with the chaos. It would like 4Chan on steroids. They would have next to no chance of a successful IPO in the face of that. The new CEO, because that's what would then be needed, would pretty much have to work with the community to defuse things.

Canuckabroad

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Master Geek

#3091861 19-Jun-2023 08:49

Moderators in protesting communities are now receiving this message:

Hi everyone,

We are aware that you have chosen to close your community at this time. We are reaching out to find out if any moderators currently on the mod team would be willing to take steps to reopen the community. Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Your users rely on your community for information, support, entertainment, and finding connection with others who have similar interests. The ability to find and make these connections is incredibly important to many people and ensuring that active communities are able to remain stable and active (and open) is very important.

Our goal here is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is usable for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community please let us know.

tehgerbil

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#3091888 19-Jun-2023 10:00

Canuckabroad:

Moderators in protesting communities are now receiving this message:

Hi everyone,

We are aware that you have chosen to close your community at this time. We are reaching out to find out if any moderators currently on the mod team would be willing to take steps to reopen the community. Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Your users rely on your community for information, support, entertainment, and finding connection with others who have similar interests. The ability to find and make these connections is incredibly important to many people and ensuring that active communities are able to remain stable and active (and open) is very important.

Our goal here is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is usable for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community please let us know.

I.e;

"We will not work with you (to make the site a better place) You will work for us (for free) or else."

Qazzy03

478 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3092377 20-Jun-2023 07:07

Since unistalling the office moblie app I have been on Reddit way less.

Used to open it loads waking up, going to bed or just through out the day.

Now it is just after work for a bit, seeing Pics, Aww and Videos all jump on the John Oliver train has been fun.

Will be interesting to see how Reddit evolves or doesn't.

Canuckabroad

178 posts

Master Geek

#3092380 20-Jun-2023 07:30

I'm curious as well. The NZ sub certainly appears to have given up - it's back to normal operations without even a sticky note to remind people about the cause about which they had been protesting (and others still are). I wonder how much impact there was that people (like myself) weren't using Reddit in protest - which meant the users who were there disproportionately opposed the protest and thus the voices expressed were more negative than the true user viewpoint. Like any protest, the casual observer will have a limit to their tolerance of inconvenience before they wish things were back to normal.

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Silvrav

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#3092388 20-Jun-2023 08:30

Canuckabroad:

I'm curious as well. The NZ sub certainly appears to have given up - it's back to normal operations without even a sticky note to remind people about the cause about which they had been protesting (and others still are). I wonder how much impact there was that people (like myself) weren't using Reddit in protest - which meant the users who were there disproportionately opposed the protest and thus the voices expressed were more negative than the true user viewpoint. Like any protest, the casual observer will have a limit to their tolerance of inconvenience before they wish things were back to normal.

Quite a few still out of action -

and some of the largers still protesting, but majority back online

Handsomedan

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#3092456 20-Jun-2023 11:48

There are some that have simply stopped moderating and are allowing people to post whatever they want (as a form of protest).

Handsome Dan Has Spoken.
Handsome Dan needs to stop adding three dots to every sentence...

Handsome Dan does not currently have a side hustle as the mascot for Yale

*Gladly accepting donations...

Canuckabroad

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Master Geek

#3092466 20-Jun-2023 12:17

There are a variety of 'soft-protest' options being taken. For some the only content being allowed was joke content (John Oliver memes etc) or having the sub allow NSFW content which isn't monetised with advertisements - among others. Failing to moderate as a protest may be taken by some, however it is specifically contrary to the moderator rules and is asking to have the moderators be removed and replaced (if they can find replacements). Perhaps there are some mods who are going to try call the admins' bluff about replacing everyone - but it seems a lot of subs have opened up once they started receiving threats about being removed.

I wonder how much Reddit is trying to encourage this as being framed as mods desperate to hold on to their power to discredit them in the eyes of users.

Handsomedan

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#3092495 20-Jun-2023 13:53

To be fair - there are some mods on Reddit who really should be removed.
There are "supermods" who are mods on multiple subs and are quite unreasonable and power-hungry. They are partly to blame for the general Mod hate that goes on in various parts of the site.

I'd be just as happy to see these people removed.

Handsome Dan Has Spoken.
Handsome Dan needs to stop adding three dots to every sentence...

Handsome Dan does not currently have a side hustle as the mascot for Yale

*Gladly accepting donations...

tehgerbil

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#3092555 20-Jun-2023 14:27

Handsomedan:

To be fair - there are some mods on Reddit who really should be removed.
There are "supermods" who are mods on multiple subs and are quite unreasonable and power-hungry. They are partly to blame for the general Mod hate that goes on in various parts of the site.

I'd be just as happy to see these people removed.

As soon as you said that Gallowboob came to mind haha.

Canuckabroad

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#3092751 20-Jun-2023 19:12

Not all the mods being removed are like Gallowboob.

source

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14dt9ly/removed_as_moderator_of_rcelebrities_after_over/

allan

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#3092860 21-Jun-2023 09:14

Interesting post on the current state of the Synology sub which has gone NSFW.

Reddit updated their policy about moderator autonomy & threatened to ban mods that continued the blackout. So the mods of those subs reopened, with the policy that they will not be doing any moderating (as Reddit said the work they do is insignificant).

Switching sub to NSFW does two things: the first is that NSFW subs can not be monetized, by the mods or Reddit itself, so Reddit is now losing shit tons of money from subs with multi million followers. And the second thing is that you can get punished / banned for allowing NSFW content on subs that are listed as being SFW, so officially changing that will shield the subs from being shut down ... The mods know what people will post without them filtering everything, because they see this shit every day that they log on to their unpaid hobby-job of being a moderator.

Despite the obvious effect of every sub instantly turning into a frothing cesspool of perversion, the actual point of this is to make Reddit publicly acknowledge that moderators are not disposable or irrelevant.

Canuckabroad

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Master Geek

#3093023 21-Jun-2023 13:58

Just poked my head onto Reddit to look for an update. There are posts stating admins have recently removed and replaced the moderating teams from r/Celebrities, r/beyondthebump, r/searchandrescue, r/mildlyiniteresting among others - and also that the admins are turning off the NSFW flag on subs which have recently enabled it and are removing the mods. It appears that continued protest actions will see the mod teams removed and the subs returned to their initial state (with unknown and untested mods). The question then becomes what impact this will have on crushing the protest - and how many of the users on the site are going to be affected. Ultimately the only action that users or mods can take here if they don't like what Reddit does - is to leave in sufficient quantities that they reconsider. I think the next thing which will influence them is when their 3rd party apps stop working at the end of the month - but how many will leave versus just accept the official app remains to be seen.

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