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Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Hey — one of the mods mentioned in the article here.
The idea was that if enough subreddits banded together and shut down, we could have brought Reddit to the negotiating table and helped to save the 3rd party apps so many of us relied upon for our daily Reddit experience.
Unfortunately, it seems that way too many mods preferred the sense of control they had over their communities rather than what was right or just. All those subs that went public again after 48 hours, and all the other ones that went public again but with protest content killed all momentum the protest had, and doomed it.
The part all too many people miss is that Reddit is like an iceberg on the ocean — while frequent visitors see the new content at the top, it’s the huge mass of old content that brings Reddit the bulk of its revenue. It’s all that old content that is indexed by Google and which shows up towards the top of Google search results — and during the shutdown, all of those links were broken. Google even took note during the protest that a significant number of search results were leading to broken links.
This look was terrible for Reddit, and hit them directly in the pocketbook. But then some mods decided they didn’t mind being bent over a barrel by Reddit so long as they could put “moderator” on their resume and reopened too soon. The subs that went with John Oliver content were droll, but also reopened the huge mass of content that lies beneath the waves and which Google indexes into. Reddit didn’t lose anything from those subs.
I was fully expecting to be turfed. I pretty openly dared Reddit to do it. After the shit they pulled I wasn’t going to go back and do free work for them on their terms. I forced them to be the bad guy. We had to show people how Reddit was treating its volunteer moderators, and in the end they didn’t disappoint.
In the end, for me, I chalk this one up as a win.
Good for you! I was mod of a tiny gaming sub, and 99% of its members did not care the least tiny bit about Reddit. They will when it comes for old-Reddit, but the "first they came for..." argument did not manage to penetrate their shells, especially as they were involved in multiple subs and those all stayed behind intact as well. So like 4 of us started a new community here... where we have maybe 1 post a week instead of 1 per hour. Even that much is inordinately complicated by all the bugs on Kbin/Lemmy, where ~80% of the time when you want to upvote or boost it asks you to re-login (actually it's ~100% after a certain threshold of time is reached, or 0% if you instantly do it without taking time to read or write anything first, but that is not normal behavior!), and my notifications have been permanently busted for weeks now due to a bug where if you comment on a post that a mod later removes, the notification of someone responding to you has no way to ever be removed or even seen, ever again. So what I am saying is... I really cannot even so much recommend that they come here, just yet? I am a techie person and can patiently deal with these things, but most of them are not, and won't.
But you cannot control them. You can only control yourself. Which you did? Thus, good for you! YOU at least did the right thing. Maybe others will follow your lead, especially as the software gets better (Kbin in particular is more in its infancy than Lemmy - like iirc it even has zero moderation tools right now!?), or maybe they will not, but that again is on them. You at least showed them the way.
Fair enough. Although, I remember seeing stats on how much their traffic was down in those 48 hours, and it wasn't much, I don't think they even broke 10%.
At this point, the only way to truly hurt Reddit is to move the community to another platform.
Traffic stats actually went UP during those 2 days and in the next month or two after that time! Much of that was likely from the bots used to shred all the data whilst removing it, but they still counted as "traffic".
As you say, the only way forward would be to move. But to where? 99% of people in my small gaming sub refused to come here, and with all the bugs now (I'm on Kbin, there seem many more here than on Lemmy tho), I can hardly blame them: this place is not ready for them.
Anyway, the point was not to hurt Reddit, the point was to be okay. In part by getting Huffman to either back down, or getting the board members behind him to ask him to step down or forcibly remove him, neither of which happened, so now... we move, b/c that is all that is left to us to do. Even if 99% of the community remains behind. :-(
The best way to make people move, in my view, is for the content creators to move. The consumers will follow.
Absolutely. I am not really one of those, although I tried to do my part, and yet there needs to be a minimum amount to really be self-sustaining.
Also, the software is REALLY buggy. I am on Kbin, and 100% of the time when you want to upvote or boost some comment or thread, it asks you to re-login if you do that after spending a minute reading and/or typing - i.e. it only remembers who you are for a few seconds. Also my Notifications have been busted for WEEKS now, b/c anytime you comment on a post that is later removed by a mod from elsewhere on the Federiverse, the notification will be poisoned and can literally never go away, nor even be visited, nor can you visit any other notifications (update that I just found out yesterday: that are on the same page), so basically you will forever receive continually-new notifications that you cannot visit, i.e. it is the entire Notifications system that becomes unusable, not just that single one. Oh yeah, and afaik, moderation tools are literally non-existent on Kbin.
Lemmy is much more advanced, even having several mobile apps (which iirc Kbin has none yet nor will it ever in the future until it opens up its API publicly) but either way I can really empathize why people, especially non-technically minded ones, would (even should?) STRONGLY hesitate to come here. Like for one thing, I already would like to move my account from Kbin to Lemmy, but account migration isn't a thing. I am not going to go around and ask every person that DMs me to now shift over to use a new account, after having just done that for Reddit. And then do it again, if I don't like the new instance? And again, and again, and again, and again?
Fuck spez yes but... now what? This place isn't ready for the masses just yet. Especially Kbin. Though people are starting to work on it, and that will change, soon(-ish).
Right now, Lemmy/Kbin is good to replace doom-scrolling with meme-scrolling. And for communities where enough people were willing to migrate, it may even be a full replacement for a niche sub-Reddit, but I understand why 99% of people are remaining behind. Can we really blame them? I mean yes, obviously, but also, can we, really? It is ultimately their choice what to do with their lives.