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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Test
Every other day, I get over how mad I was about the whole spez thing, and just focus on bettering our community and Lemmy in general.
But then they do something again that immediately remind me how much of an asshole he is. Last week, it was them taking out the coins and awards. Now this week, it’s introducing r/Places like nothing happened and we’re all friends again. Fuck him.
I’ve been on Reddit quite some years, but don’t understand what the fuss about r/places is about. Would you mind explaining it to me?
It’s just a way to get a whole subreddit involved in an activity and compete against other subreddits in a goodhearted way that doesn’t involve brigading or anything. In theory, it’s fine. Doing it right now is absolutely tone-deaf.
Doing it right now is absolutely tone-deaf.
Its mandated fun. “Users, you have been agitated in the last weeks. We hereby strongly suggest you participate in this thing we have chosen in order for you to have fun again.”
Reddit becomes stale as it goes through the motions when trying to hand out the member berries.
The beatings will continue until morale improves vibes
Imo it is also a way to offset some of the losses of engagement they’ve been experiencing and show potential shareholders that they can still drive traffic instead of being driven by it.
Oh I have no doubt of that. They want to look better for their IPO and they look terrible right now.
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.
deleted by creator
The other people can also join Lemmy with very limited efforts compared to a real life situation that may be highly complex (housing, job).
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.
Your argument is strange, since I definitely feel bad for people in abusive relationships and have understanding for how difficult it might be to leave one.
Come on, we are stretching the analogy here. Reddit isn’t beating them. Reddit isn’t isolating them. Reddit isn’t going to explode in anger if they find out you’re flirting with another social media website.
It’s a website. I was on there for 15 years and I left with a snap of a finger. It’s not that serious.
It’s a website. I was on there for 15 years and I left with a snap of a finger. It’s not that serious.
That’s why it’s a bad analogy.
Some people are sentimental, and that’s okay.
And everyone is exactly like you? Some people feel attached to it for any kind of reasons and when someone sunk countless hours in something, I have no troubles understanding why it might be difficult to leave. Especially since for some communities there are no alternatives. Why not be a bit more emphatic?
Ok I admit there may be some emotion there and might be difficult to leave. I was there for 15 years, I get it.
But really I’m pushing back at the analogy to an abusive relationship.
The mechanism seems similar, sunken cost, ignoring bad treatment, lack of self respect - while the abuse part is definitely not comparable.
I do think there is some element of abuse, (i.e. “landed gentry”) but definitely not on par with an intimate relationship. Comparable, but not anywhere near equivalent.
I think the sunk cost can be compared to a gambling addiction. You lose money, you know the casinos are designed to make you lose money on average, yet people chase after losses all the same.
Casinos are an investment of money, and moderation is an investment of time. A gambler could just leave the casino after suffering a loss, and a Reddit mod could leave Reddit after suffering from this blatant abuse from the admins. But with addicts, you’ll always have that itch, that voice in the back of your head telling you to stay or go back.
Some people are more prone to these urges and can’t resist. Gambling addicts exist. It’s a serious problem, and I have a close friend who suffered from this very addiction. I’d consider many of these mods to suffer from a similar, albeit lesser form of this brand of addiction.
Either way, I agree that it’s something that should be pitied, and disagree with the idea that “it’s not that serious.”
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.
Oh I don’t, don’t you worry.
The admin are trash over on reddit. The CEO is trash. Lots of the mods in the big subs are trash too though.
Any of the mods that complained and protested but are still on the site are gutless and just don’t want to lose their mod power.
Right? As somebody else said, the protest was supposed to be a warning shot. Any subreddit that went dark, but then stayed compliant when the API changes went through is chock-full-o spineless mods.
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 used to mod about 3 dozen big/medium Subreddits too. It was worth it though, because through it I somehow found my girlfriend of 1 year. Drama was a real headache in those places.
Mods get all the girls 😔
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
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.
Hey, I’m here now, at least. I vented my frustrations, exposed their shit over here, and signed up for lemmy.
Wait, people felt bad for the mods??
I never did. Far too many of them were power-hungry douchebags. We all knew they officially worked for free, but you won’t convince me that there weren’t some kind of backdoor deals which gave them money or other perks from advertisers. Plus there were at least some of them who were there to spread propaganda - when a Bernie Sanders sub is actively trying to promote the idea that a vote for Trump is the best pick for liberals, then you know some crazy shit is going down.
Yeah, so I have no idea why anyone would feel bad for them. They have put themselves in that position, all so SPEZ can take Reddit public and make a few billion dollars over the deal.
but you won’t convince me that there weren’t some kind of backdoor deals which gave them money or other perks from advertisers.
I was a mod for r/games for years and never got a single perk. I must have been doing it wrong.
Should have been part of more controversial communities.
And you have any evidence to support this theory at all? You’re just moving goalposts by going from mods of subreddits to mods of controversial subreddits specifically, and using an anecdote from one political sub that doesn’t prove any sort of backdoor deal.
There are other people who have replied to this thread who have made similar claims. If you think this is some big CoNsPiRaCy then go watch some gadget reviewers kn YouTube who get inundated with offers for free stuff all so they can be featured on their channels. I would expect something similar is happening with the mod community. To think it isn’t happening what with all the Shenanigans that go on in Reddit is rather naive.
I won’t deny it is a possibility (there’s nothing about it that’s explicitly impossible), but surely if this was a widespread issue at the topmost subreddits, then there would be some leak that would have gotten out? Even recently, when that one powermod, awkwardturtle got banned, a private message between him and admins got released.
If something like that can be leaked to the public, then with the sheer number of moderators that would be “in on it” at least one would go rogue, posting some screenshot of this being the case. Either a correspondence with other moderators, or correspondence with other interest groups or corporations. Hell, with a mass exodus of mods, the chance of at least one mod turning coat on their fellow mods is absurdly high, if this is actually widespread.
Other people claiming the same theory isn’t valid evidence and doesn’t prove anything. If this issue is as present as you claim it is, the again, I’ll believe it if I can see some evidence of that being the case. Until then, it is by definition a conspiracy theory, and just conjecture.
you won’t convince me that there weren’t some kind of backdoor deals which gave them money
how would that stay secret
If neither party wants people to know, not sure why it wouldn’t stay secret.
Removed by mod
Im a moderator of subreddits, and i can say i agree.
the moderator of r/onlyfans is a good example, it was repurposed to be about fans, but in order to “protest” he decided to allow porn back in, and despite the users constantly being extreamly angry about this for over a month, he had refused to dissalow porn, while he did tighten the rules on it slightly recently, they appear to go totally uninforced with porn bots slowly taking over the community.
Spez’s comment on moderators showed the world he’s not a tiny bit better than Marck “They trust me, dumbfucks!” Zuckerberg.
Yet so many people willingfully trust him with their most personal sensitive information until it’s too late.
https://www.insider.com/nebraska-teen-sentenced-jail-abortion-police-facebook-2023-7
Even with that, you still don’t see FB users running away from the private data collection and resell platform.
It will be very hard for some moderators to leave because they put so much work in reddit, and leaving would force them to admit they were used by someone who despised them the whole time, and there is no hope he would ever change.
It’s similar to women who can’t leave their violent companion: they want to believe in something that does not exist, and will stretch their perception of reality to avoid admitting they’re wrong.
I do not despise the moderators who won’t leave. I pity them.
With all that said, this remind me I wanted to permanently delete my reddit’s account. I won’t contribute to a BS “users” numbers…
It’s similar to women who can’t leave their violent companion: they want to believe in something that does not exist, and will stretch their perception of reality to avoid admitting they’re wrong.
This analysis really fucking sucks lmao. Abuse also includes controlling access to structures of dependency (housing, food, money, social webs, children), so a lot of time in the immediate term and often long term it is a MUCH better value proposition to stay with abusers in the hope that they change.
Idk this is so victim blamey and misunderstanding.
Well, we’re talking about 2 different things here:
1.Does the victim in an abusive reationship ackowledge it is abusive. You’d be surprised how many victims don’t. And that does not make them a tiny bit “less” victims.
2.Once the victim acknowledges the abusive situation, how much support is offered to help the victim, and yes, very often, the answer is close to peanuts, and that’s quite a shame. But that’s a whole different issue.
With all that said, this remind me I wanted to permanently delete my reddit’s account. I won’t contribute to a BS “users” numbers…
If you are ok with going scorched earth, download one of those programs that lets you replace the content of all of your comments with either gibberish or a pre-defined message saying why you did it and left first. I only deleted mine and I wish I did that but too late now.
Ah, too late! I deleted it right after writing my comment. I missed that opportunity.
Part of me hopes the raw number of users will drop at least a bit, that would be terrible for the valuation of the company…
But the other part of me has already moved on. Lemmy is fine, I don’t really need to look back.
