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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Moderating for free is a mental illness.
I don’t do it for free thank you very much! I pay to do it :P
Moderators are not a vital part of Reddit, mods are Reddit.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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It’s like the mods are divorcing parents who has to deal with the toxic ex to take care of their children.
The other people can also join Lemmy with very limited efforts compared to a real life situation that may be highly complex (housing, job).
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.
The majority of the “good” mods like yourself have already bailed, I’d wager. Only the bad ones, who use moderation to feel a sense of power and control over others to replace their own lack of power and control, will remain after a couple more months, at which point you’ll see Reddit truely begin to falter. Those are the ones clinging to hope and power, even though they lose more of it by the second.
Welcome to Lemmy. It’s fun here.
That assumes most mods aren’t there for the power trip. I believe they are the majority.
In terms of total subreddits, they’re not, as most smaller subs are often run by their original creators who have a vested interest in the continuation of the community. but in terms of the larger subs whose mod teams are quite large… yeah. it’s a special kind of mind that actively wants to spend multiple hours a day sifting through the Internet’s sewage, and it’s not often the stable, well-adjusted kind.
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.
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.
This whole affair just confirms what many people already knew, mods are addicted to power. That’s the real reason they didn’t leave.
Addicted to duty is more like it. People in abusive relationships rarely feel powerful.
So many reddit mods were angry power-hungry assholes. I don’t feel sorry for them just as much as I don’t feel sorry for reddit’s hopeventual collapse. I can’t count how many times I had BS moderation enacted, then when I was perfectly civil, usually just asking for basic clarification as to why something was removed, was instantly silenced from further communication with the mods with threats of potential removal from participation in the sub or reddit entirely. I am not alone in this experience.
I run a discord server and freely explain to user that they are welcome to disagree with me, openly and freely, as while I run this unofficial community server about an event I don’t own/operate,
The same is for a reddit mod, especially for broad topics and localities.
Unfortunately I do see the potential for similar behavior here in the fediverse. I can’t say I know how to address it entirely, but I know I can act the way that’s fair to the community of which I am only an administrator, not a ruler nor creator.
You can move to an instance where the operator has a low tolerance for abusive curators.
Literally had my account banned for Calling out power hungry mods.
One mod was on rspiders and a recounted a take about my gfs friend being bitten by a spider. Perma banned and because I had 3 strikes I was permanently banned from reddit.
Just fucking stupid. Fuck em all.
Basically the bouncers of the internet
Agree 100%. Reddit mods want an echo chamber and if you had a differing opinion they silenced you. I was banned from subs I never knew about because I belonged to a certain wrong think sub. Fuck the mods as far as I’m concerned 90%of them just got exactly what they deserved.
Bro I was banned once from world news and then was banned from basically all leftists leaning subreddits the next day.
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I really, really wanted all the mods to quit in protest. I think the site would go up in flames within a day of people finding out it was open season. Like, not able to recover, up in flames.
Eh, so a couple of things:
These moderators are in an abusive relationship with Reddit, Inc.
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…
That’s not at all how abusive relationships work. I get what you’re saying, and the comparison isn’t that far off, but your conclusions are wildly off base.
I was a mod of some big subs too, and I have a friend who’s staying at one of the very large “Ask(Insert Specific Thing Here)” subs. He genuinely cares about the integrity of the thing people ask about and doesn’t want it to devolve into conspiracy theory nonsense. I get it, and yeah we know he is physically capable of leaving, but I admire that about him and I do feel sorry for him. For all of them, for being so disrespected in the first place. And yes, he does understand all of the points you just made - we’ve discussed it ad nauseam.
It’s Reddit’s fault, not theirs or ours. Fuck spez.
