The Social Internet and its dramatic stories

[yashima]

Over at the reddit drama… everything seems still on strike (I haven’t looked, and made a lemmy account on feddit.de instead):

My favorite webiste to scroll today instead of reddit: https://reddark.untone.uk/

[tomm_archer]

Yeah it’s 48 hours but some subreddits are going private indefinitely. Of the three I’m subscribed to, all three went dark yesterday. It’s been interesting navigating to Reddit out of habit and just seeing nothing there.

I only really visit /r/formula1 with any regularity, it would be a shame if it never came back as I’d have to follow a load of journalists on Twitter…

[yashima]

I scroll reddit pretty regularly but I am not very active in participating. Just occasional posts on r/boardgames. I upvote stuff though and read quite a few comments (I admit I sort by best and because of timezones I usually see posts when “best” is really quite nice so to me reddit always felt far more wholesome than it must appear to the average US user).

I am just fascinated by the whole thing but not terribly surprised that the reddit people apparently misjudged badly how this was going to go down–because what is happening is surely not what they anticipated.

I’ve been careful not to accidentally open my (3rd party) apps in the past few days…

[dscheidt]

Most users won’t care. taking away the tools mods need, on the other hand, pissed them off. Reddit’s provided tools would have to be much better before I’d describe them as sucking. that’s especially true on mobile, where the offical app is garbage, and the third party apps make it possible to do basic mod stuff (remove, ban, etc) fairly easily. It’s also important to power users: much of the content generated comes from 3rd part app users, and like many online platforms built around user-generated content, a small percentage generate a lot of it, but it’s consumed by many more.

This is all about advertising eyeballs: reddit doesnt’ get those on 3rd party apps. Reddit seriously misread the room, I expect many mods to quit (I know lots of mods, many of which are pretty burned out about doing it.), and even if reddit throws out the exisiting moderators and makes subs public again, without active moderation, they place will be a festering cesspool of hate and spam. And reddit has not shown any evidence of having any ability to moderate things themselves. (they routinely fail to act on blatant hate speech and targeted threats when they have them pointed out to them. Forget about looking for stuff that breaks rules.) No one wants to look at a discussion about boardgames if every post turns into a rant about how the rutabaga eating scum are destroying the world, which is what most high traffic subs will be without moderation.

Disclosure: I am one of the mods of a fairly large sub that’s gone dark.

[yashima]

@dscheidt

Most users won’t care.

I agree. But I feel like reddit is a place–as you also describe it–where much of the community is built on the power-users by which I mean both the mods and those who post the most content. And those people care when you take away their tools.

I just considered writing about 3 paragraphs that all amounted to me saying: they (reddit the company) shot themselves in the foot in the most unnecessary and dumbest way in a good while.

[JGD]

@yashima

I just considered writing about 3 paragraphs that all amounted to me saying: they (reddit the company) shot themselves in the foot in the most unnecessary and dumbest way in a good while.

They seem to have decided to follow the “Elon Musk’s Twitter” model. Fortunately for me, I don’t much like Reddit, and very rarely visit.

[pillbox]

I feel like reddit is a great archive of knowledge. But it’s been something that I’ve found to be frustrating to use as a communication/community medium

[tomm_archer]

r/formula1 has extended their blackout indefinitely.

[raged_norm]

I’m kinda missing r/boardgames

There’s no where else I know that is just all the boardgames

[Boronian]

I moderate several subs on Reddit (mainly r/Malazan) and we participated for two days in the blackout.

I personally don’t use third party apps but I am not a huge mobile fan, so I could live with the limited Reddit app (it also got somehow better in the last year). And on my desktop PC I use Toolbox and RES as browser plugins to close the gap between what Reddit offers and should offer.

But I am also a huge fan of old Reddit and really dislike the new design and with these changes I am sure it is just a question of time when they close old Reddit.

[tomm_archer]

I was reading the responses to r/formula1’s tweet on the matter and it just made me sad.

Not about Reddit so much but just the absolute absence of sympathy/empathy/etc. for those involved or affected by all this.

My fault for reading Twitter I guess.

[yashima]

There is and always has been a big difference between reddit and twitter for me (even before Musk took over). While I enjoyedto scroll either (stopped Twitter with the pandemic) … on reddit I often enjoy reading the comments below a post (thanks to upvotes and moderation) and on twitter I never have. The comments on twitter always were a cesspool.

[SteveB_uk]

I managed to get an invite for BlueSky (in locked beta) and it’s… just really nice. None of the aggressive twitter comments nonsense. It’s back to the early internet days of “SHOW ME YOUR FAVOURITE ROCK” and “I know a fact about FISH” followed by loads of comments by people who would like to hear more facts about fish.

[tomm_archer]

I’ve really enjoyed my time over on Mastodon so far. It’s where a lot of the tech folks I followed moved to and I’m on a tiny instance.

But it never really supplanted Twitter so now I’m using both.

[SteveB_uk]

Yeah, the one thing about BlueSky so far is, it’s tiny. Which is deliberate for now so they can get the tech and moderation running, but also means that you’re not getting access to celebs or a big enough pool of strangers yet. Keep an eye on it opening up though, it’s very good so far.

[RogerBW]

@tomm_archer

I’ve really enjoyed my time over on Mastodon so far.

Do I know you there? Rev. Roger BW 😷 (@RogerBW@emacs.ch) - Emacs.ch
(Never did Twitter, quite liking the elephant.)

Back from Uppsala for the Eurocon. 3 days there, 3 days convention, 3 days back. I love driving.

[tomm_archer]

I’m Tom Archer (@TomArcher@leds.social) - LEDs

[tomm_archer]

I was surprised to see r/formula1 was (partially) re-opened. Apparently they’ve been threatened with the removal and replacement of mods who support the protest.

[dscheidt]

happened to a bunch of subs, mostly big ones. I expect there will be less active moderation.

Advertisers are not happy, a bunch of them have paused spending, and w/o the targeting of particular subs, those that stayed are less willing to pay.

[dscheidt]

@reddit

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.

a message we got from the powers that be.