To all the folks saying that reddit couldn’t replace the mods, that it was too big an effort, that they couldn’t run a big sub all by themselves, I have only one thing to say to you.
You were right.
Thanks, I hate being right.
How fitting. There should be a community/magazine for this
Call it CaptainObvious
I’m sure users will step forward if they care. Otherwise, it’s just a campaign optimization at work. Limit the breadth of organic content to deepen the brand-friendly content and push more paid media into the feed.
Yes they most definitely will…but increasingly such things likely will not happen on the Reddit platform, moving forward. There are actual reasons that the mods left - e.g. to moderate a sub of millions of subscribers takes effort, which needs tools to make that happen - and those reasons still exist.
Reddit is really on their way to become the next facebook.
Thing is, people stay on Facebook because their friends and family are on Facebook. Reddit is far more anonymous and therefore has far less inertia.
I would drop kick FB in a heart beat if it wasn’t for that shitty platform being my only means of communication with some family and friends. WTF happened to email and phone calls/txt jesus.
If any of my friends told me they’d only use FB for communication, they would be my friend no longer.
I wish I could do that. But I’m disabled which is isolating by itself but also makes maintaining friendships difficult let alone making new friends.
So unfortunately the few friends I do have are firmly entrenched in FB and I have little recourse to make more friends. They’re good people. Genuinely good people so I don’t want to ditch them anyway, they’ve just been wicked into social media addiction and entrapment the same way many have been.
I’m sure users will step forward if they care.
This is the part I didn’t quite get. Like I am sure that there were users who requested this sub in r/redditrequest after r/TIHI became unmoderated.
For some reason I don’t understand, these requests did not pan out and it ended up getting shut down instead.
At the very least, users stepping forward doesn’t seem to be enough on its own.
If I had to guess, there are too many users who would become appointed as moderators, then just shut down the subreddit again. The admins need time to filter through the applications to find the genuine bootlickers.
Yeah I fully expect reddit to replace the moderators but it will take time and effort to select the right people.
If all the mods who protested actually resigned or moved their subs to being unmoderated it would’ve crippled the site, reddit would not be able to replace them quick enough.
It’s unfortunate that the threat alone was enough to get most of them to reopen.
The admins would never disrespect themselves by doing this peasant job by themselves. They have standards.
If I hadn’t deleted my accounts, this us what I’d have done.
From the one time I tried requesting a sub there, they don’t just let someone have a sub if they ask and it’d be banned otherwise, they probably won’t give it to you if you don’t have mod experience for example (the reason I didn’t get the niche sub I was trying to revive, which is reasonable enough), or if they feel that what experience you do have isn’t enough that you’d likely be able to handle the particular sub. TIHI is a big sub, so they’d not just be looking for any random volunteer, it’d have to be someone experienced with moderating sizable subs, probably. And those people are, well, exactly the kind of people angry with reddit right now.
Reddit gave the snackexchange subreddit to someone who had no mod experience and hadn’t participated in the sub for years. The person claims they didn’t even ask for the position and only asked for the head mod to be removed. Reddit removed the top mod and made the person top mod.
That person had effectively no mod experience, but was already on the moderator list there - having been added by the old team.
Head mod chose to reopen under protest by turning off anti-scam bots and similar - letting sub continue to function visibly the same, but without the bot-supported protection it had used prior. He somehow talked his way onto the team during the protests, and then went to Admin and arranged to oust the head mod who had shut down the bots and was doing protest stuff in the sub.
He has since been returned to the bottom of the mod hierarchy there, for whatever that’s worth.
Like, I kind of get that guy’s point in some senses - simply turning off security features that quietly protect users, without announcing it, sure seems like the kind of thing that would hurt users pretty quick - without ever affecting site Admin. Especially when the head mod who shut down those bots wasn’t the user/mod who was responsible for them, it’s not ‘their’ bot if they’re gonna go home and take their toys, as it were.
Staging a coup and getting Admin to put him at the top of the modlist is hyper shitty, and Admin’s decision to promote someone who wasn’t really part of that community to that sort of position is utterly inexplicable if we were trying to square their actions with their stated values.
it’d have to be someone experienced with moderating sizable subs, probably
So someone who was using moderation tools provided by 3rd party apps?
Admin realized that despite all the applications, there were:
- People requesting the subreddit so they could continue the protests.
- People requesting the subreddit so they could give it back to the original mods.
- People requesting the subreddit so they could own it.
- People requesting the subreddit because they have strong feelings about “moderation” and want to /worldpolitics it.
- Absolutely no one who wanted to just do what the old mods did.
From what I could see, there no actual good-faith requests from people who genuinely cared about /TIHI and wanted to moderate it well and diligently. And like, who’s surprised? It’s a huge subreddit without a concrete community core, it’s more of a content category. I don’t think anyone except the mods cared about the community itself, because there barely was one.
That’s the same issue they’re running into with the other large subs. They’re too huge and too general and everyone is just another face in the crowd, so there are very few people who care about that specific space in the way that makes for good volunteer moderators - in most cases, when those people existed for those communities, they were already recruited into the old mod team.
And all the people who want to mod are either activists for the protest, the sort of power-hungry weirdos that end up as powermods, but who showed up to Reddit too late, or somebody with an axe to grind about moderation in general seeing an opportunity in the massive unmoderated subreddit.
Im halfway tempted to start claiming demodded subs and filling them up with instructions on how to move to their kbin/lemmy alternatives.
If they kick me out and ban me I won’t find out cause I don’t go into reddit no more.Edit: of course they would never give the subreddits to me, but I find the idea really funny
this would have been a good thing to do for some of the people who deleted their accounts. the ones who had accounts which could have credibly been given subs.
Ever since Victoria got sacked, reddit doesn’t seem to have anyone competent enough to run community relation anymore. They probably can’t figure out how to vet new mods if they were to hire some.
I said it, but I didn’t believe it would happen that quick. That’s amazing and sad.
Thanks, I love it.
TIHI was a fairly large sub, with almost multimilion level of subscribers. If reddit wanted to increase traffic and get more eyes on ads, they’re doing quite a terrible job of it so far.
Reddit’s stance has just been so bizarre.
So they want people to pay to not see ads? They literally sell that as a product, Reddit Premium. Why not tie API access to premium subscriptions? It’s not even unprecedented; Spotify does this.
This is literally the only reason I would pay for Premium access.
If they had come out of the gate with that being the change, I would probably have paid for Reddit premium. Now though, not a chance.
Being a cheapass, I would probably have made the switch to using their horrid app. But, it would have been my own decision to be a cheapass so I would’ve been fine using it.
I can understand that line of thinking. In this instance, I think I’m w/ @bionicjoey on this one. If it was a choice of use their app or pay, I’d have paid. I refused to use New Reddit on the PC. I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that’s ok. Their choice and all that.
@gpage @danbob @bionicjoey I’ve said in other threads that I would have gladly paid $3/month (assuming that even 20% of the reddit userbase would also be willing to pay, making this subscription so cheap) to keep the lights on at reddit - and hell, maybe even turn a profit - if that had been presented as an option before all this debacle.
But then someone replied to me scoffing about how this means not only would I be generating free content for the site, but also paying for the privilege to do so. My take is that if this created a gated online community of contributors, that’s probably fine by me.
Now that humans are leaving by the droves, the chatter in the Fediverse is that AI bots will eventually be all that’s left on reddit and a few humans who don’t know they’re talking to bots. But if being a participating member (submissions, comments) cost money, I think it would become cost prohibitive to run bot armies on a platform like reddit.
I know folks that have gone to using the new app though (even knowing what we know now) and I guess that’s ok. Their choice and all that.
IMO this is the reason why boycotts don’t really work in the age of the Internet. It seems like there are just so many people with access and either too apathetic to try and make change or are simply just ignorant to the situation, whatever it may be.
I’m so fucking tired of this line. Redefine success and you’ll find most boycotts are actually quite successful - if you include every individual who changes their habits as a success. It took almost 20 fuckin years to get reddit to where it is, to think it was gonna burn in a day is foolish. The fall of Rome (I know I’m being hyperbolic) took what, 250 years?
I would have, as well. But that ship has sailed, even if Spaz does try to offer that up now.
At this point, it’s not about what is logical or sensible. Huffman would rather burn the place down than admit he was wrong.
He took Elon Musk as an inspiration. I am wondering if he has a narcissistic anti-liberal leanings that he just wants to make whatever he can on an IPO while destroying it in the process
That’s not totalitarian enough.
That’s not what Elon Musk would do, so spez doesn’t like it.
It’s not about the ads. It’s about the telemetry you can get on user behavior from a mobile app. Reddit wants to leverage that as part of its ad sales package.
Bingo. TARGETED ads is where the money is. They need the app to collect data. This is about selling your data.
What I still don’t get is why all these apps had to have a single api account for all users.
It does not make sense to me why the API charge have to be calculated by total traffic of all users of an app either. I’ve decided to think it is just an excuse to get rid of third party apps until convinced otherwise.
It was to make pay-to-play “big deals” with supposed app developers, I imagine. Maybe they were hoping to get a quantifiable influx of cash
To my understanding it’s a somewhat reasonable approach that has its upsides and downsides. I believe Twitter apps were all designed that way back in the day as well.
Once you have enough of it to live a comfortable life, money just becomes about power. So, what we have is some spoiled rich asshole who is used to having influence and power being shown that most of that was a gift. That gift has been recinded, and so the only control he has left is money.
He’s spending some of Reddit’s current and future earnings on stepping on necks. Because that’s what the cash was going to be used for, in one way or another, anyway.
So what was TIHI anyway?
TIHI stood for Thanks, I Hate It. I never browsed but figure it was a meme sub on things to dislike.
It was more than a sub to meme on things you/to dislike, it was more like Oh Gosh Why Would This Exist Thanks I Hate It!
Have you ever imagined a bird with teeth? What about a gif of a needle going into an eye? Or maybe a nice chocolate milkshake in a butt-oriented sex toy.
Why do these things exist? Thanks, I hate it.
Thanks I hate this comment and the images you put into my head. Excellent description
I’m sorry, you’re welcome.
I appreciate it exists, or at least used to, but that is definitely a sub I would have avoided if I knew it existed.
It had occasionally funny posts, more worth checking once every few months for a laugh rather than being subscribed to.
It was basically all the same posts from Thanks I Love It, posted by very different people… or, often, the same people.
I thought they would just take over or replace the mod list. Guess I was wrong
Fucking dumb to force them to reopen and then when mods say fuckit ban the sub. This is some bad parenting.
But I thought millions of people depended on the communities involved and that’s why they had to reopen.
Doesn’t banning the community just fully go against their stated reasoning?
Like most things that frustrate me, it seems logic has flown out the window in this situation. At least from Reddit’s perspective. I cannot fathom how they could mess this up so badly. Could you imagine if they would have given 12 months notice and piped API access behind Reddit Premium of some sort? They would have raked in the money.
We are under no obligation to pretend that’s not a tissue-paper thin disguise for getting the moderators to act how Reddit wants here.
And who are they going to have take over mod responsibilities (for free) in all of these communities at once? This is why mods need to call their bluff and force them to try to replace them.
Saw someone complaining about the protest in a thread where the top mod was offering up the sub to whoever wanted it. I suggested they (person complaining) go ahead and step up and ask to be a mod. They replied something like, “I don’t wanna be an E-jannie…[blah blah].”
These people assume that there’s plenty of other people who will step-up and take over. We’ll see I guess.
Whenever people say “Somebody should do something!” they very rarely ever add “and the somebody is me”
What I expected:
Randos asking for it on /r/redditrequest
And if that didn’t work out poorly paid workers in some cheap country somewhere, like facebook does.
Yeah this is the dumbest move possible. I can only assume they’re trying to scare other mods into alignment because they can’t replace the moderators effectively. Well, I’ll cheers to their stupidity!
Who they gonna replace them with? Paid employees? That’d go against their whole business model! XD
“We’ll replace you with loyal moderators” has always been an empty threat. You don’t just find people willing to take the responsibility of moderating a 100k+ user sub on the street.
Reddit: You can’t be private, people need to see the content, reopen or else!
TIHI: No.
Reddit: Fine, mods are gone and we’ve reopened the community. People who want to be mods speak up
Crickets: Cricket noises
Reddit: This sub is unmoderated, so it’s now banned so nobody can see itSo… Reddit just reclosed the sub they said MUST be open.
Sound logic. Real class act.
Whole situation is so bizzare. Good for kbin and lemmy tho
We should all message the admins demanding the closed sub be reopened to stop the protests.
Maybe we can get an infinite loop going.
I personally never browsed TIHI. It was always one of those where linking it was more of a meme than actually browsing it in my mind. Similar to how a lot of people would comment “/r/unexpectedjohnmulaney” but very few people were actually subbed to /r/unexpectedjohnmulaney. Because who the heck wants a bunch of pictures of comments referencing John Mulaney jokes in their feed? It’s the old “subreddits as hashtags” bit.
All that being said, it sucks because I know TIHI actually had more of a community than most “hashtaggy” subreddits. My understanding is it was a bit like a blend of ATBGE, MildlyInfuriating, CursedImages, or DIWhy.
Reddit is killing real communities, and killing their own history in the process. All those comments throughout the ages linking “/r/TIHI” now link to a dead sub. As much as I may have found those comments annoying, there were people out there who would click that link and go browse or maybe even subscribe to TIHI as a result of those comments.
It’s only a matter of time until more subs start meeting the same fate. I’m glad to have found a new platform to move to. After reading the posts from the Apollo dev, it seemed like the writing was on the wall about Reddit
I was subscribed to it, RIP
The thing about TIHI, interestingasfuck, SLPT are that they regularly made r/all. Content hitting the front page means views for Reddit. So it’s less about the sub’s specific userbase, and more that those “main” subs have broad user appeal that brings people to Reddit in the first place.
And currently they’re all shuttered. Which means less content on r/all, which decreases the general audience appeal of Reddit.
Quality management 👍
I guess we will start to see an uptick of “r/subsIfellfor” posts after more closures in light of how frequently the subreddit-as-hashtag but was being used.
I think it’s funny that in response to this people are STILL insisting that it’s easy to find new mods. TIHI, interestingasfuck, and shittylifeprotips have been closed for over a week because they have no mods. Before TIHI mods got banned, they offered multiple users complaining the option to take over moderating the sub and they said no.
How does any of this point to it being easy to replace mods? Delusional
You would think that Reddit would have put some new mods in there right away (even if those “new mods” were just socks being staffed by Reddit employees) to put pressure on other subreddits.
That’s hard to do when you’re not profitable lol and with reddit users/creators leaving en masse, I don’t see reddit ever being profitable since those are the same people that made the site what it was, not reddit employees.
Oh well too bad, but the fediverse is interesting and it has potential to be better than reddit could ever dream of being, without a single monolith able to destroy it. Decentralization is the future of the internet.
This is what “to cut off your nose to spite your face” means. To the letter.
Spez is demonstrating “thanks I hate it (the users)”
So having all the mods quit is actually a viable way to protest? (writes down notes)
In for a penny, in for a pound I guess.
I didn’t think Spez would literally drive his platform to ashes, I thought there was a middle ground, but nope he is going straight to the logical conclusion to all this.
What was r/TIHI? I can’t get to the reddit site anymore, but even if I could, it probably wouldn’t be very enlightening if the sub is already deleted…
@ausiematt “Thanks, I hate it”
Idk if youve ever seen the bagel made of semi solid pasta and sauce that had a bite out of it? I think that was in TIHI once. Im gonna try and find it and link it.
Edit: this is the google image result. U can see is from that subreddit but also posted other places.
“its illegal to kill yourself!” kills them
“ah, you see that action carries the death penalty”
We don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn
Banned, aka set permanently private, exactly what reddit wanted to destroy
From what I can see, /r/tihi has only been closed, not banned.
It was banned when the post was made, it appears that it has switched to private. Haven’t seen any public update about what changed
