As some subreddits continue blackouts to protest Reddit’s plans to charge high prices for its API, Reddit has informed the moderators of those subreddits that it has plans to replace resistant moderation teams to keep spaces “open and accessible to users.”

Edit, there seems to be conflicting reporting on this issue:

While the company does “respect the community’s right to protest” and pledges that it won’t force communities to reopen, Reddit also suggests there’s no need for that.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762501/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview-protests-blackout

  • Dusty@lemmy.dustybeer.com
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    1 year ago

    I doubt anyone is actually surprised by this. reddit owns the site, and (according to their TOS) they have rights to everything posted on their site (while they at the same time take zero responsibility for anything posted). I’m only surprised it’s not happened sooner.

    I’m also not surprised that this came about from someone that wants to take over one of the privated subs. Most likely to stroke their own egos.

    • christophski@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      I guess the problem is that they rely on moderators to do the work for free out of their love for their community. Every time the reddit admins pull shit like this, they are giving moderators a reason not to trust them.

    • FlamingHot@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      So if i make a reddit sub, they can kick me from it whenever they want? How has this not been adressed so far?

      • apis@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Yes, they can and they have done so occasionally.

        It hasn’t been addressed because so far it has been used relatively sparingly, and because the subreddits in question are often shut down by Reddit rather than handed over to a new head moderator.

        Often it happens because the mod(s) refuse to enforce sitewide rules on their subreddit. The removals are usually preceded by encouragement from admin to sharpen up, followed by warnings and milder measures.

        Historically, Reddit has been slow to act on that stuff of its own accord, only doing so when users organise to alert advertisers to the content their ads are appearing alongside.

        You will see users of these subreddits complain that their communities are being targeted, especially if Reddit has acted against a cluster of related behaviours, but that latter bit does mean that those users tend to seek out other places. I don’t want to compare those fleeing to Lemmy/kbin/mastodon to proponents of political violence or those running foreign disinformation campaigns, but the principle of Reddit pushing a given class of users away from the site remains the same.

        I suspect that Reddit has miscalculated here, or is just gunning to manipulate the apparent user metrics ahead of the IPO, but it seems to me that they actively want to shed everyone who is privacy-conscious, tech-literate, etc. They don’t want conversations about old.reddit or 3rd party apps or the fediverse influencing those who are unaware of these things, and they don’t want users or moderators who will organise against Reddit They already have power mods who have been running large numbers of the most popular subreddits for years and some of these may be paid admin; they’d find it easy to get people to replace the head mods of smaller communities, and they probably don’t care about the niche subreddits and will either let those die or trial the use of bot moderators on them.

        • FlamingHot@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I suspect that Reddit has miscalculated here, or is just gunning to manipulate the apparent user metrics ahead of the IPO, but it seems to me that they actively want to shed everyone who is privacy-conscious, tech-literate, etc. They don’t want conversations about old.reddit or 3rd party apps or the fediverse influencing those who are unaware of these things, and they don’t want users or moderators who will organise against Reddit They already have power mods who have been running large numbers of the most popular subreddits for years and some of these may be paid admin; they’d find it easy to get people to replace the head mods of smaller communities, and they probably don’t care about the niche subreddits and will either let those die or trial the use of bot moderators on them.

          Yeah that much is obvious to me. Every platform has a turning point when the investors smell the money and ask why it is not making more money. And then they will do everything to make that happen. Every change they make is about ads. You control the conversation, you can sell more ads, that is all this is. They don’t like 3rd party apps anymore, because they can’t sell ads on them. The reddit app is full of ads. Same with old reddit, not enough ads. The whole redesign was hated so much because the purpose of it is to show more ads, not to make reddit better.

          Reddit is on this path for a few years and now they are trying to throw out the opposition to replace them with yes-men.