Reddit tells rebellious mods of private communities they will be REMOVED unless they reopen - “We see no reason to reopen as I don’t think we’re the bad guys here,” yoasif, an r/firefox moderator who received the message, tells The Verge in an email. “Reddit has had a chance to reconcile with the protest for weeks now, and they haven’t.” #Reddit #redditmigration #RedditStrike #SocialMedia https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23778997/reddit-remove-mods-private-communities-unless-reopen

Since, but of course, the top comment on my (aggressively down-moderated, possibly by HN itself) Hacker News thread Utterly Missed The Plot (I'm shocked, shocked...):

The point of this post is that the contributors to this subreddit are one person. And has been for going on ten years.

The moderator team is one person. And has been or going on ten years.

Much of the readership is ... one person, who refers back to older posts to link elsewhere. (Though I'll admit that according to Reddit's stats, surprisingly more than that.)

That the subreddit had already been largely on hiatus for the past three years, because of preexisting frustrations with Reddit's leadership and direction. The subject of much of the front page of the subreddit.

Archive snapshot from this past February (there's been no change to content since then): https://web.archive.org/web/20220224161047/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/

That the moderator and contributor had long voiced concerns over precisely the issue of Reddit seizing control of subreddits, and a lack of any ongoing right over a subreddit, no matter how personal and how long it had been:

Quoting from "No, this subreddit is not fully dead yet, but ...":

<quote>

Years before "profile pages" became a thing, several people started what were effectively personal subreddits. /r/TalesByToxlab[1] is a classic instance, and also an exemplar of the conflicts arising. This is not my sub, and I'm not nominating it, to be ABSOLUTELY clear.

TBT was a personal space where one person shared their personal stories, some from real life, some fictional.

And I say "was", because /u/toxlab[2] died three years ago. A fact which large sites need to deal with.

(A ways back I'd computed that a site at the scale of Google+, with a nominal 3 billion profiles, saw on the order of 10k newly dead accounts every day. Reddit operates at about 1/10 that scale. Do the math.)

Should TBT be recycled back into the pool? It was never a "community site". What any modmail or logs, which might reveal personal messages and communications? I get these myself from time to time via several subs.

Reddit's stance has long been that subreddits are community, not personal, resources. For large and leading subs, this may well be appropriate. For small efforts, it almost certainly is not.

That concern is a chief one I've had with Reddit since beginning a few experiments of my own. I wrote on various aspects of Reddit which raise flags[3] five years ago. And this weighs heavily (though other factors contribute) in my decision to move my principle posting activity elsewhere[4], specifically to a blog whose features, content, and presentation are far more under my control.

I don't want my subs to become zombies or be allocated to others. When they're done, they should die, and be buried, their electrons recycled. And I suspect I'm not the only one.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/dt527o/no_this_subreddit_is_not_fully_dead_yet_but/

Links:

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20230612102634/https://old.reddit.com/r/TalesByToxlab

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20230612102634/https://old.reddit.com/u/toxlab

3. https://web.archive.org/web/20230612102634/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/20yhxc/reddit_and_community_what_works_what_raises_flags/

4. https://web.archive.org/web/20230612102634/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/9ebkjh/current_plans_on_migrating_this_blog_elsewhere/

This is no longer about arguably large and "community" subreddits which might arguably have some thin line of reasoning to legitimise Reddit's corporate claim to them, but small group and individual efforts, with private data and communications potentially being handed over to third parties. Issues I'd raised years ago, now proving to have been quite prescient concerns. One-person subreddits.

And in this case, that one person happens to be me.

#Reddit #RedditStrike #RedditBlackout #RedditBoycott #RedditMigration #RedditAPI

The Reddit story goes deeper, and drags in Ycombinator and its popular news aggregator Hacker News

My submission earlier today about Reddit seeking to seize my personal subreddit of going on ten years drew 405 votes and 299 comments, but ranked 42nd on the archive page https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2023-06-22&p=2, well below posts with far fewer votes and/or comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434885

I've inquired as to whether that was due to flags or HN moderator actions (automated or manual).

But ...

... HN's chief moderator dang had commented earlier today that Reddit content is now penalised, and has been since "a while ago": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36435312

I note that this conflicts with, and contradicts, a comment from a week ago reiterating HN's policy of moderating less not more on stories concerning YC companies, specifically noting that this was despite the somewhat distant-in-time and tenuous present relationship between YC and Reddit.

And that comment appears to be the first HN's mod team bothered mention the fact, as an HN site search reveals:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36366909

The fact is that Reddit are an Internet juggernaut, that they are going explicitly against prior commitments, promises, and policies (both sitewide and in my case specifically communicated to me three years ago by a Reddit admin ggAlex: https://web.archive.org/web/20230612102634/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/dt527o/no_this_subreddit_is_not_fully_dead_yet_but/f6vj489/

This war-against-its-power-users has made international headlines.

HN plays a de facto role of customer-support-of-last-resort, which dang has specifically acknowledged:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20customer-support-of-last-resort&sort=byPopularity&type=comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34320816

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34941474.

And yes, that can be repetitive and annoying and repetitively annoying ... but ... it is often one of the only viable venues for those who are disempowered to be heard.

Or, in /u/toxlab's case, the dead: https://web.archive.org/web/20230612102634/https://old.reddit.com/r/TalesFromRetail/comments/5a2xj3/everett_redditor_utoxlab_of_rtalesbytoxlab_passed/

HN's present Reddit policy both amplifies an existing power discrepancy (that of Reddit members against the company) and puts HN's own credibility at risk.

HN cannot simultaneously claim to:

• moderate YC companies less,
• impose a penalty for submissions concerning a specific YC company, and ]- fail to disclose the existence of that penalty at all.
  

I'm well aware of the jump in Reddit-related traffic, and have commented at length on it (per my wont): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36435319

The fact that HN have now put their thumb on the scale without notifying either submitters or the general readership concerns me greatly.

How about HN:

• De-thumbs that scale
• Clearly and prominently disclose the fact of the penalty, and the dates at which it was applied and lifted.
• Applies a case-by-case assessment based on new significant information.
• Provides a mechanism for aggregating similar classes of stories. E.g., the tens to hundreds of thousands of small and/or personal subreddits which Reddit are now acting to seize control of.

Hacker News's own credibility is very much at risk here and that itself is a serious concern to the site.

(Communicated to HN's mod team via email, toot here adapted slightly.)

#Reddit #HackerNew #HN #RedditStrike #RedditBlackout #ycombinator

As my toot notes, I'd been very aware that Reddit could reclaim the subreddit according to its rules then in place. The pinned posts on the sub, for 2 and 3 years respectively as of this past February, discussed that amongst other concerns. The Wayback Machine shows those here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220224161047/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/

One of those posts specifically addressed my preferences for how my subreddit should allowed to die and rest in ... ouch, typo, "piece". That post received an admin response saying that it would be a good candidate for just that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230612102634/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/dt527o/no_this_subreddit_is_not_fully_dead_yet_but/

#Reddit #FuckReddit #ModCodeOfConduct #RedditStrike #RedditBlackout

First they came for /r/pics ... now Reddit are coming for the individual personal subreddits

Quite some years ago I'd realised that amongst the problems with using Reddit as a personal blogging space (my avatar here is a relic of that, if you'd not put the two together) was that I do not in fact have any permanent claim to that space.

Reddit's previous policies of moderator re-assignment bothered me. The policies apparently instituted September 2022 and being rolled out aggressively in recent days ... have not weakened my concerns.

And, checking in now, I find a day-old modmail to /r/dredmorbius, a subreddit which only ever was my own personal posts with comments from a few friends, and about 1,000 subscribers ... has received a notice to reclaim by /u/Modcodeofconduct, screenshot attached here.

I have not abandoned the sub. I had closed it in protest of Reddit's continued failings and war against its volunteer moderators and general community.

And I will not go quietly.

#Reddit #FuckReddit #ModCodeOfConduct #RedditStrike #RedditBlackout

Meanwhile, at the other other hellhole: Reddit mod scorched-earth protocol:

There's only one thing they can do, and it's not a checkmate, more of a fire on the way out the door.

• Turn off all spam filtering
• Disable minimum karma requirements
• Allow all posts, disable all rules
• Unban all banned users
• Purge all allowed submitters
• Turn off AutoModerator, Scrub all configs
• Delete all CSS and uploaded images/maps
• Blank all sidebars, Delete all flairs
• Allow NSFW content, Enable sub's content on /all
• Set the sub's color scheme on mobile to something vomit-inducing
• Blank all of the text options such as the sub's topic listing
• Grab a copy of anything in the wikis worth saving
• Disable and permanently remove all third party mod tools and bots
• Invite all users to the moderation team with full comment/submission privs
• GDPR request for their own account data and then
• Use it to delete their accounts and all of their content

-- Amarok @ Tildes: https://tildes.net/~tech/16e3/reddit_ceo_pledges_to_not_force_subreddits_to_reopen_admin_team_then_immediately_threatens#comment-8gbi

#Reddit #RedditStrike #ModWar #ScorchedEarth #ScorchedEarthProtocol

Well Reddit Corporate has decided to go full draconian on moderators participating in the #RedditBlackout and #RedditStrike .

There is a clear and obvious threat presented here, for a subreddit of 270 members....

I deleted ALL of my Reddit comments and posts a while back and today I noticed a part of them have been magically restored and are back online. Anyone else experiencing this? This ain’t right. #gdpr #reddit #deletereddit #redditMigration #redditblackout #redditapi #redditprotest #RedditStrike #redditalternatives

@morebento @dangillmor Hoffman is now threatening my sub of a few hundred thousand users:

Absolute fascist scare tactics, trying to get people to tell on each other and abandon their friends. #redditblackout #reddit #redditstrike #spez

With my HN FP archive updated through yesterday, as one does, updated occurrences of "Reddit" in front-page story titles:

  2007 41
  2008 31
  2009 15
  2010 44
  2011 41
  2012 46
  2013 28
  2014 27
  2015 27
  2016 19
  2017 15
  2018 15
  2019 12
  2020 24
  2021 12
  2022 13
  2023 28

And what's the occurrence by month in 2023, you ask? Why, I'll tell you:

  1 1
  2 1
  3 0
  4 1
  5 3
  6 22

And those 22 stories in the first half of June are ... not positive:

1. Teddit – An alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy
2. [dupe] Third-party Reddit apps are being crushed by price increases
3. Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative
4. Reddit’s plan to kill third-party apps sparks widespread protests
5. Reddit's Recently Announced API Changes, and the future of /r/blind
6. Redditor creates working anime QR codes using Stable Diffusion
7. ArchiveTeam has saved over 11.2B Reddit links
8. Archive your Reddit data before it's too late
9. Reddit Strike Has Started
10. Thousands of subreddits pledge to go dark after the Reddit CEO’s recent remarks
11. Show HN: Non.io, a Reddit-like platform Ive been working on for the last 4 years
12. Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
13. Reddit.com appears to be having an outage
14. Show HN: Zsync, a Reddit Alternative with the Goal to Reward Quality Comments
15. Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted
16. The Reddit blackout will continue
17. The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
18. Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely
19. Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts
20. Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private
21. Louis Rossmann calls community to leave Reddit
22. Reddit App – Suspicious high number of recent 5 star, one word reviews

#HackerNews #HackerNewsAnalytics #Reddit #RedditStrike #RedditBlackout

You know #reddit #redditblackout #redditMigration #redditapi #RedditStrike this Spez guy is not so bad. Why not make a bot same as gandalfbot from r/lotrmemes. It's not like he will be ashamed of his words? His quotes like "The blackouts are not representative of the greater Reddit community" and "My favorite analogy for Reddit is that of a city" "Hi Snoos" "We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor." Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy"

Hey, any other Reddit mods on here participating in the Reddit Strike? Us fellow Rubyists have noticed a pattern of 5-10 messages per-day from users asking to join the sub-reddit, but they're predominately new users with 1 karma and were created in 2020... I've seen this on /r/ruby and another mod confirms it on /r/rubyonrails (which is much smaller). Could be lurkers trying to join, but could also be bot accounts trying to infiltrate the sub-reddits. Given the recent comments from the Reddit CEO about allow users to vote out striking moderators, this pattern seems ominous. Anyone else noticing any unusual patterns or upticks?
#reddit #redditblackout #redditstrike

@postmodern maybe is paranoia, but there's a possibility of having enough "active" users #reddit would allow them to remove your on-strike moderator(s) and end the #redditstrike

cfr.

https://mas.to/@carnage4life/110550835049286310

The #Reddit Blackout + other news | TechNewsDay

#technews #technology #redditStrike #Twitter #AI #AImusic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMtqriaG7uk

I’m a long-time #Reddit user with the karma to prove it. I love the site, but have been absent now for several days. PLEASE, stay off of Reddit for at least the next few days, we’ve got a point to make - that our community is mightier than the greedy corporation. The CEO says it will “…all blow over soon…” Let’s prove him wrong. It’s hard, but we need to stay off the site until management gets the point. It’s ok to explore profit-making moves, but it’s not ok to attack the community and valued third party app devs. #redditblackout #redditapi #redditstrike #redditapiprotest

Hey #RedditBlackout / #RedditStrike peeps,

Once again Louis Rossman knocks it out of the park with his summary of the #Reddit situation. In short, u/Spez thinks "You are noise". Nothing but noise, of no value. Lets keep up the strike and show him he's so so terribly wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOm_UKGyrZg

With all the issues that brought Reddit under the spotlight I was wondering: is there something similar to Reddit in the Fediverse? #Reddit #redditblackout #redditapi #RedditStrike #Fediverse

Får nog räkna med att många användare flyttar från Reddit den närmsta tiden till fediverse då Reddit har planer på att öka på sina priser för användadet av deras API.

#redditmigration #redditblackout #redditapi #redditstrike #fediverse

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759674/reddit-mods-blackout-protest-extended-indefinitely

#redditblackout has been effective:

> But if the blackout continues, Reddit’s recently accumulated goodwill with advertisers could quickly dissipate.

> “It’s going to be a big turning point,” Johnson said. “They’re hoping for the easy option where everyone quiets down.”

https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-reddit-as-advertisers-weather-moderators-strike

#redditapi #redditstrike

Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts

With Google’s generally poor search results nowadays, appending “reddit” has long been the default way I search for almost anything (and no, I’m not ready to get my info from an AI chatbot, either). But given the sheer volume of subreddits that are currently unavailable — including some of the most-subscribed subreddits — clicking through many Reddit links in search results takes me to a message saying the subreddit is private. ...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759942/google-reddit-subreddit-blackout-protests

Seems Google (and Bing ... by extension DDG) might want to consider whether they want to be working on Maggie's farm no more.

#Reddit #RedditStrike #Google #WebSearch #InternetOfShit #KillingTheGooseThatLaysGoldenEggs #GoldenGoose #UnintendedConsequences #Sharecropping #Sharecroppers #Dylan