from Hacker News

The note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen

by lewisflude on 6/16/23, 4:22 PM with 458 comments

by Havoc on 6/16/23, 4:39 PM
They’re gonna be left with bottom of the barrel mods. It’s a thankless task to begin with - a marginal proposition at best. Add some threats as a thank you for the unpaid work and it becomes downright abusive
Who the hell is going to want to mod in that context?
by jmull on 6/16/23, 5:33 PM
I'm almost starting to think they really will break Reddit.
When all this started I had no doubt that the protests would come, make their point, end, and then Reddit would continue on its way.
But this has been so poorly handled.
I think a key to reddit's "success" (such as it is) is that they figured out how to scale moderation -- by getting volunteers to do the tough work for free. I'm sure reddit can toss all the uncooperative mods and get as many new ones as they could ever want.
But they are changing the fundamental dynamic between mod, subreddit and reddit the company. I wonder if this won't actually break the system.
Before, mods could run subreddits as they saw fit, users could choose the subreddits they participated in, and a user can always create a new subreddit if they don't think any existing ones suit their needs.
Now mods will have to accept that supporting reddit's business goals is the "zeroth law" for any subreddit. I just wonder if enough quality moderators will be willing to put in the time and effort required to keep a larger community from devolving into a cess pool, or to build up new subreddits -- for free.
When you're working for yourself doing what you want, when you want, you don't mind not getting paid for it. When a boss is telling you want to do and when to do it, you expect to get paid. Reddit is making itself the boss of the mods.
The thing is, this is an entirely unforced error. Overwhelmingly, the natural interests of subreddits are aligned with Reddits business goals, or at least aren't in opposition to them. The horribly handled roll out of the API pricing has essentially backed mods into a corner, basically forcing them to protest and then extend the protest.
IDK, maybe this was all 4D chess, and reddit wanted to get rid of third party apps and have an excuse to purge moderators with a sense of ownership over the subreddits they moderate. But it sure seems to me like they just don't know what they are doing. I know reddit needs to figure out how to become sustainable (profitable), and changing the dynamic between reddit and third-party apps is likely a necessary part of that. But I can't believe disengaging moderators can possibly help.
by lewisflude on 6/16/23, 4:24 PM
Key paragraphs
> If there are mods here who are willing to work towards reopening this community, we are willing to work with you to process a Top Mod Removal request or reorder the mod team to achieve this goal if mods higher up the list are hindering reopening. We would handle this request and any retaliation attempts here in this modmail chain immediately.
> Our goal is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is made available 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.
by pnathan on 6/16/23, 5:40 PM
I mod a top-1000-by-subs subreddit with about 800-900K subs. It has tight rules and aggressive automods. And people like that subreddit.
Not gonna lie, if reddit strips our moderation, once the automod rules get figured out by the spammers, the value that particular subreddit will collapse into trash and spam.
so, sure, aim that footgun and start pulling the trigger... go on then.
by mattmaroon on 6/16/23, 4:47 PM
I don’t blame them. Reddit owns the subreddits, not redditors.
I have no idea why someone would put the time required into moderating a large sub for no money just for Reddit’s benefit in the first place. A Reddit model where the mods share in profits (kind of how YouTube creators do) would be interesting.
But if you’re going to sign up for that, you can’t expect Reddit to just let you tank their site. It was never yours.
I’d do the same thing if I were Reddit, though I guess I’d also not be in this situation if I were them either because I’d just price the API reasonably.
by freeAgent on 6/16/23, 5:27 PM
Mods should engage in malicious compliance. Historically, Reddit has done absolutely nothing to help communities suffering from malicious moderation, including banning users and censoring posts without good reason. Mods can just open up their subs, but start moderating in such a way that they drive away users. Reddit would look very hypocritical removing mods who do this now when they have been fine with that sort of behavior historically.
by EA-3167 on 6/16/23, 4:23 PM
That's a hell of a way to treat the volunteers who make the existence of that site possible.
by revscat on 6/16/23, 4:51 PM
I don't see a way that Huffman can follow through on his threat. According to Reddark [1] at the time of this writing there are still 4752 subs that are dark. I understand that powermods exist, but were Huffman to follow through on his threat he would have to come up with many hundreds of willing moderators, on a rather short timeframe.
Frankly, I don't see this happening, at least not without significant pain. Not to mention the ill will that is continuing to build, which will only compound the difficulty of getting new volunteers on board.
[1] https://reddark.untone.uk
by pixelpoet on 6/16/23, 4:33 PM
I really hope a decent Reddit replacement shows up soon; my impression is that HN is mostly webdevs, so surely some of y'all are on it?
by acheron on 6/16/23, 4:46 PM
I'm thrilled to watch reddit burn itself down, but of course the mods of big subs were one of the main reasons it was so terrible. If reddit could clone dang a few dozen times, then sure, kick the old mods out and maybe the site could get a handle on itself and be mildly worthwhile. But in reality, whatever jabronis they end up putting in place are not going to be any better than what they had before, and probably even worse. And so the site is still going to be awful, but now with a worse UI.
by Pxtl on 6/16/23, 4:49 PM
Threatening your unpaid volunteers who are responsible for keeping your site clear of the worst most vile freaks on the internet (something your site has repeatedly made international headlines for) is not long-term thinking.
by pbae on 6/16/23, 6:37 PM
You should read these threads if you want to get an idea of how the normie users think about the whole lockout: https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/14b11kh/were_just_here... https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/14al426/rapple_black...
by arecurrence on 6/16/23, 5:10 PM
In my experience, whenever volunteer mod positions open, there is a near infinite supply of people that want those roles. For whatever reasons, people want it and those that have it typically seek to hold onto it.
It's borderline inexplicable to me. How could someone want this in the first place and how could they be willing to do it in a volunteer capacity?
by kazbars on 6/16/23, 5:07 PM
I think /u/spez needs to take a look at /r/maliciouscompliance. I cant see how actions like this wont lead to malicious modding to destroy the communities they helped foster.
by samwillis on 6/16/23, 4:45 PM
This has been massively discussed this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36350938
Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private - 1573 points, 12 hours ago, 915 comments
by Freebytes on 6/16/23, 5:24 PM
This is getting ridiculous. I was not necessarily in agreement with the protest, but after seeing the reaction from Reddit, I am going to unsubscribe from all subreddits that are not part of the protest in support.
This is like a master class in how not to deal with this type of situation.
by joshstrange on 6/16/23, 6:04 PM
It's worth noting Reddit has never cared about absent mods except maybe in very high-profile subs. Relatively active subs with absent mods (or an absent mod) preventing new mods from being added or spam have traditionally fallen on deaf ears. I've watched at least 1 subreddit die due to such neglect.
As with a lot of things Reddit has done in the last week this falls under then "Oh, you only care about this now??? Screw you Reddit".
by CodeWriter23 on 6/16/23, 4:34 PM
Well that’s a highly optimized take on The Prisoner’s Dilemma
by Jabbles on 6/16/23, 6:20 PM
Facebook has ~a billion or so~ users and is worth ~$500B.
Reddit has ~hundreds of millions of~ users and is not worth anything like that.
Why? Facebook's content is provided by all its users for free? So if Reddit can figure out a way to monetize it like Facebook, it's worth literally hundreds of billions of dollars.
Which is why the leadership of Reddit will do anything if there's a chance that they can dramatically increase the value of the company. From their perspective, it absolutely is worth the risk. From our perspective it isn't worth it, ofc, because the upside for us doesn't involve lifechanging amounts of money.
by ctoth on 6/16/23, 5:07 PM
Calling it now. Reddit will supply the firehose of data to OpenAI in return for AI moderators. Boom. Human problems solved.
by 1024core on 6/16/23, 6:03 PM
The almighty Dollar brought about more change in Reddit than many years of users complaining.
This feels so disingenuous:
> Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust.
Where the fuck were you guys when, for example, people were complaining about the mods over at /r/india?
by just_a_quack on 6/16/23, 5:06 PM
Everyone saw this coming. Still, it's disappointing to see. I will be taking my valuable 0.12$ elsewhere thank you very much.
by bruiseralmighty on 6/16/23, 7:25 PM
Wasn't the 'protest' of overpriced or non-existent public APIs for popular websites really the additional server cost due to endless web scraping? The whole concept of a general strike of subreddits seems like an antiquated way try and strong arm Reddit into complying.
If all these subreddit had instead migrated their users to a hastily built alternate frontend that web scrapped reddit.com, the entire mother site could have been taken down quite effectively.
There's plenty of methods for routing around ip-address blacklisting or region blocking.
Just as there's no law against web scrapping there's no law protecting the labor rights of the moderators who work for free. Overall it just strikes me as a weaker axis of attack.
by 0x6461188A on 6/16/23, 6:07 PM
Did they change the code of conduct to retroactively put the protesting mods in violation? Reddit management does not realize this but these actions make them look worse and reduces the attractiveness of Reddit as a platform for the 99% readers who are not mods.
by younggeorge on 6/16/23, 6:14 PM
I think this will be a net positive even if they are replaced with worse moderators. Users are more than capable of self-regulating their communities and upvoting quality content.
Moderators are too concerned with weeding out people and bad content as soon as possible and as much as possible. But it's OK to have a bunch of low quality comments and posts, and just let the users decide what gets seen by most of the people.
I'm much more concerned with moderators thinking they can decide to protest on behalf of millions of people, than I am with millions of people seeing content that breaks a subreddits rules.
by robbywashere_ on 6/16/23, 6:56 PM
This sounds like it could be the death of the platform, or at least the beginning of. I can see it devolving into bot generated content and intrusive ads. Once being a site noteworthy of high signal to noise ratio for content (ie google'ing with 'reddit' for quality search results) will now enshitify as it attempts to squeeze out every drop of revenue.
Had the owner of twitter not fired all of his employees, they very well may have been able to seize the opportunity and develop an alternative which could have integrated with their current users and product.
by ttctciyf on 6/16/23, 5:14 PM
It is quite impressive to see the detailed intimate knowledge of the personality and inner landscape of reddit moderators shown by commenters in this thread.
Clearly the moderators have many psychological characteristics in common and are motivated by the exact same personality flaws and doubtless it is because of this that the commenters here are able to achieve such startling generality in their succinct evaluations!
by AdamJacobMuller on 6/16/23, 6:15 PM
Just the threat of this on bigger subs, combined with the two subreddits that reddit did actually shuffle around mods in, seems to have totally broken the blackout. The benevolent dictators who moderate were threatened with losing their power and seem to have completely caved (.
The mods realized that they are replaceable and that they don't have infinite rights to the moderator spots on these subreddits. Did they not consider that they do not own anything here and are all just operating on reddit's platform and reddit could just remove them and install new mods?
It seems highly plausible to me that reddit has now effectively won this one, though, I strenuously think they could have achieved their goals with far far less negative press but it wouldn't really be reddit if they didn't do something in the maximally inefficient way.
I do think this could lead to a situation where reddit moderation is more democratized, with moderators being elected (in a more formal way than how some subs do it now) and I think that would be an overall net positive for the communities and for reddit as a whole. Moderators at this point operate as mostly benevolent dictators and benevolent dictatorships have their plusses but I think that the limitations are starting to show now.
by larvaetron on 6/16/23, 5:30 PM
If the Reddit admins don't want mods to have the ability to set a subreddit to private, then why did they even give them the option in the first place? Couldn't they just disable the "private" flag for all subs and be done with it?
by gliixo on 6/16/23, 5:14 PM
We really should all collectively just stop using reddit already. It went to shit years ago
by e40 on 6/16/23, 6:11 PM
The API changes don't impact Mod tools but many (most?) Mods use Apollo or other apps because they have far better moderation tools.
Steve's statement about this really pissed me off, due to this ommision.
by neop1x on 6/17/23, 10:30 PM
Now what remains is to stop moderating posts and write scripts and automations to fill Reddit with AI-generated spam. Then Spez will have a bag full of sh*t to do IPO with.
by Topgamer7 on 6/16/23, 5:22 PM
> 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.
Fucking comical.
by yieldcrv on 6/16/23, 4:44 PM
the algorithm simply elevated other open communities to the front page
users that disabled the algorithm and only use niche subreddits never see the protest at all
I definitely think Reddit company’s view of the outcome is accurate, and that them choosing to not unilaterally open subreddits is favorable for them because it doesn’t matter too much, aside from useful information in old posts being locked away (for now)
by ck2 on 6/16/23, 4:42 PM
I still don't get what alternative everyone is going to.
There isn't one. At least not similar or consensus.
Weird to burn bridges without a plan.
by djmips on 6/16/23, 5:52 PM
Reddit should have been like the wiki.
by stcg on 6/16/23, 5:09 PM
I think this was quite a clear and non-threatening note. How is this threatening?
by blibble on 6/16/23, 7:15 PM
setting the users against the mods didn't work, so now they're trying to split the mods from each other
from the businesses perspective this is probably the first sensible decision they've made so far
by readyplayernull on 6/16/23, 5:50 PM
Should 2023 be officially named the year of the Great Social Media Purge?
by faangsticle on 6/16/23, 5:28 PM
I wonder what reddit means with "retaliation attempts". This all sounds very threatening. Are they going to pull a wizards of the cost and start sending Pinkerton agents after mods who dont play ball?
by anigbrowl on 6/16/23, 5:12 PM
Ah, digital feudalism. It's so efficient.
by poorbutdebtfree on 6/16/23, 5:33 PM
The big problem here is what will young people do without the paid posters from /r/white/blackpeopletwitter and /r/politics forming their worldview for them?
by cush on 6/16/23, 5:02 PM
Instead of harassing mods, Reddit should be paying them. Mods should get kickbacks from coins spent in their sub.
by paulpauper on 6/16/23, 4:53 PM
some of the sub-level censorship on reddit has gotten so bad in recent years, I see this as possibly a welcome change
by Convolutional on 6/16/23, 5:29 PM
Reddit management is in the process of learning from what had seemed the boon of unpaid labor, that the struggle of management and ownership against the unpaid moderator workers is over control of the means of production and the relations of production.
by tehjoker on 6/16/23, 4:52 PM
don't be scabby the rat lol
by PrimeMcFly on 6/16/23, 4:46 PM
Inevitable that this was going to happen. I have no issue with it.
Most mods have an issue because they want to mod from their phones. There are mods like me who use desktop exclusively and don't care about third party apps in the slightest.
More importantly, most users seem to want the subs reopened, and it isn't fair or just to punish the users because the mods can't mod the way they want to anymore.
The mods that actually polled their communities and acted on those results are the only ones I have respect for out of those protesting.