What do you mean? How can this end poorly? Most people browsing Reddit are addicted with no viable substitutes. Breaking their addiction through continued blackouts would end badly. Replacing some mods no user cares about will hardly have an impact.
Yes, let's be realistic. Most people browsing reddit are not addicted. This isn't 2013. The site is massive, and, the most important users aren't just random "terminally online" people. Continuing to antagonize a key "constituency" in what makes the platform so incredibly valuable is a TERRIBLE strategy. Even replacing mods of small / unimportant (alone) subreddits is not a good idea (right now).
That said, I do think Reddit Inc. can solve this without having to "give" too much ... in fact, I think Reddit Inc. could come out BETTER off if they go about this the right way.
Fundamentally, that way is relatively simple and should be easier for them, as well - basically, showing communities, mods, etc. some basic respect. No more dissembling, no more misleading / outright incorrect communication, no more "royal edict" tone in decisions - and, ideally, just the most basic overtures to involving 3rd parties that have HELPED the platform grow and thrive (regardless of whether they've benefitted directly financially or not) ... some basic cleanup of PR and decision-making processes would be very helpful for all. Hell, even a simple apology for some of what has happened - no one needs to be "wrong" for that to be the case. And, I don't think there is any particular person or party that is right or wrong, here. Just terrible communications and decisions, probably "distributed", realistically.
If not, the platform likely isn't going off a cliff, but it'll be a shell of its former self and likely enter a classic decline a la LiveJournal, Tumblr, etc. This may be likely in any case, but they hardly need to guarantee it before they've even IPO'ed.
Many people using scroll sites are addicted and do it compulsively.
It does not mean they are “terminally online” or dysfunctionally addicted, but they are addicted and relatively unable to drop scrolling regularly as a habit.
Also, mods are volunteers and it’s completely normal for volunteers to be dismissed. There are no laws that grant them any entitlements from, claims to, or ownership of Reddit.
Reddit won’t become a shell of itself if mod dismissal and replacement happens. Most of the users don’t know the moderators nor do they care. A vocal minority will be upset and very loud for two weeks and then continue using the site as normal.
There is some value in not rocking the boat and keeping existing mods, but Reddit can easily survive replacing them.
This does not mean that I champion, condone, or endorse how Reddit has been acting. But I’m just stating that these platforms don’t fail as quickly as some people claim they would.
Groups of vocal users have been abandoning Facebook for years, and it’s still tremendously popular. Reddit is similar. A critical mass of users carries a lot of momentum.
Replacing these volunteer moderators with paid moderators is obviously not in the cards, which can only mean Reddit wants to replace these volunteer moderators with other volunteer moderators. Assuming anyone volunteers in the first place.
Given that moderation is a thankless (and, in this case, unpaid) job, do you really think that many people with good intentions are stepping forward to take on that responsibility? Or is Reddit accidentally gonna recruit a bunch of trolls who turn r/apple into a hentai and piracy forum?
>Given that moderation is a thankless (and, in this case, unpaid) job
And a shit one, too. Years ago when i was moderating "not too big, not too small" subreddit about certain game, i was routinely receiving death threats and stuff like that for deleted comments, bans and etc.
Yes. Yes I do think people will volunteer. There's never been a shortage of mods, in fact reddit has been way over-moderated for about 5 years now. I don't see why there would suddenly be a shortage now. People love having power.
What's better? A site where people love your service and aren't looking for alternatives?
Or one where you've pissed off a decent portion of your userbase, encouraging them to be on the lookout for alternatives to move to?
Reddit could be like, say, Valve, universally liked (or at least, not disliked), making it virtually impossible even with gargantuan effort to take market share.
Or they can be like Digg, their predecessor, or any other number of dead services over time who kept turning the screws on their users and found out there is indeed a point at which it is too much.
Digg and Tumblr are some clear precedents where users walked away and a seemingly robust network effect collapsed. Moving on to "the next thing" on the Internet is a lot easier than some people seem to think.
Some small percentage of Reddit mods and users quit in disgust, some come back, and the rest of the normies hang around until it inevitably dies post-IPO.
This is like a farmer's livestock protesting. At best when the hogs are marching around with their picket signs it's irritating. Most of the time it's just comical. By the end of the week, they'll still be pork chops.
The last 10 years of reddit history has been the mods teaching everyone that they're not special and no one will miss them. Now that the admins have turned around and say that the same rule still applies to the mods and even "everyone as a whole"... people are shaking they're heads and whining "no, you're wrong, we are important".
But the reddit IPO will go through, spez will be a billionaire, and a bunch of strangers will be moderating that subreddit you thought was so awesome. Which will be full of cat pictures and facebook memes, and the comments will be five thousand deep nested reply chains of bad pop culture jokes.
They remove the moderators and replace them with different moderator, then hope that people don’t care and stay on the site like what happened with Twitter. It could happen, the main Reddit alternatives seem to be actively trying to keep most users out of the site with archaic interfaces and site owner/moderator drama
My guess has been that Huffman is just following Musk. My further guess is that he has actually either seeked or been given unsolicited advice from Musk about standing firm. Despite all the whining and complaints about Musk's handling of Twitter, the masses still use it. I see Twitter links on most sites I go to. Huffman thinks reddit is too big for a loud minority to shout down and he is probably correct. Reddit will become a pariah for some, but still used by the masses and Huffman and his investors will get their money. I'm on the side of the strikers and don't personally plan to use reddit daily anymore, but I view that as my personal stance and don't think it will have an effect on anything. I'm OK with that.
These things are fairly simple to game out, I've got some money on reddit surviving but not without taking damage. That being said, I don't agree with it, but as people are well aware there is no good alternative.
The game-plan as I've found, (dons being Reddit mask, and I'm not associated with them in any way).
Was always, we own this data (not the community) we bought this when we bought out the founders in 2015/2016, we need to monetize it before interest rates cause an IPO to evaporate, we're going to do this no matter what. We don't want people being able to delete their content (Shredder App), and we can charge for access to this valuable corpus data, and we have all the control because we control the infrastructure. That's where they are coming from.
Now, If you look at which protests were successful in history, and which protests were not, you see that it really comes down to whether at the end of the day the authority making the decisions is responsive to the people demanding change.
Reddit has never been responsive in any of their actions towards external non-employees requesting changes. They've only ever provided illusory promises, or things they were already going to do (but didn't announce), and they had to fake the first communities until they could get enough people interested.
So, they'll let the protest occur for two days because it was planned, and if you crush it you look bad, and you can just ignore it because it doesn't affect the bottom line, people will grow tired and if it lasts longer they would have an automated way to replace the mods.
People will whine in their corners when that happens, and the people that didn't see what was happening, or didn't have an easy alternative will go back to their habits using reddit and supporting their overall decisions mindlessly because its habit. Click-whirr, fixed action pattern, no change happens. Its repeated over and over and over.
From what I've seen, None of the mods actually gamed out how this would go down and took pre-emptive measures to have a fallback and move their communities off the hostile platform. Some are scrambling to get Lemmy to do that, but Lemmy has been tested by who? I hadn't even heard of it until earlier this week so I doubt its a big project, let alone one that can scale to tens of thousands or above.
>Unhappy mods are free to leave, there's no need to pull the rug from under everyone else who doesn't care.
You are assuming that Reddit mods are mentally sound, unbiased volunteers who do it to improve the world.
That's simply not the case for a great deal of them. There is a LOT of agenda pushing, a LOT of powertripping and a LOT of mental illness at work. If that wasn't the case the blackout would have been completely site-wide without a time estimate.
I don't think that was a preference. I read it more as a statement about how Reddit's actions seem to be going against their own interest, and their motives are unknown....
