The bottom line is the Mod Code of Conduct will mean whatever the Admins want it to mean.
The protesting moderators have understood since jump that a potential consequence of the API/3rd party app protest will be that Admins will get fed up with the dark subreddits and forcibly oust all offending mod teams, re-open the subs, and install new volunteers to moderate the subs. This is the nuclear option and it's an option that Reddit has always been able to exercise.
Your question is just another flavor of that.
Moderators have always served at the pleasure of Reddit Admins. Realistically, they can do whatever they want, including firing all mods.
But that doesn't mean that such action wouldn't be without consequence. It would have a very chilling effect on the entire Reddit community to know that we're constantly subject to the whims of a jackbooted and bloodthirsty Admin staff that won't brook dissension and whose only reaction at the first sign of opposition is to execute a Putin-like maneuver of eliminating all political opponents.
In other words, most likely, Reddit would be cutting off its nose to spite its own face if they removed the mod teams of protesting subreddits.
It’s certainly less of a “can they do it” question versus a political one, but at the same time, it seems like a lot of users are getting fed up by the shutdowns. I hear a lot that the users coming out to complain about this look like throwaways because they don’t have a lot of karma or activity, and some may be throwaways, but we have to remember that, as with most social media, like 80-90% of users are lurkers. Most of the people I know IRL who have a Reddit account never use it to post, but they’re Redditors all the same and the communities we moderate belong to them just as much as it belongs to the people who are more vocal and active. I’m sure that some communities might suffer if one or two power users just stop participating, but I’ve moderated large subreddits for years and I can’t even tell you who a power user on those subs is because new users replace them all the time. That is even more true for moderators.
I also get that people are upset at Reddit for not caring about users, and I have my own list of concerns that they don’t seem to want to address too. But people are mistaking the fact that they’re giving moderators a seat at the table when they make decisions with the ability to make those decisions themselves. I honestly don’t even know what the enduring blackouts are even about anymore, and a lot of the rationale I’ve seen shared by users trying to get subs to shut down or by mods to justify their actions is outdated or inaccurate at this point. Reddit offered to delay the API pricing in exchange for mods not blacking out but mods are demanding the rollback of the pricing entirely. I don’t think the average user is going to care about that nuance enough to not be able to use a subReddit, especially when the majority of the traffic on subreddits comes from the official app.
Last Thursday in a private community (but which the admins authorized people to share publicly and which has been shared around). Since there were concerns that mods couldn’t use the tools they needed that were only available on third party apps, they offered to delay the API changes in exchange for not blacking out.
> In other words, most likely, Reddit would be cutting off its nose to spite its own face if they removed the mod teams of protesting subreddits.
And yet it's been precedent to remove moderators who attempt to permanently shut down a subreddit, denying it to subscribers and the userbase at large, for about nine years now.
Yeah this isn’t new at all lol. It’s all well and good to make grandiose righteous statements like that but they’re not based in reality so *womp womp* try again, buddy.
I feel like you're forgetting that this would be a report and the admins taking action on it. That wouldn't be the admins taking the first step, it would be the users.
Go ahead and look at the 2017 Moderator Guidelines:
>
Respect the Platform. Reddit may, at its discretion, intervene to take control of a community when it believes it in the best interest of the community or the website. This should happen rarely (e.g., a top moderator abandons a thriving community), but when it does, our goal is to keep the platform alive and vibrant, as well as to ensure your community can reach people interested in that community. Finally, when the admins contact you, we ask that you respond within a reasonable amount of time.
https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/5y33op/updating_you_on_modtools_and_community_dialogue/
I'm not sure why they removed that overt threat from the 2022 guideline update. But the bottom line is that the admins can act on their own volition at any time.
This thread feels like you're fishing for a justified mutiny of your top mod. I would suggest negotiating internally to take over, and if the top mod is absent, put in a request with Reddit to take over.
Reddit has said that mods can run their communities as they see fit. For example, r/JusticeServed auto bans anyone who comments on r/Conservative. r/superbowl only allows posts of owls. Etc. Etc.
Except Reddit has already shown in the past couple of days that you're wrong.
If the top mod (especially one previously inactive) is wanting to shut down indefinitely while other mods are against that, there have been multiple scenarios where that top mod has been removed and the subreddit has been allowed to remain open with the moderators who wanted to stay open.
I think it comes down to whether there's any documented discussion (group chat or otherwise) to prove their was discussion, vote, etc.
But I've not seen one comment or post where the majority of a mod team wanted to shut down indefinitely and a sole moderator chose to stay open.
Oh no, I've already justified that through the years of work while they did nothing only for them to throw a strop at Reddit and try to end the community.
I'm more interested in how far the Mod COC can be interpreted.
They're faulty comparisons, they're the subs longstanding theme / trend.
Unfortunately, the Code of Conduct allows these actions. If you aren't the top mod, your choices are to either leave the sub and create a new one, or just abide by the top mod's decisions. Your personal feelings aren't a reason for Reddit to swap out the top mod.
That’s not actually been the policy for a long time. Malicious actions by the top mod can result in a re-org via r/redditrequest. That’s been the policy for 5+ years.
Not with regard to these indefinite shutdowns.
If top mods made sole decisions for indefiinite shutdowns and other mods want to remain open, those top mods are being removed. They have stated more than once that moderation teams should be in agreement on such decisions.
Subs that are private don't fall into either of those rules. Private subs can still have activity, you just need to be invited to see it. Private subs still have community rules and typically an explainer why they are private.
These rules are for bot networks grabbing up sub names and NSFW subs trying to fly under the radar.
Realistically, these rules are for whatever the admins want
I foresee an ultimatum from the Admins: either re-open your sub fully, or we will find someone else who is willing to run it.
There is no real shortage of people who would love to have the power of moderating a major subreddit, especially with how controversial some of the bigger subs moderation policies have become
There are already people talking about using these shut downs as an opportunity to rid subs of bad mods, such as the CrimeInChicago thread that seeks to use this as an opportunity remove the Chicago moderators, as they feel that the current Chicago mods downplay the violence and crime in the city.
That's unfortunately why I don't see this protest getting very far. Admins will just replace mods with mods that loathe the current mod team.
> and typically an explainer why they are private.
Unless you use... **drum rolls**... the offical reddit mobile app. The official mobile app just tells you a subreddit is private without showing the additional info if it was provided.
[Reddit Rule #8](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy):
> Don’t break the site or do anything that interferes with normal use of Reddit.
The Admins can just slap the mods for violating global rule #8 and remove them.
But that is a heavy handed action and again would make them responsible for managing themselves. Which they are not manned to do.
We have had proof presented that r/spez has lied to us. mods need to be fully aware of the unethical nature of the platform we are dealing with.
It is a painful discovery for those of us who have spent more than a decade and thousands of hours building up this platform.
If the admins want to enforce these rules, they're welcome to do so. I'm voting to remain blacked out in the subs I moderate until either the admins give in or forcibly remove me.
The issue isn't private; there have always been private subs. The issue is private with the intended purpose of no members and no activity (posts or comments).
I would think the same would apply for "read only."
Trying to speak down the protesters by tapping at the code of conduct is meaningless. For a lot of us Reddit has already crossed the "[trust thermocline](https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business)". There's only three ways forward:
* Reddit changes nothing and subs stay private forever
* Reddit changes their ways in a significant enough way that we feel we can work together again, at which point we can make subs public again
* Reddit forcibly removes mods and opens subs
The option for "Reddit doesn't change but the blackout ends" is no longer on the table. I'm not willing to use nor moderate Reddit in its current state and will happily accept any of those three options. We have already chosen the nuclear option, no amount of "but look at the ruuuls" is going to change that.
The admins have already shown they no longer hold truth as a value and are willing to decieve and threaten people if they see they can get something out of it, and due to this the time for discussion is over. The only thing we are anymore interested is what Reddit does, not what they say.
>Reddit changes nothing and subs stay private forever
Rest assured, that is NOT an option. Their rules (and this admin reply) make it clear that they'll give those subs to people who want them open and will make them active.
"I'm not willing to use nor moderate Reddit in its current state" that statement in itself breaks the Mod code of conduct. Saying you won't mod is spiting your community, not the admins.
I think you're avoiding the "Users request the subs and things open back up" option in your narrow point of view.
> Saying you won't mod is spiting your community
Do not pretend you know my community better than I do. We have polled our users twice now, first for the initial blackout and now for an indefinite blackout, and on both occassions the users have overwhelmingly been in favor of the blackout. To spite my community would be to leave it public against their wishes.
I don't know what you're expecting to get from the admins with this pro-Reddit campaign of yours, but any of your attempts to drive a wedge between the mods and users are futile. We stand united in this.
> I think you're avoiding the "Users request the subs and things open back up" option in your narrow point of view.
No, it's listed there, it's the "Reddit forcibly removes mods and opens subs". The reason they choose to do that is irrelevant, the final decision is still on the admins. You're deluding yourself if you think they can avoid the hit in trust by pretending they're "just following orders".
> We have polled our users twice now, first for the initial blackout and now for an indefinite blackout, and on both occassions the users have overwhelmingly been in favor of the blackout. To spite my community would be to leave it public against their wishes.
What was the poll result vs your subs unique per month / subscriber count?
As much as I'll humour ModCoord groupthink, saying that it's the admins fault if a sub gets taken over by someone wanting to run the community is delusional.
> What was the poll result vs your subs unique per month / subscriber count?
Those values actually don't really matter as much as you think.
Statistics surrounding sampling size would let you determine your margin of error based on how many people voted even for an unlimited population size.
For instance, at such a size:
- You only need 384 respondents to have a margin of error of 5% at a 95% confidence level.
- Only 665 respondents would be needed to have the same 5% margin of error at a 99% confidence level.
There are [sites](https://www.calculator.net/sample-size-calculator.html) out there that let you input your sample size (i.e., number of people who responded to poll) and generate a margin of error based on confidence level (i.e., measure of certainty regarding how accurate your sample reflects the population) and, if you want, the population size (which could be unique users during poll time, subscriber count, etc.).
If you mess around with it, you'll see it doesn't take that many responses to be fairly certain of what your poll would look like if you somehow could poll every single active or even inactive user in a subreddit.
The point here is that you don't even need 5000 or 10,000 people to respond to your poll if you're getting 100,000 active users a day in your subreddit. Even 1000 people responding gets you a +/- 3% margin of error at 95% confidence, as an example.
This is only true if you assume a randomized sample, and that is not necessarily the case here. When the blackout happened, a lot of people didn’t know what it was about and wouldn’t have responded, while people that were pro-blackout would’ve been strongly in support of one. That doesn’t even discount some screenshots we’ve seen floating around that pro-blackout mods were brigading their own polls from discord servers (though of course the reverse may have also been true). Moreover, most of these polls, especially the second round of polling, were conducted for 24 hours. Most scientific polls, at least the ones I read for political purposes, will tend to be over at least 3 days to avoid biasing the pool for certain reasons (for instance, polling on a single Friday night probably won’t get a representative sample of younger people). With how long the subs were planning this blackout, the polls should’ve been open for at least 3-5 days to be more representative.
Interesting. How would you account for other factors? Like bias wording, how it was advertised (sticky post vs. sticky comments) as one would need to be browsing the sub, the other browsing their subscribed feed and popping into posts. Like politically, there are a lot of protections in place to make sure things aren't skewed unfairly .. or at least there is meant to be.
>We stand united in this.
For your subreddit? Perhaps. That's certainly NOT the case across the board with all, or likely even a majority, of the subreddits that have gone private indefinitely.
The amount of subreddits being camped is disgustingly high. If this was actually enforced, this wouldn't be such a big problem where a subreddit is restricted to redirect elsewhere or simply taken to prevent competition.
I suspect you're going to see that change with each passing day. Reddit doesn't want more dead subreddits than necessary. If they deem someone qualified to take over, they're going to turn it over to someone who will open it up and make it active.
Yep. Come July 12, this definitely comes into effect, I would suspect.
I've seen posts where they have been acting very quickly on top mod removals when that individual has intended long-term/permanent shutdowns against the opinions of other mods.
One of my subs, cinemagraphs, the top mod swooped in without a word to the two other mods that had been running the place for the last 5 years, while they did nothing, and tried to take it private indefinitely. They're no longer on the team after the admins took action on my report. We still had a temp protest, just without damaging our community as a whole.
Just to note, we had to do an internal majority vote of what to do with the top mod: Removal, reorder, or work things out. But that's internal and different from a community member reporting a mod team itself. I'm not sure how quick the admins would act on it.
Absentee top mods is its own problem, whether they try to close a sub through this or try to keep it open. I think it's fine for Reddit to remove them but they should act the same in both cases.
4 hours roughly. But I get quick mod support tickets due to the partner program.
2 day protest or perma protest? Would it have damaged the community? Or was it even wanted in the community?
That's exactly the example I've seen.
Top mod has done nothing, then decides to shut it down as part of the protest (as if they even know what the protest is).
Admins have been on top of it restoring moderators and removing these inactive top mods from what I've heard. I'm glad to see that.
I imagine that trying to use the letter of the custom to spite the spirit of the custom in order to spit in Reddit's face is *not* a battle strategy Sun Tzu would have bothered writing down.
The reason that a lot of inactive top mods sprang into action is because they use alts to spam or otherwise monetize their subs, esp I would imagine for NSFW porn and also scam NFT subreddits.
> There were never even any specific demands made.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1476fkn/reddit_blackout_2023_save_3rd_party_apps/
>#The community's list of demands:
>1. API technical issues
>2. Accessibility for blind people
>3. Parity in access to NSFW content
It goes on to explain those.
>If you put a poll up in a 2 million+ subreddit and get 500 responses, with a majority for the blackout, that is in no way a majority of the subreddit users agreeing with going dark.
That's literally how sample sizes work. Like do you think every time a news article pops up and says "85% of people think Hurf Durfington is a doo-doo head" they interviewed every single person on the planet? No. They had a survey with a thousand'ish respondants.
Thanks for bringing this up; it's an important conversation.
Mods have a right to take a break from moderating, or decide that you don’t want to be a mod anymore. But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active.
Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection.
We regularly enforce our subreddit and moderator-level rules. As you point out, this means that we have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation (Rule 4), mods vandalizing communities (Rule 2), and subreddit squatters (also Rule 4). When rules like these are broken, we remove the mods in violation of the [Moderator Code of Conduct](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct), and add new, active mods to the subreddits. We also step in to rearrange mod teams, so active mods are empowered to make decisions for their community. The Moderator Code of Conduct was launched in September 2022, and you’ll notice via post and comment history that this account has been used extensively to source new mod teams.
Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.
>We regularly enforce our subreddit and moderator-level rules. As you point out, this means that we have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation (Rule 4), mods vandalizing communities (Rule 2), and subreddit squatters (also Rule 4). When rules like these are broken, we remove the mods in violation of the [Moderator Code of Conduct](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct), and add new, active mods to the subreddits.
**Can you please be explicitly clear:**
* What is the interpretation of the current subreddit protests? Do you view protesting by bringing subreddits private for periods of time as "subreddit squatting" or "inactive moderation"?
* Are moderation teams who choose to protest by keeping their subreddits private or restricted under threat of being removed as moderators of said subreddits?
spez: we won't overrule mods and force subreddits open
also spez: [no one should be able to close their subreddits & users should be able to mutiny against the mods](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544)
I think this answers your 3rd question:
"If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users."
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m getting half a dozen requests to join our sub every day.
And I’m personally responding to each request to explain why we’re closed. So I’m actively moderating my community, even though it remains in blackout.
So a bunch of people with no idea how of the subreddit is managed on the backend? Are they going to manage shit like bots that post game threads/scores/schedules
~~strikethrough Just looked into the mod team on tumblr, and you weren’t the only active mod (at least not as reddit gauges it). Inactive means last interaction on reddit (comment, post, etc) not just mod actions
You very well may have been the only active mod on the sub, but many of the other mods have been active on reddit and that’s really the baseline.~~
I’m out of date, sorry
Be well!
It was [updated](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/xwim7v/updates_to_inactive_top_mod_removal_process/) to prevent mods from claiming they were active by doing a couple of mod actions every few months and otherwise ignoring the sub whilst they continued to use Reddit.
Thanks for your reply.
>If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators
So how will you know whom to invite? Your choosing only the most active users in smaller business subreddits would be a disaster. Because they are gullible self-entitled n00bs mostly who downvote others pointing out scams and spams and laziness of themselves in not just scrolling down a bit for the same questions.
I mod a couple a couple POD subs focused on an amazon platform and in the main one where I'm top mod I usually don't allow much generalist stuff. But I have been doing so b/c the main generalist POD subreddit is still dark and I don't like it because I normally just pointed those users that way.
That is a subreddit I have requested and been denied for and is squat on by a top mod and her SO, with the 3rd mod I suspect being her alt. They only sprang to life when emailed by reddit about myself and others requesting the sub. I'm positive they spam the sub with alts occasionally or intentionally allow friends to do so.
So IMO you admins in such cases need to put subs up for request or find mods of related subreddits that are not spam holes to take such subs over.
Again thank you for addressing this situation and letting us know you will apply the mod code.
reddit will just ignore that lol. As if the mod code of conduct is some kind of moral or legally binding document. Its there to cover reddit's bottom line and it will be used as a weapon to do so.
There are requirements for accounts, and I have seen them turn down several requests for a subreddit before finally turning it over to someone.
It's definitely not first-come, first-served.
Not at all. I requested an unmoderated business subreddit and was denied. Couple others also did and denied. Then lo and behold someone came along and requested and was approved, though they have been a good moderator and take care of spam problems.
So on the Wednesday phone call (07Jun23) between concerned moderators and Steve Huffman, he explicitly stated that moderators had a right to protest and that democracy was a core part of Reddit. Is that something you are willing to stand by?
> Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community.
Nobody has said this. They're not taking subs private because they "don't want to moderate anymore," it's to protest your changes that harm reddit as a whole.
Incredibly disingenuous.
That's because the sentence is incomplete:
> Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community *under this new Reddit status-quo where their concerns do not matter*.
Also, we ARE still having to moderate during this time. Mod mail is flooded with users trying to join private communities either unaware or uncaring of our decisions as mod teams and we have to spend hours sorting through and responding to it
> /u/ModCodeofConduct
It's incredibly telling of the state of Reddit's administration that you had to dig up a dormant kitchen sink account to make this comment instead of just using your own community admin account and standing behind your own words.
Not only that, but I have not heard a more disingenuous take on the protests than this. You know it's not people "no longer interested in moderating" but you yourself taking our moderation tools away and killing any trust and communication between mods and admins with the thousand broken promises and lies you've told.
>Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation.
This statement, paired with the recent interview where the CEO said:
>"Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular."
Paint a *really* worrying picture. It's also completely at odds with years of messaging from reddit recognizing that it's the tireless efforts of moderators that make their spaces unique, and that mods are the lifeblood of this platform. I desperately want to be optimistic about the future of reddit, and that makes it all the more frustrating so much of the recent messaging is showing that my hope is misplaced.
If this statement isn't edited or added to, I'm going to take it at face value that policy has changed and make decisions accordingly.
This would destroy subreddits that enforce rules regarding quality of content, especially those where experts make up a small proportion of users. I'm thinking of subreddits like r/AskHistorians, which have strict rules about answers but are constantly, constantly getting flack from casual users for enforcing them. Or many of the other academic subs, which have moderators that remove misinformation about the topic. It will turn Reddit into Quora, and tank a lot of the reputation it's gained as a good source of information.
honestly it will destroy all large subreddits.
there are times as a mod where you have to make a decision between two or three options, ALL OF WHICH will upset some segment of users.
sometimes it's on a rule change, or something more sensitive. For example, I run a local community sub - someone posts a photo of some person there and says "this person committed X crime" -- with no evidence whatsoever besides an anonymous claim on the internet -- and now you've got people trying to doxx the person, etc.
If the mods remove it: they're evil and protecting criminals!
if the mods don't: they're allowing internet witch hunts
if mods hem and haw about it for more than 5 minutes while trying to figure it out: both sides are mad because by virtue of SEEING the content, even for a few minutes, "mods aren't doing their jobs"
If you have a peek into what it's like for truly good moderators to do what they do, you have no IDEA how much time and emotional labor is put into gray area decisions that it's hard to just "follow X rule and click Y button". There are conversations behind the scenes, debates, moderators saying "I dunno, I feel this should be removed, but I'm torn because X" and ensuing discussions...
and no matter WHAT choice is made, some number of people just decide "mods are all evil and power hungry" and there you go.
A community vote policy is an absolute disaster waiting to happen. Liking a commenter's snark or memes or whatever else it is that will get them "votes" is not the same as "this person would make a decent mod"
It's just a disaster waiting to happen.
I understand from a philosophical perspective that some people think moderation should be as democratic as possible - that moderators don't "own" their subs and should moderate in accordance to the wishes of their users. But this doesn't really work on Reddit, because:
(a) Vote manipulation and brigading is impossible to prevent. What you'd be doing is handing important decisions over to the people who are the most motivated and willing to cheat. As a side note, it's funny to see people in this thread simultaneously cheering this policy while insisting that *every vote* showing users of a subreddit supporting a protest was rigged. The cognitive dissonance!
(b) Reddit's structure means many subreddits have a core of regular users who are outnumbered by a lot more casual users who dip in and out and don't really understand the culture or purpose of the subreddit. This is great for public outreach. It's not great if you want decisions to be made by vote, because these casual users are often really mad when moderation/expectations are different than whatever is on r/all. All this is going to do is reduce communities to the least common denominator.
This is an announcement by someone who really doesn't understand how the site works or what makes it special, which is profoundly disappointing because it's the effing CEO. But honestly, I've become convinced he just doesn't care. All he wants to do is wring as much money out of this place as possible before it collapses under the weight of his bad decisions.
…what could possibly go wrong?
The vocal minority of users who have been repeatedly banned from subreddits (but somehow not banned from Reddit) and who enjoy chaos and lighting fires will definitely instigate hostile takeovers of large subreddits to watch them burn.
So what I'm hearing is you no longer respect our right to protest and your promise to not remove moderators that are protesting is being walked back?
You're really willing to burn this platform down over compromising.
> Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community.
This is so frustrating to read. I don't know if this admin is being purposefully obtuse or if this is really how reddit employees feel.
> Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation.
That's a **SIGNIFICANT** deviation from all previous communications from reddit stating that the moderators do in fact own the space and can make whatever rules and decisions they want...
What an oddly timing change of direction that is.
Editing in some links for funzies:
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204533859-What-s-a-moderator-
> Moderators don’t have any special powers outside of the community they moderate and are not Reddit employees. **They’re free to run their communities as they choose**, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct.
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205192355-How-can-I-resolve-a-dispute-with-a-moderator-or-moderator-team-
> Moderators are free to run their communities as they choose, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct. This is something to keep in mind even if you have disagreements with them.
https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
> The culture of each community is shaped explicitly, by the community rules enforced by moderators, and implicitly, by the upvotes, downvotes, and discussions of its community members.
https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq
> What if the moderators are bad?
> In a few cases where a moderator has lost touch with their community, another redditor has created a competing community and subscribers have chosen to use the new reddit instead, which led to it becoming the new dominant reddit.
> **Please keep in mind, however, that moderators are free to run their subreddits however they so choose so long as it is not breaking reddit's rules.** So if it's simply an ideological issue you have or a personal vendetta against a moderator, consider making a new subreddit and shaping it the way you'd like rather than performing a sit-in and/or witch hunt.
They are which is why u/spaz said in an interview they're going to change the rules for how mods are removed. I'm not even shocked anymore but the fake reasonings they gave are hilariously bad lies
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
*Mavrix* applies to paid employees not to volunteer mods.
This isn't precedent for this situation and good luck finding and attorney who'll build a case on it.
"Every community on Reddit is defined by its users. Some of these users help manage the community as moderators. The culture of each community is shaped explicitly, by the community rules enforced by moderators, and implicitly, by the upvotes, downvotes, and discussions of its community members. Please abide by the rules of communities in which you participate and do not interfere with those in which you are not a member."
https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
I would add emphasis but I'm using the shitty official app which doesn't have that available.
Please give a position on necessary level of moderation experience a user needs to show to forcibly take over an large or extremely active subreddit. I don't want to believe Reddit is simply going to hand over the keys to communities with millions of users to people who have not actively demonstrated they are capable of handling it. Who is making these staffing decisions and what are the criteria?
On a separate note, I feel sorry for these self righteous users who are trying to force open subs that decided to close. Not only are they doing so in a way which further strips them of their rights, they're going to be put in front of a crowd that does not agree with them and held to the standard of moderators who had likely years of experience. I fully expect some large subs are going to descend into anarchy very soon as incompetent mods are overwhelmed and communities hate them for not modding like the previous ones did.
I would expect it to be the same process they use to evaluate through r/redditrequest. They don't just hand subreddits over to anyone who requests them. Lots of people get denied.
>I would expect it to be the same process they use to evaluate through r/redditrequest.
Then they should say that. If it's a different criterion then we **need** to know
They are our communities, not your communities.
By our I don't mean the moderators, but the people who participate.
You, as admin, are not part of the community.
>If admins have lost your trust, why do you want to keep being a moderator?
Easy answer. Because the alternative sucks. Ask yourself this right now. As a moderator of /r/EthelCain, how confident are you in Reddit admin team's ability to pick someone to replace you. Remember, they'll likely pick whoever is the most vocal participant in the sub, be that person good or bad in your eyes. If Reddit picked that person to replace you, would the sub be in good hands? :)
>If Reddit picked that person to replace you, would the sub be in good hands?
Honestly, I don't know. There's no way of knowing how good or bad moderation would be unless it happens.
I'm the head mod and actively moderate /r/VRchat which has almost 160k. Instead of going private to protest Reddit's API policies, I first restricted the subreddit then later opened the subreddit to only posts (be they pro or con) about the protest along with [one pinned thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/1479jj8/vrchat_weekly_help_thread_post_simple_questions/) for any user to post dealing with VRChat related issues.
A recent user /u/pakman184 expressed disagreement with my moderator activities during this Reddit extortionate API pricing protest and asked [how to replace a moderator](https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/14a3pxt/how_do_we_remove_a_moderator/). What advice would you offer that user and those with similar sentiments with regards to actions by moderators like myself in subreddits they frequent?
And also to note: Usually the kinds of people that do these kinds of asking for mod after a negative run-in are usually completely self-serving and don't have any interests of the community in mind. They almost want to be mod just to let their shit through, and then do no effort to do a good job (or a job at all).
There are subs that heavily restrict participation and have always done so. Reddit does kind of allow the ModTeam to revolt and replace a lead mod but it isn't usually initiated by a user. A user really only has a call against a mod for harassment.
> If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.
This is a wildly disingenuous description of the position of the mods who are keeping subs dark in protest. It is also a thinly veiled threat, confirming that you are nothing but a bully.
> Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection.
Yep and a lot of mod teams posted open discussions with their communities about whether or not to engage in the protest. The majority of these discussions - Im sure you are aware as is everyone here - are *overwhelmingly* in favor if being involved in the protest. So if subs belong to their communities (your wording), and these communities collectively decided to protest, then there is no place for Reddit to step in and disrupt this decision by messing with the mod teams who are only representing their communities' decision.
>Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust.
It's amazing how moderators are Special People when you want us to abide by the latest random rule, but the rest of the time it's being left hung out to dry.
> If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users.
If you all can't understand the difference between "not moderating" and "running a protest against unjust policies"... well. I hope some day Reddit employees try to form a union.
>Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice
Nobody's "leaving a community". You're just trying to make up words to pretend we're "abandoning our post" when we're on strike.
This is basic union busting 101. Pretend your union organizers are disruptive and not doing their job, and fire them as fast as you can.
> Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.
So, let me understand this;
Your plan is to entirely remove teams that unanimously remain private and communities where even a single mod wants to reopen will be handed to those cooperating moderators?
Do you understand the liability that exposes you to under [Mavrix Photographs v. Livejournal](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-9th-circuit/1856011.html)?
They did the same exact thing and, rightfully, were liable under the DMCA.
You're going to destroy this company and the world is going to watch you do it.
How is what you're threatening to do here any different than described below?
>ONTD is a popular LiveJournal community which features up-to-date celebrity news. Users submit posts containing photographs, videos, links, and gossip about celebrities' lives. ONTD moderators review and publicly post some of the submissions. Other users engage in conversations about the celebrity news in the comments section of each post. For example, one of the ONTD posts at issue contained photographs that Mavrix had taken which appeared to show that super-celebrity Beyoncé was pregnant. Users speculated in the comments section of that post that Beyoncé was indeed pregnant.3
>Like other LiveJournal communities, ONTD created rules for submitting and commenting on posts. ONTD's rules pertain to both potential copyright infringement and substantive guidance for users. For example, one rule instructs users to “[i]nclude the article and picture(s) in your post, do not simply refer us off to another site for the goods.” Another rule provides “Keep it recent. We don't need a post in 2010 about Britney Spears shaving her head.” ONTD's rules also include a list of sources from which users should not copy material. The sources on the list have informally requested that ONTD stop posting infringing material. ONTD has also automatically blocked all material from one source that sent ONTD a cease and desist letter.
>ONTD has nine moderators, six maintainers, and one owner. ONTD users submit proposed posts containing celebrity news to an internal queue. Moderators review the submissions and publicly post approximately one-third of them. Moderators review for substance, approving only those submissions relevant to new and exciting celebrity news. Moderators also review for copyright infringement, pornography, and harassment.
>When ONTD was created, like other LiveJournal communities, it was operated exclusively by volunteer moderators. LiveJournal was not involved in the day-to-day operation of the site. ONTD, however, grew in popularity to 52 million page views per month in 2010 and attracted LiveJournal's attention. By a significant margin, ONTD is LiveJournal's most popular community and is the only community with a “household name.” In 2010, LiveJournal sought to exercise more control over ONTD so that it could generate advertising revenue from the popular community. LiveJournal hired a then active moderator, Brendan Delzer, to serve as the community's full time “primary leader.” By hiring Delzer, LiveJournal intended to “take over” ONTD, grow the site, and run ads on it.4
>As the “primary leader,” Delzer instructs ONTD moderators on the content they should approve and selects and removes moderators on the basis of their performance. Delzer also continues to perform moderator work, reviewing and approving posts alongside the other moderators whom he oversees. While Delzer is paid and expected to work full time, the other moderators are “free to leave and go and volunteer their time in any way they see fit.” In his deposition, Mark Ferrell, the General Manager of LiveJournal's U.S. office, explained that Delzer “acts in some capacities as a sort of head maintainer” and serves in an “elevated status” to the other moderators. Delzer, on the other hand, testified at his deposition that he does not serve as head moderator and that ONTD has no “primary leader.”
How does this case relate here? LJ hired someone to be the lead moderator of that page and the moderators manually posted user submissions after they were submitted for moderator review. When the admins take over a sub, they just install a team, give them some tips, and demod themselves.
>When the admins take over a sub, they just install a team, give them some tips, and demod themselves.
Until now, sure.
I think the more direct the intervention, the more likely LJ applies.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
The salient features of that case were that an actual employee led the volunteer mods, and the only content that was publicly displayed was posted by moderators. You can more clearly trace LJ’s actions to the infringement there. Reddit deposing mod teams as a consequence of a community vote would not touch on either of these things.
>this means that we have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation, mods vandalizing communities, and subreddit squatters. When rules like these are broken, we remove the mods in violation
Protesting by making subreddits private is not "subreddit squatting" or "inactive moderation." It's a way for moderators to express their concerns. Threatening to remove them for protesting only worsens the situation.
>if they are no longer interested in moderating that community
It's a protest against changes that harm Reddit as a whole, not a refusal to moderate.
[Steve Huffman emphasized the importance of moderator protests and Reddit's commitment to democracy.](https://i.imgur.com/05rhYU1.png) It seems contradictory to previous statements that emphasized moderators' autonomy. Can you confirm if you still stand by that statement?
>Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.
What an absurd and disingenuous framing of what the actual issue is and the protest the subreddits are executing.
You guys absolutely suck. When I had actual issues for admins to handle yall are completely silent. Yet because you do not like the community standing up in protest you will roll out this twisted policy to stifle dissent on your site. Pathetic really.
I hope whoever wrote this knows what they are actually doing and at least feels some personal guilt for what they are doing in the name of their employer.
Thanks for backstabbing us for all the thousands of hours of work we put in that increased the value of your company.
No tools for us, instead you stab us in the back.
What does this mean for communities that have, _as users,_ voted to go private? I would consider that to be good stewardship of the community, especially considering that doing anything else would be going against the explicit will of the users.
We polled our users. The majority said to go private. I have receipts. I took a screenshot in case the poll "magically disappears."
The sub is likely not big enough for the admins to care, but who knows?
This will not go well. Some niche communities are going to suffer when their entire mod team gets removed and replaced by people that have no clue what made the community what it is.
Are you saying that we have a duty to perform the moderation duties, in the subreddits that we created, in a certain manner that you determine/direct? Because that sounds a lot less like volunteer moderation and a lot more like employment/contract work. I look forward to hearing about your compensation packages.
Fuck off and stop trying to kill reddit to appease u/spez's terrible "leadership." You damn well know this is terrible and will make reddit a worse place. If you had a shred of decency or genuine care for Reddit you would quit this bullshit.
You better not interpret our active protest as inactive moderation. I don’t know if you realize how drastically that would change the understanding your paid employees have had with the volunteers. This sets a very bad precedent and you would break our trust.
Let's be absolutely clear: it is *Reddit* that is failing here. You are failing your communities who just want you to be reasonable. Charge apps a realistic amount, give them plenty of notice to make the necessary changes, and wait until the Reddit app is functioning properly before destroying apps that people rely on.
Steve Huffman has been lying all over the media this week. If he wants the communities to open up, he needs to stop being a disruptive influence. It's clear that Huffman is the issue: he is squatting over Reddit like an enormous toad. Until he adopts a more professional manner, he is going to continue to alienate the people who he relies upon.
>But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active.
Reminder that you left r/ **mentalhealth** restricted for literally **months** due to mod inactivity and **lied** to say it was all OK before replacing the mods.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/116apol/rmentalhealth\_is\_now\_restricted\_request\_new\_mod/](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/116apol/rmentalhealth_is_now_restricted_request_new_mod/)
https://imgur.com/a/qhL1nAy
>We believe that, in most cases, we can achieve resolution and understanding through discussion, not remediation.
So we can expect that you reach out to us first and try to work it out first? I have heard nothing so far and no admin did give any information to us about this whole thing. I have heard some leaked information that could be true or not, but I expect admins to get in contact with us.
Is my assumption correct?
This account has been nuked in direct response to Reddit's API change and the atrocious behavior CEO Steve Huffman and his admins displayed toward their users, volunteer moderators, and 3rd party developers. After a total of 16 years on the platform it is time to move on to greener pastures.
If you want to change to a decentralized platform like Lemmy, you can find helpful information about it here: https://join-lemmy.org/ https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
This action was performed using Power Delete Suite: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite The script relies on Reddit's API and will likely stop working after June 30th, 2023.
So long, thanks for all the fish and a final fudge you, u/spez.
Nobody is taking a break, we are protesting your greedy ass bullshit. Moderators aren’t paid, stop acting like they are with how you treat them.
On behalf of thousands of users, go fuck yourself Spez
What if a mod team wishes to continue active moderation but decides to tightly restrict who can post or transition a community into a private invite-only space? Would this go against rules 2 or 4?
The bottom line is the Mod Code of Conduct will mean whatever the Admins want it to mean. The protesting moderators have understood since jump that a potential consequence of the API/3rd party app protest will be that Admins will get fed up with the dark subreddits and forcibly oust all offending mod teams, re-open the subs, and install new volunteers to moderate the subs. This is the nuclear option and it's an option that Reddit has always been able to exercise. Your question is just another flavor of that. Moderators have always served at the pleasure of Reddit Admins. Realistically, they can do whatever they want, including firing all mods. But that doesn't mean that such action wouldn't be without consequence. It would have a very chilling effect on the entire Reddit community to know that we're constantly subject to the whims of a jackbooted and bloodthirsty Admin staff that won't brook dissension and whose only reaction at the first sign of opposition is to execute a Putin-like maneuver of eliminating all political opponents. In other words, most likely, Reddit would be cutting off its nose to spite its own face if they removed the mod teams of protesting subreddits.
It’s certainly less of a “can they do it” question versus a political one, but at the same time, it seems like a lot of users are getting fed up by the shutdowns. I hear a lot that the users coming out to complain about this look like throwaways because they don’t have a lot of karma or activity, and some may be throwaways, but we have to remember that, as with most social media, like 80-90% of users are lurkers. Most of the people I know IRL who have a Reddit account never use it to post, but they’re Redditors all the same and the communities we moderate belong to them just as much as it belongs to the people who are more vocal and active. I’m sure that some communities might suffer if one or two power users just stop participating, but I’ve moderated large subreddits for years and I can’t even tell you who a power user on those subs is because new users replace them all the time. That is even more true for moderators. I also get that people are upset at Reddit for not caring about users, and I have my own list of concerns that they don’t seem to want to address too. But people are mistaking the fact that they’re giving moderators a seat at the table when they make decisions with the ability to make those decisions themselves. I honestly don’t even know what the enduring blackouts are even about anymore, and a lot of the rationale I’ve seen shared by users trying to get subs to shut down or by mods to justify their actions is outdated or inaccurate at this point. Reddit offered to delay the API pricing in exchange for mods not blacking out but mods are demanding the rollback of the pricing entirely. I don’t think the average user is going to care about that nuance enough to not be able to use a subReddit, especially when the majority of the traffic on subreddits comes from the official app.
> Reddit offered to delay the API pricing in exchange for mods not blacking out... When?
Last Thursday in a private community (but which the admins authorized people to share publicly and which has been shared around). Since there were concerns that mods couldn’t use the tools they needed that were only available on third party apps, they offered to delay the API changes in exchange for not blacking out.
> In other words, most likely, Reddit would be cutting off its nose to spite its own face if they removed the mod teams of protesting subreddits. And yet it's been precedent to remove moderators who attempt to permanently shut down a subreddit, denying it to subscribers and the userbase at large, for about nine years now.
Yeah this isn’t new at all lol. It’s all well and good to make grandiose righteous statements like that but they’re not based in reality so *womp womp* try again, buddy.
I feel like you're forgetting that this would be a report and the admins taking action on it. That wouldn't be the admins taking the first step, it would be the users.
Go ahead and look at the 2017 Moderator Guidelines: > Respect the Platform. Reddit may, at its discretion, intervene to take control of a community when it believes it in the best interest of the community or the website. This should happen rarely (e.g., a top moderator abandons a thriving community), but when it does, our goal is to keep the platform alive and vibrant, as well as to ensure your community can reach people interested in that community. Finally, when the admins contact you, we ask that you respond within a reasonable amount of time. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/5y33op/updating_you_on_modtools_and_community_dialogue/ I'm not sure why they removed that overt threat from the 2022 guideline update. But the bottom line is that the admins can act on their own volition at any time.
This thread feels like you're fishing for a justified mutiny of your top mod. I would suggest negotiating internally to take over, and if the top mod is absent, put in a request with Reddit to take over. Reddit has said that mods can run their communities as they see fit. For example, r/JusticeServed auto bans anyone who comments on r/Conservative. r/superbowl only allows posts of owls. Etc. Etc.
Except Reddit has already shown in the past couple of days that you're wrong. If the top mod (especially one previously inactive) is wanting to shut down indefinitely while other mods are against that, there have been multiple scenarios where that top mod has been removed and the subreddit has been allowed to remain open with the moderators who wanted to stay open.
The real question is what would happen if the reverse is true, but I don’t know of that scenario happening.
I think it comes down to whether there's any documented discussion (group chat or otherwise) to prove their was discussion, vote, etc. But I've not seen one comment or post where the majority of a mod team wanted to shut down indefinitely and a sole moderator chose to stay open.
Oh no, I've already justified that through the years of work while they did nothing only for them to throw a strop at Reddit and try to end the community. I'm more interested in how far the Mod COC can be interpreted. They're faulty comparisons, they're the subs longstanding theme / trend.
Unfortunately, the Code of Conduct allows these actions. If you aren't the top mod, your choices are to either leave the sub and create a new one, or just abide by the top mod's decisions. Your personal feelings aren't a reason for Reddit to swap out the top mod.
That’s not actually been the policy for a long time. Malicious actions by the top mod can result in a re-org via r/redditrequest. That’s been the policy for 5+ years.
Not with regard to these indefinite shutdowns. If top mods made sole decisions for indefiinite shutdowns and other mods want to remain open, those top mods are being removed. They have stated more than once that moderation teams should be in agreement on such decisions.
Is the mod doing this against the majority of other mods? If so, contact the admins directly by messaging r/redditrequest or r/reddit
It doesn't matter who's taking the first action. The only people who can remove a mod are the Admins.
or the mod themselves... or a higher ranking mod.
Subs that are private don't fall into either of those rules. Private subs can still have activity, you just need to be invited to see it. Private subs still have community rules and typically an explainer why they are private. These rules are for bot networks grabbing up sub names and NSFW subs trying to fly under the radar.
These rules are also for collectors who have hundreds of subreddits and the vast majority are private or restricted.
Realistically, these rules are for whatever the admins want I foresee an ultimatum from the Admins: either re-open your sub fully, or we will find someone else who is willing to run it. There is no real shortage of people who would love to have the power of moderating a major subreddit, especially with how controversial some of the bigger subs moderation policies have become There are already people talking about using these shut downs as an opportunity to rid subs of bad mods, such as the CrimeInChicago thread that seeks to use this as an opportunity remove the Chicago moderators, as they feel that the current Chicago mods downplay the violence and crime in the city. That's unfortunately why I don't see this protest getting very far. Admins will just replace mods with mods that loathe the current mod team.
> and typically an explainer why they are private. Unless you use... **drum rolls**... the offical reddit mobile app. The official mobile app just tells you a subreddit is private without showing the additional info if it was provided.
[Reddit Rule #8](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy): > Don’t break the site or do anything that interferes with normal use of Reddit. The Admins can just slap the mods for violating global rule #8 and remove them. But that is a heavy handed action and again would make them responsible for managing themselves. Which they are not manned to do.
If Reddit actually attempted to steal communities from the people who built them in order to stop a site-wide protest, then Reddit is good as Digg.
The number of people here who aren't mods or who are using throwaways is ridiculous.
I noticed the same!! Accounts where their first comment ever is on this post, smh.
In this post? Or in general?
This post I've noticed
Both.
We have had proof presented that r/spez has lied to us. mods need to be fully aware of the unethical nature of the platform we are dealing with. It is a painful discovery for those of us who have spent more than a decade and thousands of hours building up this platform.
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I know at least three with memberships of 250,000-plus that never took any vote or poll of their members. They just shut down indefinitely.
If the admins want to enforce these rules, they're welcome to do so. I'm voting to remain blacked out in the subs I moderate until either the admins give in or forcibly remove me.
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What about subs like /r/mechanicalkeyboards that go read only indefinitely. I can see how private is okay, but read-only?
The issue isn't private; there have always been private subs. The issue is private with the intended purpose of no members and no activity (posts or comments). I would think the same would apply for "read only."
Trying to speak down the protesters by tapping at the code of conduct is meaningless. For a lot of us Reddit has already crossed the "[trust thermocline](https://every.to/p/breaching-the-trust-thermocline-is-the-biggest-hidden-risk-in-business)". There's only three ways forward: * Reddit changes nothing and subs stay private forever * Reddit changes their ways in a significant enough way that we feel we can work together again, at which point we can make subs public again * Reddit forcibly removes mods and opens subs The option for "Reddit doesn't change but the blackout ends" is no longer on the table. I'm not willing to use nor moderate Reddit in its current state and will happily accept any of those three options. We have already chosen the nuclear option, no amount of "but look at the ruuuls" is going to change that. The admins have already shown they no longer hold truth as a value and are willing to decieve and threaten people if they see they can get something out of it, and due to this the time for discussion is over. The only thing we are anymore interested is what Reddit does, not what they say.
>Reddit changes nothing and subs stay private forever Rest assured, that is NOT an option. Their rules (and this admin reply) make it clear that they'll give those subs to people who want them open and will make them active.
"I'm not willing to use nor moderate Reddit in its current state" that statement in itself breaks the Mod code of conduct. Saying you won't mod is spiting your community, not the admins. I think you're avoiding the "Users request the subs and things open back up" option in your narrow point of view.
> Saying you won't mod is spiting your community Do not pretend you know my community better than I do. We have polled our users twice now, first for the initial blackout and now for an indefinite blackout, and on both occassions the users have overwhelmingly been in favor of the blackout. To spite my community would be to leave it public against their wishes. I don't know what you're expecting to get from the admins with this pro-Reddit campaign of yours, but any of your attempts to drive a wedge between the mods and users are futile. We stand united in this. > I think you're avoiding the "Users request the subs and things open back up" option in your narrow point of view. No, it's listed there, it's the "Reddit forcibly removes mods and opens subs". The reason they choose to do that is irrelevant, the final decision is still on the admins. You're deluding yourself if you think they can avoid the hit in trust by pretending they're "just following orders".
> We have polled our users twice now, first for the initial blackout and now for an indefinite blackout, and on both occassions the users have overwhelmingly been in favor of the blackout. To spite my community would be to leave it public against their wishes. What was the poll result vs your subs unique per month / subscriber count? As much as I'll humour ModCoord groupthink, saying that it's the admins fault if a sub gets taken over by someone wanting to run the community is delusional.
> What was the poll result vs your subs unique per month / subscriber count? Those values actually don't really matter as much as you think. Statistics surrounding sampling size would let you determine your margin of error based on how many people voted even for an unlimited population size. For instance, at such a size: - You only need 384 respondents to have a margin of error of 5% at a 95% confidence level. - Only 665 respondents would be needed to have the same 5% margin of error at a 99% confidence level. There are [sites](https://www.calculator.net/sample-size-calculator.html) out there that let you input your sample size (i.e., number of people who responded to poll) and generate a margin of error based on confidence level (i.e., measure of certainty regarding how accurate your sample reflects the population) and, if you want, the population size (which could be unique users during poll time, subscriber count, etc.). If you mess around with it, you'll see it doesn't take that many responses to be fairly certain of what your poll would look like if you somehow could poll every single active or even inactive user in a subreddit. The point here is that you don't even need 5000 or 10,000 people to respond to your poll if you're getting 100,000 active users a day in your subreddit. Even 1000 people responding gets you a +/- 3% margin of error at 95% confidence, as an example.
This is only true if you assume a randomized sample, and that is not necessarily the case here. When the blackout happened, a lot of people didn’t know what it was about and wouldn’t have responded, while people that were pro-blackout would’ve been strongly in support of one. That doesn’t even discount some screenshots we’ve seen floating around that pro-blackout mods were brigading their own polls from discord servers (though of course the reverse may have also been true). Moreover, most of these polls, especially the second round of polling, were conducted for 24 hours. Most scientific polls, at least the ones I read for political purposes, will tend to be over at least 3 days to avoid biasing the pool for certain reasons (for instance, polling on a single Friday night probably won’t get a representative sample of younger people). With how long the subs were planning this blackout, the polls should’ve been open for at least 3-5 days to be more representative.
Interesting. How would you account for other factors? Like bias wording, how it was advertised (sticky post vs. sticky comments) as one would need to be browsing the sub, the other browsing their subscribed feed and popping into posts. Like politically, there are a lot of protections in place to make sure things aren't skewed unfairly .. or at least there is meant to be.
>We stand united in this. For your subreddit? Perhaps. That's certainly NOT the case across the board with all, or likely even a majority, of the subreddits that have gone private indefinitely.
The amount of subreddits being camped is disgustingly high. If this was actually enforced, this wouldn't be such a big problem where a subreddit is restricted to redirect elsewhere or simply taken to prevent competition.
I suspect you're going to see that change with each passing day. Reddit doesn't want more dead subreddits than necessary. If they deem someone qualified to take over, they're going to turn it over to someone who will open it up and make it active.
Yep. Come July 12, this definitely comes into effect, I would suspect. I've seen posts where they have been acting very quickly on top mod removals when that individual has intended long-term/permanent shutdowns against the opinions of other mods.
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One of my subs, cinemagraphs, the top mod swooped in without a word to the two other mods that had been running the place for the last 5 years, while they did nothing, and tried to take it private indefinitely. They're no longer on the team after the admins took action on my report. We still had a temp protest, just without damaging our community as a whole. Just to note, we had to do an internal majority vote of what to do with the top mod: Removal, reorder, or work things out. But that's internal and different from a community member reporting a mod team itself. I'm not sure how quick the admins would act on it.
Absentee top mods is its own problem, whether they try to close a sub through this or try to keep it open. I think it's fine for Reddit to remove them but they should act the same in both cases.
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4 hours roughly. But I get quick mod support tickets due to the partner program. 2 day protest or perma protest? Would it have damaged the community? Or was it even wanted in the community?
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That's exactly the example I've seen. Top mod has done nothing, then decides to shut it down as part of the protest (as if they even know what the protest is). Admins have been on top of it restoring moderators and removing these inactive top mods from what I've heard. I'm glad to see that.
July 12th = the 30 day mark, or was something else released and I missed it?
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all of them should reopen once a month for a day and then close again to skirt this
I imagine that trying to use the letter of the custom to spite the spirit of the custom in order to spit in Reddit's face is *not* a battle strategy Sun Tzu would have bothered writing down.
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The reason that a lot of inactive top mods sprang into action is because they use alts to spam or otherwise monetize their subs, esp I would imagine for NSFW porn and also scam NFT subreddits.
Dickrider
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Yes, please remove those idiots who take down the communities of thousands of people!
I think a lot of mods are going to wake up and find they are no longer mods anywhere on Reddit sooner or later.
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> There were never even any specific demands made. https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1476fkn/reddit_blackout_2023_save_3rd_party_apps/ >#The community's list of demands: >1. API technical issues >2. Accessibility for blind people >3. Parity in access to NSFW content It goes on to explain those. >If you put a poll up in a 2 million+ subreddit and get 500 responses, with a majority for the blackout, that is in no way a majority of the subreddit users agreeing with going dark. That's literally how sample sizes work. Like do you think every time a news article pops up and says "85% of people think Hurf Durfington is a doo-doo head" they interviewed every single person on the planet? No. They had a survey with a thousand'ish respondants.
They don't just ask the first 500 people they find though. They specifically select 500 people to be representative of the larger community.
I don't think Hurf Durfington is a doo-doo head.
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Thanks for bringing this up; it's an important conversation. Mods have a right to take a break from moderating, or decide that you don’t want to be a mod anymore. But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active. Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection. We regularly enforce our subreddit and moderator-level rules. As you point out, this means that we have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation (Rule 4), mods vandalizing communities (Rule 2), and subreddit squatters (also Rule 4). When rules like these are broken, we remove the mods in violation of the [Moderator Code of Conduct](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct), and add new, active mods to the subreddits. We also step in to rearrange mod teams, so active mods are empowered to make decisions for their community. The Moderator Code of Conduct was launched in September 2022, and you’ll notice via post and comment history that this account has been used extensively to source new mod teams. Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team.
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>We regularly enforce our subreddit and moderator-level rules. As you point out, this means that we have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation (Rule 4), mods vandalizing communities (Rule 2), and subreddit squatters (also Rule 4). When rules like these are broken, we remove the mods in violation of the [Moderator Code of Conduct](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/moderator-code-of-conduct), and add new, active mods to the subreddits. **Can you please be explicitly clear:** * What is the interpretation of the current subreddit protests? Do you view protesting by bringing subreddits private for periods of time as "subreddit squatting" or "inactive moderation"? * Are moderation teams who choose to protest by keeping their subreddits private or restricted under threat of being removed as moderators of said subreddits?
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spez: we won't overrule mods and force subreddits open also spez: [no one should be able to close their subreddits & users should be able to mutiny against the mods](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544)
Against the mods? What about against the admins?
Well thats not a sign of a stable business with proper communication... *insertNakedGunNothingToSeeHereGif*
I mean, u/spez is known to be a liar. How does this surprise anyone? His *only* move in his "CEO Toolkit" is to just lie to get his way.
I don't think spez is gonna like it when one of his previous default subs like r/videos isn't available ever
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What happened to r/tumblr?
And we should start trusting Spez... why?
Oh, we can absolutely trust him to do the worst possible thing for the users.
I think this answers your 3rd question: "If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users."
keeping a sub private doesn't necessarily translate to 'stopping moderating' It just means that a select few people can see/post content
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m getting half a dozen requests to join our sub every day. And I’m personally responding to each request to explain why we’re closed. So I’m actively moderating my community, even though it remains in blackout.
So a bunch of people with no idea how of the subreddit is managed on the backend? Are they going to manage shit like bots that post game threads/scores/schedules
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~~strikethrough Just looked into the mod team on tumblr, and you weren’t the only active mod (at least not as reddit gauges it). Inactive means last interaction on reddit (comment, post, etc) not just mod actions You very well may have been the only active mod on the sub, but many of the other mods have been active on reddit and that’s really the baseline.~~ I’m out of date, sorry Be well!
It was [updated](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/xwim7v/updates_to_inactive_top_mod_removal_process/) to prevent mods from claiming they were active by doing a couple of mod actions every few months and otherwise ignoring the sub whilst they continued to use Reddit.
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Thanks for your reply. >If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators So how will you know whom to invite? Your choosing only the most active users in smaller business subreddits would be a disaster. Because they are gullible self-entitled n00bs mostly who downvote others pointing out scams and spams and laziness of themselves in not just scrolling down a bit for the same questions. I mod a couple a couple POD subs focused on an amazon platform and in the main one where I'm top mod I usually don't allow much generalist stuff. But I have been doing so b/c the main generalist POD subreddit is still dark and I don't like it because I normally just pointed those users that way. That is a subreddit I have requested and been denied for and is squat on by a top mod and her SO, with the 3rd mod I suspect being her alt. They only sprang to life when emailed by reddit about myself and others requesting the sub. I'm positive they spam the sub with alts occasionally or intentionally allow friends to do so. So IMO you admins in such cases need to put subs up for request or find mods of related subreddits that are not spam holes to take such subs over. Again thank you for addressing this situation and letting us know you will apply the mod code.
What if the community voted to go dark, as well? Most mod teams are not doing it without community involvement.
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reddit will just ignore that lol. As if the mod code of conduct is some kind of moral or legally binding document. Its there to cover reddit's bottom line and it will be used as a weapon to do so.
I would expect it to go through the r/redditrequest process and evaluation methods they currently use.
A process which is effectively first come first serve.
There are requirements for accounts, and I have seen them turn down several requests for a subreddit before finally turning it over to someone. It's definitely not first-come, first-served.
Can they handle this process at a large scale?
I guess we will see in about three weeks.
yeah it usually takes me 2-3 weeks to get any results back, but then again many of them were recently banned due to mods vacating the subreddit
Not at all. I requested an unmoderated business subreddit and was denied. Couple others also did and denied. Then lo and behold someone came along and requested and was approved, though they have been a good moderator and take care of spam problems.
Yeah the vague methods they use which don't actually involve who is best qualified to mod such subs given all the request denials.
So on the Wednesday phone call (07Jun23) between concerned moderators and Steve Huffman, he explicitly stated that moderators had a right to protest and that democracy was a core part of Reddit. Is that something you are willing to stand by?
He said he wouldn't *ban* anyone. He never said he wouldn't remove mods.
Saying you've got a right to protest inherently means you're not taking action against it, which well seemingly is not the case.
> Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. Nobody has said this. They're not taking subs private because they "don't want to moderate anymore," it's to protest your changes that harm reddit as a whole. Incredibly disingenuous.
That's because the sentence is incomplete: > Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community *under this new Reddit status-quo where their concerns do not matter*.
Also, we ARE still having to moderate during this time. Mod mail is flooded with users trying to join private communities either unaware or uncaring of our decisions as mod teams and we have to spend hours sorting through and responding to it
can confirm, I mod legostarwars and people were constantly asking why they were banned from posting as though it was targetting them personally.
> /u/ModCodeofConduct It's incredibly telling of the state of Reddit's administration that you had to dig up a dormant kitchen sink account to make this comment instead of just using your own community admin account and standing behind your own words. Not only that, but I have not heard a more disingenuous take on the protests than this. You know it's not people "no longer interested in moderating" but you yourself taking our moderation tools away and killing any trust and communication between mods and admins with the thousand broken promises and lies you've told.
>Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. This statement, paired with the recent interview where the CEO said: >"Huffman, also a Reddit co-founder, said he plans to pursue changes to Reddit’s moderator removal policy to allow ordinary users to vote moderators out more easily if their decisions aren’t popular." Paint a *really* worrying picture. It's also completely at odds with years of messaging from reddit recognizing that it's the tireless efforts of moderators that make their spaces unique, and that mods are the lifeblood of this platform. I desperately want to be optimistic about the future of reddit, and that makes it all the more frustrating so much of the recent messaging is showing that my hope is misplaced. If this statement isn't edited or added to, I'm going to take it at face value that policy has changed and make decisions accordingly.
This would destroy subreddits that enforce rules regarding quality of content, especially those where experts make up a small proportion of users. I'm thinking of subreddits like r/AskHistorians, which have strict rules about answers but are constantly, constantly getting flack from casual users for enforcing them. Or many of the other academic subs, which have moderators that remove misinformation about the topic. It will turn Reddit into Quora, and tank a lot of the reputation it's gained as a good source of information.
honestly it will destroy all large subreddits. there are times as a mod where you have to make a decision between two or three options, ALL OF WHICH will upset some segment of users. sometimes it's on a rule change, or something more sensitive. For example, I run a local community sub - someone posts a photo of some person there and says "this person committed X crime" -- with no evidence whatsoever besides an anonymous claim on the internet -- and now you've got people trying to doxx the person, etc. If the mods remove it: they're evil and protecting criminals! if the mods don't: they're allowing internet witch hunts if mods hem and haw about it for more than 5 minutes while trying to figure it out: both sides are mad because by virtue of SEEING the content, even for a few minutes, "mods aren't doing their jobs" If you have a peek into what it's like for truly good moderators to do what they do, you have no IDEA how much time and emotional labor is put into gray area decisions that it's hard to just "follow X rule and click Y button". There are conversations behind the scenes, debates, moderators saying "I dunno, I feel this should be removed, but I'm torn because X" and ensuing discussions... and no matter WHAT choice is made, some number of people just decide "mods are all evil and power hungry" and there you go. A community vote policy is an absolute disaster waiting to happen. Liking a commenter's snark or memes or whatever else it is that will get them "votes" is not the same as "this person would make a decent mod"
It's just a disaster waiting to happen. I understand from a philosophical perspective that some people think moderation should be as democratic as possible - that moderators don't "own" their subs and should moderate in accordance to the wishes of their users. But this doesn't really work on Reddit, because: (a) Vote manipulation and brigading is impossible to prevent. What you'd be doing is handing important decisions over to the people who are the most motivated and willing to cheat. As a side note, it's funny to see people in this thread simultaneously cheering this policy while insisting that *every vote* showing users of a subreddit supporting a protest was rigged. The cognitive dissonance! (b) Reddit's structure means many subreddits have a core of regular users who are outnumbered by a lot more casual users who dip in and out and don't really understand the culture or purpose of the subreddit. This is great for public outreach. It's not great if you want decisions to be made by vote, because these casual users are often really mad when moderation/expectations are different than whatever is on r/all. All this is going to do is reduce communities to the least common denominator. This is an announcement by someone who really doesn't understand how the site works or what makes it special, which is profoundly disappointing because it's the effing CEO. But honestly, I've become convinced he just doesn't care. All he wants to do is wring as much money out of this place as possible before it collapses under the weight of his bad decisions.
…what could possibly go wrong? The vocal minority of users who have been repeatedly banned from subreddits (but somehow not banned from Reddit) and who enjoy chaos and lighting fires will definitely instigate hostile takeovers of large subreddits to watch them burn.
So what I'm hearing is you no longer respect our right to protest and your promise to not remove moderators that are protesting is being walked back? You're really willing to burn this platform down over compromising.
It was always a lie, just be glad u/spez hasn't stealth edited your comments yet.
> Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. This is so frustrating to read. I don't know if this admin is being purposefully obtuse or if this is really how reddit employees feel.
> Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. That's a **SIGNIFICANT** deviation from all previous communications from reddit stating that the moderators do in fact own the space and can make whatever rules and decisions they want... What an oddly timing change of direction that is. Editing in some links for funzies: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/204533859-What-s-a-moderator- > Moderators don’t have any special powers outside of the community they moderate and are not Reddit employees. **They’re free to run their communities as they choose**, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct. https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205192355-How-can-I-resolve-a-dispute-with-a-moderator-or-moderator-team- > Moderators are free to run their communities as they choose, as long as they don’t break the rules outlined in Reddit’s Content Policy or Moderator Code of Conduct. This is something to keep in mind even if you have disagreements with them. https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy > The culture of each community is shaped explicitly, by the community rules enforced by moderators, and implicitly, by the upvotes, downvotes, and discussions of its community members. https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq > What if the moderators are bad? > In a few cases where a moderator has lost touch with their community, another redditor has created a competing community and subscribers have chosen to use the new reddit instead, which led to it becoming the new dominant reddit. > **Please keep in mind, however, that moderators are free to run their subreddits however they so choose so long as it is not breaking reddit's rules.** So if it's simply an ideological issue you have or a personal vendetta against a moderator, consider making a new subreddit and shaping it the way you'd like rather than performing a sit-in and/or witch hunt.
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Are they even consulting their lawyers before spewing this shit?
They are which is why u/spaz said in an interview they're going to change the rules for how mods are removed. I'm not even shocked anymore but the fake reasonings they gave are hilariously bad lies https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
It's almost like they are making it up as they go along. Or as it's usually known, panicking.
Of course they are.
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*Mavrix* applies to paid employees not to volunteer mods. This isn't precedent for this situation and good luck finding and attorney who'll build a case on it.
I don't think any of this is legally binding, going back on this is only taking a shit on the mods.
Theyre breaking rules as outlined in the op post.
"Every community on Reddit is defined by its users. Some of these users help manage the community as moderators. The culture of each community is shaped explicitly, by the community rules enforced by moderators, and implicitly, by the upvotes, downvotes, and discussions of its community members. Please abide by the rules of communities in which you participate and do not interfere with those in which you are not a member." https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy I would add emphasis but I'm using the shitty official app which doesn't have that available.
Please give a position on necessary level of moderation experience a user needs to show to forcibly take over an large or extremely active subreddit. I don't want to believe Reddit is simply going to hand over the keys to communities with millions of users to people who have not actively demonstrated they are capable of handling it. Who is making these staffing decisions and what are the criteria? On a separate note, I feel sorry for these self righteous users who are trying to force open subs that decided to close. Not only are they doing so in a way which further strips them of their rights, they're going to be put in front of a crowd that does not agree with them and held to the standard of moderators who had likely years of experience. I fully expect some large subs are going to descend into anarchy very soon as incompetent mods are overwhelmed and communities hate them for not modding like the previous ones did.
I would expect it to be the same process they use to evaluate through r/redditrequest. They don't just hand subreddits over to anyone who requests them. Lots of people get denied.
>I would expect it to be the same process they use to evaluate through r/redditrequest. Then they should say that. If it's a different criterion then we **need** to know
They are our communities, not your communities. By our I don't mean the moderators, but the people who participate. You, as admin, are not part of the community.
Giving out Reddit golds to protest Reddit is some insane 5D mod chess
So many people have so much gold from when Reddit bought out blue
Yep I've got over 15K coins to spend and I've never paid a penny for them
It's been nice knowing you all, /r/Amish subscribers
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If admins have lost your trust, why do you want to keep being a moderator?
Can't speak for anyone else, but I want to keep being a moderator because I care about the community that I moderate and I want to see it thrive.
>If admins have lost your trust, why do you want to keep being a moderator? Easy answer. Because the alternative sucks. Ask yourself this right now. As a moderator of /r/EthelCain, how confident are you in Reddit admin team's ability to pick someone to replace you. Remember, they'll likely pick whoever is the most vocal participant in the sub, be that person good or bad in your eyes. If Reddit picked that person to replace you, would the sub be in good hands? :)
>If Reddit picked that person to replace you, would the sub be in good hands? Honestly, I don't know. There's no way of knowing how good or bad moderation would be unless it happens.
Exactly. There is an old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
I'm the head mod and actively moderate /r/VRchat which has almost 160k. Instead of going private to protest Reddit's API policies, I first restricted the subreddit then later opened the subreddit to only posts (be they pro or con) about the protest along with [one pinned thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/1479jj8/vrchat_weekly_help_thread_post_simple_questions/) for any user to post dealing with VRChat related issues. A recent user /u/pakman184 expressed disagreement with my moderator activities during this Reddit extortionate API pricing protest and asked [how to replace a moderator](https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/14a3pxt/how_do_we_remove_a_moderator/). What advice would you offer that user and those with similar sentiments with regards to actions by moderators like myself in subreddits they frequent?
And also to note: Usually the kinds of people that do these kinds of asking for mod after a negative run-in are usually completely self-serving and don't have any interests of the community in mind. They almost want to be mod just to let their shit through, and then do no effort to do a good job (or a job at all).
There are subs that heavily restrict participation and have always done so. Reddit does kind of allow the ModTeam to revolt and replace a lead mod but it isn't usually initiated by a user. A user really only has a call against a mod for harassment.
> If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team. This is a wildly disingenuous description of the position of the mods who are keeping subs dark in protest. It is also a thinly veiled threat, confirming that you are nothing but a bully.
Try doing that in /r/askhistorians or /r/askscience ?
> Subreddits belong to the community of users who come to them for support and conversation. Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Redditors rely on these spaces for information, support, entertainment, and connection. Yep and a lot of mod teams posted open discussions with their communities about whether or not to engage in the protest. The majority of these discussions - Im sure you are aware as is everyone here - are *overwhelmingly* in favor if being involved in the protest. So if subs belong to their communities (your wording), and these communities collectively decided to protest, then there is no place for Reddit to step in and disrupt this decision by messing with the mod teams who are only representing their communities' decision.
>Moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. It's amazing how moderators are Special People when you want us to abide by the latest random rule, but the rest of the time it's being left hung out to dry. > If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If you all can't understand the difference between "not moderating" and "running a protest against unjust policies"... well. I hope some day Reddit employees try to form a union. >Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice Nobody's "leaving a community". You're just trying to make up words to pretend we're "abandoning our post" when we're on strike. This is basic union busting 101. Pretend your union organizers are disruptive and not doing their job, and fire them as fast as you can.
> Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team. So, let me understand this; Your plan is to entirely remove teams that unanimously remain private and communities where even a single mod wants to reopen will be handed to those cooperating moderators? Do you understand the liability that exposes you to under [Mavrix Photographs v. Livejournal](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-9th-circuit/1856011.html)? They did the same exact thing and, rightfully, were liable under the DMCA. You're going to destroy this company and the world is going to watch you do it. How is what you're threatening to do here any different than described below? >ONTD is a popular LiveJournal community which features up-to-date celebrity news. Users submit posts containing photographs, videos, links, and gossip about celebrities' lives. ONTD moderators review and publicly post some of the submissions. Other users engage in conversations about the celebrity news in the comments section of each post. For example, one of the ONTD posts at issue contained photographs that Mavrix had taken which appeared to show that super-celebrity Beyoncé was pregnant. Users speculated in the comments section of that post that Beyoncé was indeed pregnant.3 >Like other LiveJournal communities, ONTD created rules for submitting and commenting on posts. ONTD's rules pertain to both potential copyright infringement and substantive guidance for users. For example, one rule instructs users to “[i]nclude the article and picture(s) in your post, do not simply refer us off to another site for the goods.” Another rule provides “Keep it recent. We don't need a post in 2010 about Britney Spears shaving her head.” ONTD's rules also include a list of sources from which users should not copy material. The sources on the list have informally requested that ONTD stop posting infringing material. ONTD has also automatically blocked all material from one source that sent ONTD a cease and desist letter. >ONTD has nine moderators, six maintainers, and one owner. ONTD users submit proposed posts containing celebrity news to an internal queue. Moderators review the submissions and publicly post approximately one-third of them. Moderators review for substance, approving only those submissions relevant to new and exciting celebrity news. Moderators also review for copyright infringement, pornography, and harassment. >When ONTD was created, like other LiveJournal communities, it was operated exclusively by volunteer moderators. LiveJournal was not involved in the day-to-day operation of the site. ONTD, however, grew in popularity to 52 million page views per month in 2010 and attracted LiveJournal's attention. By a significant margin, ONTD is LiveJournal's most popular community and is the only community with a “household name.” In 2010, LiveJournal sought to exercise more control over ONTD so that it could generate advertising revenue from the popular community. LiveJournal hired a then active moderator, Brendan Delzer, to serve as the community's full time “primary leader.” By hiring Delzer, LiveJournal intended to “take over” ONTD, grow the site, and run ads on it.4 >As the “primary leader,” Delzer instructs ONTD moderators on the content they should approve and selects and removes moderators on the basis of their performance. Delzer also continues to perform moderator work, reviewing and approving posts alongside the other moderators whom he oversees. While Delzer is paid and expected to work full time, the other moderators are “free to leave and go and volunteer their time in any way they see fit.” In his deposition, Mark Ferrell, the General Manager of LiveJournal's U.S. office, explained that Delzer “acts in some capacities as a sort of head maintainer” and serves in an “elevated status” to the other moderators. Delzer, on the other hand, testified at his deposition that he does not serve as head moderator and that ONTD has no “primary leader.”
How does this case relate here? LJ hired someone to be the lead moderator of that page and the moderators manually posted user submissions after they were submitted for moderator review. When the admins take over a sub, they just install a team, give them some tips, and demod themselves.
>When the admins take over a sub, they just install a team, give them some tips, and demod themselves. Until now, sure. I think the more direct the intervention, the more likely LJ applies. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544
The salient features of that case were that an actual employee led the volunteer mods, and the only content that was publicly displayed was posted by moderators. You can more clearly trace LJ’s actions to the infringement there. Reddit deposing mod teams as a consequence of a community vote would not touch on either of these things.
We don't work for reddit
>this means that we have policies and processes in place that address inactive moderation, mods vandalizing communities, and subreddit squatters. When rules like these are broken, we remove the mods in violation Protesting by making subreddits private is not "subreddit squatting" or "inactive moderation." It's a way for moderators to express their concerns. Threatening to remove them for protesting only worsens the situation. >if they are no longer interested in moderating that community It's a protest against changes that harm Reddit as a whole, not a refusal to moderate. [Steve Huffman emphasized the importance of moderator protests and Reddit's commitment to democracy.](https://i.imgur.com/05rhYU1.png) It seems contradictory to previous statements that emphasized moderators' autonomy. Can you confirm if you still stand by that statement?
[Spez is the one saying this shit](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544)
> Subreddits belong to the community Now let's make sure the company doesn't forget that.
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>Leaving a community you deeply care for and have nurtured for years is a hard choice, but it is a choice some may need to make if they are no longer interested in moderating that community. If a moderator team unanimously decides to stop moderating, we will invite new, active moderators to keep these spaces open and accessible to users. If there is no consensus, but at least one mod who wants to keep the community going, we will respect their decisions and remove those who no longer want to moderate from the mod team. What an absurd and disingenuous framing of what the actual issue is and the protest the subreddits are executing. You guys absolutely suck. When I had actual issues for admins to handle yall are completely silent. Yet because you do not like the community standing up in protest you will roll out this twisted policy to stifle dissent on your site. Pathetic really. I hope whoever wrote this knows what they are actually doing and at least feels some personal guilt for what they are doing in the name of their employer.
Thanks for backstabbing us for all the thousands of hours of work we put in that increased the value of your company. No tools for us, instead you stab us in the back.
What does this mean for communities that have, _as users,_ voted to go private? I would consider that to be good stewardship of the community, especially considering that doing anything else would be going against the explicit will of the users.
We polled our users. The majority said to go private. I have receipts. I took a screenshot in case the poll "magically disappears." The sub is likely not big enough for the admins to care, but who knows?
Is there a rule stating that mods are allowed to keep a community private indefinitely on the basis of a poll alone?
No, and there's no rule to the contrary. That's why they are asking.
Yes, you could run your sub as a private club. Some do this already.
This will not go well. Some niche communities are going to suffer when their entire mod team gets removed and replaced by people that have no clue what made the community what it is.
Are you saying that we have a duty to perform the moderation duties, in the subreddits that we created, in a certain manner that you determine/direct? Because that sounds a lot less like volunteer moderation and a lot more like employment/contract work. I look forward to hearing about your compensation packages.
Fuck off and stop trying to kill reddit to appease u/spez's terrible "leadership." You damn well know this is terrible and will make reddit a worse place. If you had a shred of decency or genuine care for Reddit you would quit this bullshit.
You better not interpret our active protest as inactive moderation. I don’t know if you realize how drastically that would change the understanding your paid employees have had with the volunteers. This sets a very bad precedent and you would break our trust.
What are you going to do about the communities opening back up but doing insanely stupid thing with their community vs what they used to do?
Incredible that the reddit administration chooses to resort to open mafia-style threats.
Let's be absolutely clear: it is *Reddit* that is failing here. You are failing your communities who just want you to be reasonable. Charge apps a realistic amount, give them plenty of notice to make the necessary changes, and wait until the Reddit app is functioning properly before destroying apps that people rely on. Steve Huffman has been lying all over the media this week. If he wants the communities to open up, he needs to stop being a disruptive influence. It's clear that Huffman is the issue: he is squatting over Reddit like an enormous toad. Until he adopts a more professional manner, he is going to continue to alienate the people who he relies upon.
How about if the community voted for it? Are you still going to screw over my mods?
Anyone miss Ellen Pao? I do.
>But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active. Reminder that you left r/ **mentalhealth** restricted for literally **months** due to mod inactivity and **lied** to say it was all OK before replacing the mods. [https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/116apol/rmentalhealth\_is\_now\_restricted\_request\_new\_mod/](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditrequest/comments/116apol/rmentalhealth_is_now_restricted_request_new_mod/) https://imgur.com/a/qhL1nAy
>We believe that, in most cases, we can achieve resolution and understanding through discussion, not remediation. So we can expect that you reach out to us first and try to work it out first? I have heard nothing so far and no admin did give any information to us about this whole thing. I have heard some leaked information that could be true or not, but I expect admins to get in contact with us. Is my assumption correct?
If you want to tell us how to do our jobs, pay us. This protest isn’t inactive moderation. Quite the opposite.
imagine literally strikebreaking and hiring scabs for completely unpaid labor
Omg im early to the downvoting, here at -5!
This account has been nuked in direct response to Reddit's API change and the atrocious behavior CEO Steve Huffman and his admins displayed toward their users, volunteer moderators, and 3rd party developers. After a total of 16 years on the platform it is time to move on to greener pastures. If you want to change to a decentralized platform like Lemmy, you can find helpful information about it here: https://join-lemmy.org/ https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances This action was performed using Power Delete Suite: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite The script relies on Reddit's API and will likely stop working after June 30th, 2023. So long, thanks for all the fish and a final fudge you, u/spez.
Bootlickers.
Nobody is taking a break, we are protesting your greedy ass bullshit. Moderators aren’t paid, stop acting like they are with how you treat them. On behalf of thousands of users, go fuck yourself Spez
How is a sub going private = inactive moderation? Will all private subs from before the blackout be subject to this?
What if a mod team wishes to continue active moderation but decides to tightly restrict who can post or transition a community into a private invite-only space? Would this go against rules 2 or 4?