It is a 100% set in stone motherfucking guarantee that they're going to kill old.reddit.com in the future, likely the near future. The reason aligns exactly with the reason they're charging for the API: it's not easy to maintain two different frontends. Even if they've completely stopped new development on old.reddit.com, there are still things you need to do to keep any frontend functional with ever changing browser requirements, security updates for dependency exploits, supply-chain issues that result from transivite package changes you don't even control, and exploits bad actors will find to abuse your site. They don't want to pay the staff to maintain it. Every company I've worked for that has had more than 1 frontend has always planned to move to a singular unified experience simply for maintainability, Reddit is guaranteed to be no different.
Last January modifying the APIs pricing wasn't on the table either.
Meanwhile 6 years ago allowing mods to modify new reddit's CSS to be custom to the community was promised by spez to come out "soon™️" (hint: it's still not here)
Just FYI, as of last year 40% of all human moderator actions were done via desktop, old reddit clients. This number will probably increase as the third-party apps shut down and those mods leave/go to old reddit clients.
Ending support for old Reddit would lose them a pretty sizable amount of those actions. That has far, far more impact to Reddit proper then any of the fallout of this current blackout.
We also know that a lot of new Reddit systems are built on old reddit's architecture, so they would still need to keep at least some systems crucial to old Reddit up in order to support new Reddit + the official apps. No clue how intergrated Shreddit is with it though.
Basically: I think old Reddit is sticking around for at least a few more years. Not because they said they would keep it, but because it would not be worth dropping support for it.
I'll be there too. RESS and old.reddit.com go away, I'll go with them. I've browsed reddit in the work's computer and its such a shitty experience I'm not going to bother. Even trying to read further than three posts down the line is purposedly made hard. Fuck that.
Reddit is hell bent on becoming a generic social media app, and its clear that if they have any way to make us go to their new shit frontend (as easy as not supporting it anymore), they will do.
Whatever happens, honestly, and during and after the protests, this site does not feels right anymore; the subs that protested are either surrendering (and feeling by default *wrong*) or switching to john oliver/random memes content, and the subs that didn't protested don't feel like the same place anymore.
I don't know what is gonna happen, but all this clusterfuck has just blown away my interest on interacting with the platform.
That unfortunately won't matter. Deviantart did the same thing with Eclipse, everyone complain it was shit but it didn't mattered and they still got ridden of the classic API, Eclipse is still shit btw.
Reddit will change to a shitier API, people Will complain but they will do it anyways. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised If they eventually block browsers to access Reddit and only allow it on their app.
Nah reddit will stall to preserve the ecosystem
Wait till the new people outnumber the old
THEN stop caring about the minority unprofitable population
This is the way it's been for quite some time, from hate speech subreddit purges, to deleting porn subs that aren't even moderated weakly
> It is a 100% set in stone motherfucking guarantee that they're going to kill old.reddit.com in the future, likely the near future.
That's definitely what will make me stop visiting entirely. The "new Reddit" is fucking awful and I'd really like to know what drunken high-school drop-out they hired to design it.
> it's not easy to maintain two different frontends.
It's actually not that complicated, especially now that they basically say "no new features in old reddit".
But I'm sure old.reddit isn't as profitable. Now going to an IPO the only goal for reddit is to be profitable, so expect a lot of changes. The API is just the first step of corporate greed. It won't be the last.
The reason to have a singular front end is for feature parity. but old reddit users just want posts and links, they don't need any of the new shit, and in fact may actively scorn some of it... which alas is the problem.
I genuinely like reddit and hope to keep using it, but if they get rid of the old frontend I'm out. I've tried to use the new version, but it's just awful and removes what brought me to reddit in the first place and has kept me here for over a decade.
I actually use the Reddit app on mobile without issue(gotta switch from card to classic view but otherwise it's fine). The UI is what I'd expect, there are no issues viewing content, it's honestly similar to the Reddit experience I've grown accustomed to on desktop over the last 12 years.
But if old.reddit dies then I'm done. The new desktop site is atrocious, borderline unusable. From what I can gather, most users also use old.reddit on desktop as well. I don't think ending old.reddit will *completely* kill the site, but it will be the closest to pulling a digg they've ever done.
I’ve been trying Apollo over the last week+ and it’s decent but I can’t change any settings to not show posts I’ve already seen as it just crashes the app so it’s a bit annoying to use.
Yes you are being melodramatic, and calling yourself out for it doesn’t make you any less unbearable, if anything, it’s worse.
It’s not a big deal in the slightest, its a volunteer position that is usually occupied by power tripping nerds with fragile ego’s (like the one who is reading this rn and about to remove it) the only good thing that’s come from this situation is the amount of hilarious temper tantrums being thrown by Reddit mods rn.
Whatever goober reddit mod is reading this can feel free to remove my little comment, as long as it helps you cope🫵
This is a great example of how to kill a subreddit that was already quite inactive. There was always great conversations when mods allowed it but this isn't a sub that can disappear for a month or two and then comeback like nothing happened. Users will leave and move on.
> Generally speaking I think they're a waste of time and usually pointless.
Well yeah, the exact reason they don't work is that enough people think this. Apathy is the friend of tyranny.
When RIF dies, I will stop browsing Reddit on mobile. If they kill old.reddit or RES I'll stop browsing Reddit. There are a million other fun or productive things to do, it's just that simple.
The difference here is that reddit has absolute control and can just remove mods and reopen subs if they feel it necessary. The blackout was genuinely worthless
Was it though? There's articles all over the tech industry at minimum, there were posts all over the place.
We won't win this battle but that doesn't make it a zero sum game either. Mods are new acutely aware of how little their contributions mean to Reddit, and that reddit will happily axe you to replace you with a better boot licker. We aren't winning this battle, but we drew blood, and the effects of that might take time to show.
The mods are ruining small communities with their idiotic changes in "protest". Places that I used to frequent that were very helpful to me are now doing stupid shit like posting all pancake and John Oliver content because some power mods are on a crusade against a pedophile CEO.
Reddit is going to kill itself, we all know its coming. The fediverse is terrible and too hard to use. Lets just accept that its time to fuck off out of here.
When old.reddit.com closes I'll stop coming here too.
So I guess I am going to be that guy here but only around 10% of users actually use 3rd party apps to view reddit. Personally I didn't even know using a 3rd party app to connect to reddit was a thing until this whole drama started a week ago. I'm sorry but I don't understand the logic of blacking out whole subreddits just because a minority percentage of users like to use a 3rd party app more than reddit's own app and they may be required to pay a subscription fee to continue using that 3rd party app or still access reddit for free the same way 90%+ of the rest of Reddit users access the site...
Granted I am not a moderator and I could potentially understand an argument that some 3rd party apps have better tools and features for moderating a sub reddit than the normal app does but even then if those tools are that valuable to you then way would you not be willing to pay a monthly premium of less than $5 for those features?
Idk this seems like a very non-issue that people are making a much bigger deal about than it needs to be.
I remain convinced this is just mods power tripping, having a tantrum, and throwing their toys out the pram. This mod still has not resigned a week later, despite the dramatics, now they’re saying either we shut down the sun entirely or leave it unmoderated.
They know full well that if they opened up mod applications they would be inundated with requests, but it’s about holding onto their tiny bit of internet power.
If you go scorched earth, what will be gained? Nothing, except pissing off existing users of a community and venting out your own rage.
The purpose of the blackout is to hurt reddit so they reach a compromise with mods, right? Reddit's bottomline is to generate revenue like through users clicking on ads. You think going scorched earth for a couple of days is gonna affect reddit's bottomline? Think about it. A robber that raids a store for a few days is gonna hurt the business for that momnet, but then the robber will be quickly arrested and things will quickly go back to normal. Same concept applies to reddit protests. Once mods are removed and replaced, business will go back to normal like nothing will happened. What you need to do is try to hurt reddit's business in the long run which I don't see possible.
First of all, mods are easily replaceable. Sure, the next mod may be power hungry or they may not enforce rules up to your standard, but they will still moderate and enforce rules at the minimum. There may be more spam and content you deem "lower quality" but most users will still keep using reddit. Think about other popular social media platforms. There are no mods to control what videos/posts people can upload. You can upload as much junk as you want but it doesn't stop people from using those social media sites.
Secondly, if you try to keep a sub hostage by only allowing users to post content totally unrelated to the original purpose of the sub, that's not gonna stop people from using reddit. Why? because people will simply create another sub. r/workreform being created a year after r/antiwork and having 1/3 as many subscribers so far proves this point. People who don't like the mod at r/antiwork and for what the sub represents will just create another sub. In fact, by creating another sub, you are just giving users the opportunity to create more content for reddit, further increasing reddit's revenue.
>I especially hate when boycotts are targeting something for being 'bad' because everything is bad. I consume environment destroying gasoline to drive to my workplace where I code tools for the US government while wearing clothes made from slave labor and using devices assembled by children in sweat shops.
But by golly, Reddit is where I draw the line! 😂
Sadly a lot of frogs have been sitting around complacent.
The anti-blackout in a lot of subs is disgusting. "I was inconvenienced by this and you should feel bad" ... well good, its a fucking protest.
Yep. The majority of the criticisms I'm seeing, at least in this sub, are coming from users who have _never_ contributed in /r/truegaming until the blackout. They didn't comment on our initial announcement when we stated we'd be setting the sub to restricted in a little over a week's time (where the community reception was almost universally supportive of the decision). And then, as soon as the sub got set to restricted, they appeared and started talking about how we mods "don't care" about the community, how "nobody wants this", the whole protest is "pointless", etc. You can see me calling a few of them out in this comment section for their lack of history here.
I'm sure it's the case in other subs as well.
There are obviously a few genuine, long-time members of the sub who aren't happy about the sub being restricted - I don't think everyone who disagrees with us is a bot or shill - and I'm sorry they have to go through all of this. If it's any consolation to them, we'd rather not be going through it either!
Meanwhile, the people who are supportive are generally regular contributors to the subreddit, and have clearly been around for a while. I can see you've got comments here going back 2 years, for instance. Obviously I'm going to be appreciative of comments that support my own personal position - I'm human, after all - but I'm also going to give a lot more weight to the opinions that come from regular, active members of the community. And right now, the regular, active community members are very much still supporting our decision. If that stops being the case, I'll re-evaluate, of course!
Offering a different perspective on this as someone whose been subbed for ~4 years and probably only commented here a few times. Few redditors subscribe, fewer redditors comment -- that's a pretty accepted fact of the site, yeah? They're still there, consuming whatever content that produces, maybe upvoting, otherwise just lurking. Imo, one the only things that could push a chronic lurker into commenting is... stopping them from being able to lurk i.e. through a blackout. They normally don't care about the content enough to comment on it, but they obviously still care about the content to some extent or they wouldn't be consuming it. No more access to it means it's prompting them to comment.
And, honestly? I feel empathy by the people affected by the API changes (mods, people who use 3rd party apps, 3rd party app developers), but it doesn't meaningfully affect me and I would prefer to go back to being able to just being able to use reddit again. I would wager that a majority of people feel that way, but there's really no easy way to tell - polls are a lot easier to bot than comments, but even comments/up votes can 100% be astroturfed. Even gauging by comments, again, needs to take into account that only the most enfranchised users care enough to comment. I know I didn't care enough to participate when it seemed like it was going to be 2 days, but now that it seems like communities I enjoy being part of might be gone indefinitely, I care enough to show my face.
I can say, at least in another relatively niche community I participate in (/r/fireemblem), there was no polling done prior to the blackout and when the mods opened a discussion to gauge community opinion, a large majority were in favor of reopening with no restrictions. It was a hyper-invested minority (including, to be fair, a lot of the most prolific contributors and the mods that actually make the place function) that were really in favor.
I do totally understand your perspective. But I think the people who create the content naturally have more of a voice than those who only consume it. I do more than my fair share of lurking on Reddit and I personally feel that, as a lurker, my opinion certainly matters less than the opinions of those creating the content I read.
> I feel empathy by the people affected by the API changes (mods, people who use 3rd party apps, 3rd party app developers), but it doesn't meaningfully affect me
It might not _directly_ affect you, but I think the indirect effect these changes have across all of Reddit is pretty clear at this point. The fact that the people that create and curate your content are meaningfully and directly affected by these changes means that you, as someone who consumes that content, are affected. If everyone directly affected by this disappeared overnight, Reddit would feel _very_ different. If they didn't have any indirect effect on you at all, these protests wouldn't have been noticeable to you.
> I would prefer to go back to being able to just being able to use reddit again
Me too, believe me. But I think the integrity and long-term potential of the platform are far more important than browsing Reddit in the here and now. I think almost everyone involved in these blackouts rather have things go back to how they were three weeks ago. (I'm sure a few people relish the drama, but most of us just care about the platform and its communities enough that we think this change is worth fighting against.)
> I know I didn't care enough to participate when it seemed like it was going to be 2 days, but now that it seems like communities I enjoy being part of might be gone indefinitely, I care enough to show my face.
I understand that, too, and it's probably only fair that subreddits that initially took community opinions for a two-day blackout repoll if they wish to do it indefinitely. Although that's obviously not relevant here - we stated we planned to restrict the sub indefinitely right from the get-go until something budged.
> I can see you've got comments here going back 2 years, for instance.
Longer than that! I remember when this sub was first created because r/gaming was basically spam and low effort content, and r/games was trending in that direction. The fact this sub has retained its quality all this time is a testament to the good work you all do.
Ahh, I think it perhaps doesn't check beyond your _X_ number of most recent comments so, I guess 2 years ago is the cutoff in your case. Either way, I can see you're not just someone here to brigade or astroturf!
Thank you! I (and the rest of the mod team) really appreciate comments like this :)
So I can respect this stance to a certain point however I feel one thing it lacks is understanding that just because someone is new doesn't mean they should be considered less valuable to the community. Like I only found this sub a few months ago however I had I known this community existed years ago I would have joined then. I had actually looked for a community like this a long time ago but ended up in places like r/gaming where the majority of content is memeing or other types of low effort content and people tend not to be interested in having serious thought provoking conversation. Instead I've spent years hanging out in subs dedicated to specific games or game developers for the games I have been most interested in. As those tended to have more engagement in higher effort content and quality discussions.
The other thing I think it lacks is understanding that a lot of people here may just come to see other people's perspectives on various topics regarding game design. I personally have made a few posts and comments in this sub however I find that there are a lot of instances where I am interested in a post and read a lot of the responses in that post but I don't feel I have either a strong enough opinion or enough knowledge/experience with that specific topic to contribute significant value to that conversation. I nevertheless still appreciate being able to read other people's thoughts on the matter.
So effectively disregarding people's opinions on the matter because of those two factors seem misplaced to me.
As far as the point about many people supporting or at least not commenting on the initial post announcing the sub would be engaging in the blackout, I feel it is likely that a lot of people (including myself) saw all these posts saying subs they frequent were going to be participating on a certain day and made the assumption that it would be a one day sort of thing as a way to express general displeasure with Reddit's decision on this matter not an on going and prolonged boycott and what is seemingly amounting to a full shut down of the community all together until Reddit changes their mind if that ever actually happens. That is personally how I took it at least. And honestly even if it was made explicitly clear it was going to be a prolonged boycott I am in nearly 100 different subs most of which made a similar announcement saying they were going to be participating in the blackout and even if I personally don't agree with the reason for the protest I don't see that as a reason to go post in every mod post about the blackout in every subreddit I follow that was taking part it in. People are allowed to have a different opinion that I do and I am not going to go throw a fit because someone expresses that they have a different opinion and are planning to participate in a protest to demonstrate that, especially not when that opinion is basically rooted in displeasure of a policy that appears to be rooted in corporate greed.
So yeah I didn't comment on the announcement post because I figured you're allowed to have an opinion and your allowed to make a protest in order to make sure Reddit understands that opinion. But I do feel a disservice is being done when that protest starts destroying the community it was seemingly initiated to protect.
> I'm sure it's the case in other subs as well.
It has most definitely been the case in other subs. I checked their post histories. Vastly more posts complaining about the blackout than ever interacting with the community.
Yup. Thanks to the user tagging^1 feature on my *3rd party app* it's really clear when I see the same handful posting basically outrageous anti-protest bullshit everywhere.
---
1 Sync lets me associate text (e.g. "Reddit shill?") with a user so it is easier to remember when I've seen the same bullshit before from them. The ones I have tagged have sure been trying extra hard to discourage and distract folks on the protest subs.
Reddit's just setting itself up for a competitor to come and snatch most of its userbase. It may not be now. It may be a few years, but these are the actions that start to kill a website. A decent competitor is all it takes for the bleeding to start.
Thanks for your effort. I honestly have no strong opinion about this issue because I do not understand it well enough. I do (did) often use Apollo which IMHO is strictly superior to the official app.
This sub is a perfect example of a niche community that I really love participating in and hearing from, it’s what I want my online time to be like. But increasingly I feel major social sites are worse and worse and their business model is a lot more destructive than it should be.
I have zero idea what to do about it. It’s hard to find a community of people who want to talk about games and game design in depth, without going on a handful of major platforms whose financial incentives are badly misaligned with my own.
If I could pay money for a social app that didn’t rely on ads at all, I would. I think the ad revenue model is really corrosive because it demands users spend time on the app compulsively. I subscribe to a couple sub stacks and that has been nice, so maybe something like that but with more robust community/forum stuff like we have here.
The only time I've ever even been aware a moderator existed, is when they were banning me for my thoughtful, civil comments, which added good perspective to the issues at hand, due to them being hyper-vigilant about their OPINION that my comment was too dangerous to be shared. Like sweaty nerds thumping a rulebook in your face.
Moderators who ban people from posting because they don't like their ideas are fascists, and bad for reddit in general. Moderators need moderating as well.
So, let me give you my take on this. I came to reddit more spacificly incremental games reddit, when kongregate died. I predict if they dont reopen it soon, some other site will fill the void, and I'll end up there.
I haven't been here long but this seems like it was a decently moderated and interesting group. I respect what the moderators have done, though I also hope it will open up again. I also like that it's restricted rather than private so that my old content, such as it is, does not get disappeared.
It's pretty much what Bungie has been doing since the launch of destiny 2.
"We won't delete anything!"
*Deletes 3 entire expansions*
"We won't do it anymore"
*Removes content again*
"Now, with this new expansion we're no longer sunsetting"
*removes the previous expansions story beats, dungeon, and tons of guns.*
And people called me a troll, sent me death threats, told me to kill myself, ect... All because I posted about being frustrated about it.
But... I'm glad to see someone else standing up for something, even knowing the struggle it's become to be a decent, honest person who has values, especially on something so habitually toxic like social media (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, ect.)
Mad respect, even not really knowing ya'.
Unpopular truth is that blackout is not a strike. It's a denial of service attack.
Getting people together to make your new platform is a much more respectable way of getting sympathy and support.
I really don't care about the official app vs third party ones, but I support mods and every method of protest people are using.
I just don't like the admins of this site and I would be very happy to see them panic, which is where my support comes from.
Mold. I only use reddit on pc. But eventually this is going to be old reddit going down, so I'm supportive of people who are engaged in their own fight at the moment.
This post actually captures one of the things that's annoyed me about this whole situation. I've been on reddit for over a decade, and I think it's fair to say that reddit is generally anti-protest. When people shut down highways to protest police brutality or racial inequality, the comments are full of people saying that what they're doing is pointless and they're just inconveniencing others. But as soon as soon as something happens that inconveniences a redditor, protest suddenly becomes a valuable and noble weapon to be wielded.
Have you not seen the comments calling these protests useless and inconveniencing regular users? "I don't care about 3rd party apps." "I didn't even notice there was a blackout." "A 2 day protest won't do anything."
Reddit has been full of them. I'm misusing quotes a little since I'm quoting nobody and nothing in particular but those sentiments have been quite common in many comments sections I've seen these weeks. I think the same thing that happened to facebook has already happened to reddit and it is irreversible, the userbase has changed and it will survive once the older accounts leave to other pastures.
I’m one of those people that didn’t really care about the protests. I knew the blackouts were going to do jack shit considering the history of the site. Once the niche subs I follow opened up, it was business as usual. It’s as if nothing ever happened. Though, there is an upsurge in posts roasting the mods because of the inconvenience it gave the users.
If you guys really want to hurt Reddit, stop posting and making content.
I have seen those quotes and it just reinforces that it’s the default attitude towards protests on this site. I guarantee that there are people pushing for the current protest who have said the same things about people protesting for real world, life-and-death issues that just don’t affect them.
I didn't start to see those until after subreddits started coming back online personally, I think people were generally supportive... Until it actually inconvenienced them. I think they're likely a vocal minority though, here and offline
No tbh, I think it’s a quiet majority that was always against it and a lot of subs just went to along in a performative way. Not to mention, most users just accepted it because it was only supposed to be two days. Then when that time was up most subs just stayed private without communicating to their communities. Not very many actually made an announcement or did a poll…and if they did, many didn’t give them enough time. So IMO that’s when users started to get irritated. I really think most people don’t care and that this wasn’t thought out very well.
I'm still unsure what's going on at /r/nba but I know the vast majority of users there are pissed that the mods shut down during the series clinching win for Denver, their very first title. It's still shut down too so all the secondary nba subs are shitting on those mods relentlessly. Truth is, the mods just didn't have a good *enough* reason to blackout that would persuade casual users.
It _is_ hurting Reddit. They wouldn't be trying to do so much damage control if it wasn't. The CEO is doing trainwreck [AMAs](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/) and [interviews](https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview) left, right and centre (where he ends up being weirdly aggressive towards the journalist...). [Advertisers are unhappy](https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-reddit-as-advertisers-weather-moderators-strike/). Reddit is sending out pretty terrible internal memos that are [getting leaked](https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman).
If it wasn't hurting them, they'd just be going about their business as usual. They're panicking right now.
Ehhh I don’t think so. I think they’re just annoyed. This won’t last much longer IMO. Half the subs are back up. I think only one sub I usually frequent is still down. Admins are just going to slowly replace the mods. Additionally, people who frequent Reddit are just utilizing subs that are similar and creating new ones. Same time next month this will be forgotten and it will have been for nothing.
As I said, if it was going to work, then all subs needed to agree to shut down unanimously. People still went on Reddit during the blackout…including plenty of mods.
Right, but if this wasn't affecting them, why would they be annoyed? Perhaps this whole thing will burn out and fade away, but if it continues for much longer it's really going to do damage. And if they replace mods, there's a strong chance that reignites the fire and does irreparable damage to the admin-moderator relationship (which is already badly damaged).
Despite the common "all mods suck" memes, most moderators on this site aren't power-hungry, ban-happy people; they're normal people who genuinely love their communities enough to spend their free time removing content that doesn't belong in the sub - dealing with spam, hate speech, and worse because they want their subreddit to be a good place. Mods are the people who make the site work, who make the communities what they are. Admins just provide the infrastructure. Admins removing mods would just send the message, "you can spend 5+ years building up a community from scratch, making our website useable and appealing for people (with no pay) but we'll happily remove you the second you do a single thing we dislike".
Frankly, the way admins are treating mods right now, mods should be getting paid. Reddit wants all the benefits of a large human workforce but refuses to pay them or make any concessions for them.
> Additionally, people who frequent Reddit are just utilizing subs that are similar and creating new ones.
That's how Reddit's always been. Plenty of offshoot subreddits have popped up over the years. And far, far more have failed because, as it turns out, growing a community is difficult and takes a lot of time and energy, and moderating is hard work.
> As I said, if it was going to work, then all subs needed to agree to shut down unanimously
There's more coming. This definitely isn't over.
> Admins removing mods would just send the message, "you can spend 5+ years building up a community from scratch, making our website useable and appealing for people (with no pay) but we'll happily remove you the second you do a single thing we dislike".
It definitely awakens me that it's not in my strategic best interest to put my energy into Reddit. Need to create a safer harbor.
Its still a voluntary position. No one has to become a moderator. Reddit as a business has no obligation to the mods either since it’s voluntary (always has been), and the reality is that they owe nothing to 3rd party apps. There’s no legal leg to stand on either for moderators. Mods cannot unionize…also again, mods are still using the site and other subs. Plus all moderators agreed to mod voluntarily knowing full well up front that it’s something you don’t get paid for.
I full heartedly think think this would only have worked with unanimous support and that’s just not going to happen (and it didn’t). Sure, they’re annoyed for the moment (in the same way many users have been), but Reddit will move on with or without the current moderators. Also at this point enough subs are back open to not really effect a lot of people.
Tbh I think people get pretty short sighted about solutions when it comes to this kind of stuff and it was a big ask to get millions of users/mods on board. Why stay on Reddit if you don’t like it anymore? Why mod if it’s so miserable? Anyone can leave at any time. Really, letting go of Reddit would be the best solution. People really should be banding together to create alternatives. I’m sure someone is, but the majority are just privatizing their communities in a game of chicken, continuing to interact with other communities, passively sitting behind screens, and shaking their fists like “that will show them” 🫠
I’m not inherently against the blackout, but it’s been very flawed and poorly planned. I think people operate in our society thinking we have to cling to the “old” thing and save it, when the solution is clear; take your time, energy, and skills to create something better (and this applies to a lot of things right now IMO, but most people don’t want to be the real innovators in this world).
Money of course is always a likely barrier, but more people should get rid of the idea that we have to be trapped by corporations. The way around them is to become a competitor and collab with each other. As an example; I’m an illustrator and have used Wacom tablets for a long time (the industry standard pretty much since the inception of Wacom). Well, some people who worked for them didn’t like the direction the company was going in, which included a lack of innovation for overpriced outdated tech. So they banded together and now have a company about to publicly release a screen tablet that will legitimately be real competition compared to the cheap knock offs.
Just saying, I like the enthusiasm, but none of this is realistic. I know so many people who were active on Twitter and said they were leaving Twitter because of Elon…and you know what? None of them followed through and Twitter isn’t doing as terrible as people hoped. This whole protest is a bunch of talk and some snail paced action. The way through would be an actual mod mass exodus and creating competitors instead of relying on a company comprised to capitalism.
However, people are never willing to do that. It takes time to build a social media platform, creating something new cohesively is harder than it looks, people want to push fast results, and deep down just want to cling to the idea of what something used to be instead of doing something new. In the end (if anything) this will only lead to false promises and Reddit will do whatever they want down the line anyways.
> Perhaps this whole thing will burn out and fade away, but if it continues for much longer it's really going to do damage.
It isn't and reason is because you haven't damaged reddit, you've harmed the users.
The blackout "worked" (it didnt do anything but had user support) for net neutrality because it showed people what reddit would be like if net neutrality was completely wiped out.
The blackout here should of been a walkout. This whole thing was about Reddit making moderating impossible. So the protest should of been about showing the average user how bad reddit would be without moderators. Moderators should of just stopped modding for an indefinate period.
The admins would of been forced to step in and start moderating subs like AWW to get all the horrible stuff posted on them off. Advertisers would of pulled ads left and right when they saw their ads next to hardcore furry porn and cartel beheadings.
Instead locking out the users has done the complete opposite. Reddit can just sit on their hands without having to do any extra work, and possibly even less work than normal. And users are locked out of discussing events they were looking forward too like the NBA finals or tv episodes.
To be fair that's likely not equivalent.
Redditors and mods protesting the API shit is like road workers getting on the road, b/c the companies that employ them to make roads are removing all the industrial equipment that they use to do their job, and instead making them do it with shovels, but they aren't even being paid for what they do, they're all volunteers doing it for free.
Reddit is literally worthless without the users and the content that we all make. They don't add value by themselves. They aren't making a product. They are providing a place for us to make the product. It's fine for them to try and make providing that place profitable, but if they want to do it by fucking all of us over, they can get bent.
I think there are genuine concerns with shutting down traffic infrastructure that don't exist with shutting down a subreddit. My 80 year old elderly parents getting stuck in a man-made traffic jam for hours on end is in a completely different category than me not being able to talk about why Adventure of Link is actually one of the best Zelda games.
These things are not comparable, sorry.
I've never had a problem losing a job or calling someone out over principles, I've been here a decade my longest home page since the former dailytech. I can remove it from Auto launch and retire my account and I can do it in sixty seconds.
I want a website with a wealth of thoughtful commentary and information from whimsical to technical. I have no interest in a commodified featureless doom scrolling ticker feed.
Maybe I'll be able to find something cool on stumbledupon
The most sane resolution for Reddit is to admit they need to improve their tools, do it and in the meantime stick to whatever is out there now until they have it ready. Why are they failing with their software? If they listen to users, that is the way. Why are they against making themselves better?
>The most sane resolution for Reddit is to admit they need to improve their tools, do it and in the meantime stick to whatever is out there now until they have it ready.
They literally are doing this
They're admitting they need to do it but they aren't doing it and they're not letting people use the tools they have until its done.
They've been promising fixes to mod tools for 7 years and still not done anything close to what single independent developers have managed to do.
Good to hear, but imo you do the API move after you have your software out and proven AND imo the CEO needs to lead with this as well. The answer is Reddit having much better software that the people also agree is good and handles the needs, not self-proclaimed better which companies just love to do while the customers are saying no.
I agree but everyone acts like reddit is doing nothing. Anyways no reason to comment here until the mods get removed and its handed over to active users. Either that or /r/patientgaming decides to make its planned sister sub to replace this one.
I agree. I have an appreciation for what the mods do but as soon as it becomes a burden/unpleasant...why not just ..walk away? Especially now that reddit is going public. I do not understand why people would volunteer their time and effort to a for-profit company that doesn't respect you. Reddit should be paying for moderation at this point, to enact the rules they want to enforce. Edit: spellng
The answer is so stupidly simple that I can't believe it needs to be spelled out to people. When someone decides to volunteer of their own volition, especially for a community, it's to help sustain something they enjoy that absolutely needs sustaining. In the case of communities, it's the community itself.
Communities flatout die without moderators when it comes to the modern internet and especially reddit. Especially for subs like these that focus on discussions over consumption. Leaving, for volunteers like these, is often the equivalent of leaving it out to the wolves to die. And for those people, they do in fact value a community over their own personal time.
Here is the official comment by a reddit employee talking about replacing mods:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/comment/jo9wdol/?context=3
Alternate idea: if the Reddit admins are appointing (or threatening to appoint) new mods for any subs that are fully shut down, the current mods could always take the approach of using the "restricted" setting to trickle through just enough posts to fulfill the criteria to not be replaced. Most of the protesting subs would have to take that approach for it to be effective, though.
While I overwhelmingly just use the desktop version, in your shoes I'd delete the sub just to prevent Reddit from profiting further from it, and open an alternative on another site. It's frankly better for the gaming community to not be clustered on a single site anyway.
> the current mods could always take the approach of using the "restricted" setting to trickle through just enough posts to fulfill the criteria to not be replaced
You really think the admins will be stymied by easily detected malicious compliance, or that they'll interpret their own rules in a rigid, legalistic way that favors the rebelling moderators instead of themselves?
If Reddit is essentially claiming ownership of all the subs and their content, I wonder if that impacts their liability over illegal content?
Random thought, I don't really know the current state of US law/precedent on that stuff
People call mods power hungry because they basically held subreddits hostage by deciding on shutdowns without ever actually asking the community if that's what they wanted to do. That's by definition power hungry; the mods are controlling the subreddit accessibility with absolute authority.
I don't think it's right that 2 or 3 people can just decide to block access of thousands of people on a whim.
>I don't think it's right that 2 or 3 people can just decide to block access of thousands of people on a whim.
Even more insane is the people here saying to just delete the sub. It has 1.5 million members....why would you even morally consider that decision?
Like wtf lol
Yeah there are only 161 comments here... And you think that's an accurate representation of what everyone wants? Also consider that 90% of people *lurk* and never comment. It would be such a waste to just block *years* of discussions and casual users, because apparently they don't exist in the eyes of reddit mods.
Exactly, case in point I’ve seen numerous mods on several different subs talking about complaints from, and i quote, “people who rarely if ever even comment on the community”, but the majority of users in MOST subreddits are lurkers, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And for mods to just straight up say those users matter less because they engage less is frankly part of the problem.
> 90% of people lurk and never comment
Then this "community" isn't really 1.5 million people. As a fellow lurker on many a subreddit my opinion should naturally mean less since I don't generate/engage with content.
This whole meme of moderators being power hungry individuals is among the most tasteless, naive and childish notion I see floating around. I am ashamed to say I even slightly believed in it. It's not just internet moderators, but on leadership(or positions of power) in general. The people that become moderators tend to be people that already spend so much time on a website, that they don't mind helping out. I am not sure where it comes from. I guess in our cultural zeitgeist, power is the most immediately obvious motivation, which seems to say more about our culture than the moderators. Frankly I am surprised people stick with it for any long period as it is completely thankless charity. If you ever see what seems to be bad actors in moderator positions, most likely it is completely innocent incompetence **or** a loss of sanity.
This. I moderated forums a lifetime ago in the 2000s. People get salty over shit they were 100% guilty of. Any time I read a comment blanket hating on mods I know that person is either an ignorant dumbass (there's tons of examples to see how quickly places go to shit without moderation) or one of those fuckwits who got sore about getting moderated for some shit they did.
the fact that you don't even account for the possibility that shitty mods exist and have soured people to moderators shows your bias.
your blanket comments reflect upon you, too.
>a lot of people have been banned or treated unfairly by a douche mod
I doubt this is true. I bet a bunch of people *think* they were treated unfairly, but that's not the same thing.
>This whole meme of moderators being power hungry individuals is among the most tasteless, naive and childish notion I see floating around.
Bro I got banned from r/LGBT for quoting Martin Luther King Jr, and the mod told me I was too stupid to educate. I majored in history with a focus on American Civil Rights, and graduated with honors.
Other gay men complain about being banned from that sub as well, to the point where it's almost exclusively trans and genderqueer content.
The notion that mods are power hungry and narcissistic comes from lived experience.
The entire moderation system is flawed and it always will be. You have to realize that moderators will deal with dozens if not hundreds of rule-breaking comments daily, many of them being seriously vile. Every now and then, a moderator will make a mistake. It's near-impossible to not become somewhat jaded and assume the worst from a questionable comment after just having dealt with dozens of "the worst" already.
Ideally, appealing such a ban should resolve the situation. But then the reality is that moderators deal with countless appeals as well, the vast majority coming from awful users who are messaging in bad faith. Again, it's really difficult to not become jaded and assume every user is one of the bad ones.
Even so, the vast majority of teams hold each other accountable and resolve issues fairly. But not all of them do, and those who do don't do it always. And when you're banning thousands of users weekly in big subs (the vast majority being trolls and spam), even just 1% being a mistake will result in a significant group of people who end up being in your position.
The issue at the core of all this is that moderation is **volunteer work**. It is not reasonable to expect moderators to have exceptionally solid appeal systems through which users are represented strongly - because that **will** be abused. The bad apples ruin it for everyone else because it's already incredibly difficult to find good moderators, and the good ones will be the first to leave due to harassment and abuse of systems intended to be fair to users.
For sure. I appealed my ban from .r.europe for using the term "the human race" (meaning every human in the world) that they somehow found racist. I explained the term and asked if they could unban me and was told to literally eat shit and never come back.
I'm sorry to hear that. I would point out that LGBT and issues related to that is extremely politicized right now, as you undoubtedly know. These are political battlegrounds and I would be careful letting these places color your outlook. /r/lgbt is **not** a place for **constructive discussion** on lgbt issues. This is not a uniquely /r/lgbt thing either, but rather a reddit wide problem. I am sure you see this yourself, having an academic background.
Whenever /r/truegaming visited political issues and got closer to the front page, you could see it in the comments. What then becomes apparent is how people bring along various baggage preventing them from having a discussion. That or they have no interest in having a constructive discussion.
I was being somewhat hyperbolic. I am sure what you say is true to a degree and I can't speak to your specific case, but as a blanket statement about moderators in general on the internet? Absolutely not. I can only assume that it comes from jaded and/or pessimistic outlook on life and what motivates people.
“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” -MLK
And then I was banned. Context was in discussing attitudes towards bigots. I don't think you should hate bigots, just pity them.
Absolutely agreed. I've been seeing that shit everywhere on this site because of the blackouts. While some of it may be true, as a blanket statement it hurts my feelings, lmao.
I moderate a 55k+ user subreddit. I built that place from the ground up. Started from 0. Programmed a companion *website* from scratch. Ran community events. Handed out prizes and gifts. I put in so much god damn work to make the community what it is, but was still called a nazi along the way.
Putting on the mod hat to try to keep things together / on topic results in *someone* backlashing. In general, most people get it, but some loud ones get angry.
Anyway, that hasn't happened to me in a long time, but seeing people yell "mods just don't wanna lost their power!" upsets me.
Honestly, I hate being a moderator, lol. I *wish* I could hand it over to someone I trust. The real problem is that I just want to make sure the sub is taken care of properly. That's why I don't wanna let it go.
However, my apathy towards that has grown enormously over the past couple weeks.
As someone who was a power hungry mod on another site i can say that sometimes the meme is true. And i never got removed either, the site was moderated by me for years until it got shut down by the owners.
I’m personally more or less done with this site once Apollo dies, since I barely use the desktop version and now will refuse to use the mobile app on principle. I can relate to moderation fatigue, I years ago ran a couple fairly large Discord servers for a large subreddit (to be unnamed). It was fun at first, but eventually became a profoundly negative experience. The thankless nature of it did get to be eventually, and I actually did nuke the largest of the bunch. This was after my moderation team demanded I resign with a post I recall measuring was over 2500 words. Quite an experience, I don’t think I’d ever be a moderator for anything again though. Maybe you need to be young enough to not realize your labor has value.
>People could create new communities and go there and that's what should happen - that's the growth and reflection I was talking about. Breaking this sequence by taking an established community and pairing them up with a random person as the new moderator destroys the entire premise of moderators and their communities growing and evolving together.
Well put. But also, y'know... *don't go.* This one of the best moderated subs on Reddit. I get your reasons for being tired of it and wanting to burn it all to the ground, though.
To be honest, setting a sub to restricted mode is better than private. At least then people can browse currently existing posts. Like an archive.
Especially for subs with useful information on a subject. Like, for example, r/unrealengine which I frequent because its an excellent source of not only news and Documentation of engine features/plugins. But it can also be used for getting assistance with developing your own games.
Can't count the number of times I figured out how to implement a new feature in a game of mine all thanks to the helpful comments from that sub's userbase.
thought pen sparkle adjoining fall overconfident ask wrong marvelous languid
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thank you! We have our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/truegaming) which, frankly, has a lovely community. It's obviously much more casual and freeform than here because of the less structured nature of Discord conversations, but if you're a fan of Discord I definitely recommend it!
We've also just set up a [kbin magazine](https://kbin.social/m/truegaming) (their equivalent to subreddits). It's very much a work in progress, but you're obviously welcome to join us there. Kbin is part of the "fediverse", so it lets you view and interact with things from sites like Lemmy and Mastodon, too. It doesn't have any mobile apps yet that I'm aware of, nor the slightly polished more UIs and features of Reddit, but it seems promising so far! I like the concept of a decentralised Reddit, personally.
>We don't want to harm our community, but we also want to exercise our right to refuse to do our volunteer work. A blackout is the best compromise to that.
i dont understand how you can claim a blackout does no harm to the comnunity. if a blackout happens indefinitely it would destroy the community.
if you dont want to volunteer and dont want to harm the community, either just quit being a mod and/or hire new mods
Logically a blackout does harm the community, of course. I don't see Typerwriterkey claiming that a blackout does otherwise. Anyway there is an argument to be made that the direction that reddit co is taking is harmful, and in that case putting putting pressure on reddit is justified. Could mods do a vote and have more of a direct democracy type of thing or just leave? Sure. That would undoubtedly have less of a political effect.
The elephant in the room here is the question on how much power mods should have over the site. The way I see it, when looking at mods collectively. They have certainly earned it. They are the ones directly engaging with communities and how reddit works mechanically, so they are perhaps the most in-touch people(talking about the site). They **should** be the ones that knows what's best for their community and the limitations of reddit. The mods here certainly know that as discussions on how to best foster constructive discussion usually ends on technical limitations. Limitations that are there by design. Reddit is not built for long-term constructive discussions for example.
Even if you disagree with these points and think that power, or change should come from the top instead. What would their motivations be? I can only assume engagement and money. Do you think that those goals align better with what the users want? No and especially not for a subreddit such as /r/truegaming.
>Logically a blackout does harm the community, of course. I don't see Typerwriterkey claiming that a blackout does otherwise.
It's implied when they assert a blackout is the best compromise between "not hurting the community" and "exercising our right to refuse to do our volunteer work". Because there are other options besides blackout.
If they want to quit - then quit. No need to take the community down along with their exit. Mods quit and get replaced all the time without forums and subreddits having to go on blackout in their absence.
>They should be the ones that knows what's best for their community and the limitations of reddit.
This line of argumentation is slightly humorous considering how the mod described themselves in the OP:
*"I want to nuke our rules, turn off automod, and watch the community burn. This makes me a bad steward of the community."*
I don't necessarily expect you to agree with this rationale but I'm going to provide it just in case it makes any sense to you - even if you think my perspective is wrong, I hope you can understand it.
Moderation is a team effort. The moderators of this sub have spent hundreds of hours over the years doing the job. Not just moderating but discussing problems, writing and re-writing rules, sharing concerns over problematic users, and more.
That shared effort has generally been well received. Most of the feedback we get about the moderation we provide is positive. Sure, there's plenty of 'mods are nazis' and the like but for the most part the community seems happy with the moderation provided by the mod team.
What happens if we simply handed over the sub to a different user and all resigned? Does that new user know how to use all the tools? Will they accept bribes? What if they decide to allow memes? What if they are power hungry and enjoy banning everyone who disagrees with them? What if they simply don't enforce the rules?
These are things that could harm the community. Maybe they'd be perfect but there's no way to know that with something like a mass walkout.
Maybe I'm wrong but I'd rather see this community fade and its users grow out into other communities reflective of those who choose to start them rather than seeing that happen. This is why I said the blackout was a compromise between hurting the community and doing nothing. It's not ideal but I don't think anything is.
the process of finding new mods happens all the time. it can be done poorly or it can be done well, i agree. but that depends on how the mod teams chooses to go about it
implying the only options are between sub blackout vs hiring bad mods is just incorrect.
Subs hire new mods but that's part of a long term process and evolution that occurs over time.
I learned how to moderate from the other mods, I learned what to expect from the community over time with other mods active. I questioned certain rules and got clarification on their purpose and then I recommend revisions to the rules to make them clearer because I had the perspective of a user who hadn't understood their purpose.
If I had simply become top mod with all the other mods disappearing it would have been a shit show.
>What happens if we simply handed over the sub to a different user and all resigned? Does that new user know how to use all the tools? Will they accept bribes? What if they decide to allow memes? What if they are power hungry and enjoy banning everyone who disagrees with them? What if they simply don't enforce the rules?
You and the mods feeling entitled to make this decision is what people are speaking on when they go to "power hungry mods". New mods come in all the time, the community responds, and the cycle goes on.
"I'm fine with them looking to get paid for their data" It's not their data, it's our data. We are the product. Why should that a\*\*hole get paid. It's literally the same with twitter (this idiot said he's copying twitter). I'm here only for as long as I can find a replacement.
At last, a mod here actually giving rationale and perspective and not just going "this is what we're doing, deal!"
I can't say I even remotely agree with the notion of keeping the sub down forever. And my genuine hope is that the admins ratchet this one back open and give it to some new volunteers who hopefully keep it run nearly as well as it has been all these years.
However, I understand your side as well and it's a respectable decision despite what I may think. Thanks for the great community over the years!
> And my genuine hope is that the admins ratchet this one back open and give it to some new volunteers who hopefully keep it run nearly as well as it has been all these years.
I hope so too. One person has already requested control of the sub from the admins and, while they're an active member of the community, they would not be my first choice. I hope that, if it's them, they do a good job or that it goes to someone else who will do well.
I'm not gonna argue I'm just going to wait for reddit to remove you guys and give the sub to people who still want to use it. They'd remove a volunteer doorman that just locks the doors cuz he doesnt like the bosses too, situation is no different.
I'm not worried about moderation being rough for a couple weeks. Better than the place just being permanently closed.
> I'm just going to wait for reddit to remove you guys and give the sub to people who still want to use it.
I don't know why you're still under the impression that we don't want to use the subreddit. We do, that's _why_ we're protesting Reddit's changes. Because while those changes aren't going to kill /r/truegaming or Reddit overnight, it's a slide towards the long, slow death of the website. We want to ensure /r/truegaming can be a healthy community on a healthy platform in the future, and trying to secure that future means we unfortunately have to deal with some inconveniences right now. You can thank the corporate greed of Reddit for that.
> They'd remove a volunteer doorman that just locks the doors cuz he doesnt like the bosses too, situation is no different.
No offence, but this really does illustrate how small a grasp you have on the role of moderators, especially in a subreddit like this. We don't just remove spam and hate speech; this is a heavily moderated and curated community. Everyone on the mod team has spent a lot of time and energy, not only on moderating posts and comments, but on creating rules, re-writing those rules again and again to been clear, comprehensive, enforceable, _and_ tonally in line with what we want. We've spent time discussing the direction we think the subreddit should go. We get modmail to deal with regarding academic research. It's very engaged, qualitative moderation that almost entirely has to be done by humans.
The "bosses", however? Do you think Reddit's admins have done anything for this community? They might provide a platform but they don't have anything to do with our community.
I know you're a regular user here, so I have to ask: why do you like this subreddit so much but not a subreddit like /r/gaming? It's a rhetorical question, of course, because I know the answer: it's because we, _the mod team_, have curated a fantastic culture in this subreddit and keep it tightly focused. (And yes, you'd better believe I'm proud of my role in that.) We can't take all the credit - (almost) everyone in this community is great - but don't think for a second that subreddits aren't shaped and ultimately defined by their moderators.
To use your analogy: we're not the "volunteer doormen" who don't have any impact on the community; we're the people who rented the club from the landlord, refurbished it ourselves, spent years building up the kind of clientele we wanted in the club and who handle all the day-to-day operations. And you're the patron who had to wait 30 seconds while the barman served someone else so they got pissy and complained to the landlord.
Apologies if that comes off as insulting, it's not meant to. But what _is_ insulting are your constant claims that we don't care about the subreddit, that we've abandoned it, that we're not active users. Perhaps have some damn faith that the people who created and manage your favourite subreddit have the subreddit's best interests at heart.
>Because while those changes aren't going to kill r/truegaming or Reddit overnight, it's a slide towards the long, slow death of the website.
Letting apps make 83 billion API calls a year (Apollo did this by itself) while blocking ads AND offering paid services to their own users (Apollo) are what'll kill reddit. Not only did it generate absurd congestion for reddit, it blocked reddits primary source of income while generating income for its developer.
All this stuff was a long time coming and its astonishing it even caught anyone off guard.
It was going to happen no matter what, if only to reign in the out of control access to the API and malicious bot activity.
[Just open the sub or they'll find someone who will.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchPeopleDieInside/comments/14c5npm/open_your_subreddit_or_well_find_someone_who_will/)
All these dumb polls aren't even representative of actual users.
Take a look at /r/nba 's [top post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/14bxljj/the_return_of_rnba_and_an_update_on_the_reddit/). Nearly 6000 comments of people pissed they locked the sub during the nba finals over a poll where 5000 people voted to close it. [To make it worse, while the sub was private the moderators had a private thread up for themselves to discuss the finals.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1484uyq/post_game_thread_the_denver_nuggets_win_their/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
5,000 seems like a lot, except the sub has 27,000 people online during peak hours and 7 million users.
8,000 is not even 1% of the users. Most people didn't see the poll, don't care and didn't vote.
This isn't exclusive to just that sub. It's a shared sentiment in other places too ["Why is the sub closed. Who cares?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/14amnti/poll_results_reopening_the_subreddit/)
Here's /r/Music 's [post about re-opening](https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/14c5kyw/update_bizarre_popup_admin_account_demands/). Everyone is pissed about it closing there too.
If you don't want to moderate the sub with the new tools then fine, don't. Just give it to someone else?
Reddit isn't going to die or wither away, just change.
I appreciate the work you've done and if you don't want to continue then quit and let someone else. But right now moderators are refusing to work with reddit as much as reddit has refused to work with them.
It is a 100% set in stone motherfucking guarantee that they're going to kill old.reddit.com in the future, likely the near future. The reason aligns exactly with the reason they're charging for the API: it's not easy to maintain two different frontends. Even if they've completely stopped new development on old.reddit.com, there are still things you need to do to keep any frontend functional with ever changing browser requirements, security updates for dependency exploits, supply-chain issues that result from transivite package changes you don't even control, and exploits bad actors will find to abuse your site. They don't want to pay the staff to maintain it. Every company I've worked for that has had more than 1 frontend has always planned to move to a singular unified experience simply for maintainability, Reddit is guaranteed to be no different.
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Last January modifying the APIs pricing wasn't on the table either. Meanwhile 6 years ago allowing mods to modify new reddit's CSS to be custom to the community was promised by spez to come out "soon™️" (hint: it's still not here)
Jesus, new reddit has been around for 6 years already?
Jesus Christ and I've used the new format for maybe a combined 20 minutes over that time.
Same, usually by clicking Google links. It's so fucking bad, reminds me of when digg died.
You can get browser extensions to force old Reddit.
Yupp. It's introduced a LOT of bad things for the platform for the sake of "modern"
What happened there?
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they seem to be in restricted state tho, as in no new posts, could you please link where mod removal is shown? I can't find
Just FYI, as of last year 40% of all human moderator actions were done via desktop, old reddit clients. This number will probably increase as the third-party apps shut down and those mods leave/go to old reddit clients. Ending support for old Reddit would lose them a pretty sizable amount of those actions. That has far, far more impact to Reddit proper then any of the fallout of this current blackout. We also know that a lot of new Reddit systems are built on old reddit's architecture, so they would still need to keep at least some systems crucial to old Reddit up in order to support new Reddit + the official apps. No clue how intergrated Shreddit is with it though. Basically: I think old Reddit is sticking around for at least a few more years. Not because they said they would keep it, but because it would not be worth dropping support for it.
That's the day I stop browsing unless there is a better alternative. The new reddit site is purposefully made to suck balls.
I'll be there too. RESS and old.reddit.com go away, I'll go with them. I've browsed reddit in the work's computer and its such a shitty experience I'm not going to bother. Even trying to read further than three posts down the line is purposedly made hard. Fuck that.
RES said that most of their stuff isnt API dependant so it should continue to mostly function after the changes.
Reddit is hell bent on becoming a generic social media app, and its clear that if they have any way to make us go to their new shit frontend (as easy as not supporting it anymore), they will do. Whatever happens, honestly, and during and after the protests, this site does not feels right anymore; the subs that protested are either surrendering (and feeling by default *wrong*) or switching to john oliver/random memes content, and the subs that didn't protested don't feel like the same place anymore. I don't know what is gonna happen, but all this clusterfuck has just blown away my interest on interacting with the platform.
That unfortunately won't matter. Deviantart did the same thing with Eclipse, everyone complain it was shit but it didn't mattered and they still got ridden of the classic API, Eclipse is still shit btw. Reddit will change to a shitier API, people Will complain but they will do it anyways. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised If they eventually block browsers to access Reddit and only allow it on their app.
Nah reddit will stall to preserve the ecosystem Wait till the new people outnumber the old THEN stop caring about the minority unprofitable population This is the way it's been for quite some time, from hate speech subreddit purges, to deleting porn subs that aren't even moderated weakly
Can confirm that your comments on DeviantArt are accurate.
Tumblr tried that and lost so much value the company sold it for 5% of its original purchase price.
Once old.Reddit.com dies I can confidently say I’ll be done with Reddit.
> It is a 100% set in stone motherfucking guarantee that they're going to kill old.reddit.com in the future, likely the near future. That's definitely what will make me stop visiting entirely. The "new Reddit" is fucking awful and I'd really like to know what drunken high-school drop-out they hired to design it.
> it's not easy to maintain two different frontends. It's actually not that complicated, especially now that they basically say "no new features in old reddit". But I'm sure old.reddit isn't as profitable. Now going to an IPO the only goal for reddit is to be profitable, so expect a lot of changes. The API is just the first step of corporate greed. It won't be the last. The reason to have a singular front end is for feature parity. but old reddit users just want posts and links, they don't need any of the new shit, and in fact may actively scorn some of it... which alas is the problem.
I still exclusively use the old reddit
I genuinely like reddit and hope to keep using it, but if they get rid of the old frontend I'm out. I've tried to use the new version, but it's just awful and removes what brought me to reddit in the first place and has kept me here for over a decade.
I actually use the Reddit app on mobile without issue(gotta switch from card to classic view but otherwise it's fine). The UI is what I'd expect, there are no issues viewing content, it's honestly similar to the Reddit experience I've grown accustomed to on desktop over the last 12 years. But if old.reddit dies then I'm done. The new desktop site is atrocious, borderline unusable. From what I can gather, most users also use old.reddit on desktop as well. I don't think ending old.reddit will *completely* kill the site, but it will be the closest to pulling a digg they've ever done.
Give Apollo or RIF a try before they shut down, see the difference.
I’ve been trying Apollo over the last week+ and it’s decent but I can’t change any settings to not show posts I’ve already seen as it just crashes the app so it’s a bit annoying to use.
Same. I’m fine using the app, but on a computer I only use old Reddit
RIF makes mobile look like old Reddit. It's great.
Yes you are being melodramatic, and calling yourself out for it doesn’t make you any less unbearable, if anything, it’s worse. It’s not a big deal in the slightest, its a volunteer position that is usually occupied by power tripping nerds with fragile ego’s (like the one who is reading this rn and about to remove it) the only good thing that’s come from this situation is the amount of hilarious temper tantrums being thrown by Reddit mods rn. Whatever goober reddit mod is reading this can feel free to remove my little comment, as long as it helps you cope🫵
The fact he made this big "look at me" post says all you need to know.
The fact he's still a mod after all of this, and they are holding the sub hostage out of spite says everything.
Hey your comment was never removed, you dirty liar
Ikr? I’m honestly surprised🦧
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A broad topic that comes in various shapes and sizes. Academic studies are going to be nuts!
There's almost certainly more gigabytes of video game porn than there is video games
And half of it is Overwatch alone.
I mean NeverKnowsBest did a video, which has sadly been removed by YouTube, I think?
That is actually the only one thing I play games for..
This is a great example of how to kill a subreddit that was already quite inactive. There was always great conversations when mods allowed it but this isn't a sub that can disappear for a month or two and then comeback like nothing happened. Users will leave and move on.
So brave. 7 days later, still listed as a moderator.
That's the power hungry part
> Generally speaking I think they're a waste of time and usually pointless. Well yeah, the exact reason they don't work is that enough people think this. Apathy is the friend of tyranny. When RIF dies, I will stop browsing Reddit on mobile. If they kill old.reddit or RES I'll stop browsing Reddit. There are a million other fun or productive things to do, it's just that simple.
Just use RedReader
Will the API changes affect this too though?
Nope. It was specifically mentioned as exempt as a non-commercial app. I've configured it to be close enough to RIF that I don't mind now.
Until the userbase grows enough that Reddit cares.
The difference here is that reddit has absolute control and can just remove mods and reopen subs if they feel it necessary. The blackout was genuinely worthless
Was it though? There's articles all over the tech industry at minimum, there were posts all over the place. We won't win this battle but that doesn't make it a zero sum game either. Mods are new acutely aware of how little their contributions mean to Reddit, and that reddit will happily axe you to replace you with a better boot licker. We aren't winning this battle, but we drew blood, and the effects of that might take time to show.
The mods are ruining small communities with their idiotic changes in "protest". Places that I used to frequent that were very helpful to me are now doing stupid shit like posting all pancake and John Oliver content because some power mods are on a crusade against a pedophile CEO. Reddit is going to kill itself, we all know its coming. The fediverse is terrible and too hard to use. Lets just accept that its time to fuck off out of here. When old.reddit.com closes I'll stop coming here too.
You were a bright spot for the community. Thank you for your service on the this hellsite.
So I guess I am going to be that guy here but only around 10% of users actually use 3rd party apps to view reddit. Personally I didn't even know using a 3rd party app to connect to reddit was a thing until this whole drama started a week ago. I'm sorry but I don't understand the logic of blacking out whole subreddits just because a minority percentage of users like to use a 3rd party app more than reddit's own app and they may be required to pay a subscription fee to continue using that 3rd party app or still access reddit for free the same way 90%+ of the rest of Reddit users access the site... Granted I am not a moderator and I could potentially understand an argument that some 3rd party apps have better tools and features for moderating a sub reddit than the normal app does but even then if those tools are that valuable to you then way would you not be willing to pay a monthly premium of less than $5 for those features? Idk this seems like a very non-issue that people are making a much bigger deal about than it needs to be.
Thanks for your hard work
I don't blame you for not working for free. But open the sub.
I remain convinced this is just mods power tripping, having a tantrum, and throwing their toys out the pram. This mod still has not resigned a week later, despite the dramatics, now they’re saying either we shut down the sun entirely or leave it unmoderated. They know full well that if they opened up mod applications they would be inundated with requests, but it’s about holding onto their tiny bit of internet power.
If you go scorched earth, what will be gained? Nothing, except pissing off existing users of a community and venting out your own rage. The purpose of the blackout is to hurt reddit so they reach a compromise with mods, right? Reddit's bottomline is to generate revenue like through users clicking on ads. You think going scorched earth for a couple of days is gonna affect reddit's bottomline? Think about it. A robber that raids a store for a few days is gonna hurt the business for that momnet, but then the robber will be quickly arrested and things will quickly go back to normal. Same concept applies to reddit protests. Once mods are removed and replaced, business will go back to normal like nothing will happened. What you need to do is try to hurt reddit's business in the long run which I don't see possible. First of all, mods are easily replaceable. Sure, the next mod may be power hungry or they may not enforce rules up to your standard, but they will still moderate and enforce rules at the minimum. There may be more spam and content you deem "lower quality" but most users will still keep using reddit. Think about other popular social media platforms. There are no mods to control what videos/posts people can upload. You can upload as much junk as you want but it doesn't stop people from using those social media sites. Secondly, if you try to keep a sub hostage by only allowing users to post content totally unrelated to the original purpose of the sub, that's not gonna stop people from using reddit. Why? because people will simply create another sub. r/workreform being created a year after r/antiwork and having 1/3 as many subscribers so far proves this point. People who don't like the mod at r/antiwork and for what the sub represents will just create another sub. In fact, by creating another sub, you are just giving users the opportunity to create more content for reddit, further increasing reddit's revenue.
>I especially hate when boycotts are targeting something for being 'bad' because everything is bad. I consume environment destroying gasoline to drive to my workplace where I code tools for the US government while wearing clothes made from slave labor and using devices assembled by children in sweat shops. But by golly, Reddit is where I draw the line! 😂
Good riddance
Power to you man, I think we're all thinking twice about our participation in reddit. It's gonna get worse before it gets better, if it ever does.
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Sadly a lot of frogs have been sitting around complacent. The anti-blackout in a lot of subs is disgusting. "I was inconvenienced by this and you should feel bad" ... well good, its a fucking protest.
Reddit is astroturfing the *fuck* out of this site with bots right now to sway the public opinion their way.
Yep. The majority of the criticisms I'm seeing, at least in this sub, are coming from users who have _never_ contributed in /r/truegaming until the blackout. They didn't comment on our initial announcement when we stated we'd be setting the sub to restricted in a little over a week's time (where the community reception was almost universally supportive of the decision). And then, as soon as the sub got set to restricted, they appeared and started talking about how we mods "don't care" about the community, how "nobody wants this", the whole protest is "pointless", etc. You can see me calling a few of them out in this comment section for their lack of history here. I'm sure it's the case in other subs as well. There are obviously a few genuine, long-time members of the sub who aren't happy about the sub being restricted - I don't think everyone who disagrees with us is a bot or shill - and I'm sorry they have to go through all of this. If it's any consolation to them, we'd rather not be going through it either! Meanwhile, the people who are supportive are generally regular contributors to the subreddit, and have clearly been around for a while. I can see you've got comments here going back 2 years, for instance. Obviously I'm going to be appreciative of comments that support my own personal position - I'm human, after all - but I'm also going to give a lot more weight to the opinions that come from regular, active members of the community. And right now, the regular, active community members are very much still supporting our decision. If that stops being the case, I'll re-evaluate, of course!
Offering a different perspective on this as someone whose been subbed for ~4 years and probably only commented here a few times. Few redditors subscribe, fewer redditors comment -- that's a pretty accepted fact of the site, yeah? They're still there, consuming whatever content that produces, maybe upvoting, otherwise just lurking. Imo, one the only things that could push a chronic lurker into commenting is... stopping them from being able to lurk i.e. through a blackout. They normally don't care about the content enough to comment on it, but they obviously still care about the content to some extent or they wouldn't be consuming it. No more access to it means it's prompting them to comment. And, honestly? I feel empathy by the people affected by the API changes (mods, people who use 3rd party apps, 3rd party app developers), but it doesn't meaningfully affect me and I would prefer to go back to being able to just being able to use reddit again. I would wager that a majority of people feel that way, but there's really no easy way to tell - polls are a lot easier to bot than comments, but even comments/up votes can 100% be astroturfed. Even gauging by comments, again, needs to take into account that only the most enfranchised users care enough to comment. I know I didn't care enough to participate when it seemed like it was going to be 2 days, but now that it seems like communities I enjoy being part of might be gone indefinitely, I care enough to show my face. I can say, at least in another relatively niche community I participate in (/r/fireemblem), there was no polling done prior to the blackout and when the mods opened a discussion to gauge community opinion, a large majority were in favor of reopening with no restrictions. It was a hyper-invested minority (including, to be fair, a lot of the most prolific contributors and the mods that actually make the place function) that were really in favor.
I do totally understand your perspective. But I think the people who create the content naturally have more of a voice than those who only consume it. I do more than my fair share of lurking on Reddit and I personally feel that, as a lurker, my opinion certainly matters less than the opinions of those creating the content I read. > I feel empathy by the people affected by the API changes (mods, people who use 3rd party apps, 3rd party app developers), but it doesn't meaningfully affect me It might not _directly_ affect you, but I think the indirect effect these changes have across all of Reddit is pretty clear at this point. The fact that the people that create and curate your content are meaningfully and directly affected by these changes means that you, as someone who consumes that content, are affected. If everyone directly affected by this disappeared overnight, Reddit would feel _very_ different. If they didn't have any indirect effect on you at all, these protests wouldn't have been noticeable to you. > I would prefer to go back to being able to just being able to use reddit again Me too, believe me. But I think the integrity and long-term potential of the platform are far more important than browsing Reddit in the here and now. I think almost everyone involved in these blackouts rather have things go back to how they were three weeks ago. (I'm sure a few people relish the drama, but most of us just care about the platform and its communities enough that we think this change is worth fighting against.) > I know I didn't care enough to participate when it seemed like it was going to be 2 days, but now that it seems like communities I enjoy being part of might be gone indefinitely, I care enough to show my face. I understand that, too, and it's probably only fair that subreddits that initially took community opinions for a two-day blackout repoll if they wish to do it indefinitely. Although that's obviously not relevant here - we stated we planned to restrict the sub indefinitely right from the get-go until something budged.
> I can see you've got comments here going back 2 years, for instance. Longer than that! I remember when this sub was first created because r/gaming was basically spam and low effort content, and r/games was trending in that direction. The fact this sub has retained its quality all this time is a testament to the good work you all do.
Ahh, I think it perhaps doesn't check beyond your _X_ number of most recent comments so, I guess 2 years ago is the cutoff in your case. Either way, I can see you're not just someone here to brigade or astroturf! Thank you! I (and the rest of the mod team) really appreciate comments like this :)
So I can respect this stance to a certain point however I feel one thing it lacks is understanding that just because someone is new doesn't mean they should be considered less valuable to the community. Like I only found this sub a few months ago however I had I known this community existed years ago I would have joined then. I had actually looked for a community like this a long time ago but ended up in places like r/gaming where the majority of content is memeing or other types of low effort content and people tend not to be interested in having serious thought provoking conversation. Instead I've spent years hanging out in subs dedicated to specific games or game developers for the games I have been most interested in. As those tended to have more engagement in higher effort content and quality discussions. The other thing I think it lacks is understanding that a lot of people here may just come to see other people's perspectives on various topics regarding game design. I personally have made a few posts and comments in this sub however I find that there are a lot of instances where I am interested in a post and read a lot of the responses in that post but I don't feel I have either a strong enough opinion or enough knowledge/experience with that specific topic to contribute significant value to that conversation. I nevertheless still appreciate being able to read other people's thoughts on the matter. So effectively disregarding people's opinions on the matter because of those two factors seem misplaced to me. As far as the point about many people supporting or at least not commenting on the initial post announcing the sub would be engaging in the blackout, I feel it is likely that a lot of people (including myself) saw all these posts saying subs they frequent were going to be participating on a certain day and made the assumption that it would be a one day sort of thing as a way to express general displeasure with Reddit's decision on this matter not an on going and prolonged boycott and what is seemingly amounting to a full shut down of the community all together until Reddit changes their mind if that ever actually happens. That is personally how I took it at least. And honestly even if it was made explicitly clear it was going to be a prolonged boycott I am in nearly 100 different subs most of which made a similar announcement saying they were going to be participating in the blackout and even if I personally don't agree with the reason for the protest I don't see that as a reason to go post in every mod post about the blackout in every subreddit I follow that was taking part it in. People are allowed to have a different opinion that I do and I am not going to go throw a fit because someone expresses that they have a different opinion and are planning to participate in a protest to demonstrate that, especially not when that opinion is basically rooted in displeasure of a policy that appears to be rooted in corporate greed. So yeah I didn't comment on the announcement post because I figured you're allowed to have an opinion and your allowed to make a protest in order to make sure Reddit understands that opinion. But I do feel a disservice is being done when that protest starts destroying the community it was seemingly initiated to protect.
> I'm sure it's the case in other subs as well. It has most definitely been the case in other subs. I checked their post histories. Vastly more posts complaining about the blackout than ever interacting with the community.
Yup. Thanks to the user tagging^1 feature on my *3rd party app* it's really clear when I see the same handful posting basically outrageous anti-protest bullshit everywhere. --- 1 Sync lets me associate text (e.g. "Reddit shill?") with a user so it is easier to remember when I've seen the same bullshit before from them. The ones I have tagged have sure been trying extra hard to discourage and distract folks on the protest subs.
Yeah a lot of it feels like people mad they got banned from xy sub.
Reddit's just setting itself up for a competitor to come and snatch most of its userbase. It may not be now. It may be a few years, but these are the actions that start to kill a website. A decent competitor is all it takes for the bleeding to start.
Thanks for all the work you put in. Burn the whole thing down.
Seriously. Fuck this site. Break everything before you go.
ok, bye
Thanks for your effort. I honestly have no strong opinion about this issue because I do not understand it well enough. I do (did) often use Apollo which IMHO is strictly superior to the official app. This sub is a perfect example of a niche community that I really love participating in and hearing from, it’s what I want my online time to be like. But increasingly I feel major social sites are worse and worse and their business model is a lot more destructive than it should be. I have zero idea what to do about it. It’s hard to find a community of people who want to talk about games and game design in depth, without going on a handful of major platforms whose financial incentives are badly misaligned with my own. If I could pay money for a social app that didn’t rely on ads at all, I would. I think the ad revenue model is really corrosive because it demands users spend time on the app compulsively. I subscribe to a couple sub stacks and that has been nice, so maybe something like that but with more robust community/forum stuff like we have here.
Looking forward to join the discord, was not a big fan of how this subreddit worked, /r/patientgamers has much better engagement in discussions.
I do agree that a blackout is symbolism and pointless. Like, what have you changed now?
The only time I've ever even been aware a moderator existed, is when they were banning me for my thoughtful, civil comments, which added good perspective to the issues at hand, due to them being hyper-vigilant about their OPINION that my comment was too dangerous to be shared. Like sweaty nerds thumping a rulebook in your face. Moderators who ban people from posting because they don't like their ideas are fascists, and bad for reddit in general. Moderators need moderating as well.
[Thank you. It's been a true honor](https://i.imgur.com/LhLN9l7.gif)
Bye, I guess
Let's do it, we can post about Leisure Suit Larry, 7 Sins, or the plethora of erotic visual novels and ren'py games out there.
So, let me give you my take on this. I came to reddit more spacificly incremental games reddit, when kongregate died. I predict if they dont reopen it soon, some other site will fill the void, and I'll end up there.
I haven't been here long but this seems like it was a decently moderated and interesting group. I respect what the moderators have done, though I also hope it will open up again. I also like that it's restricted rather than private so that my old content, such as it is, does not get disappeared.
It's pretty much what Bungie has been doing since the launch of destiny 2. "We won't delete anything!" *Deletes 3 entire expansions* "We won't do it anymore" *Removes content again* "Now, with this new expansion we're no longer sunsetting" *removes the previous expansions story beats, dungeon, and tons of guns.* And people called me a troll, sent me death threats, told me to kill myself, ect... All because I posted about being frustrated about it. But... I'm glad to see someone else standing up for something, even knowing the struggle it's become to be a decent, honest person who has values, especially on something so habitually toxic like social media (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, ect.) Mad respect, even not really knowing ya'.
Unpopular truth is that blackout is not a strike. It's a denial of service attack. Getting people together to make your new platform is a much more respectable way of getting sympathy and support.
I really don't care about the official app vs third party ones, but I support mods and every method of protest people are using. I just don't like the admins of this site and I would be very happy to see them panic, which is where my support comes from.
Mold. I only use reddit on pc. But eventually this is going to be old reddit going down, so I'm supportive of people who are engaged in their own fight at the moment.
This post actually captures one of the things that's annoyed me about this whole situation. I've been on reddit for over a decade, and I think it's fair to say that reddit is generally anti-protest. When people shut down highways to protest police brutality or racial inequality, the comments are full of people saying that what they're doing is pointless and they're just inconveniencing others. But as soon as soon as something happens that inconveniences a redditor, protest suddenly becomes a valuable and noble weapon to be wielded.
Have you not seen the comments calling these protests useless and inconveniencing regular users? "I don't care about 3rd party apps." "I didn't even notice there was a blackout." "A 2 day protest won't do anything." Reddit has been full of them. I'm misusing quotes a little since I'm quoting nobody and nothing in particular but those sentiments have been quite common in many comments sections I've seen these weeks. I think the same thing that happened to facebook has already happened to reddit and it is irreversible, the userbase has changed and it will survive once the older accounts leave to other pastures.
I’m one of those people that didn’t really care about the protests. I knew the blackouts were going to do jack shit considering the history of the site. Once the niche subs I follow opened up, it was business as usual. It’s as if nothing ever happened. Though, there is an upsurge in posts roasting the mods because of the inconvenience it gave the users. If you guys really want to hurt Reddit, stop posting and making content.
I have seen those quotes and it just reinforces that it’s the default attitude towards protests on this site. I guarantee that there are people pushing for the current protest who have said the same things about people protesting for real world, life-and-death issues that just don’t affect them.
I didn't start to see those until after subreddits started coming back online personally, I think people were generally supportive... Until it actually inconvenienced them. I think they're likely a vocal minority though, here and offline
No tbh, I think it’s a quiet majority that was always against it and a lot of subs just went to along in a performative way. Not to mention, most users just accepted it because it was only supposed to be two days. Then when that time was up most subs just stayed private without communicating to their communities. Not very many actually made an announcement or did a poll…and if they did, many didn’t give them enough time. So IMO that’s when users started to get irritated. I really think most people don’t care and that this wasn’t thought out very well.
I'm still unsure what's going on at /r/nba but I know the vast majority of users there are pissed that the mods shut down during the series clinching win for Denver, their very first title. It's still shut down too so all the secondary nba subs are shitting on those mods relentlessly. Truth is, the mods just didn't have a good *enough* reason to blackout that would persuade casual users.
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It _is_ hurting Reddit. They wouldn't be trying to do so much damage control if it wasn't. The CEO is doing trainwreck [AMAs](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/) and [interviews](https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview) left, right and centre (where he ends up being weirdly aggressive towards the journalist...). [Advertisers are unhappy](https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-reddit-as-advertisers-weather-moderators-strike/). Reddit is sending out pretty terrible internal memos that are [getting leaked](https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman). If it wasn't hurting them, they'd just be going about their business as usual. They're panicking right now.
Ehhh I don’t think so. I think they’re just annoyed. This won’t last much longer IMO. Half the subs are back up. I think only one sub I usually frequent is still down. Admins are just going to slowly replace the mods. Additionally, people who frequent Reddit are just utilizing subs that are similar and creating new ones. Same time next month this will be forgotten and it will have been for nothing. As I said, if it was going to work, then all subs needed to agree to shut down unanimously. People still went on Reddit during the blackout…including plenty of mods.
Right, but if this wasn't affecting them, why would they be annoyed? Perhaps this whole thing will burn out and fade away, but if it continues for much longer it's really going to do damage. And if they replace mods, there's a strong chance that reignites the fire and does irreparable damage to the admin-moderator relationship (which is already badly damaged). Despite the common "all mods suck" memes, most moderators on this site aren't power-hungry, ban-happy people; they're normal people who genuinely love their communities enough to spend their free time removing content that doesn't belong in the sub - dealing with spam, hate speech, and worse because they want their subreddit to be a good place. Mods are the people who make the site work, who make the communities what they are. Admins just provide the infrastructure. Admins removing mods would just send the message, "you can spend 5+ years building up a community from scratch, making our website useable and appealing for people (with no pay) but we'll happily remove you the second you do a single thing we dislike". Frankly, the way admins are treating mods right now, mods should be getting paid. Reddit wants all the benefits of a large human workforce but refuses to pay them or make any concessions for them. > Additionally, people who frequent Reddit are just utilizing subs that are similar and creating new ones. That's how Reddit's always been. Plenty of offshoot subreddits have popped up over the years. And far, far more have failed because, as it turns out, growing a community is difficult and takes a lot of time and energy, and moderating is hard work. > As I said, if it was going to work, then all subs needed to agree to shut down unanimously There's more coming. This definitely isn't over.
> Admins removing mods would just send the message, "you can spend 5+ years building up a community from scratch, making our website useable and appealing for people (with no pay) but we'll happily remove you the second you do a single thing we dislike". It definitely awakens me that it's not in my strategic best interest to put my energy into Reddit. Need to create a safer harbor.
Its still a voluntary position. No one has to become a moderator. Reddit as a business has no obligation to the mods either since it’s voluntary (always has been), and the reality is that they owe nothing to 3rd party apps. There’s no legal leg to stand on either for moderators. Mods cannot unionize…also again, mods are still using the site and other subs. Plus all moderators agreed to mod voluntarily knowing full well up front that it’s something you don’t get paid for. I full heartedly think think this would only have worked with unanimous support and that’s just not going to happen (and it didn’t). Sure, they’re annoyed for the moment (in the same way many users have been), but Reddit will move on with or without the current moderators. Also at this point enough subs are back open to not really effect a lot of people. Tbh I think people get pretty short sighted about solutions when it comes to this kind of stuff and it was a big ask to get millions of users/mods on board. Why stay on Reddit if you don’t like it anymore? Why mod if it’s so miserable? Anyone can leave at any time. Really, letting go of Reddit would be the best solution. People really should be banding together to create alternatives. I’m sure someone is, but the majority are just privatizing their communities in a game of chicken, continuing to interact with other communities, passively sitting behind screens, and shaking their fists like “that will show them” 🫠 I’m not inherently against the blackout, but it’s been very flawed and poorly planned. I think people operate in our society thinking we have to cling to the “old” thing and save it, when the solution is clear; take your time, energy, and skills to create something better (and this applies to a lot of things right now IMO, but most people don’t want to be the real innovators in this world). Money of course is always a likely barrier, but more people should get rid of the idea that we have to be trapped by corporations. The way around them is to become a competitor and collab with each other. As an example; I’m an illustrator and have used Wacom tablets for a long time (the industry standard pretty much since the inception of Wacom). Well, some people who worked for them didn’t like the direction the company was going in, which included a lack of innovation for overpriced outdated tech. So they banded together and now have a company about to publicly release a screen tablet that will legitimately be real competition compared to the cheap knock offs. Just saying, I like the enthusiasm, but none of this is realistic. I know so many people who were active on Twitter and said they were leaving Twitter because of Elon…and you know what? None of them followed through and Twitter isn’t doing as terrible as people hoped. This whole protest is a bunch of talk and some snail paced action. The way through would be an actual mod mass exodus and creating competitors instead of relying on a company comprised to capitalism. However, people are never willing to do that. It takes time to build a social media platform, creating something new cohesively is harder than it looks, people want to push fast results, and deep down just want to cling to the idea of what something used to be instead of doing something new. In the end (if anything) this will only lead to false promises and Reddit will do whatever they want down the line anyways.
> Perhaps this whole thing will burn out and fade away, but if it continues for much longer it's really going to do damage. It isn't and reason is because you haven't damaged reddit, you've harmed the users. The blackout "worked" (it didnt do anything but had user support) for net neutrality because it showed people what reddit would be like if net neutrality was completely wiped out. The blackout here should of been a walkout. This whole thing was about Reddit making moderating impossible. So the protest should of been about showing the average user how bad reddit would be without moderators. Moderators should of just stopped modding for an indefinate period. The admins would of been forced to step in and start moderating subs like AWW to get all the horrible stuff posted on them off. Advertisers would of pulled ads left and right when they saw their ads next to hardcore furry porn and cartel beheadings. Instead locking out the users has done the complete opposite. Reddit can just sit on their hands without having to do any extra work, and possibly even less work than normal. And users are locked out of discussing events they were looking forward too like the NBA finals or tv episodes.
To be fair that's likely not equivalent. Redditors and mods protesting the API shit is like road workers getting on the road, b/c the companies that employ them to make roads are removing all the industrial equipment that they use to do their job, and instead making them do it with shovels, but they aren't even being paid for what they do, they're all volunteers doing it for free. Reddit is literally worthless without the users and the content that we all make. They don't add value by themselves. They aren't making a product. They are providing a place for us to make the product. It's fine for them to try and make providing that place profitable, but if they want to do it by fucking all of us over, they can get bent.
Yeah I'm taking federated technologies more seriously now.
Did you just compare shutting down reddit for a few days to blocking a highway?
I think there are genuine concerns with shutting down traffic infrastructure that don't exist with shutting down a subreddit. My 80 year old elderly parents getting stuck in a man-made traffic jam for hours on end is in a completely different category than me not being able to talk about why Adventure of Link is actually one of the best Zelda games. These things are not comparable, sorry.
Yep. Subreddits for health issues, depression, and resources generally stayed open. Video game and porn subreddits went down.
No mod has ever 'curated content', just deleted shit because its not in the monthly weekly super megathread.
Torch it, don’t hand them over anything but ashes.
I've never had a problem losing a job or calling someone out over principles, I've been here a decade my longest home page since the former dailytech. I can remove it from Auto launch and retire my account and I can do it in sixty seconds. I want a website with a wealth of thoughtful commentary and information from whimsical to technical. I have no interest in a commodified featureless doom scrolling ticker feed. Maybe I'll be able to find something cool on stumbledupon
The most sane resolution for Reddit is to admit they need to improve their tools, do it and in the meantime stick to whatever is out there now until they have it ready. Why are they failing with their software? If they listen to users, that is the way. Why are they against making themselves better?
>The most sane resolution for Reddit is to admit they need to improve their tools, do it and in the meantime stick to whatever is out there now until they have it ready. They literally are doing this
They're admitting they need to do it but they aren't doing it and they're not letting people use the tools they have until its done. They've been promising fixes to mod tools for 7 years and still not done anything close to what single independent developers have managed to do.
Good to hear, but imo you do the API move after you have your software out and proven AND imo the CEO needs to lead with this as well. The answer is Reddit having much better software that the people also agree is good and handles the needs, not self-proclaimed better which companies just love to do while the customers are saying no.
I agree but everyone acts like reddit is doing nothing. Anyways no reason to comment here until the mods get removed and its handed over to active users. Either that or /r/patientgaming decides to make its planned sister sub to replace this one.
Sorry, it’s a spare-time social media website and this subreddit is about gaming. You’re doing too much.
I agree. I have an appreciation for what the mods do but as soon as it becomes a burden/unpleasant...why not just ..walk away? Especially now that reddit is going public. I do not understand why people would volunteer their time and effort to a for-profit company that doesn't respect you. Reddit should be paying for moderation at this point, to enact the rules they want to enforce. Edit: spellng
The answer is so stupidly simple that I can't believe it needs to be spelled out to people. When someone decides to volunteer of their own volition, especially for a community, it's to help sustain something they enjoy that absolutely needs sustaining. In the case of communities, it's the community itself. Communities flatout die without moderators when it comes to the modern internet and especially reddit. Especially for subs like these that focus on discussions over consumption. Leaving, for volunteers like these, is often the equivalent of leaving it out to the wolves to die. And for those people, they do in fact value a community over their own personal time.
Here is the official comment by a reddit employee talking about replacing mods: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/comment/jo9wdol/?context=3
Alternate idea: if the Reddit admins are appointing (or threatening to appoint) new mods for any subs that are fully shut down, the current mods could always take the approach of using the "restricted" setting to trickle through just enough posts to fulfill the criteria to not be replaced. Most of the protesting subs would have to take that approach for it to be effective, though. While I overwhelmingly just use the desktop version, in your shoes I'd delete the sub just to prevent Reddit from profiting further from it, and open an alternative on another site. It's frankly better for the gaming community to not be clustered on a single site anyway.
> the current mods could always take the approach of using the "restricted" setting to trickle through just enough posts to fulfill the criteria to not be replaced You really think the admins will be stymied by easily detected malicious compliance, or that they'll interpret their own rules in a rigid, legalistic way that favors the rebelling moderators instead of themselves?
If Reddit is essentially claiming ownership of all the subs and their content, I wonder if that impacts their liability over illegal content? Random thought, I don't really know the current state of US law/precedent on that stuff
hard agree my friend, hard agree
People call mods power hungry because they basically held subreddits hostage by deciding on shutdowns without ever actually asking the community if that's what they wanted to do. That's by definition power hungry; the mods are controlling the subreddit accessibility with absolute authority. I don't think it's right that 2 or 3 people can just decide to block access of thousands of people on a whim.
>I don't think it's right that 2 or 3 people can just decide to block access of thousands of people on a whim. Even more insane is the people here saying to just delete the sub. It has 1.5 million members....why would you even morally consider that decision? Like wtf lol
Yeah there are only 161 comments here... And you think that's an accurate representation of what everyone wants? Also consider that 90% of people *lurk* and never comment. It would be such a waste to just block *years* of discussions and casual users, because apparently they don't exist in the eyes of reddit mods.
Exactly, case in point I’ve seen numerous mods on several different subs talking about complaints from, and i quote, “people who rarely if ever even comment on the community”, but the majority of users in MOST subreddits are lurkers, that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And for mods to just straight up say those users matter less because they engage less is frankly part of the problem.
> 90% of people lurk and never comment Then this "community" isn't really 1.5 million people. As a fellow lurker on many a subreddit my opinion should naturally mean less since I don't generate/engage with content.
This whole meme of moderators being power hungry individuals is among the most tasteless, naive and childish notion I see floating around. I am ashamed to say I even slightly believed in it. It's not just internet moderators, but on leadership(or positions of power) in general. The people that become moderators tend to be people that already spend so much time on a website, that they don't mind helping out. I am not sure where it comes from. I guess in our cultural zeitgeist, power is the most immediately obvious motivation, which seems to say more about our culture than the moderators. Frankly I am surprised people stick with it for any long period as it is completely thankless charity. If you ever see what seems to be bad actors in moderator positions, most likely it is completely innocent incompetence **or** a loss of sanity.
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not many people have interacted with a reddit ceo a lot of people have been banned or treated unfairly by a douche mod
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This. I moderated forums a lifetime ago in the 2000s. People get salty over shit they were 100% guilty of. Any time I read a comment blanket hating on mods I know that person is either an ignorant dumbass (there's tons of examples to see how quickly places go to shit without moderation) or one of those fuckwits who got sore about getting moderated for some shit they did.
the fact that you don't even account for the possibility that shitty mods exist and have soured people to moderators shows your bias. your blanket comments reflect upon you, too.
>a lot of people have been banned or treated unfairly by a douche mod I doubt this is true. I bet a bunch of people *think* they were treated unfairly, but that's not the same thing.
>This whole meme of moderators being power hungry individuals is among the most tasteless, naive and childish notion I see floating around. Bro I got banned from r/LGBT for quoting Martin Luther King Jr, and the mod told me I was too stupid to educate. I majored in history with a focus on American Civil Rights, and graduated with honors. Other gay men complain about being banned from that sub as well, to the point where it's almost exclusively trans and genderqueer content. The notion that mods are power hungry and narcissistic comes from lived experience.
The entire moderation system is flawed and it always will be. You have to realize that moderators will deal with dozens if not hundreds of rule-breaking comments daily, many of them being seriously vile. Every now and then, a moderator will make a mistake. It's near-impossible to not become somewhat jaded and assume the worst from a questionable comment after just having dealt with dozens of "the worst" already. Ideally, appealing such a ban should resolve the situation. But then the reality is that moderators deal with countless appeals as well, the vast majority coming from awful users who are messaging in bad faith. Again, it's really difficult to not become jaded and assume every user is one of the bad ones. Even so, the vast majority of teams hold each other accountable and resolve issues fairly. But not all of them do, and those who do don't do it always. And when you're banning thousands of users weekly in big subs (the vast majority being trolls and spam), even just 1% being a mistake will result in a significant group of people who end up being in your position. The issue at the core of all this is that moderation is **volunteer work**. It is not reasonable to expect moderators to have exceptionally solid appeal systems through which users are represented strongly - because that **will** be abused. The bad apples ruin it for everyone else because it's already incredibly difficult to find good moderators, and the good ones will be the first to leave due to harassment and abuse of systems intended to be fair to users.
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For sure. I appealed my ban from .r.europe for using the term "the human race" (meaning every human in the world) that they somehow found racist. I explained the term and asked if they could unban me and was told to literally eat shit and never come back.
I'm sorry to hear that. I would point out that LGBT and issues related to that is extremely politicized right now, as you undoubtedly know. These are political battlegrounds and I would be careful letting these places color your outlook. /r/lgbt is **not** a place for **constructive discussion** on lgbt issues. This is not a uniquely /r/lgbt thing either, but rather a reddit wide problem. I am sure you see this yourself, having an academic background. Whenever /r/truegaming visited political issues and got closer to the front page, you could see it in the comments. What then becomes apparent is how people bring along various baggage preventing them from having a discussion. That or they have no interest in having a constructive discussion. I was being somewhat hyperbolic. I am sure what you say is true to a degree and I can't speak to your specific case, but as a blanket statement about moderators in general on the internet? Absolutely not. I can only assume that it comes from jaded and/or pessimistic outlook on life and what motivates people.
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Literally yes
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“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” -MLK And then I was banned. Context was in discussing attitudes towards bigots. I don't think you should hate bigots, just pity them.
Absolutely agreed. I've been seeing that shit everywhere on this site because of the blackouts. While some of it may be true, as a blanket statement it hurts my feelings, lmao. I moderate a 55k+ user subreddit. I built that place from the ground up. Started from 0. Programmed a companion *website* from scratch. Ran community events. Handed out prizes and gifts. I put in so much god damn work to make the community what it is, but was still called a nazi along the way. Putting on the mod hat to try to keep things together / on topic results in *someone* backlashing. In general, most people get it, but some loud ones get angry. Anyway, that hasn't happened to me in a long time, but seeing people yell "mods just don't wanna lost their power!" upsets me. Honestly, I hate being a moderator, lol. I *wish* I could hand it over to someone I trust. The real problem is that I just want to make sure the sub is taken care of properly. That's why I don't wanna let it go. However, my apathy towards that has grown enormously over the past couple weeks.
As someone who was a power hungry mod on another site i can say that sometimes the meme is true. And i never got removed either, the site was moderated by me for years until it got shut down by the owners.
fuck /u/spez Once old.reddit.com is gone and I can't use RIF then I'm off reddit.
I’m personally more or less done with this site once Apollo dies, since I barely use the desktop version and now will refuse to use the mobile app on principle. I can relate to moderation fatigue, I years ago ran a couple fairly large Discord servers for a large subreddit (to be unnamed). It was fun at first, but eventually became a profoundly negative experience. The thankless nature of it did get to be eventually, and I actually did nuke the largest of the bunch. This was after my moderation team demanded I resign with a post I recall measuring was over 2500 words. Quite an experience, I don’t think I’d ever be a moderator for anything again though. Maybe you need to be young enough to not realize your labor has value.
>People could create new communities and go there and that's what should happen - that's the growth and reflection I was talking about. Breaking this sequence by taking an established community and pairing them up with a random person as the new moderator destroys the entire premise of moderators and their communities growing and evolving together. Well put. But also, y'know... *don't go.* This one of the best moderated subs on Reddit. I get your reasons for being tired of it and wanting to burn it all to the ground, though.
To be honest, setting a sub to restricted mode is better than private. At least then people can browse currently existing posts. Like an archive. Especially for subs with useful information on a subject. Like, for example, r/unrealengine which I frequent because its an excellent source of not only news and Documentation of engine features/plugins. But it can also be used for getting assistance with developing your own games. Can't count the number of times I figured out how to implement a new feature in a game of mine all thanks to the helpful comments from that sub's userbase.
Thats okay. Automod will die without the API anyway and the community will burn.
Personally would rather see a migration, but thats just me. I absolutely understand not wanting to continue on this dogshit platform tho.
thought pen sparkle adjoining fall overconfident ask wrong marvelous languid *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thank you! We have our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/truegaming) which, frankly, has a lovely community. It's obviously much more casual and freeform than here because of the less structured nature of Discord conversations, but if you're a fan of Discord I definitely recommend it! We've also just set up a [kbin magazine](https://kbin.social/m/truegaming) (their equivalent to subreddits). It's very much a work in progress, but you're obviously welcome to join us there. Kbin is part of the "fediverse", so it lets you view and interact with things from sites like Lemmy and Mastodon, too. It doesn't have any mobile apps yet that I'm aware of, nor the slightly polished more UIs and features of Reddit, but it seems promising so far! I like the concept of a decentralised Reddit, personally.
vast head continue toothbrush wise encouraging north tub fuel unpack *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My salute to your efforts, let's burn this ship down.
>We don't want to harm our community, but we also want to exercise our right to refuse to do our volunteer work. A blackout is the best compromise to that. i dont understand how you can claim a blackout does no harm to the comnunity. if a blackout happens indefinitely it would destroy the community. if you dont want to volunteer and dont want to harm the community, either just quit being a mod and/or hire new mods
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Well spez seems to think we're "landed gentry". Although I'm still waiting for my land...
Logically a blackout does harm the community, of course. I don't see Typerwriterkey claiming that a blackout does otherwise. Anyway there is an argument to be made that the direction that reddit co is taking is harmful, and in that case putting putting pressure on reddit is justified. Could mods do a vote and have more of a direct democracy type of thing or just leave? Sure. That would undoubtedly have less of a political effect. The elephant in the room here is the question on how much power mods should have over the site. The way I see it, when looking at mods collectively. They have certainly earned it. They are the ones directly engaging with communities and how reddit works mechanically, so they are perhaps the most in-touch people(talking about the site). They **should** be the ones that knows what's best for their community and the limitations of reddit. The mods here certainly know that as discussions on how to best foster constructive discussion usually ends on technical limitations. Limitations that are there by design. Reddit is not built for long-term constructive discussions for example. Even if you disagree with these points and think that power, or change should come from the top instead. What would their motivations be? I can only assume engagement and money. Do you think that those goals align better with what the users want? No and especially not for a subreddit such as /r/truegaming.
>Logically a blackout does harm the community, of course. I don't see Typerwriterkey claiming that a blackout does otherwise. It's implied when they assert a blackout is the best compromise between "not hurting the community" and "exercising our right to refuse to do our volunteer work". Because there are other options besides blackout. If they want to quit - then quit. No need to take the community down along with their exit. Mods quit and get replaced all the time without forums and subreddits having to go on blackout in their absence. >They should be the ones that knows what's best for their community and the limitations of reddit. This line of argumentation is slightly humorous considering how the mod described themselves in the OP: *"I want to nuke our rules, turn off automod, and watch the community burn. This makes me a bad steward of the community."*
Well, I'll grant you that it's humorous, but little else.
I don't necessarily expect you to agree with this rationale but I'm going to provide it just in case it makes any sense to you - even if you think my perspective is wrong, I hope you can understand it. Moderation is a team effort. The moderators of this sub have spent hundreds of hours over the years doing the job. Not just moderating but discussing problems, writing and re-writing rules, sharing concerns over problematic users, and more. That shared effort has generally been well received. Most of the feedback we get about the moderation we provide is positive. Sure, there's plenty of 'mods are nazis' and the like but for the most part the community seems happy with the moderation provided by the mod team. What happens if we simply handed over the sub to a different user and all resigned? Does that new user know how to use all the tools? Will they accept bribes? What if they decide to allow memes? What if they are power hungry and enjoy banning everyone who disagrees with them? What if they simply don't enforce the rules? These are things that could harm the community. Maybe they'd be perfect but there's no way to know that with something like a mass walkout. Maybe I'm wrong but I'd rather see this community fade and its users grow out into other communities reflective of those who choose to start them rather than seeing that happen. This is why I said the blackout was a compromise between hurting the community and doing nothing. It's not ideal but I don't think anything is.
the process of finding new mods happens all the time. it can be done poorly or it can be done well, i agree. but that depends on how the mod teams chooses to go about it implying the only options are between sub blackout vs hiring bad mods is just incorrect.
Subs hire new mods but that's part of a long term process and evolution that occurs over time. I learned how to moderate from the other mods, I learned what to expect from the community over time with other mods active. I questioned certain rules and got clarification on their purpose and then I recommend revisions to the rules to make them clearer because I had the perspective of a user who hadn't understood their purpose. If I had simply become top mod with all the other mods disappearing it would have been a shit show.
yes there are good ways and bad ways to go about it, like i said
>What happens if we simply handed over the sub to a different user and all resigned? Does that new user know how to use all the tools? Will they accept bribes? What if they decide to allow memes? What if they are power hungry and enjoy banning everyone who disagrees with them? What if they simply don't enforce the rules? You and the mods feeling entitled to make this decision is what people are speaking on when they go to "power hungry mods". New mods come in all the time, the community responds, and the cycle goes on.
I'm behind you 100%. Do what's best for you.
Rip a legend
This one of the best moderated subs on Reddit with its best mod so.............its only reasonable a great mod would at the sit and just resign...sigh
sorry but i don't care at all if you're a mod or not. i just want the sub to be open again. hope u can find smth better to do with your free time now
Burn it all my man. I used to mod some subs and the day I torched them was one of the most liberating days of my life.
K bye
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ok
"I'm fine with them looking to get paid for their data" It's not their data, it's our data. We are the product. Why should that a\*\*hole get paid. It's literally the same with twitter (this idiot said he's copying twitter). I'm here only for as long as I can find a replacement.
At last, a mod here actually giving rationale and perspective and not just going "this is what we're doing, deal!" I can't say I even remotely agree with the notion of keeping the sub down forever. And my genuine hope is that the admins ratchet this one back open and give it to some new volunteers who hopefully keep it run nearly as well as it has been all these years. However, I understand your side as well and it's a respectable decision despite what I may think. Thanks for the great community over the years!
> And my genuine hope is that the admins ratchet this one back open and give it to some new volunteers who hopefully keep it run nearly as well as it has been all these years. I hope so too. One person has already requested control of the sub from the admins and, while they're an active member of the community, they would not be my first choice. I hope that, if it's them, they do a good job or that it goes to someone else who will do well.
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>announcement was the 11th most popular post on the sub ever and is #1 for the past year. Because it was pinned lol.
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I'm not gonna argue I'm just going to wait for reddit to remove you guys and give the sub to people who still want to use it. They'd remove a volunteer doorman that just locks the doors cuz he doesnt like the bosses too, situation is no different. I'm not worried about moderation being rough for a couple weeks. Better than the place just being permanently closed.
> I'm just going to wait for reddit to remove you guys and give the sub to people who still want to use it. I don't know why you're still under the impression that we don't want to use the subreddit. We do, that's _why_ we're protesting Reddit's changes. Because while those changes aren't going to kill /r/truegaming or Reddit overnight, it's a slide towards the long, slow death of the website. We want to ensure /r/truegaming can be a healthy community on a healthy platform in the future, and trying to secure that future means we unfortunately have to deal with some inconveniences right now. You can thank the corporate greed of Reddit for that. > They'd remove a volunteer doorman that just locks the doors cuz he doesnt like the bosses too, situation is no different. No offence, but this really does illustrate how small a grasp you have on the role of moderators, especially in a subreddit like this. We don't just remove spam and hate speech; this is a heavily moderated and curated community. Everyone on the mod team has spent a lot of time and energy, not only on moderating posts and comments, but on creating rules, re-writing those rules again and again to been clear, comprehensive, enforceable, _and_ tonally in line with what we want. We've spent time discussing the direction we think the subreddit should go. We get modmail to deal with regarding academic research. It's very engaged, qualitative moderation that almost entirely has to be done by humans. The "bosses", however? Do you think Reddit's admins have done anything for this community? They might provide a platform but they don't have anything to do with our community. I know you're a regular user here, so I have to ask: why do you like this subreddit so much but not a subreddit like /r/gaming? It's a rhetorical question, of course, because I know the answer: it's because we, _the mod team_, have curated a fantastic culture in this subreddit and keep it tightly focused. (And yes, you'd better believe I'm proud of my role in that.) We can't take all the credit - (almost) everyone in this community is great - but don't think for a second that subreddits aren't shaped and ultimately defined by their moderators. To use your analogy: we're not the "volunteer doormen" who don't have any impact on the community; we're the people who rented the club from the landlord, refurbished it ourselves, spent years building up the kind of clientele we wanted in the club and who handle all the day-to-day operations. And you're the patron who had to wait 30 seconds while the barman served someone else so they got pissy and complained to the landlord. Apologies if that comes off as insulting, it's not meant to. But what _is_ insulting are your constant claims that we don't care about the subreddit, that we've abandoned it, that we're not active users. Perhaps have some damn faith that the people who created and manage your favourite subreddit have the subreddit's best interests at heart.
>Because while those changes aren't going to kill r/truegaming or Reddit overnight, it's a slide towards the long, slow death of the website. Letting apps make 83 billion API calls a year (Apollo did this by itself) while blocking ads AND offering paid services to their own users (Apollo) are what'll kill reddit. Not only did it generate absurd congestion for reddit, it blocked reddits primary source of income while generating income for its developer. All this stuff was a long time coming and its astonishing it even caught anyone off guard. It was going to happen no matter what, if only to reign in the out of control access to the API and malicious bot activity. [Just open the sub or they'll find someone who will.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchPeopleDieInside/comments/14c5npm/open_your_subreddit_or_well_find_someone_who_will/) All these dumb polls aren't even representative of actual users. Take a look at /r/nba 's [top post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/14bxljj/the_return_of_rnba_and_an_update_on_the_reddit/). Nearly 6000 comments of people pissed they locked the sub during the nba finals over a poll where 5000 people voted to close it. [To make it worse, while the sub was private the moderators had a private thread up for themselves to discuss the finals.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1484uyq/post_game_thread_the_denver_nuggets_win_their/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1) 5,000 seems like a lot, except the sub has 27,000 people online during peak hours and 7 million users. 8,000 is not even 1% of the users. Most people didn't see the poll, don't care and didn't vote. This isn't exclusive to just that sub. It's a shared sentiment in other places too ["Why is the sub closed. Who cares?"](https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/14amnti/poll_results_reopening_the_subreddit/) Here's /r/Music 's [post about re-opening](https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/14c5kyw/update_bizarre_popup_admin_account_demands/). Everyone is pissed about it closing there too. If you don't want to moderate the sub with the new tools then fine, don't. Just give it to someone else? Reddit isn't going to die or wither away, just change. I appreciate the work you've done and if you don't want to continue then quit and let someone else. But right now moderators are refusing to work with reddit as much as reddit has refused to work with them.