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Comment by codeflo | Hacker News Reader

So, to summarize: Both Reddit and Discord force transfered seemingly officially named communities to the trademark owning entity. That sucks, but it’s also something that social media companies have been doing 10 times a week since forever. Is there something special about this instance that makes it news?

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Mostly that yet another online community is shocked to learn that they thought they were living in a house they'd invested their own sweat equity into building when the whole time, they were really living in a shantytown parked in a spare corner of some corporation's city.

If it ain't your computer (and if no money even changed hands), it ain't your property.

It always sounds strange when someone is talking about a "server" after creating a chat channel on a glorified IRC-fork.

TBF server is what discord calls it. And a discord server can contain a multitude of channels with fairly extensive individual customisation.

So it goes quite a bit further than “a chat channel”.

As far as I know they still stick to "guild" as the official term, but virtually everybody calls a guild a "server"

They changed all the user facing docs to "server" a while back. Internally the code might still say "guild", but officially they've embraced calling them servers.

Reddit did not "force transfer" the community, the top moderator was convinced to hand it over.

Reddit, for all its faults, goes to great lengths to give its moderators latitude and discretion to operate their communities, and only steps in as an absolute last resort.

The top moderator was changed at the request if stability to someone they had more trust in (but was still a community member and not an employee), and then they convinced that person to transfer. That person identified themselves as a minor.

I wonder if Stability fucked up by using a minor in this case. They seem to still view Stability in high regard, mostly it seems because they are hoping for future gain from the relationship, but I doubt they'll feel that way forever. Probably they won't feel that way for much longer given Stability's heavy handed approach. It might be a lot easier to reverse some of this once it's made obvious they took advantage of a minor.

Many people are under the false impression that Discord, Reddit, Twitter, etc., treat ordinary people the same way they do corporations and celebrities. Which is obviously false, as we see here--on these platforms, corporations win every time.

Social media died the day that Shaquille O'Neal was no longer @THE_REAL_SHAQ.

>Is there something special about this instance that makes it news?

I suppose one could go the, "SD had a minor doing the work, which they then capitalized on" route, but I find it a little uncompelling.

If SD had asked the minor to moderate the subreddit, then took it away from him afterward, that would be an issue. Doubly so if they were aware of his age. From the description that was given, none of that applied.

As it is, I see it as fixing up a parking spot for the CEO; cleaning the ground, repainting the lines, putting up a nice shiny plaque, all unasked. Then getting upset when the CEO parks in the spot and leaves garbage strewn about. It's not nice, or even fair, but it is not particularly surprising either. Hard work is rarely appreciated, even when it is actively being paid for. "Took you long enough" is a phrase I have heard thrown about on projects before. When work is unfunded? You will be lucky to get so much as a mention, let alone a head nod or thumbs up.

I just hope that he can learn from this experience and remind himself how much he is making the next time he takes up a project of this kind. There is nothing wrong with working for free, but it is crucially important to remember that the merit of working for free does not somehow entitle us to anything. It's not something that brings me any joy to say, but it is true.

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