Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’ | Hacker News Reader

Reddit CEO tells employees that subreddit blackout ‘will pass’

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242 pointsmfiguiere259 comments

If the blackout is only for two days then they're right, but if they continue indefinitely it could force a change (reddit is currently unusable since all but one sub I enjoy is gone, if it was gone indefinitely then reddit would be indefinitely out of the picture for me).

They’ll just replace the mods if the popular subreddits go longer than 2 days.

Good luck finding hundreds of new mods.

They can pay for it with their increased revenue from the new API pricing

I don’t doubt they’ll have people lining up out the door to be mods… whether someone you picked with zero vetting because you’re in dire straits is going to be a good mod though is very doubtful.

I can see things going very sour if they choose to replace long standing mods.

> someone you picked with zero vetting

As opposed to the current state of affairs, where it is someone you didn't pick, also with zero vetting.

Reddit mods are causally picked by the users. If they don't tow the users' line you're looking at even more drama (there has already been tons of mod drama in the past). The slightest hint of power hungering is enough to set off a wildfire across the site, so anyone that is lining up is probably unqualified to begin with.

The current set of volunteer mods are by far Reddit's largest asset - especially on the major subs.

I suspect they're already moderating more subs than they lead on publicly. I see no way the big subs that have remained open aren't being moderated by someone on Reddit's payroll.

That means they'll let these subs go dark, claim they're unmoderated (even though they could take over them right now), and expand their internal moderation team.

I keep seeing this sentiment everywhere. There's absolutely zero support for it, whatsoever, other than that folks can't possibly imagine that most of reddit's value is built on the back of volunteers.

Are you kidding? There's no shortage of would-be petty tyrants willing to work for free to get a little taste of power. Insofar as the current mods think they're better than this, they're just getting high off their own farts.

Cheering for them to do that for r/nba already. Mods blacked out the sub on the last day of the NBA finals. Zero common sense.

This is the entire point of the blackout, make reddit unusable to demonstrate that damage to reddit can be done if they don't change their plans.

I care about basketball, not about API costs and I don't find mod's job that much useful for aggregating daily threads on results and most recent NBA relevant tweets.

If basketball discussion is what you care about, then who cares if the discussion takes place on Reddit? Forums are a dime a dozen.

so you care about having a place to gather, to talk about your hobby and usually at the mods' effort to aggregate content (I assume since these are always the most upvoted and most commented threads on match day), but you don't find their job "that much useful"?

"I care about getting my $2 T-shirts, not about whether Walmart's employees can afford to pay for rent, food, and heat in the same week without relying on public assistance!"

Just because you don't appreciate the work that other human beings do doesn't mean that they deserve to be treated like shit, nor does it mean that when they stand up against greedy bastards who care neither about them, you, nor the product or service they're selling you should throw them to the wolves just because it inconveniences your life.

Reddit modding is a hobby, not a job you do to feed yourself, stop with drawing ridiculous strawmans.

what percentage of reddit users use apollo or another 3rd party app?

Depending on which post you look at somewhere between 1% - 6%. But, the more important question is which users use Apollo (or other 3rd party tools).

The answer overwhelmingly is mods and content creators, the most important people to Reddit's success.

Your anger is justified, but directed at the wrong people.

That is precisely the point, hit 'em where it hurts.

At some point, if they remain closed, Reddit will just take ownership of them, suspend the mods and reopen the reddits.

They will however need to do it carefully, probably after most others have folded and reopened, so as not to cause another blackout.

But ultimately it's their platform, they can do what they want. Maybe they will just have to start actually employing the mods, which may actually end up a net positive from this fiasco.

the unmotivated mods will tank the subreddits and Reddit doesn't seem to be in a position to pay the mods

Even worse if the mods just walked away. Reddit is completely beholden to them, but the mods aren't beholden to Reddit at all (except for imaginary internet points). The likes of Voat are a good example of what happens with lax moderation.

They can just disable the private subreddit feature without changing absolutely anything else.

Reopening is one thing but moderating an internet forum for no pay is not universally appealing.

Losing the most motivated mods may be a big loss, or extremely active users who post and/or make content. Hard to know right now but I think we'll get an early glimpse when some reopen.

Who will they give the job to, and what will they pay them?

Most of the reason Reddit works at all is because of the huge number of volunteers doing moderation because they're passionate about their sub. If Reddit had to pay for moderators they would be bankrupt in a very short time. And even if it did replace mods with its own people (whether paid or not) the quality of the sub will drop.

The problem is that reddit's entire system depends on unpaid labor from volunteer moderators. And they just pissed a lot of those moderators off.

Yeah, reddit can reopen those subreddits if they want to and kick the mods. But who are they going to get to moderate it? They can't afford to hire staff to moderate themselves, reddit is already unprofitable. Are they going to do an application process for scab mods? That will be an extremely unpopular fiasco.

The end result is either reddit capitulating, or becoming an absolute shell of its former self. Most likely they will compromise, charging third party apps for API access but an amount that is feasible. That is capitulation, because the entire point was to kill the third party apps entirely. There's a reason that all their compromises so far revolve around still supporting the third party moderation and accessibility tools. They want the moderators, they need the moderators, they very much want to be done with third party clients.

Moderation is the worst part of Reddit. If this succeeds in running off these folks, I’d consider that the best outcome.

Moderation is also the best part of Reddit. You just don't notice the moderation that's good—almost by definition.

I used to hang out on a forum where people regularly said they liked it because there was no moderation. Conveniently forgetting that if you woke up at 3am the boards had posts from Thailand, or India, or Russia and in the morning they were cleaned up.

That board never had no moderation, it just managed it in a way where most people either didn't realize, or appreciated it. Then if someone crossed one of the few lines they would start screeching about how for X years there's been no moderation and the boar has gone to shit.

I personally woudn't mind not having moderators, as the ones we have at the moment are really bad and have pushed their political views in apparently impartial subs (like /r/politics).

I frequented /r/cfb and /r/collegebasketball, which are terrific and very on-topic. Very little drama there. I can easily imagine those going to the dumpster without their mod teams.

I think the general reddit community underestimates how important moderation is. Yes, you have some moderators who go overboard, push a personal agenda on something that's supposed to be a neutral subreddit, etc. But subreddits without active moderation very quickly (in order of increasing tragedy) lose their focus, get overtaken by spam, or become hangouts for Nazis. reddit closes unmoderated subs for a reason.

Also a large chunk of the people who complain about moderators are actually upset that moderators stop their subreddits from being overtaken by Nazis. If you want completely unmoderated anonymous public discourse, go to 4Chan and see how it goes there. Though even that is moderated.

I don't want zero moderation, I just want good moderation, which is not the case when you have a few mods that push their agenda over many enormous subs.

I mean, why not create your own subreddit then? All you have to do is create it with a small group of people to see it, post good articles, and keep a 24/7 watch to kill the comment and post spam going to viagra and obvious trash.

I'm not interested in unpaid labour, I barely have time to do the paid one.

So to be clear: you're fine with all the moderators leaving, but you don't want to moderate, but you also don't want there to be no moderation. You would like an arbitrarily "good" moderation you agree with completely, from someone else. Fantastic. Online community in a nutshell.

I just want reddit to moderate the moderators (there are very few that push an agenda), to me it doesn't seem an archaic idea.

It feels like there is a bit of contradiction inherent in your position here, no?

Why would it be?

Because any good ones get banned by reddit?

Is this an actual question?

Any examples?

I am surprised people haven't just made new reddits. I am subscribed to a lot of alternate subs because the mods acted overpowering so there is no reason to think that new subs cannot be created until reddit decides to just remove the mods.

The only thing they care about is bottom line, and this, "Huffman says the blackout hasn’t had “significant revenue impact”," is key.

To lose 95.8% of your site (judged by the 8467 out of 8838 subreddits gone dark) and not have a revenue impact at all raises some questions, primarily if there are any revenue streams based on usage, or only on monthly subscriptions and non-view-based ad contracts?

> To lose 95.8% of your site (judged by the 8467 out of 8838 subreddits gone dark)

That's out of the 8838 that made a pledge to go dark. Those ~400 are just the ones that went "restricted" (read-only) instead of private, or flaked on the pledge.

There are over a million subreddits, the blackout doesn't even reach one percent of them.

Anyone can make a subreddit if it's not been taken but you're right in that the real impact is by # of users affected.

I think if what I read is true that ~ 1/2 of the top subreddits went dark that is a big outage. FWIW my reddit is not really usable except for 1 sub that I read.

Your denominator is pretty much useless in terms of measuring user impact since subreddit subscriber size is not evenly distributed.

It's about 70% of the largest subreddits: https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/

There are plenty still open, but many of those million are dead anyway. I've made half dozen and abandoned them all.

CEO caught lying multiple times this week, known to abuse admin powers to manipulate narrative, and completely failing to understand the entity he is in charge of says there is no significant impact from the blackout. Nothing to see here, move along.

We are talking about the CEO who edited user comments that criticized him: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reddit-ceo-edits-user-comment...

It's about 70% of the top 1500 subreddits

https://blackout.photon-reddit.com/

Does not look like there is a huge dip in new posts/comments. Except for that short time when reddit went down yesterday.

> If the blackout is only for two days then they're right

Yeah... I don't know the tradeoffs at play but 2 days is... extremely insignificant / probably a bad decision by all of the moderators? It sends a message sure but, it's a bunch of "whiny reddit mods" versus C-level executives in a "help us make API more affordable versus help us not lose a ton of money offering generous free API hosting/usage" negotiation.

How does the CEO + team not just ignore this two day spat? They are in the business of making money. Why should they foot the bill for the API calls? So they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off. Sucks but at the end of the day, will it really matter in 6 months?

Now, blackout for a week or two weeks to really hurt their ad revenue traffic, sure

But 2 days?... lol

What the 2 day blackout does is it nudges people to explore alternatives. With this, Reddit management has lowered the barriers to exit. When the next boycott comes, migration for many subreddits will be easier.

> What the 2 day blackout does is it nudges people to explore alternatives

I don't think 2 days is significant enough for that slash I don't think an alternative to reddit exists given the fact that it has millions of users and millions of different niche subreddits

but we're already commenting on the only good reddit alternative... :)

You won't be talking about stocks or NBA / NFL / NHL on HackerNews (for good reason :))

For my hobbies (vinyl, headphones, audio gear, android), the forums are still the superior way to interact with other hobbyists. Some of these forums have been around since early 2000s are still around and very active.

Correct. I’m here because of the blackout and find it a refreshing change

Fingers crossed braindead redditors don't migrate here and ruin this space.

What alternate website can I tack onto a search to get an actual human's answer to a question that is otherwise only served by blogspam?

StackOverflow?

That works for a certain class of problem, but if I have a question about woodworking, home repairs, personal finance, a video game, or a bit of geography, it's not so comprehensive.

https://woodworking.stackexchange.com/

https://diy.stackexchange.com/

https://money.stackexchange.com/

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/

Perfection

no it doesn't, I have barely even noticed there is a blackout because there is plenty of content from non blacked out subs. The only thing I've noticed is when I try to visit subreddits I like some of them are blacked out. A 2 day blackout does literally nothing, just virtue signaling

Exactly. I said the same on reddit and got downvoted (not that it matters, but indicates the mindset of people downvoting). They really thing virtue signalling is sufficient and impactful lol. 48 hours means nothing.

It's not 48 hours though. /r/AskHistorians has gone permananently dark, or protected. Existing content/comments will remain, but only as an archive.

No they didn't, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/

> When the next boycott comes, migration for many subreddits will be easier.

Which will be when all the third party apps stops working and people realize what hot garbage the official app is.

It also demonstrates to Reddit management that the moderators are capable of a coordinated action.

> Why should they foot the bill for the API calls? So they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off. Sucks but at the end of the day, will it really matter in 6 months?

This would be all fine and well if their official app weren't garbage. They do everything in their power to push you to the mobile app, but they seemingly haven't improved it since its inception.

> This would be all fine and well if their official app weren't garbage

It's not garbage. I've used it for years. It's fine. Try not being dramatic online / feeding into the narrative that so and so app is garbage or not / parroting other things people say / being picky.

It is garbage. I've tried many times. Every time, my disappointment with the experience mirrored many of the complaints others have with it.

It may have been a "fine" experience for you, but that does not give you the right to attack ad-hominem others who did not have the same experience. If you want to attack their position, attack their arguments. Show us how the official app is at least barely usable. Or how navigation and search aren't like children's toys. Or how the iOS app actually got better instead of worse after Reddit Inc. bought it. Or how the Android app got any of the features the iOS app deigned to retain post-acquisition. Or how the YouTube-esque ad-pushing makes for a good UX. Or how comment scores and user karma aren't totally infuriating to look for.

If you can't argue on merits, you cannot participate in discussions of any kind except primary school 'no u'.

In the Android app, audio in GIFs (that have audio in the target link) have only infrequently worked for years.

I installed it today and uninstalled it. I also used 2 days a few years back, it was garbage so I deleted. Did that again today. It's not hyperbole to say the app is garbage.

I agree, it's not garbage. It's designed and optimized to provide a primarily image/video experience, and focus the app more on the endless scrolling / low information density, skinner-box experience that has infected nearly all social media. The de-emphasis placed on comments and discussion is clear from the design. The app is indicative of the direction where Reddit would like to take the site.

Needless to say, there are many people (such as myself) who enjoy what Reddit is/was, and would prefer it to stay that way. Emphasis was not placed on posts themselves, but rather the discussion surrounding the posts. This design goal is clear in the layout of the old.reddit.com layout, which is optimized for information density, back and forth conversation, and parallel conversational threads (quite unique compared with modern social media apps).

So long as third-party apps and the old.reddit front-end exist, Reddit can still exist as a discussion-board focused site that (in the minds of some users) keeps the site unique. With the death of third-party apps, we are forced into the vision that Reddit has for the site instead. I'm sure that model gets more "engagement" (the skinner-box formula certainly makes a lot of money for other social media), but it also ruins what makes Reddit, Reddit.

Therefore for older users, it's not a matter of being "picky" that the app is "garbage". It's actually much worse than that. If the app was merely "garbage" there would be a holdout that the app could improve. Instead it's a fear that Reddit is changing the site dramatically to be more in line with modern social media. Those who like Reddit for being Reddit, and would rather Reddit stay Reddit than try to be Instagram/TikTok are obviously not happy with what they see as what Reddit is all about changing. There will be a similar outcry when old.reddit.com is inevitably sunsetted.

As a user who likes the old discussion board format of Reddit, I am obviously going to be unhappy when my personal favourite third party app (Sync in my case) dies. I don't need to doomscroll through skinner-box style feeds, getting a dopamine hit everytime a Twitter screenshot confirms my political biases, or strawmans opinions of those who believe differently than myself. Maybe I'll just go "touch grass" as the kids say these days.

This is my thoughts exactly. The app design and usability are fine enough, even pleasant in reference to using other modern social media apps. But what makes me sad is that I don't use any of those other social media apps for a reason. Specifically, I enjoy discussion and being part of a community, not just blindly consuming content and mindlessly scrolling. It seems like the era for that has passed though, at least in a centralized way.

Have you tried any third party app and compared the experiences? If you have not, you will not understand how crappy it is compared to third party apps.

have you tried other apps ? Just try relay for reddit, for one day and tell me reddit's app even compares. Being able to just choose galleries, image views, or cards, and have many other aesthetical features is priceless. Reddit's app is hardly usable in my opinion, not the way I use reddit anyhow.

You're in minority who enjoy garbage software. There's a good reason why people want to use alternatives and not reddit app and why so many Reddit users make so much fuss about it.

> they have to crack down on some 3rd party apps we all took for granted and kill a few apps off

I believe they aim for selling API access to AI companies, for (re)training data. Third party apps are just taking collateral damage.

If that were the case, they could offer exclusive deals to existing mobile apps that are NOT using it for AI/data-scraping. Reddit is also financed by the same VC's that finance OpenAI, do you honestly think they didn't know what was going on? They knew, this is not just about AI Companies, this is about control, and honestly maybe some Elon Musk fan-boyism by Steve Huffman.

2 days shows Reddit that the mods can organize. It's a warning shot.

Now, you can't entirely extrapolate from there to an indefinite blackout, but statements like this from the CEO seem like one of the best ways to make it more likely—especially given the average orneriness level of the stereotypical Redditor.

>Why should they foot the bill for the API calls?

You have a serious misunderstanding of how this works. They are footing the bill for API calls regardless. All reddit access by users is to external public facing API's. We are not on their internal network. They MUST have accessible servers + data costs. In all honesty the 3rd parties are probably more efficient as they are a lot less bloated which means LESS costs.

I'm just waiting to see third party apps that, in lieu of API access, work by scraping the website, and are a LOT heavier on the servers.

A major selling point of API's is to lighten the load.

These apps will then also be a lot heavier on the phone’s battery and the users patience. So I doubt they will retain the experience the users are accustomed to.

Not really, all you need is a server that does all the scraping using cron jobs/etc and creates a reddit api backend service that pushes up new content when new content is added. In this way all that extra load would be via some server on digital ocean or even serverless functions.

You could maybe even get away with the 100 calls/minute free tier if you were doing it that way. The problem is that the user can't vote, submit, comment, or check anything personalized then, which really limits the value of the third-party app anyway.

I wonder if Reddit will let arbitrary users generate their own API keys and then each user plugs their own key into a third party app as creds to stay within the free tier limits.

Right now the new "Dev Platform" (API) is waitlisted so hard to tell.

Well, there's also opportunity costs via lost ad revenue, which they're seemingly attempting to charge for.

> They are in the business of making money.

Sounds like they're pretty bad at it, then. 4 days ago, their CEO claimed that Reddit is not profitable.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_...

Cause he 10x'd their headcount.

If he kept headcount low like craigslist, wikipedia, etc. They would probably be profitable

Minorly profitable, though, not "giant IPO" profitable.

Reddit has investors who clearly want their money back with a nice return on top.

I'm not saying anyone planned it this way, but it's no surprise to see this particular length of time. You can't accuse the mod of failing care since they did participate. But then again, pushing it much longer poses the risk that the mod loses their subreddit to a new volunteer when Reddit inevitably forces the subreddit open again.

It'll only be for two days. Which means it's exactly as effective as gas boycotts.

I kind of like it, many of the large overpopulated subreddits are gone and more niche subreddits remain.

Reddit may have found a way to end the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

For me it's the other way around ... A lot if the high volume subreddits are gone leaving only the small communities that I have actually subscribed to ... And honestly, I very much enjoy the current state of reddit :-/

it's out indefinitely for me, the day I can no longer use relay for reddit on Android.

It's amazing how my muscle memory reaches for the spot that it was on my homescreen in any spare moment, and also excellent that my doing that has faded hugely even in the last day.

Before the blackout, many subreddits hinted at extending the blackout indefinitely if Reddit is being adversarial.

This seems adversarial.

Seems like someone determined to finish the task his masters sent him to do.

Extending the blackout indefinitely has now become a coordinated action via /r/ModCoord (which is the also the source of the list of blacked out subreddits that people are using), with an optional "solidarity mode" that involves blacking out one day a week in perpetuity (which they're calling "Touch Grass Tuesdays"): https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinit...

The irony of organizing a blackout to teach Reddit a lesson while organizing it on a subreddit.

It isn't irony at all.

Reddit gets almost zero revenue from the sub organizing it.

People aren't protesting Reddit in general, but a policy of reddit.

It’s not about revenue. As people have mentioned already, the CEO said the blackout has had almost no revenue impact.

it’s funny to create a protest and hoping for change by showing Reddit that the community can walk away…and then using reddit to organize it.

You are basically showing you can’t think of any good alternatives to organizing or chatting with people. So you will continue to use Reddit, even during a protest specifically about not using reddit.

“we will leave you if you treat us badly” and then also “I have to use your product cause I can’t find anything else.” Doesn’t work well together.

...Except that /r/ModCoord does have other venues, like the Discord linked in the sidebar. They mirror announcements to Reddit because that's the only place that's guaranteed to reach everyone involved, who are on Reddit by definition.

Sure, but shouldn’t they all not be on Reddit by definition?

If they don't need reddit, then they should stop using it to demonstrate that point.

> "I'm not addicted, I can quit anytime I want."

> "Okay then, prove it and quit today."

> "....No."

> If they don't need reddit, then they should stop using it to demonstrate that point.

Why wouldn’t you use every available, easy to use mechanism to broadcast a message? Clearly the actual organizing is happening on a variety of channels including Discord.

Because the message is “don’t use Reddit”

Use every available and easy mechanism, unless your protest is about one of them.

> Why wouldn’t you use every available, easy to use mechanism to broadcast a message?

Because continuing to use reddit broadcasts a different sort of message: they're a bunch of addicts who will come crawling back.

> Clearly the actual organizing is happening on a variety of channels including Discord.

All the more reason for them to quit using reddit...

The irony is that there is no viable alternative platform for the mods to organize on, demonstrating that Reddit has the market position to set high prices if they want to.

It doesn't take an intellectual giant to realize they are organizing on Discord.

This sounds like finding ways to fold without it looking like they folded. The question is simple - can they live with the new situation or not? If they are willing to, then protesting on Tuesdays is not going to do much. If they are not, then they are not on every day, not only Tuesday. I don't endorse either side here, but looking realistically, it's either win - Reddit changes their behavior to more acceptable - or loss - Reddit doesn't. Solidarity Tuesdays are just a form of the loss where people still pretend it's not lost yet.

For reference, 93% of the responses there so far are for indefinite blackout, and only 7% are for weekly blackouts.

There are a handful of subreddits (for example, one for recovering alcoholics, one for legal advice) that have decided that their value to the community is higher than the value of staying closed. So I think if it does get extended then the eventual outcome is that "general" subreddits will remain closed, and those dealing with, for lack of a better phrase, vulnerable communities, will show solidarity with weekly blackout days instead.

Funny you linked old.reddit, I find the new version unusable via firefox (I do not do mobile).

From Reddit's perspective overall this is a terrible idea, but from Huffman's perspective it's purely rational. If he has to walk this back it's probably not compatible with his continued tenure after all, the question of why this was done so hastily and rudely would inevitably undermine his leadership. If he just barrels ahead though, and prays that the addictions of mods and users are greater than their pride/desire to have a functional site, then he can possibly survive.

It's not as though there's a third choice, he can't realistically get rid of the mods and replace them, then expect that to not blow up in his face. He can't walk this back, and he's doubled down on libeling the dev of Apollo for example. "Stay the course and hope everyone just gets over it" is his best option, having already sunk into the quicksand.

IMO of course.

> he can't realistically get rid of the mods and replace them, then expect that to not blow up in his face

I'm not so sure about that. I would be very surprised if there was a high % of redditors that know / care about the mods or mod system. This could be the cynic in me but I bet he could eject all the mods tomorrow, replace them with more faceless accounts, and the vast majority of reddit's userbase would not see a difference.

Those that have been around the site for a while would notice and feel the change and not be happy about it, but we're most likely talking about a very small single-digit % of the userbase.

I don't think the problem with ditching the existing mods for new ones has much to do with how users would perceive the shift. You have to ask how the hell Reddit would vet that number of replacements in any way, how they'd find the required number of able replacements, and not just people who would (through incompetence or malice) run things into the ground. That's doubly true for the mega-subs which genuinely require a LOT of constant moderation, specialized automated tools, and so on.

That doesn't seem like a feasible path to me, and I think if it was remotely possible it would have already happened. The only way it COULD work is to get rid of the volunteer mod system and replace it with paid mods... and I don't think Reddit has the funds for that.

You're correct if you hold the assumption that they actually care about the quality of the content.

I definitely don't think it's a good idea for Reddit to do that as it will eventually create a substandard product. However, I do think if the goal is "profits at all costs" and an IPO in the near future (which is what it clearly appears to be), replacing a large number of mods with literally anybody is a possible path forward.

Again, it's a horrible idea and I think it would cause irreparable harm to the platform down the line.

I don't think the users mostly care about the mods directly. They will care about the effects of not having motivated, committed mods, because it makes the subreddits less pleasant or compelling to use. That is, there wouldn't be user protests, just lots of users drifting away because reddit kind of sucked.

I agree, it would be a bad idea. But I also think it would take time for the average user to feel the negative effects of such a short-sighted decision. Enough time, perhaps, for an IPO and cash-out for the c-suite at reddit.

Users will definitely notice when their favorite subreddits suddenly go to crap under the tenure of the new puppet-mods.

This decision comes from the board of directors, not Huffman. Huffman's job here is to be the whipping boy for their decisions.

The one login for multiple forums as nice but I wouIdn't mind it if they fold. But not HN. Today, I can just spin up a dedicated forum browser and save all the username-password there in isolation.

> he can't realistically get rid of the mods and replace them

Out of hundreds of millions of users, finding new mods does not seem that difficult. There are a lot of power-hungry users and people looking to leverage moderating for political or financial advantage.

There would be backlash, but I don't know what it would take for the real mass-exodus of Reddit. Lemmy/Tildes aren't showing massive numbers of new users that would make a real exodus (Lemmy has gone from 1k users to 18k, but that's far from 500M on Reddit).

* Source on Lemmy numbers https://the-federation.info/platform/73

Huffman isn't going to walk it back or he'd have done so during the Q+A. Like nobody doubts that mods are willing to take subs private, the move was telegraphed well in advance. Spez doesn't care, he's not going to back down on this change, that was the message from the Q+A last week and actually pushing the button doesn't change the status quo from last week.

They're gonna wait the 48 hours, lever open any major subs that stay closed, and move on with life. If mods leave en-masse there are "abandoned communities" procedures for new mods taking over or being inserted. There will always be someone willing to take on the work for the modicum of status and power it gives you. Some of those will be bad, and life will move on.

Don't mistake "terrible for the communities that have been built" with "terrible for reddit as a business", and yes you're probably also right that there is also "terrible for spez the person" in play here as well (there always is). Even if they lose 25% or 30% of the users turning it into Reddit-Shaped Tiktok, that may be more profitable for Reddit The Business than operating as a community platform. Because advertisers are, on the whole, willing to pay more than the average user, that's always been the thing about Facebook and Google and every other platform. Nobody's really paying for a Kagi subscription, in the grand scheme of things, that's a lot smaller revenue than Google selling Adwords and offering a free search service on the back of it.

But users have an emotional attachment to their posts and their community, and see it (rightly) as something they've built collectively and is being taken away from them. But that's not necessarily where the interests of Reddit The Business lay. Reddit-Shaped Tiktok probably is more profitable.

At the end of the day this is their platform, Spez is YCombinator and they're gonna chase the YC payday. You don't have to like it, but after the symbolic protest they are gonna clear the place out and get back to it.

If you want to build sustainable communities hosted by people who aren't chasing a payday, use Mastodon and Lemmy and Matrix, and not a Ycombinator platform or Facebook or other centralized service. Otherwise we're back here in another 2 years crying about how great Imgur Communities (idk) were before they cranked rates.

It is, of course, an ironic sentiment for YC, home of the “10,000x ROI or go home” mindset. Hypercapitalism is great up until it affects you personally, right? Very “bioshock”.

Tiktok bans leave a market gap for TikTok-Shaped Reddit and everybody in the industry wants to be the one to fill that gap. Spez is pivoting to profitability and 1000x revenue in classic YC style and people act like he’s grown a second head.

Fediverse is too disjointed, I want one place to go for all the seedy "ask reddit" stuff, or for "history", etc. Single-topic silos is a big feature that you can't get in the fediverse when there could be askhistory on multiple instances, etc, and when the whole community is going to different servers to access lemmy, etc..

A centralized reddit that is a co-op / wikipedia like org, would be better. It could still be profitable, it could still run ads even, but it doesn't have to take VC funding, or sell it's soul.

/r/de, THE German sub has extended till Sunday.

One of the fun things about reddit is that if mods decide to extend it indefinitely, users are free to create their own subreddits and move their conversations there. Any mod who thinks they're ultimately important in the grand scheme of things is deluding themselves.

I don't think that's true at all. Users can certainly create new subreddits, but new, compelling subreddits usually require... committed mods. Where are they going to come from, and why wouldn't they also care about these changes that make modding much worse?

It's essentially an empty threat.

No individual is all that important, but collectively, a bunch of individuals are extremely powerful. A bunch of angry individuals can destroy quite a lot in a short period of time.

The individuals that are deluding themselves are the very few individuals at the top of this scheme.

I wonder how many of the people coordinating the blackout sent the "challenge accepted" meme to one another, on reading this quote. It was sure the first thing that popped into my head, on reading it.

"We can remain r*tarded longer than they can remain solvent"

Reddit CEO's fragile ego was hurt during the AMA and his personal account was downvoted into oblivion. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and tank a couple of news cycles of bad press.

This 2 day moratorium is now much more likely to become a multi-week protest/blackout. Reddit board should look at issuing a "no confidence" vote on this guy.

Offer Selig the position.

Selig acquihire to head of iOS/mobile dev could have been a good move.

Selig would still be at the whims of product/marketing/the board so I'm not sure that'd be good at all.

> I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don’t want you to be the object of their frustrations.

LoL

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/are-we-the-baddies

Hans... they've got snoos on them.

Only said to make the protesters appear crazy.

inb4 paid actors coming up

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss, external popularity can paint a target on your back for 0.000x% of people (which, of course is infinitesimal but non-zero).

I myself have been harrassed for wearing local game studio garb because our games are "violent" and we have "problems with violence" in the city.

The game was a vampire fantasy battle royale, so not exactly a realistic depiction of gun crime- people who feel vindicated to act a certain way will do so without shame or impunity. Best to not give them anything to cling to.

I was sad to see Bloodhunt end development. Thanks for your work on it!

Ha! Thanks, I guess there aren't many "Vampire Battle Royale's"..

I didn't know it was shut down actually, hope you had fun with it. :)

True, but that statement might speak to his current state of mind.

Sorry, but he is right on that - if 0.001% really hate you and you have millions of users, then you have a lot of crazy people.

I'm so happy that this Reddit stuff is giving HN something to talk about other than ChatGPT.

until you mentioned it though

You just lost the GameGPT

I don't understand why reddit didn't respond to the initial criticism by decreasing the pricing/demands and just slowly implementing what they want over time. Doing it all at once seemed like a silly move.

I think they would’ve done that if they wanted to build Reddit more, but it seems like they’re betting on going public so the people that want to can take their exit.

They want to IPO very soon. Don't have the luxury of rolling this out over a year plus.

Were they surprised by the news that they will IPO very soon? I suppose there was nothing they could have done to avert this issue 2-3 years ago.

Not so silly if they are sure they'll crush the opposition. If they are convinced the boycotts are powerless, then the sooner they demonstrate it, the better.

Reddit's main asset is its community, so it is odd to cast the community as their opposition.

Looks like they either don't see the community as an asset, or don't see the protestors as part of the community. In either case, they do not think the opinion of the people protesting matters enough to change anything.

What I don't understand is why they simply don't do what spotify does. Free acounts have to use the official spotify apps but paid accounts can use third party apps and apis as part of their subscription benefits. I would gladly pay for reddit gold monthly if I got to keep using my ad-free 3rd party client of my choice.

hm yeah that seems like an obvious possible win for reddit, they would convert all the 3rd party app users into paid users. Maybe they simply didn't have that idea

That was brought up in a lot of discussions as something the users would be willing to do, but leadership so far has not been interested in engaging with those suggestions.

They want everyone to use the official app so they can advertise to paid users in the future. It's the cable TV model: get people to start paying for subscriptions by offering to remove ads, then slowly trickle the ads back in.

A paid tier lets you easily identify which of your users have disposable income, and then you can sell the ability to advertise to them at a huge premium.

Spotify's advertisements are quite different because they're basically worthless. Nobody wants to pay money to advertise to broke people. Their free tier exists merely as a funnel; the advertisements function as intentional annoyances to nudge people into paying for a subscription.

In other words: Because they think they can get 500% the revenue by abusing their users even more, they're unwilling to accept the 450% revenue they could get by making a reasonable compromise.

And now they're running the risk of getting 5% the revenue.

* No actual numbers were harmed in the making of this post.

The Athletic (sports news publication) pretty much did this exact thing. Originally marketed that you'll pay for a subscription so you don't get ads, and now for the last year or so they've added multiple ads in every article even though they're already behind a paywall.

Probably VCs or board pushing CEO to make hasty decisions. Profit over everything else.

It wasn't until they announced this that all the issues with accessibility came up either. They literally didn't think about it until now (because they didn't have to).

Also running a paid API service actually requires providing services to the third parties that are using them (like billing dashboards, etc).

I'm pretty sure they didn't really think this through entirely when they proposed it. Now that they kind of have a better idea of what they're getting into doubling down is just hubris.

For me, the recent goings-on at Reddit have made me fully acknowledge that this is a fundamentally different Reddit from the one I first started visiting over a decade. Change is inevitable. It therefore made it a surprisingly easy decision to uninstall the Reddit third-party apps (the devs who I am thankful to for making Reddit usable again) and I haven't missed it at all.

Louis Rossman was right about this in his video where he said "going dark for two days is actually saying the quiet part out loud, which is that you're willing to put up with this shit 363 days a year"

>Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private.

comforting to know he lies to his employees the same way he lies to would-be partners and users

reddark currently shows over 8000 subreddits as "dark" and that is under-counting. It uses the API to determine status, but only checks from a list of subs that notified of their plan to go dark.

I think he went about this completely in the wrong way and comes off as arrogant but on this I agree.

Many subs that didn’t go dark still seem to have plenty of participants and people need their digital crack.

I don’t see this being a digg moment for Reddit.

The problem isn't that no one can create a Reddit clone, the problem is that no one can scale like Reddit and do it at continuous loss just to be dominant

> The problem isn't that no one can create a Reddit clone, the problem is that no one can scale like Reddit and do it at continuous loss just to be dominant

Well, anyone with enough money to burn can, but most who could probably can find other, better ways to burn the money.

That's what i meant, because Reddit still is running at loss not profit

No, the problem with a Reddit clone isn't technical.

It's getting the network effect that's difficult. And as much as we nerds want to believe, the best technical solution isn't always what wins.

Right now if you had a perfect reddit clone and it didn't lag and didn't throw 500 or some stuff you'd be golden (provided you could scale)

But you don't have content or the network. That's the problem

Right now a large portion of Reddit is willing to jump the ship at all cost. You can't design for such events, i agree, but if you had a perfect reddit clone right now - people would flock even if there was no content. This is a digg moment. The problem is scaling up when there's demand, because people don't like lag and a half loaded tab. No one is stepping up as a Reddit successor because everyone know they have no pockets to scale to Reddit scale

The network effect comes from building actual networks. We don't need a reddit clone, we need good old-fashioned forums/bulletin boards that also interoperate via Fediverse standards. This solves the scalability issue, because individual instances would stay small, and would choose whether to accept "guest" interactions from users of other instances.

The problem with reddit clones is that every single freaking one I've seen featured on HN over the past few days has absolutely no idea of what it takes to run a proper social media platform. We abandoned tagging-as-categories two generations back. Active moderators are always better than hivemind moderation. They're so hellbent on trying to find a use case for monetizing their halfassed "build reddit in 24 hours" clones that they don't actually think about how to make the user experience better. Why the hell is the one guy working on a disbursement algorithm when his UI looks like shit and his site is unnavigable? Because he's a hobbyist, not an entrepreneur.

If you tasked a team to build a reddit clone and nothing else the only problem would be scaling and paying an aws bill (for decades at loss)

Having scaling problems and a big AWS bill is the consequences of success, though. I'm pretty sure the team would consider that a win.

That's where Reddit is at right now, they make no profit. You think u/spez would piss off the entire site for no reason? They desperately need profit

They also went from 700 employees to 2000 employees because they took VC money and have to grow grow grow. I'm sure one could make a sustainable business out of Reddit but nobody wants just a sustainable business.

Reddit makes no profit because it needs about 100 devs and support staff if we're being generous and they've hired over a thousand.

There is sudden death and there is death by a thousand cuts.

The current social media scene is dead. But its going to be messy because of the network effects, the poisson adtech models etc.

I'd be really surprised if the known platforms can somehow reinvent themselves. They are hostage to the same mechanics that prevents others to do something better.

Tend to agree with your final thought. The web is so different than it was in 2010, yes there are some promising newcomers but our expectations of a service are radically different in 2023. Also want to note there seems to be a general sentiment of fatigue regarding Reddit and social media in general.

But I do want to selfishly drop this gem from the founder of digg on the eve of their destruction, which mirrors so closely the quote from this memo https://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/22543843421

I deleted my account - scrubbed all of my comments and content first - and I've always blocked ads on reddit anyway. A two day blackout won't do much unless it extends indefinitely, but actually hurt reddit in their bottom line and they might actually think twice.

Mods are joining forces for an indefinite blackout https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinit...

I do hope a good chunk of mods extend the blackouts indefinitely.

Reddit will simply replace the mods if this becomes more than an annoyance.

For heavily moderated communities (eg r/AskHistorians or even dang here on HN), I think it's a mistake to treat mods as fungible. For better or worse, moderation sets the tone and timbre of the community.

I agree, but what really drives their userbase numbers is the inane crap like r/AmItheAsshole and r/pics, and those mods are replaceable.

They don't have a mechanism to easily find competent, committed mods. Incompetent mods will create evaporation of users.

As I predicted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36192312#36192983 they thing it's a blip on the radar and will soon pass and everybody would just consent to the new reality. The thought of their way not being the right way is not being considered and there would be no changes. They plan to just wait it out and count on redditors to fold and endure what they must. We'll see if they are right.

There was an idea floating around here about users downvoting en masse as a form of protest. While this could certainly disrupt the algorithm and content quality, it wouldn't require a massive participation. However, identifying and banning accounts engaged in systematic downvoting would be quite straightforward. A more subversive approach could be to invert the system - upvote low quality posts and downvote high quality ones.

Moved from Digg to Reddit back in the day. Used to love it, now it's more of a habit. Also, if you really look at it, it's just 9gag with extra's that I don't use. The way down is here, time for something new.

I've been trying mastodon but it doesn't scratch any itches, I just want to read other peoples comments and thoughts and learn from them. I actually don't even comment myself that much.

Do MODs lose money during blackout. If no, what's the incentive to bring them back quickly?

Mods aren’t paid, so no. There are mods based around commercial interests that might have some financial incentive—for example if you are an author and you moderate a subreddit for your books.

Reddit mods are all volunteers....

Got a chuckle from him addressing his employees with a "Hi Snoos".

Am I the only one surprised how hard they are doubling down on this?

His job is to double down on getting Reddit public with a successful IPO.

Investors want their $ back out of Reddit

With all the negative publicity this IPO is DOA. Not unless they push it out year(s) and do PR. Damage is already done.

doubtful. if the blackout doesn't stay, the issue will be forgotten about. The majority of users won't see a difference for awhile, probably until a bit after Reddit goes public and makes the API switch. and by then investors will have pulled money out, moderators won't be able to moderate, and Reddit will die slowly (or quickly, depending on spam volume after the switch).

An IPO is the least of his concerns right now. It is clear they are on the verge of bankruptcy and are panicking, desperately trying to find some source of revenue to keep the lights on. In the past they would find more investors, but investors have had enough.

He's not wrong that it will pass. Getting to this stage was a big mistake but doubling down now seems viable to me. I don't see this as Reddit's Digg moment - but maybe I'm wrong. It's definitely a big bet.

Does Huffman have supervoting shares? Little bit surprised he's still CEO given how tone deaf this is being handled.

>The peasants are restless but don't worry they throw tantrums often and have short memories. Fuck 'em cause advertising money is still rolling in

Also quite amused that he thinks a couple of mod tool improvements are the solution.

I would love nothing more than if actual independent communities actually had to build and maintain their own internet spaces again. I do not miss the days of forums - but there has to be something between the two, right?

But... unfortunately the CEO is probably right. Reddit is first and foremost a community of addicts. No one is actually threatening to spin off their own superior community space. (The closest we see are people trying to make knockoff platforms). Unless 100 new websites spin up and take away all of the community content, the addicts will just come back.

Why do you not miss the days of forums?

Translation: A large round of layoffs are coming soon.

They just did layoffs (although they're still like 3x bigger than they were 4 years ago)

And clearly third-party apps are the source of their money troubles.

If I had a job at reddit, I'd be shopping my resume.

Oh, that's a fascinating question. My prediction is one of two things will happen:

1) His prediction will come true

2) The mods who set these subreddits private will discover that private is way more palatable, enjoyable, and easy to manage than public and will leave it there.

... at which point, either new subreddits come along to pick up the public (with the former subreddits slowly collapsing into an elite or old-guard) or Reddit will drift into irrelevance, replaced by some other public gathering location.

ModCoord Response: (Suggestion for indefinite blackout) https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinit...

Some subs have moved from a limited time blackout to indefinite (r/Chicago and r/ChicagoMeetup have gone this route)

He's not wrong. How many times has reddit abused it's users knowing that they'll just take it because they are addicted? The only thing that will get results is if these subreddits go private permanently. But they won't. They don't have it in them to.

We saw the same thing play out with Twitter. You had a large quantity but minority percentage of users upset with changes XYZ, they left the platform for mastadon/bluesky/whatever, and Twitter lived on.

What does moving on look like? My guess is reassigning moderators of popular subs to big-corp sympathizers. Or maybe making the private feature a paid one (my personal favorite because it's a little petty). But it could be as organic as users making clones of the popular subreddits.

If you look to Digg vs Reddit-- Digg fundamentally changed the experience of a lot of users in an in your face sort of way. The Reddit changes may make it a fundamentally different platform now, but for the vast majority of users, they won't notice.

I don't know, Twitter looks like its dying, and not slowly. They're hemorrhaging money (income is WAY down by all reports and it wasn't making money even before) and it seems like most reasonable people have left. Musk seems to be overseeing a pond that is getting smaller and more toxic by the day.

Investors on hopium, an IPO now is DOA.

can someone help me understand what's the core of the issue is? is it because they are now charging for APIs which used to be free? i hope that's the not the issue because that's not a sustainable business. third party apps can grow revenue using Reddit's contents and Reddit don't see a penny from them.

if the issue is the amount Reddit charge per call, why can't those third party apps charge their users more based on the API charge? the whole thing seems bit immature from both sides.

This has been discussed at length but I will summarize for you. Reddit is charging exorbitant fees for API access and they gave an unreasonably short time to adapt. 30 days is not enough time to completely change the business model of an app, so 3p apps are shutting down. Customers have already paid for annual subscriptions to Apollo for example so the app has to keep supporting those customers or refund them. But they will cost millions just in the first year with the new API fees. The business can't survive like that, so it has to shut down.

i see. i didn't realize it was a 30 day notice which is pretty short.

> if the issue is the amount Reddit charge per call, why can't those third party apps charge their users more based on the API charge?

As a first approximation yes, the issue is the amount Reddit charges per call. The perception is that they are way overcharging for the calls, because the real message is that they don't want 3rd party apps to exist anymore.

This is a weird take. You're saying that 3rd party apps should just charge their users whatever is necessary to satisfy Reddit's pricing? As a user, I don't feel like that's a viable solution. Ultimately it's the users who pay and not the app makers.

How much is Reddit worth to pay for only on mobile and with a degraded (no NSFW) experience?

I mean that's a common knowledge, no? if the cost of raw materials goes up, manufacturers hike up the prices of the final goods and consumers pay for it.

Most people are perfectly happy paying for cost of materials + reasonable profit. It was expected. Reddit announced a month ago that were going to charge for API access -- no issues then. The Apollo developer himself already pays for API access for other services (like Imgur).

However when they announced both the pricing and the timeline, it's pretty clear that they are unreasonable. Apollo finding it unsustainable is just one developer and one app. Other developers tried to reach out to Reddit to actually sign up and get more information and they were ignored.

In principle, you are correct, this not a big deal. But in practice, it's been a total disaster. And didn't have to be that way -- they could have worked with their "partners" to ensure a win-win situation for everyone. Instead, they turned it into a lose-lose for everyone. They want control more than they want money.

Reddit would rather get rid of me than find a way for me to pay and I'd be happy to pay for it.

sounds like reddit want to kill all third party apps which is a bit unfortunate but this business practice is not very uncommon (Apple/Google with their 30% fees).

I'm not sure how Apple/Google 30% relates? Those companies do a lot to support businesses on their platform. If you don't want to change anything, you get free hosting. For payments, they provide the entire infrastructure to support developers. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement even if the fees are quite high.

If Reddit does want to kill all third party apps complaining about how they haven't done a single thing to actually support 3rd party developers is kind of moot. But the point of the protest is how underhanded that is; they would be manipulating users and developers by lying about the whole thing. And if they actually didn't want to kill all third party apps then they still lied and are also incompetent.

The reason why they provide the payment infrastructure is because they can control everything end to end. Imagine if they allow payments outside the app and expect developers to pay 30% for those transactions. Yeah, that's not going to work. I don't think Apple/Google does payment infrastructure out of good heart. They just want to know how much an app makes and how much commission to take.

I don't disagree and yet it's still a service that they provide. Dealing with user accounts, payments, refunds, taxes, recurring billing, support, etc is a pain (I know, I've done it).

He seems to be counting on it lasting only 2 days, which if the case, is easy to ignore. 2 days was presumably based on concessions from Reddit but since not the case, then hopefully as many subreddits as possible will hold out as long as possible, as the only thing that will affect change is continuing to hit their financial bottom line. If only a few continue to protest it becomes much easier for Reddit to ignore. Appears it's in mods hands at this point.

None of this will do a thing if people aren't willing to leave, and unfortunately I doubt many will.

The most powerful force in computing is laziness. People will trade freedom, autonomy, privacy, security, ownership of their own works, anything for ease of use.

Everyone should move to digg.

Well, I may be boycotting reddit forever, I guess. Had enough.

The one sure way to make a point, simply move to another platform. Let them die with their "passing".

Reddit refugee here, can someone explain why moving everyone to kbin.social is not being talked about?

To some extent, the answer to that question is circular: it's not being talked about, because no one knows about it. No one knows about it, because it's not being talked about.

As we've seen with various other social media implosions in the recent past, a big part of what makes a migration successful is exactly what made the social media service successful in the first place: network effects. Get enough people on board, have them spread it to their own circles, and you'll hit a critical mass and be able to migrate to the new service with most of the community intact.

Unfortunately, far too often the conversation around where to migrate to looks like the XKCD "Standards" comic [0].

[0] https://xkcd.com/927/

I can't get past the "snoos"

I went to Reddit, the page was black, so I just went somewhere else. I still don't see how this is going to motivate anyone to do anything.

> I went to Reddit, the page was black, so I just went somewhere else

It's that part.

Sorry Ukraine, I'll donate as previously, but sure am missing a lot of tips of who I can donate to that came from the r/UkraineWarVideoReport (amongst others).

Unbelievable - but screw you reddit. Youtube works fine, and united24 is still there.

Such a shame as I was really getting into reddit - I thought it was pretty cool.

See. They don't care at all. Just another day of internet outrage.

In the end, this "blackout" will do about as much as a change.org petition.

Even if some subreddits choose to extend the time period (even indefinitely) Reddit has no reason to really care - most of them are so small they don't 'move the needle'.

I appreciate that the decision Reddit is making and their justification both seem poor. But the response seems like people are missing where and how Reddit makes its money.

Leading up to the blackout, there were multiple threads on Reddit asking for alternatives to visit instead.

None of those threads received any non-joke replies.

The only thing that will make Reddit change course is serious competition. Probably not even that, since as long as the exodus happens after the IPO, it's the public that will be left holding the bag and not the investors.

Only the smallest number of users really, truly care about any of this.

The vast majority, 99%+ just use the site casually and don't follow any of this drama. They will use the site regardless of what goes on.

Even among those who are disgruntled, many of them will just come back to Reddit anyways, because it's large enough that it has a huge chunk of content that those alternative simply don't have.

The bulk of Reddit mods have so much of their identity riding on their moderation power that there is basically nothing Reddit could say or do to lose their free labor. Yes, there is a long tail of selfless reddit mods just doing their janitorial duties in some smaller subreddits, but most reddit traffic is directed to subreddits moderated by stereotypical mods whose physical stature resembles the shape of their place in the bell curve of traffic. They will never surrender that power because it's all they have going for them.

Of course it will, like all the previous reddit hysterics which were quickly forgotten. I m not sure if people remember that net neutrality Did not pass, and yet the world did not end.

The blackout is so ill-thought and self-limiting. If they keep the subs down, my subreddits will start attracting users. The mods have no option but to end the strike, because they are too addicted to their power.

If they insist to take this further, reddit will see it as a wonderful opportunity to shake up the community which has been stagnant for years. There is nothing unique about the subs that are down

The lack of regulated net neutrality is still something to be concerned about if you care about accessing sites and services at will without additional costs, limitations, or outright blocks.

The only reason a large effect hasn't been noticed is the protections offered at some state levels that enforce neutrality in practice nationwide (assuming you're in the United States).

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