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Comment by milkytron | Hacker News Reader

This is what is needed to put pressure on Reddit. A two day protest then returning to normal is a blip in the grand scheme of things. But if they do not change their API pricing, stance on third party apps, etc, then a prolonged blackout could lead to an eventual exodus.

I hope the communities I used to engage in partake in this prolonged blackout.

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> A two day protest then returning to normal is a blip in the grand scheme of things.

People keep saying this. It's true of the vast majority of protests. And yet, they keep happening, and I don't think it's because they're completely ineffective.

I'll grant I don't entirely get it either, but here's my theory of how they work: by being a show of unity, protests are an honest signal of power. In any case where the party being protested against is not willing to cause mass civilian casualties, unified rebellion is a genuine threat. It's an even bigger threat in a democracy, or a commercial setting. It's also a signal of willingness to accept costs (not guaranteed honest, but it's still pretty hard to coordinate a bluff in public).

The threat isn't so much the initial strike, as the promise that more will follow unless the opponent agrees to negotiate. Without such a promise, the strike would indeed be ineffective.

Negotiations are typically held during a ceasefire, not while the parties are actively trying to hurt each other.

I agree. In addition to your theory, I think that even if protests are ineffective in the short term, they can be effective in the long term. That is, the media attention given to protests can gradually change people's thinking. But it is a very slow and subtle shift, and impossible to measure. Of course, one might argue that shifts in the zeitgeist were already happening, and protests are just a symptom. Personally I think it goes both ways, they feed into each other.

We can hope that even if the Reddit protests ultimately go nowhere, they will at least have shifted public opinion, if only slightly.

This is explicitly what their CEO said. Many subreddits said they'd return on wednesday.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-...

Maybe I'm reading it in a biased manner, but that sure has the feel of "if we wait it out the pigs will get hungry and be back at the trough on Wednesday." I don't think they respect their users, he doesn't understand that's a big part of why people are getting so upset, and he just keeps talking. Lol.

> ...I don't think they respect their users...

What gave you that idea? The fact that spez (the ceo) was head-mod for /r/jailbait? Or was it spez firing the AMA mod that had -massive- community engagement? Or was it spez bullying one of the top reddit-app developers (Christian, Apollo reddit-app developer)?

Reddit /obviously/ respects each and every user, the app developers, the subreddit mods, and it shows! /s

Jeez, now he was the head mod of r/jailbait? This game of telephone is ridiculous.

There’s no need to slander the guy with false information. Reddit used to allow the moderators of a subreddit to automatically make someone a moderator of that subreddit. Then, as things like people being added as an r/jailbait mod against their wishes became widespread, Reddit changed to an invite system which required a user to accept an invite to be a moderator.

Here is a post on Reddit from 10 years ago describing in depth how the ‘new’ mod invite system works and also stating that you could be made a moderator against your wishes: https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/117wkp/reddit_ch...

Spez was not an actual moderator of r/jailbait, he was added against his wishes. Please don’t spread harmful lies about the guy, there’s enough true things about him to criticize.

You forgot ‘stealth edited the posts of other users by editing the database directly’ in his list of crimes, don’t forget that along with the firing of the AMA person and lying about the Apollo dev. Those things are all based in reality.

I disagree on the 'lying about the Apollo dev'. The Apollo dev definitely said 'I can make it real easy for you', 'Apollo can quiet down' 'you cut me a check for $10m' then he tried to backtrack when pushed on clarification for a 3rd time. Yes - there was an apology by the Reddit rep as far as misinterpreting but he did say what he was accused of saying.

Spinning it to the dev saying he was referring to Apollo as a "noisy API user" was really suspect, imo. I've never heard a heavy API user being called "noisy" and why even mention a number for a buy out multiple times? The "mostly joking" was a cop out as well. Is it a joke or not? Because when he was asked for clarification, he clarified $10m and 6 months again.

I really do not read the Apollo dev anywhere close to what you do. I read it has him writing that to make a point, not that it was actually a serious offer. I have no idea why you would think anything like that would be a serious offer. Or why a serious offer would be made in public like that.

Spez, the CEO, was a mod.

Moderation is a hierarchy and the CEO is the head of a company.

A CEO moderator is THE HEAD moderator.

Your attempt to quibble over meaning instead of acknowledging that the most powerful position in the company took on a powerful position of moderation…

… for /r/jailbait …

There’s no amount of spin you can put on this to make what I said any less correct or damning.

> that sure has the feel of "if we wait it out the pigs will get hungry and be back at the trough on Wednesday."

And he's probably correct. Mark Zuckerberg once called Facebook users "dumb fucks" but plenty of people still use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The addicts will return to the drug.

They've lost me, I deleted my accounts and blocked the domain.

I’m not sure if it’s even about that anymore. They were so antagonistic towards the issues it turned everyone off to the leadership.

I think a replacement of spaz would be the only thing that could move the needle at this point.

You know, I'm beginning to think that Reddit really doesn't need to do anything. It might be best from a PR perspective to let these mods kill their subreddits. People will be chomping at the bit to start their own replacement subreddits.

This is what occurred to me upon hitting my first private subreddit screen; if I was an aspiring mod, now would be a good opportunity to found a new subreddit, though I have no idea how you'd draw traffic/attention to it. The other ploy would be to see about getting the admins to turn an existing sub over to you; I suppose they could say it's been abandoned or something to that effect.

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