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Comment by AnotherGoodName | Hacker News Reader

Ha. There were some weird posts from new users in subreddits I frequent.

'we need to rise up against the mods the blackout is an outrage!'

It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside. I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

View on HN

It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one.

Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just leave Reddit. Delete your accounts, delete your comments, resign as mods. Let the rest of reddit just move on.

> delete your comments

Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.[1]

I agree with the sentiment though; if people en masse migrated away from Reddit the way they did with Digg, that would be the only really impactful long-term gesture.

Edit: Regarding the sockpuppet thing, I mean, we've literally seen that happen a number of times. When you see an account created in 2023 with no comment activity at all post, sure, that could be a lurker deciding to comment on this one very contentious issue. When you see a dozen in a sub that has 100k subscribers, that's odd but probably not unreasonable. When you see thousands, maybe something is going on.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14av2z3/reports_of...

I've been exploring the fediverse options like kbin and lemmy and I just don't see it. Maybe someone can explain. If one lemmy instance has a really popular community, say "Memes" how can that scale? There could be millions of posts and terabytes of data. Then if multiple lemmy instances have their own "Memes" communities, that's balkanized and a user would have to subscribe to each instances "Memes" community?

Or are communities federated also? Like all instances "Memes" communities get pulled together? Examining [1] that appears to not be the case.

[1] https://lemmy.world/c/android

You can subscribe to the Memes@lemmy.world community from your account on another instance, even if your instance has its own Memes community. Then when you create a thread or post a reply, it'll be sent from your instance to lemmy.world.

You can have an account on one instance and subscribe to a community on another. There's no need for every instance to have a "memes" community, though there will undoubtedly be more than one. Then you can subscribe to the one(s) you like best. Not unlike how Reddit tends to have multiple subreddits for popular things with different mods, norms, and feels.

It is unlike that, because it scales completely differently. Basically what the GP is saying is that it's not possible (economically) in the Fediverse to create a community as large as, say, /r/funny.

Basically the federation is happening at the wrong level for that, since the whole community needs to be on a single server.

Well, I was attempting to reply to questions in the second half of the post.

That being said, I don't think communities of that size should really be the goal in the fediverse.

I assume there'd be a limit on the number of popular communities each server can handle. CommunityA@ServerB and CommunityC@ServerD can grow separately and you could participate in both.

If you had CommunityA at both, eventually everyone might migrate to ServerB; but then there's more room on ServerD for other communities.

Does this mean that instances that happen to have the popular communities gets hosed on hosting costs? Or stop submissions? Meanwhile "CommunityA" on other instances starve for content and subscribes. If that's true, communities should be federated as well. Like a user should be able to subscribe to "CommunityA" and get that content from all instances who have a "CommunityA".

Or is that totally off?

AFAICT yes. Posts are federated, but nothing else is.

I think one looking for alternatives needs to understand what they're hoping to gain from other resources.

If you want low effort jokes, or memes, the most likely outcome is you're going to migrate to where the most people are. Similar to how some subreddits overtook others in popularity, there'll be a federated instance that "wins". We're sort of in a new frontiers phase where people are scrambling to find new homes and there'll be a lot of duplication until winners and losers are settled.

But in the end, if good memes come out of the most populous place. Reddit will probably just simply be the best you have. Anything else will be second rate. Perhaps 'the best' will make its rounds through all sites as reposts just as 9Gag stuff and Imgur stuff finds its way to Reddit or Twitter, or TikTok.

But back to the main point. Lemmy/kbin/etc likely will never be reddit. I'm okay with that because I found most value in smaller niche communities (similar to how HackerNews scratches an itch that Reddit never could). I think there'll be plenty of opportunity to drop my reddit habits as I find moderately active NetSec/Programming/Networking/etc. communities on Lemmy. I'll keep Imgur for lazy image humor, and probably nod to reddit for catching the beat on my local community/provincial subs.

I still see it perhaps as a positive for myself. Loosening my Reddit addiction will be healthy long term. I'll be forced to make decisions on what topics matter to me and how I'll consume them instead of blindly marching through reddit on another doomscroll because it was convenient.

Your comment didn’t address any of OP’s questions lol

I've a fifteen year account and I've found alternatives for my interests that I'm happy with now. Don't think I'll be on Reddit much from now on.

It's a shame as I really enjoyed it while it lasted, especially in the early days.

> Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't this weaken Reddit's claim to Section 230 immunity? As in, they cross the line from simply being a provider of user generated content to being a publisher of it? We're not talking normal moderation but rather publishing what was marked for deletion.

Already done. I know three less accounts is a drop in the bucket, but whatever.

I’m sure reddit will be a really fun place to suck up to big corporations now all the other content has left.

> Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just leave Reddit. Delete your accounts, delete your comments, resign as mods. Let the rest of reddit just move on.

You're not entitled to the communities or their content. The communities themselves are what make the sub. The same happens when users migrate from one sub to another or complain.

You don't control what they do and how they should behave. There was a social contract and it was thoroughly broken, so there's obvious instability now.

The "I couldn't care less, give me my memes" can take their own arbitrary advice and leave if they don't like something. See how useless that is?

> The communities themselves are what make the sub. The same happens when users migrate from one sub to another or complain.

Yes, the sum of all users are the community, not the mods themselves. Therefore if the community is truly aligned in a consensus to not reopen a sub, it won't matter if the sub is forcibly reopened by a newly installed moderator because the community, the users, won't come back anyway. So there's really nothing to complain about; the community is now dead or moved off reddit and it doesn't matter what reddit does with the subreddit that formerly hosted that community.

Unless of course the community is not nearly so united as claimed. Then maybe most of the community will come back to the subreddit. I think this is probably this is what will happen in most cases. And this is why people are mad about reddit threatening to reopen subreddits; because they don't actually have a community consensus to stop using that subreddit. They rely on the subreddit being locked to force the community's hand, and as soon as that leverage is taken away the community will be free to make a decision which is contrary to their own desires.

> the community is now dead or moved off reddit and it doesn't matter what reddit does with the subreddit that formerly hosted that community.

It's an ongoing situation but I love how you're trying to force everyone's hand to get to "how things were" for you. Funnily enough. That's what the protest is about, in a way.

> And this is why people are mad about reddit threatening to reopen subreddits;

I love how the self proclaimed casuals like you who "don't care" have this specific takes about the motives and reasons for things.

The motives are what they are and have been clearly laid out. The one throwing a conspiratantrum is you.

Go create the sub you want. The community will follow you, right?

And yes, that has happened plenty of times that mods go against a community.

> It's an ongoing situation but I love how you're trying to force everyone's hand to get to "how things were" for you.

> Go create the sub you want. The community will follow you, right?

I stopped using reddit 10 years ago, it can burn for all I care. Stop trying to psychoanalyze people (badly.)

If admins lift the blackouts and people go back to using the subreddits, then obviously those people were not committed to not using reddit. This is simply common sense. The answer to this problem is for you to stop using reddit, then reddit's problems won't be your problems.

> Stop trying to psychoanalyze people (badly.)

Classic internet projection.

> If admins lift the blackouts and people go back to using the subreddits, then obviously those people were not committed to not using reddit

Backwards logic. They may be using it to complain or it may be intervened in a myriad of ways. You're set on dismissing while pretending you don't care but then make this claims that display ignorance of typical reddit behavioural patterns.

> The answer to this problem is for you to stop using reddit, then reddit's problems won't be your problems.

You keep going to this myopic well. Hey, if this bothers you shut up. Close your screen. Go to bed.

Basic b writing.

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The only people who act entitled to the communities and think they own them when they don't are the mods here. In what twisted way can you argue that a user of a community not wanting some power tripping mods to close down everything, acting entitled?

Unfortunately, sock-puppeting is a lot more pervasive than most people realize.

There are the reputational firms that make sock-puppeting into a big industry.

They are closely related imo to the PR firms that create wikipedia entries for people

I actually got accused of "arguing in bad faith" by a hackernews mod once because they couldn't fathom that a real person on this site would disagree with net neutrality.

<< It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one.

I would have bought this line of thinking about two decades ago, but between now and then a lot has happened that seriously undermined any kind of faith that the post found on the internet is a genuine perspective or, indeed, that it was even generated by a human.

I think the last straw for me was FCC public comment ISP industry sock puppetry related to net neutrality ( not that there were no indications of foul plays before ) and the fact that nothing changed after those revelations.

That said, I absolutely buy that there are reddit users that are annoyed; I will also admit that I have yet to talk to someone, who does not support the blackout. Still, this may reflect my social circle more than anything else so I do not dismiss your point.

It's also an entirely understandable view.

Average Reddit user doesn't care about APIs, they may not realise what it means or much more likely they don't even have a third party app!

To them their hangout just got taken away.

> It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one.

You are absolutely correct that it is a common sentiment. However, this doesn't prove that this sentiment is always wrong.

I agree with that in principle, but this particular CEO is known for anonymously editing users comments that were critical of him, and reddit itself has a history of creating fake accounts, so in this case both are judged by their past deeds.

It all depends on context, for example, accounts that are very new and go strongly against the general "consensus" (as much as that shouldn't be a thing) raise suspicions. Some people suspect the use of LLMs on trying to push for consensus and astroturf. Add the name of a fruit to your answer. Hopefully they will find a solution to that conundrum

> Some people suspect the use of LLMs on trying to push for consensus and astroturf.

I don't even suspect it at this point, I just don't know if it's Reddit or someone else, but what motivation does someone else have to make new accounts that post GPT content unfiltered (and have since been deleted), that also just happen to push against the blackout.

Smoking gun: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg

https://web.archive.org/web/20230611231119/https://www.reddi...

Other examples:

https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

https://i.imgur.com/0seHYei.png

https://i.imgur.com/Q8Pl2Ms.png

https://i.imgur.com/IRAug6a.png

https://i.imgur.com/N88AxJx.png

https://i.imgur.com/Ar8P95B.png

https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

That's the same defeatest advice people always give when you don't like the direction of your country/state/municipality/etc. you should leave/move/etc. I say absolutely not and if you have invested time and energy into something (I've had my reddit account a bit longer than my HN one) then you can and should fight for it. I don't have a vision disability and so am not very impacted by the killing of 3rd party acts but this is an act of solidarity to support those who are (However minor most of our sacrifice is). The least I can do is not complain that my daily quota of cat pictures is unfairly impacted.

You argue the critical importance of Reddit -- equivocating it with legislative bodies (which I find fantastically ridiculous, as an aside) -- but then you also dismiss people annoyed by the blackout as missing out on only cat pictures. It's an extreme example of someone arguing both sides.

Though of course what you probably intend to convey is that people who find the blackout annoying can be dismissed because they're just those weird cat picture people -- they just don't understand the importance like you do, and thus don't count -- and is a perfect example of my point.

I don't care about the API issue, despite being a professional dev. I find sharecropping on someone else's product a perilous path that eventually comes up snake-eyes. Like, the moment someone makes a third party app for Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, or anything else, they are on an expiry meter. Have people not learned this yet?

The blackout thing didn't work because most people don't care, so some people have stomped their feet and effectively started trying to vandalize the site and I think it's achieving absolutely nothing.

> don't care about the API issue, despite being a professional dev. I find sharecropping on someone else's product a perilous path that eventually comes up snake-eyes. Like, the moment someone makes a third party app for Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, or anything else, they are on an expiry meter. Have people not learned this yet?

You are missing the forest for the trees here. The issue is not that they are charging for API access. The issue is that assurances were given that the transition would be reasonable but pricing withheld until the last minute.

Negotiations then proceeded in bad faith, with reddit never intending to allow them to pay the price asked (no methods existed to even make this transaction possible with a 30 day deadline, and other app creators were ignored completely when approaching reddit sales).

When the dev made the situation public (with a 'go ahead' from reddit) then Huffman appears to have taken it personally, and instead of engaging with the community concerns about lack of options for mobile moderators, went on a tantrum. He then discounts any concerns over his handling of the situation and doubles down on libelous claims that were proven false.

This is on top of using reasoning that is not only dubious, but contradictory. If they really care about making a profit, why not offer something of value and charge for it, like the 3rd party apps do? You don't win customers by making something shitty and then removing all of their options and then not even have a plan in place to make money with the shitty alternative.

Huffman has been unable to monetize reddit and he isn't presenting any way to. All he is doing is acting unhinged and destructive -- with both community trust/relations and the corporation itself being used in ways that can not be turned around.

Usually corporations burn their trust as a short-sighted scheme to make a bunch of money quickly (reputable brand cuts so many costs the reputation is lost, etc) and this is tragic, but at least they got something out of it.

This guy seems like he is just burning things down because he is frustrated that they exist successfully on their own using the same resources he has, while he cannot.

It's a metaphor and doesn't need to be perfect. My point was merely "don't like it, then leave" is useless advice IMO. I didn't say reddit is critical exactly (though maybe it is for many who frequent https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/), only that it has value to many. Strikes and demonstrations and such are ALWAYS inconvenient by design. That doesn't mean they are pointless. BART strikes and BLM protests impacted me a lot more than reddit blackouts but I still supported them.

Ultimately we are ALL sharecropping where the majority of the web is "owned/gatekeeped" by a handful of big companies like google, meta, microsoft, amazon, twitter (?), visa, mastercard, paypal, yelp, cloudflare, comcast, cox, etc. You may agree or disagree with my list but hopefully you get my point.

It remains to be seen if it worked or not depending on what the fallout is. Will users, moderators and most importantly advertisers leave? Will reddit IPO? Will they be able to hire? Will spez survive this as CEO?

Lol don't forget "liquidate all of your assets to donate directly to Reddit and immediately sign up as unpaid interns, and consult with your betters/superiors how to vote in all upcoming elections".

I don't even know what to say, some folk just don't know how to capitalism right.

During this whole debacle, there's been quite a few posts across various parts of the internet that register to me as astroturfing, including a handful on HN. It's not about the opinions presented, nothing wrong with dissent, but the way these posts express those opinions just feels wrong somehow — I've seen 20 years worth of impassioned people posting on the internet, and these posts come off as poor imitations of that.

I agree. The posts here on HN about how all the mods are terrible human beings... that just read as an oddity.

How so? People generally hate reddit mods, for good and bad reasons. The belief that reddit mods are power hungry abusers is ingrained in internet culture so I don't find it strange that this common sentiment is leaking to HN. If anything I find it very surprising that people praise them as heroes now which would have been completely unheard of just a few weeks ago.

There are many mods I actively dislike, for example one on r/confusingperspective who gave me a warning because I tagged another user in a comment because I wanted to highlight something for them. But I still support the mods here. And I also support the third-party developers as well.

Ultimately Reddit depends on moderators being able to do their job, if Spez chooses to pull the rug out from under their feet so that they cannot do their job (which they do without cost for Reddit) effectively, why should I not cheer them on? Especially since they are pretty much the only ones able to coordinate any form of protest after Spez lied (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247130) about what the Apollo dev said?

It really isn't that odd. Most reddit users hardly interact with the admins. When it comes to mods though, the question is not whether they have had bad interactions, but how many. A job that offers no pay, no benefits, but the dopamine hit of having petty power over random strangers tends to attract poor candidates.

I’ve been on HN for years as seen by my post history. I’ve been on reddit for years. I would love to see the mods stripped of power and the ability to vote them out. A lot of mods are terrible, probably not human beings but terrible at moderating.

Nah those are real. People with a big "I dropped an r-bomb on a leftist sub and the powertripping mods banned me" energy.

More like "I disagreed with a user I didn't realize was a mod and they banned me".

You're probably used to desktop users. Most people seem to use their phones to interact nowadays, and the quality of content is lower as a result.

I won't deny that as a possibility, but the majority of my Reddit usage has been during its mobile-dominant era so it's not as if low effort mobile posts are unfamiliar.

What you're describing is textbook paranoia. People exist, real people, who hold opinions that differ from yours, including me.

> People exist, real people, who hold opinions that differ from yours, including me.

Of course, but astroturfing is also a very real thing that those with money to lose have no moral objection making use of, and as such it's naive to take every comment at face value.

The method which one determines which comment falls into which category is variable and imperfect and always will be but it's a sense I've tried to hone. I like to try to give people the benefit of the doubt but it can be difficult to do that when, say, large number of comments parrot one of a handful of talking points with few linguistic variances or elaborations on why the commenter feels that way.

Ah yes, "textbook paranoia".

Not a pattern of hallucinated poetry posted to new accounts, that just so happen to also dislike the blackout[0-6], while also occasionally apologizing for not being able to generate inappropriate or offensive content[7].

[0]: https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

[1]: https://i.imgur.com/0seHYei.png

[2]: https://i.imgur.com/Q8Pl2Ms.png

[3]: https://i.imgur.com/IRAug6a.png

[4]: https://i.imgur.com/N88AxJx.png

[5]: https://i.imgur.com/Ar8P95B.png

[6]: https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

[7]: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg

Wow, even ignoring the error message comments those are textbook ChatGPT responses.

There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored over the course of their tantrum. I've commented more in the past few days than i have in the past few months, because it's obvious the mods have completely lost perspective of the average user experience.

Lurkers should also realize that their experience is shaped by mods decisions. For the better or for the worst, that's a good question, I guess we will soon find out. But given what FB groups look like, I have my own opinion.

Also, lurkers would have nothing to lurk around if it weren't for heavier posters, many of whom use third party apps to paper over the various papercuts of posting with the official site/client.

What do you think it would cost to buy a non insignificant amount Reddit accounts from power users to own their comments and remove them from Reddit? And if Reddit restores them, file DMCA takedowns? Should be cheap, right? With the value of Reddit users being so low?

If that is where the value is being generated, that is Reddit's value lynch pin.

> And if Reddit restores them, file DMCA takedowns?

Almost certainly, Reddit's terms of service means you grant them a irrevocable perpetual license to your posts, so a DMCA takedown would be in bad faith.

There are no material repercussions for bad faith DMCA takedowns, as the evidence has shown [1]. The legal burden still falls on Reddit to triage and action them. With that said, you would want to own the Reddit accounts as IP in an LLC that holds no financial assets to shield you from any liability (not legal advice, we're just having fun talking hypotheticals). You'd own the copyright to the content, let Reddit try to argue in court the requests were bad faith. You didn't agree to the terms when the account changed hands, and you're now the owner.

You wouldn't have to do it forever, only long enough to materially impact Reddit's valuation pre-IPO. This is simply flipping the "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" model of Silicon Valley on its head. Or is that only okay when you're trying to get obnoxiously wealthy off the backs of everyone else?

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Reddit admins could automate the reposting of old content from years ago, complete with comments, and I think most doomscrolling lurkers would never notice.

Karma-point-harvesting bots do this already! Even comments -- one bot user reposts a popular post, and other bot users repost the top comments from the last time it was posted.

I mean that is how everything in life works.

Most people lurk politically and are just pulled along by people who care.

If they vote, they’re not lurkers. Even thumbs up-ing is useful engagement.

Voting could either mean you spent 10 hours researching or you picked the name that you recognize the most.

And the people who care are working to make sure you recognize the right names.

Lurkers are pure consumers, free-riders. They produce nothing. They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized.

People like to say that users who post content care about lurkers because they want to be seen/heard. No. People who post content care about commenters (and up/downvoters at the bare minimum) who interact with them in meaningful ways, not lurkers. Lurkers are the cosmic neutrinos of social media: they pass through without leaving a trace.

Reddit wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want millions of hours of unpaid labour from mods, posters, and commenters. And they want to control these people as if they were employees (by dictating what tools they're allowed/not allowed to use). This will not turn out well!

> They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized.

yes, and fund service running. Looks like important part of the ecosystem.

Only for a centralized, corporate-owned system like Reddit. A volunteer-owned fediverse system can monetize via donations, Patreon-style. This changes the incentive structure: making the administrators accountable to the most invested people (power users).

> A volunteer-owned fediverse system can monetize via donations, Patreon-style

does it exist and works on scale, or it is like communism where everyone will be happy, but it is never achievable and sustainable just because most of the people want money, power and free stuff.

Matrix has 20+ million users, and is federated.

ok, then reddit problem is solved. Or not because they solve different problem and need very different infra?..

There are social network UIs written for Matrix the same way ActivityPub is used for Lemmy and Mastodon and Flickr-clones. I expect these to multiply as the protocol gains more features too. Recent Matrix enhancements are about modeling content relationships, seemingly to this end.

And yes, the entire foundation structure of the platform and protocol are quite different, that's kinda the point. ActivityPub and Matrix protocol are similar in this regard. And yes the AP impls are seeing huge explosions in growth in the last 3 weeks.

Riku, I can't reply to you because this site is a joke, but I don't think I want to anyway, you don't seem to get the point, across the board. Not everything is about profit for bleep's sake. Also, I'll sign up for s month of reddit premium if you can find 3 subs that voted to re-open. Or literally any single person besides you and spez that think every single app dev is scamming, and nearly every single mod.

And no reddits infra is not a most, lmao. Their site crashes daily and runs on AWS, and every single bit of value is derived from the people you accuse of spamming - you know the ones that keep voting to keep the homepage looking like a wasteland of porn and AITA posts. You're completely out of touch.

> protocol are quite different, that's kinda the point

I am not familiar with all those projects, but my understanding is that reddit's moats are:

- infra which can serve significant traffic over petabytes of content with search and recommendation on top of them

- they have bootstrapped content volume and communities

- they have monetization in place which pays for all infra and salaries

how far mentioned projects from that state?

> infra which can serve significant traffic over petabytes of content with search

Search? Reddit search is so bad it’s practically a meme. They only added the ability to search within comments (y’know, like 90% of the site) _this year_.

https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/11dgwzy/whats_up_wi...

> they have bootstrapped content volume and communities

Do you mean when the founders (including current CEO) posted as a bunch of fake users to create the illusion that it was popular?

https://venturebeat.com/social/reddit-fake-users/

> they have monetization in place which pays for all infra and salaries

How is possible if Reddit has never been profitable/reached breakeven?

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

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve...

I don't see you refuted anything, they still have infra for lots of data with search and recommendation, bootstrapped content and communities and generate good chunk of revenue, and reaching this point will take good amount of effort for rivals.

> They are valuable only to Reddit for their potential to be monetized.

Why are you dismissing this? I don’t understand all of these comments talking about Reddit as if it was 100% free to operate and the only important users are the commenters

Reddit at its core is a utility. A "dumb pipe" operator whose main role is to keep the servers running and pay the bandwidth bills. Yet like so many (internet-based) utilities, they have delusions of grandeur, born out of a sense of entitlement to the incredible value produced by their users.

Why did they hire 2000 people? Nothing they have done in the last decade has provided new value to users. If they had simply accepted their role as a utility instead of chasing the mega-growth tech fantasy then they would be a (modestly) profitable company with 200 employees at most.

“But Reddit needs to make money” /s https://mastodon.social/@robotdeathsquad/110543755195398954

Except even just viewing a post leaves a trace, whether a the service chooses to display view counts or not. The webhost knows how much traffic they're getting, and those numbers help them set rates for advertisers.

None of that matters one bit to the average Reddit poster: the person who creates a text post without any links. If any value is captured from that lurker, it all goes straight to Reddit.

Lurkers can participate with upvotes and downvotes. You don't even have to join a subreddit to participate in this way.

Lurkers (who did click join, but never posted) are included in the subreddit user-counts advertised on the protest subreddit. If they count as users there, they count as users here.

I dunno, post on /r/games explaining why there were NOT going to black out is still sitting at 0 upvotes (a in "there is more downvotes than upvotes", with comments asking them to sitting on nice few k's of upvotes which would indicate that even people that never comment downvoted it and want the blackout.

The few lurkers coming out of woodwork asking people to allow for enshittification to continue is by definition vocal minority

Polls and vote counts can no longer be used to measure subreddit sentiment on this issue. That window closed once the first blackout began, which thrust low-information members into a situation where it looks like the subreddit suddenly shut down. The majority of redditors have no idea where their subreddits disappeared to, why, or when they will be back. Therefore, they can't participate in any votes.

All sentiment measurements going forward will skew towards Very Online users following the drama closely, which GP is arguing will ignore a silent majority of the subreddit's actual MAU.

> which GP is arguing will ignore a silent majority of the subreddit's actual MAU.

...while also claiming they're clairvoyant and know about what silent majority wants.

Also arguably silent majority doesn't matter here because they are not the ones that *produce* any content to watch in the first place.

The whole point of blackouts is for them to put pressure on Reddit, whether actively (complaining) or passively (not giving traffic)

> There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored

What is there for the mods to ignore, when the lurkers are - as you said - silent?

This is just an anecdote, but I just went on my city's sub this morning to see how they were handling this. Apparently the (singular) mod did the initial blackout, then put up a poll on whether it should continue, the sub voted not to, and he is now holding another poll this weekend on the same topic and everyone seems to think it's because he didn't get the outcome he wanted the first time.

I think all the people posting stuff like "reddit is DYING" are in for a rude awakening because the overwhelming majority of users do not give a single shit. They wanna see memes that confirm their biases and maybe see what is going on in their city/locality, and they can't do that if all their subs are blacked out.

That's just honestly sub with a shitty mod, but there is certainly an argument to be made for better tools, sub blackout should not be something so easily implemented by single mod out of whole group.

But I've seen both subs that asked mods, mods that unilaterally decided to blackout, and subs where users pleaded for blackout while power-hungry mods decided not to (presumable coz they were afraid reddit takes their playground from them)

If that really is how it went the mod made a stupid mistake.

If I were a power tripping mod, I would either just inform the sub about the subreddit taking part in the blackout. From the up and downvotes you can then already gauge the sentiment of the subreddit towards this issue and if the downvotes go south, you can always delete the post and do it anyway.

But then you can't go and ask the sub about continuing the blackout. But as a power tripping mod I can't keep the subreddit private as then I would miss out on my power trip.

So eventually I would open it up again, make a poll about continuing and as the sub will deny that I could keep it open and keep on power tripping while at the same time claiming that I only follow the sub's democratic decision.

As an example of why I lurk the majority of the time, the mods in /r/seattle have been perma-banning anyone who posts to /r/seattlewa - the mods have created a situation where each comment has a risk of tripping some unknown drama landmine. I don't want to have to make a new account and re-subscribe to all the subs I'm in if I ever trip one of these mines.

Why would lurker opinions greatly differ from poster opinions?

When the mods said their blackout would be for 2 days, the silent majority rolled their eyes, but did not voice their opinions. Over the years we've all learned that folks who disagree with a mod's opinion will most likely get banned from the subreddit, so since the mods promised the subreddits would be back after 2 days, it wasn't worth arguing about. When the mods refused to bring the subreddits back after that time was up, they broke their promise - they've lost all the trust that the various communities had with them.

Should you rather care about the lurkers that provide no value to the community, or to the users that actually post something and make reddit reddit? For me the answer is clear. The first party app/website is terrible, riddled with annoying UX and dark patterns. Also, I still want 18+ content on Reddit!

I identify as a lurker although I've made occasional posts and comments. I don't see how the mods are the problem here. Third part apps go, I go. It's that simple.

Not everyone that disagrees with you is doing so in bad faith. Not everything is brigading, etc. Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community. It is a very one-sided argument, as if the moderators are the reason the community exists. No. Moderators are unnecessary without users. It's a symbiosis.

Yeah I don’t give a shit about the blackouts and have been commenting on Reddit how dumb it is. I have been seeing the polls in the subreddits I frequent and it’s like 65/35 to keep them open. Pretty solid majority.

It’s certainly _not_ dumb to those who are participating in the blackout. Phrasing their position in that light will cause your argument to fall on deaf ears.

Calling it dumb is a signal that you don't care if the argument falls on deaf ears.

It's clear that one cares when they inject themselves into the thread/conversation. If one did not care, one wouldn't be in this thread.

They will probably have no problem replacing them either. You might have to take a quality dip, at least in theory; In reality it's hard to imagine the mods getting worse. They have a really terrible attitude. It's not just about community relations either, they really, really suck at enforcing rules, so it's not like we're gonna lose quality there.

The only reason reddit continues to play nice is to prevent a mass exudus from disgruntled users. They don't WANT the mods to leave, and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods.

That said, they're quite replaceable, it seems.

You're painting mods with a really broad brush, here. There are as many different moderator styles as there are subreddits.

> They don't WANT the mods to leave, and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods.

I'm not convinced. I think they want the _current_ crop of mods of big subreddits to leave, to be replaced by users who would never dream of protesting Reddit's decisions.

> That said, they're quite replaceable, it seems.

In terms of popping some users out, and granting others mod access, that's true. In terms of the quality of the subreddit as a result - that would remain to be seen. I've browsed under-moderated subreddits that are relevant to my interests, and it's not a good experience.

Are they actually going to get replaced by shill mods? It seems more like they will suffer some form of loss for some time, and that they're trying to prevent this.

I agree that poor moderation is a problem. However, it seems that moderation on reddit is quite poor to begin with.

> and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods

How about all the Apollo and RiF users? I'm sympathetic and supportive of the mods but I'm angry because at the end of the month the app I've been using for more than a decade will be no longer functional due to choices Reddit is making.

I wonder if Apollo could return as Apollo Premium, with only paid accounts. What fraction of old Apollo users would be willing to subscribe to keep that functionality?

All third party apps are doomed to deliver a second class experience due to the exclusion of "NSFW" (however that will be defined) content.

> Some of us think that the blackouts are starting to look a lot like a tantrum that doesn't represent the best interests of the community.

I've yet to seen a single coherent argument that supports this statement. Please enlighten me.

You can read through this thread to find many coherent reasons. They won't necessarily be reasons you personally find persuasive, but that isn't what coherent means. People have different value systems and priorities and therefore they can legitimately conclude different things about the same information. People with whom you cannot find yourself agreeing probably don't share many values and perspectives with you, but that doesn't mean they're being incoherrent. Assuming that anybody who disagrees with you is mentally disabled or a bot is a pernicious redditism.

I have read through this thread and I have not found a single coherent reason, hence my question.

All of the arguments I see here on the other side are assumptions backed by nothing, i.e. "the majority users of subs didn't agree with the mods decision," which is patently false. Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support.

Even if it wasn't trivially easy to prove these arguments wrong, they don't even provide any actual evidence for their claims.

> Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support.

What sticky thread? I get a note saying the subreddit is private, and a link to a news article. They certainly aren't asking for my opinion.

I don't think you quite understand what the word coherent means. Just because somebody has a different perspective on what reality is, doesn't mean they're being incoherent. In this thread and related discussions on HN there have been many posts by people explaining that they don't believe blackouts have the user consensus in many subreddits which have been locked. It is claimed that many of those subreddits never had polls at all. There are some who allege those polls were botted and received several times more votes than there are active users of that subreddit. In other subreddits, the votes are a tiny fraction of active users (including lurking readers.) Others (myself included) have pointed out that if user consensus is actually aligned with the blackout then the blackouts are unnecessary because those users can simply choose not to use reddit even if the subreddits are reopened; from this perspective the purpose of the blackouts is to lock out those users who would choose to keep using reddit.

I do not intent to persuade you that these viewpoints are compelling and truthful, because that's beyond the point. I'm not arguing that the above arguments are subjectively correct, only that they are coherent. Whether or not you find these arguments persuasive, they are coherent. Whether or not you think they have the basic facts of the situation correct, they are still coherent. Maybe you think lurking readers shouldn't count; that's a legitimate value which others may legitimately disagree with, and depending on what your values are you come to different conclusions. That doesn't mean people who think lurkers should count are being incoherent. Coherence does not mean subjectively correct.

One of us doesn't, that's for sure.

I use Reddit to talk about local stuff, ultralight gear. The larger world of mods and “power users” and whatnot - not super relevant. I understand how ya’ll feel, but is blocking people from using r/tempe really useful?

“I’m gonna make Reddit completely unusable so Reddit doesn’t become shitty”

Isn't the whole point of making communities private to make Reddit more unusable and therefore try to decrease engagement?

In a couple weeks, the main way many people use Reddit is going to literally be blocked forever. The alternatives are not palatable to many, so the users are basically being unilaterally banished from Reddit. And that's just the opening salvo to monetize reddit.

Give it another year, and your little sub will have 3 ad posts per "actual" post and modded by the Tempe Chamber of Commerce.

> In a couple weeks, the main way many people use Reddit is going to literally be blocked forever.

This is false. Stats showed 3rd party app users were an extreme minority of users.

It's more like mods are a disproportionate number of 3rd party users due to wanting to mod from their phones, and are making the blackout decision for everybody.

> This is false. Stats showed 3rd party app users were an extreme minority of users.

We don't seem to agree on the definition of "many".

Apollo had 1.5 million users. RIF about the same. That's just two of the biggest 3rd party shutting down basically overnight.

That's 3+ million users. I'm fairly certain that 3+ million people counts as "many".

That's about 5% of Reddit's DAU

Percentage wise, it's less than 10%.

So sure, it's many, it's also a very insignificant number.

You could use this as an argument against any sort of protest that inconveniences bystanders.

Looks like a tantrum to me, with moderators trying to add others who don't feel the same way to their movement.

Example of a subreddit I was in: Moderator opens a poll on whether the blackout should continue. Lays out why it should continue. Doesn't allow discussion about the vote.

A lot of talk about "unpaid labor" of mods while they pay little mind to the "unpaid labor" of the people actually creating the posts.

I'm really not worried about this not because I'm a fan of reddit because there is really nothing stopping a subreddit from coalescing somewhere else. The arguments against this really start to show the value of Reddit, though.

Yeah before I deleted my accounts yesterday, the rate of weird pro-reddit admin comments was getting pretty high. It would not surprise me at all if they are trying to game the numbers more before their IPO, so they can claim they made the right decision.

Investors: do you due diligence! Reddit has used fake accounts in the past! :)

Obviously, anyone who disagrees with me must be an astroturfer bot.

They (or someone at least) are definitely using bots: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg

Sounds like something a bot would say /s

It's reddit, I'm sure there are people that have spent the last decade on the site posting cat pics, dodgy stock tips and intimate details of their life being accused of being bots for criticising mods.

But if a bunch of new, dormant or unused accounts start promoting the exact party line of an entity which is known to generate accounts on their service to seed stuff, in a battle they're determined to win, the probability of them all being unconnected individual people popping up to express their support for Reddit's management is pretty near zero...

Spez has been caught editing comments from real users.

He should have been fired for that

Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you)

Reddit is/was my first source of real human information for a lot of stuff (since google is unusable now). And this blackout was really a pain in the ass

And just like a good old protest, it got it's point across with legal disruption.

At least you're aware of the issues now, no?

I do care about the third party apps because they assist moderators in doing their job (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit). And more personally, they provide accessibility support lacking both in the Reddit website and app. I am not a mod, and will literally no longer be able to use Reddit as well as I have had over the last years. The third-party developers have provided Reddit with tremendous value which is now lost.

> (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit).

Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power.

I couldn't care less about the API or the will of capricious mods - I hope Reddit will hand the subs over to other people

If they would only moderate for feeling power, they wouldn’t risk their mod position by going against the only party who can kick them.

Honestly, I also think that public forums such as reddit shouldn’t build up a walled garden like this and the information should be free to anyone, regardless whether they use it commercially or for research.

And those new mods are suddenly not going to need better modding tools? They'll just be happy with whatever Reddit has? It's just the current mods who get off on their power, the new ones won't?

Stop for a second and consider: why do these problems exist, and why should they stop?

You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too

> You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue

Okay, and how will that help you to not get "capricious mods"?

> and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too

And when those ones make problems you get rid of them again? And then again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again?

Are you starting to see the problem?

There is always going to be people that want to be mods

And you think for those people this doesn't hold true?

> Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power.

Are you willfully ignoring this point, or do you really think that magically it will work out?

You can't do anything about that. Most of them will will be in it for themselves but when they start getting ideas that they own the place (like the current ones think) you cull them

Well, we could always not do your bad idea, then we wouldn't have to go into this loop of getting in new power-hungry mods just to throw them out and replace them with the next ones.

> Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power.

[citation needed]

I am a regular user on Reddit and not a mod. But I have managed a very low traffic mailing list before. I cannot imagine doing it for free no matter how much ego boost I get.

So my question is, if Reddit kicks off all the mods from a sub you frequent often, and ask you to be the new mod, would you do it? And, if it is a busy enough subreddit, would you spend the time those people have been spending, to moderation?

For me, that would be no.

Even as a non-mod the third party apps are simply a substantially better user experience than the official app. The CEO's statements and actions have made it clear that the user, nor the mods are anything other than a metric to be exploited in their business plan. I'm no longer interested in participating in their cattle drive.

It is pretty much impossible to protest without annoying anybody, and it isn’t as if they are out there blocking ambulances or something.

100%. I've definitely been one of the people complaining on Reddit.

> Well, I, for one, don't fucking care about third party apps (which make money mind you)

Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators that try valiantly to diver the tide of pure excrement of content that floods in to the various subreddits.

That content you want to be able to see would be buried and gone, or never put there in the first place if it wasn't for third party apps that are crucial to moderators doing their work. Reddit has consistently done an awful job on quality moderation tooling. They really don't seem to give a shit, and just do the absolute bare minimum. The only reason it has managed to survive in the state it is is because others have voluntarily picked up the slack and built the tooling Reddit hasn't bothered to build.

Just because you don't see it or use it doesn't mean it's not central to what you get to experience. Think bigger, beyond your direct experience and consider how that directly impacts you.

> Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators

This is simply not true. I moderate several subs. 3rd party mod tools are not critical. Mods who claim this is so are really misrepresenting the issue.

Power tools for mods are nice to have for some. I make use of automod extensively. The tools reddit provides are adequate to perform moderation tasks.

Also, since I guess it needs to be said, I'm not a shill for spez. I don't like the dude, but I'm not a sock puppet. This is all winding up looking like an epic toddler tantrum from a small proportion of the higher-power mod contingent.

> This is simply not true. I moderate several subs.

How big subs ? Number of subs you moderate is entirely irrelevant to the topic

Is there any good reason that a single moderator should be allowed to moderate multiple subs?

I'd take that as an I dictator of a power hungry mod, not a mod passionate about the topic at hand.

I can imagine few small subs where that would be fine but being mod on few of the bigger traffic ones would definitely be weird and suspicious

A few related subs, certainly. Someone moderating /r/projectcar is is probably a good mod for /r/mechanics.

But you can't algorithmically determine this. It's also my impression that a few of the biggest subs have all the same mods.

The tools are critical for some small set of mods, notably r/blind. Apparently Reddit will allow those tools to continue.

Yet still a significant portion of comments come from third party app users. Reddit wants to control how I post my likely close to 1000 comments a year, I just won't comment then. The content doesn't come out of this air, it comes from a handful of power users that are far more likely to use third party apps.

Any sub that ever hits the front page will need 3rd party tools.

> Those third party apps are central to how the entire content works, they're absolutely critical for the moderators that try valiantly to diver the tide of pure excrement of content that floods in to the various subreddits.

With all respect, that's something we are about to find out.

I find it hard to believe that there are so many people who think that Reddit looked at the mountain of data they have on user and mod behaviour, and API usage, and decided to do the opposite of what that data indicated as a good option.

All the internet posters making the claims you have just made are working blind. They don't have a single iota of actual data to support their conclusions.

Either way, we're about to find out.

It is effectively not possible to be a mod of a subreddit without third party apps. I don’t think people fully understand just how awful the native mod suite is for Reddit, and this is what the blackout is really about: the fact that Reddit seems to want to absolutely refuse to support the unpaid labor that makes the site a source of real human knowledge as opposed to a wasteland of bots and trolls.

This is really well said. It feels like a new Apple CEO who views investments in design as frivolous. There are valid points that Reddit needs to improve and adjust to be a healthy business but recent changes have all the hallmark of a company making a dangerous waiver that visitors will stay because, really, where else are they going to go?

Except:

1) Reddit says mod tools will remain free on the API (as well as disability tools)

2) Other moderators in this hacker news thread say the 3rd party stuff isn't necessary anyway.

> It is effectively not possible to be a mod of a subreddit without third party apps.

Nonsense. I mod large subs just fine using toolbox and old reddit. toolbox doesn't counter at as third party app.

It seems most mods want to mod from their phones and will no longer be able to do so.

I don't have a third party app, either, but I do care that a business values its customers and partners... And I'm really getting signs that Reddit feels its only customers / partners are the advertisers. They've made their own website unusable because it demands you use the app instead. And the official reddit app just isn't a good app or an enjoyable app—it feels like a play for them to maximize ads & tracking. They don't have great native tools for moderators—essentially their own pool of free labor.

I know these things almost always blow over, eventually, but this has been just another part of the spiral. If you think your only relationship is with your advertisers... someday the advertisers will be the last ones you have left before they too take their business elsewhere.

Can you give me an example of what you search so I can see what unusable you're talking about?

Next time you have a problem with any device you have, or any doubt in general, google and try to get real human feedback instead of having to navigate through dozens of web pages with shitty answers that don't work

Electronics and gadgets are the easiest to search. As I said on another post, the forums I used to visit back in 2000s-2010s are still around. Reddit is just SEO optimized but not the be all and all for answers for that.

Google is still pretty good when I try to use it especially because I have learned some of their search functions and operators. I haven't done vanilla search since I learned them.

Bard is nice but not for everything. It always gave me the wrong answer about dates and events for the next NBA game.

Fun fact, those humans who put the info in and make up the communities do care. It's not "evil undemocratic mods", the communities in many subs voted in favor of the protest.

I love how many people who seem to complain about the blackout are like "stop whining and go back to produce the content for me".

Time will tell if the deterioration of the relationship will make that content you value less likely to exist, of less quality or more inaccesible.

I don't know. Have people forgotten that reddit mods were almost universally hated before this? It didn't matter if you were a good mod. People would consider you the enemy regardless, so I don't find it strange at all that users take this opportunity to hate on mods.

I think there's some group who's always disliked mods, but I don't think that dislike is necessarily universal.

Speaking personally I've had maybe one or two bad experiences of mods in the ~11 years I've used Reddit, and that time wasn't exactly spent lurking, with my account having accrued ~35k karma.

> It was met with unanimous wtf is wrong with you, go outside.

“Go outside” is an ironic comment, given that the subreddit blackout doesn’t appear to be all that popular among casual Reddit users. It’s popular among the chronically online people who use Reddit so much that they’re intimately involved in every detail of the site, but 98-99% of users don’t use 3rd party clients.

> I get the feeling spez is creating new accounts and posting as them again.

It’s getting weird that Redditors are turning into conspiracy theorists, believing that anyone who disagrees with the popular narrative must be a shill, a plant, or the CEO himself speaking to them.

No, the CEO of Reddit isn’t spending all day coming to your niche subreddit, creating new accounts, and sockpuppeting opinions to the handful of people there.

This is how reddit was started. If they had tools for mass posting with auto-generated accounts then why would they stop?

Remember - the top subs were being modded by epstein’s gang. If that kind of absurdity is happening then imagine when a political party offers them 10m to rig an election.

It's not that weird if you reflect a moment about the whole situation. Mods are important for reddit, but so are the users who create the content. But what power have they in this whole power? Did anyone ask them what they want and support? Probably not really, because with the subs closed, how can the mods still reach the majority of their users? Some may have found their way to other places, but the majority will remain on Reddit, knowing barely anything about the whole battlefields. So it's natural that they now will also voice their opinions, using new accounts to not suffer under the hate of those how might still have power in the future.

The more obvious answer is that many to most Reddit users do not care about how Reddit treats developers using its API. They just want their memes or discuss sports or their hobbies or whatever.

Long time reddit user and I don’t think the blackout is an outrage but do think the mods need power stripped from them. They are a bunch of power trippers and if you disagree with what they believe expect to be banned. As long as discussion is polite we should be able to voice whatever we want and currently you can not do that on reddit.

They can easily use shit like ChatGPT to astroturf tbh.

I can't find it but there was a screenshot the other day of a pro-reddit post which started with "I'm sorry, but I cannot fulfill that request."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361247

Well, Reddit was built on sock puppets.

The correct answer back is something that might betray their GPT nature ;)

Americans (and terminally online Europeans) have a hard time understanding that people outside their social bubbles can disagree with them without being sockpuppet accounts or bots.

I think it's just redditors and twitter users, basically people who spend their time online in a filter bubble designed to keep them addicted to confirmation bias.

> Americans (and terminally online Europeans)

I think this is characteristic not of Americans and not even of terminally online Europeans, but rather of reddit users specifically (and heavy users of other systems that operate similar to reddit, or which had very biased moderation for a long time but no longer do, such as twitter.) Reddit is all about forming the illusion of overwhelming consensus; an opinion shared by 49% of users can be ruthlessly suppressed by the 51%, downvoted below zero and hidden from view. The fundamental nature of reddit's comment system encourages this warped perception of people who disagree with you being unreal.

There’s nothing new here. Socialism vs Capitalism. The revolutionaries will lose, and they should. If they want to fight Reddit, they should start their own enterprise and compete in the market. I’m in full support of owners getting rid of problem employees or even volunteers. Reddit is a private enterprise and their owners have the right to do what they please.

Mods seem to think they own the subs they moderate. They do not; the subs belong to the community. Mods do have too much power at the moment.

The easiest way to resolve this is to perma ban all the mods of closed subs, then remove the ability for subs to be closed.

Yet every sub poll I've seen after the blackout has been >50% support to continue it. The community wants the blackout.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com