Ask HN: What is the point of making sub-Reddit private? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the point of making sub-Reddit private?

That is just a stronger login wall like twitter, quora, or something else alike.

I guess people who don't have any account are just going to sign up for one now, and Reddit CEO is now celebrating tons of new users.

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1. It's not a login wall at all, "private" subs rarely have regular users receive access privileges -- generally "private" means even sub members can't access it, just admins/mods.

2. Reddit is already trying to force user signup and app usage, a-la Musk-era Twitter, this is nothing new (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958) -- but the blackout of subs has *not* resulted in "tons of new users" -- quite the opposite.

3. The blackouts are in response to Reddit making a bunch of shitty decisions (huge ramp of API pricing, basically killing off third-party apps... eventually making a minuscule concession for some "dedicated" accessibility apps after receiving a bunch of bad press... taking it upon themselves to take over protesting communities and install their own mods and reopen them, effectively a hostile takeover / coup to further their own ends... etc.)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/147cksa/w...

The blackout has already been covered plenty on here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36283249

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36350938

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36210805

as a mod who did a poll, the community was in favour of going dark. this means only mods can view the content. no one else.

why? well does reddit have any terms and conditions imposed on moderators that they cannot indefinitely take sub that they moderate for free on behalf of reddit who technically has to employ people to do this job?

its a simple equation really, we (mods) do the dirty job for free, users populate the subreddits with content and comments for free, reddit gets to keep income from "awards" as a payment for keeping the whole thing up.

how does "robbing reddit" come into this?

the often thrown around phrase is "reddit owns rights to all content", well if i post a link to a funny news on NYT, does..... reddit get to keep the ownership of that link because i, a third party posted that link on reddit, if that's the case then what happened to rights of NYT? same for comments, if i wrote a comment myself, i will ultimately own all rights and liabilities arising out of that comment, if reddit wants to take "ownership rights" of my comment, they better be ready to face liabilities as well when slander a popular buffoon on reddit?

is that how its going to be?

You can see the content even when you are logged in....

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