The Reddit moderators who coordinate many celebrity AMAs will no longer do so | Hacker News Reader

The Reddit moderators who coordinate many celebrity AMAs will no longer do so

theverge.com

56 pointsOnlyLys23 comments

This is completely unsurprising. I wrote a handful of small bots for a subreddit I helped with for a few years. Had all this API stuff gone down back then I’d have shut down my stuff as well. I spent a couple hundred dollars over those years on services and servers to help with that sub and I wouldn’t change it looking back but I also would never do that for something on Reddit again given how their CEO has behaved.

This is what people were warning about. On top of moderators walking away, Reddit is going to experience a “brain drain” of bot developers and developers who make tools for Reddit. Those people might not be influencers/content creators themselves but their work empowers that group.

I’m going to really miss Reddit and what it was. Other than Google results, Reddit died for me along with Apollo.

For someone such as myself who has accessed Reddit through a web bowser since its founding in 2005, I don’t get the outrage. So some people can’t access it through their favorite app? I’m more annoyed mods are shutting off access to a valuable resource that millions of users including myself contributed to over the last 18 years.

I bet you're still on old reddit. This is the equivalent of shutting down old reddit for mobile.

Big whoop. I am on old Reddit. But if they got rid of old Reddit, I would just acclimatize myself to the new interface.

> I don’t get the outrage. So some people can’t access it through their favorite app?

OP's comment states multiple good reasons why people would be pissed off. There are many, many more.

And you don't even need to be "outraged" to leave - it's enough to feel disrespected. If you don't feel disrespected, fine - stay. Have fun. But, ignoring other people's real experience, then immediately acting as if there's nothing to be mad about, is disingenuous.

They didn’t give a single specific good reason.

No, they didn't. They gave at least 6. On on the off chance that you are arguing in good faith, here they are:

    Changes in API and technical aspects: OP mentions having to shut down their bots due to changes in Reddit's API, suggesting that the platform is becoming less friendly for developers, especially those who contribute to the community by creating bots or other tools. This could discourage tech-savvy users or developers from using or contributing to Reddit.

    Financial costs: OP notes having spent a significant amount of money maintaining their bots and server infrastructure. While this may be specific to people who run bots or subreddits, it indicates that participating in Reddit in a significant way can entail considerable personal financial investment.

    Concerns about leadership: OP cites the behavior of Reddit's CEO as a reason they would not repeat their investment in the platform. This suggests that ethical or moral concerns about the platform's leadership can lead users to disengage. And really, that's a very valid concern; given how detested Spez is.

    Loss of community members: OP predicts a "brain drain" of bot developers and tool creators. This loss of key contributors could degrade the quality of content and interaction on Reddit, making the platform less appealing to both current and potential users.

    Change in the platform's character or values: OP expresses a sense of loss about what Reddit used to be, indicating a perceived shift in the platform's character or values. Users who identified with or were attracted to Reddit's earlier ethos may feel alienated by such changes.

    Loss of tools: The mention of Apollo, a popular third-party Reddit client, suggests that the discontinuation or loss of favored tools can also lead users to abandon the platform. It implies that changes affecting such tools, whether due to Reddit's policies or other factors, can negatively affect the user experience.

Welcome to how protesting works. This could be a time for you to inform yourself of why the protesters are pissed off and why Reddit is at this point, never going to get back to the quality of engagement it used to have.

It could. Or I could be the time I decide that many of these people are prima donna big babies. I choose the latter.

Celebrity AMAs are mostly just Q&As with celebrity publicists, and are done purely for promotion (usually for some new film, show, or brand they're selling), and are a great example of how fake and astroturfed reddit is in general.

I thought they had an employee for that. I mean they used to, was Victoria her name? She took dictation for celebrities until one of them complained when she transcribed their words too directly, when she was fired. Did no one replace her?

Mea culpa, the article mentions her. Though they do not detail exactly why she was fired, which I think they should.

If I recall correctly former reddit CEO Yishan Wong’s tweets on the matter, it was ordered by Alexis Ohanian directly. Yishan went on to describe how Alexis let the at-the-time CEO, Ellen Pao, take the heat for the decision.

In my eyes, Reddit’s distaste for their own users emanates from the founders directly.

I stopped caring about AMAs after they canned her. If felt like reddit wanted to turn AMAs into nothing but advertising. Occasionally other subreddits would host them with varying success though.

I am not a Redditor; is there a synopsis somewhere to briefly explain what this war of mods vs Reddit has been about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Reddit_API_controversy

The "Subreddit Blackout" section talks about the battle with moderators:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Reddit_API_controversy#...

A good step. Will they move to the main competitor? What can we do to make that happen? Do Lemmy instances already have high-profile moderators that could attract moderators like these?

so no more Ghislaine breaching her incarceration conditions? or is she still going to retail all her current juicy mod privileges?

Any reason whatsoever to believe new mods won't fill this role immediately?

the point is not if they're getting replaced but if they're able to do so, everyone can become a moderator but how many people can actually moderate?

I view moderators a lot like open source maintainers. It’s often a thankless job you do for free and you have to put up with a lot of shit. Also a lot of people think the job is easy and “anyone could do it” when we know that’s not the case in reality. You need someone who cares in that position. Are there bad mods and bad OS maintainers? Absolutely, but it’s still not as easy as people make it out to be to replace either.

I'd argue there are a lot more people who can moderate than can code, and it's much easier to learn to moderate than code. How many millions of redditors are there?

I think people here really want Reddit to die for it's bad behavior and are doing a lot of wishful thinking.

It's turning around a bit, but historically half of a moderator's job was coding, either specialized bots or managing gigantic automod configs.

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