- cross-posted to:
- antiwork@lemmy.ml
- antiwork@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- antiwork@lemmy.ml
- antiwork@lemmy.ml
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You gotta appreciate the irony of Reddit demanding free labor from mods of a sub that is about labor abuse.
More ironic that the mod team agreed.
They should reopen and just stop doing any moderation beyond the bare minimum to keep the sub.
TBH that would make the sub significantly better
It baffles me that they even used the word “expectations.” Like… ‘ma’am… I am not being paid. Do not have ANY expectations.’
The longer this goes the more it reads like the onion.
The utter irony of r/AntiWork being forced to reopen is astounding. Strike broken. Union busted. It’s over.
they are toast, forcing these open will not save them long term. the fact that they had to go here shows how effective this has really been.
no one expect them to close doors tomorrow, and I still think they IPO, lots of dumpster fires IPO. Will still be a dumpster fire and at some point it will be “huh, you still go to that trash site”?
Its happened to ever corp social network.
I think you hit on one of the key points. Every other time this same pattern has played out, each of those sites becomes a shadow of what they once were, but the continue because (to be blunt) running Internet sites is CHEAP.
yup, very often the investment is in continued development and marketing
critical mass is an asset
I wonder why they’re forcing open not particularly advertiser friendly subs like piracy and antiwork?
Possibly conspiratorial thinking on my part, but the first reason I can think of is that those subs are both popular enough that they wouldn’t want them fully migrating off reddit/closed forever, but also the kind of sub to not go along with unpopular decisions/ cause trouble. If you were looking to force a few subs open to serve as an example to mods of other subs that they must reopen or be replaced, you’d want to choose ones that aren’t as likely to reopen on their own anyway after awhile, and who’s moderation team you might want to replace, as you now have an excuse and the people who would get mad already are.
I simply thing Reddit is using the opportunity to rid themselves of anticapitalist subs, the ones that would harm their image for the IPO. Remove the sources of future dissent.
I wonder if it’s because they know the first few subs to be forced open will make headlines, but the second batch most likely won’t. So by starting with fringe subs it paints the picture that’s it’s not the bigger or more important subs that are participating in the blackout.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the /r/antiwork mod’s disastrous appearance on Fox News become a talking point again paired with this, so that when people hear “Reddit forces mods to…” that’s the sort of person the public pictures.
I doubt they want “reddit administration forces open r/piracy community” to make headlines.
I, on the other hand, could dream of nothing better.
that may not be a wasps nest they want to be poking.
Why don’t they move here? They are being exploited there anyways
Sounds like a lot of work. And that’s not really their thing
Its really only a little bit of work, with significant rewards.
Still not their thing.
And give up their power as mods of a large subreddit and starting again from scratch? Most of them probably aren’t willing to do that.
I’m a mod of /r/Disneyland, and we recreated our sub over here on Kbin ( @Disneyland, https://kbin.social/m/Disneyland).
The issue is that we had 500k subs on Reddit. That sounds like a lot, but in reality it equates to about a dozen posts a day, maybe less.
Over here on Kbin, we almost have 100 subs - and I’m really proud of that! - but 100 subs is basically nothing. A fraction of a percent of people are actually content contributors, and the whole community rests on them. Then combine that with the fact that we’re a niche subject (not some general thing like “video games”) and that impacts what can be contributed.
On top of that, the magazine is fairly empty. Not barren - we have a few posts - but it certainly looks and feels empty. And because it’s empty, nobody wants to post, which means it stays empty.
Compare that to Reddit, which has a very dedicated community for us. Not a massive community, but certainly a passionate one. We care about our community; we’ve stewarded it for years. All of us mods started out as members of that community (the subreddit founder is long gone), and we’re all unpaid volunteers that want to keep that community healthy.
Reddit threatened to take it from us and give it to another mod team for a related Disney subreddit that played along with the admins. The issue is that multiple Disney subreddits have, uh, issues with those mods (which has been the case for years to the point where explaining the history is part of onboarding for a lot of Disney mods).
So the issue was reframed - either we reopen our sub on our terms… or we stick to our guns, force Reddit to remove us, and get replaced by a different mod team. This other team is known to be harsh about banning users for any kind of dissent, they abuse their mod powers to spread anti-vax nonsense all over their “non-political” subreddit, they have multiple subreddit drama threads talking about their actions, they’ve been gunning for all of the Disney subs for years… and they’d immediately jump at the chance to reopen the subreddit we’ve worked hard on so they could run it their way.
When you look at it like that… there’s only one real choice. I hate Reddit, but our community doesn’t deserve that.
I realize saying “we choose to keep our powers for your own good” makes me sound like, oh, I dunno, “landed gentry”… but users don’t see that side of moderation or Reddit drama, and frankly they shouldn’t have to.
So we opened and are taking the abuse. Users are torn between “you caved, scabs” and “told you this was a useless gesture, how dare you take my sub away”. Neither one is great.
But there’s more to it than what appears on the surface, and frankly that’s true across a lot of subs.
I do not understand these posts at all.
It sounds like that you are just not interested in building a new community and rather go back to the ivory tower that is reddit.
If that is so just say it.
What are you gonna do when Reddit is gonna implement the next thing that would be unbeneficial to the community?
If you know that the possible new mods are asses, why not call reddits bluff?
Let them see what good moderation is about and what happens when you don’t care about the good moderators for years.
You are probably afraid that a new mod team would do just a good a job as you and you will be forgotten after a day. Then of course what would be all this for if change wouldn’t happen? Other questions you are asking yourself can entice; Is my moderation position really that hard to take over? Are the changes really affecting me?
You are probably afraid losing something that you put your own time and effort in and the idea that someone would ruin it or just take your place is a situation you are not ready for. I would understand all that but then why black out at all? Rigorous changes after 48 hours only happen in Disney movies, you should know that.
Sorry to say but most of the community does not give a damn about moderators and you know it. They care about the content that is provided to them that is what they are hooked on.
This only shows that Reddit has full control over you and your actions and they can do whatever they want to whomever they want because you will bulge the first second they threaten to take your moderations position away.
For the life of me I cannot understand why people would gladly be providing money in Reddits pockets, while the community and moderators don’t see a penny, don’t see any user improvements, get constantly lied to, while getting bend over on every turn.
I am gonna say this again; I thought moderators actually got paid by reddit. I was baffled when I heard a few days ago they weren’t. I thought and still think it would be absolutely ridiculous to invest your time and efforts for a profit making company for absolutely nothing in return.
In the meantime Steve huffman is spitting in your and the communities face every step of the way, not caring about you or the community at all.
I have a whole lot of respect to the people who gave up their mod positions just to make a stand for themselves.
I really don’t mind if subs stay open, if you like to moderate be my guest. If you don’t agree with the blackout, sure.
But the posturing about the greater good for the community, just don’t.
Alright, one point at a time:
It sounds like that you are just not interested in building a new community and rather go back to the ivory tower that is reddit.
If we weren’t interested, we wouldn’t have founded the community. We’re now maintaining two. The Disneyland subreddit links to Kbin in its sidebar. While I’d agree that Reddit is somewhat of an ivory tower, bear in mind that it’s a community we’ve cultivated for years and we have a sense of responsibility for them.
What are you gonna do when Reddit is gonna implement the next thing that would be unbeneficial to the community?
Link here, like we already are. We’ve never participated in “Reddit drama”. The fact that we took a stand as-is was a big step for us. We even committed to “indefinite”, not just 48 hours. It wasn’t effective, and we caved after 110 hours or so. Lessons learned.
But when (not if) Reddit shoots itself in the foot, we can have a community here ready for them. Right now it’s small. To a certain extent, that’s positive… the mod tools on Kbin are lacking. But it’s not like we’re abandoning the community here.
Spez is taking inspiration from Elon. He’s going to do more dumb things. He’s already talked about the dumb things he wants to do. There’ll be other waves of migration, and we want to make sure that anyone who still wants the space they had (but doesn’t want to use Reddit) can have a home.
If you know that the possible new mods are asses, why not call reddits bluff?
Do you think Reddit cares about asshole mod teams? Honestly. Remember, the “new mods” already run a major Disney subreddit. If Reddit cared about them being assholes who regularly wind up on SubredditDrama they would have taken action already.
Also bear in mind that I am one person on a team. There are others who work alongside me that have voices which should be heard and respected. To that extent, a lot of them didn’t want to even risk it. I don’t have the authority (by design) to unilaterally override them.
Sorry to say but most of the community does not give a damn about moderators.
…
I thought and still think it would be absolutely ridiculous to invest your time and efforts for a profit making company for absolutely nothing in return.
Absolutely correct. We’re the unpaid jannies, the suckers who need to touch grass. That’s not sarcasm, btw - I really do think that. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we do it at all, especially given the amount of abuse we get from… well, basically everyone.
Spez doesn’t care about our users. We know that. Frankly, there are a lot of places on the internet that are run or controlled by those who don’t care about others.
So spaces that do care are important. You can call it posturing, but it’s the truth. If we didn’t care, we would’ve quit a decade ago.
We care about making our community a welcoming space, a little home on the internet. We care about stopping trolls that see the word “Disney” and want to cause as much damage as possible.
It is absolutely ridiculous to care. Because you’re right - the site doesn’t care. We are giving them value and expecting nothing. They depend on us to care, and they treat us any way they want because they know we’re too goddamn soft to let harm come to the communities we try and protect.
But there are people who need these little rest stops. They need a place to post a picture of their Mickey Mouse balloon, or their engagement photo in front of the castle, or their debate about what on earth the writing on some poster says. It makes them happy and there’s a whole blossoming community there, of happy people in a safe space.
What on earth do I even get out of my “posturing” otherwise? A stupid green badge that says “please yell at me?” I don’t even get that badge outside of my sub. I’m not a powermod; /r/Disneyland is the only major sub I mod. The only others I run are teeny tiny, maybe 600 users. We’re not a Reddit partner community that gets wined and dined.
We’re just some stupid, terminally-online folks who need to touch grass. Doing unpaid labor for an abusive place that doesn’t care, promoting a different abusive monopoly of a company that doesn’t care. All to make some little virtual people on the other side of a box (who also hate us) happy.
Have you considered shifting to a model of only permitting disneyfied John Oliver image posts?
You sound like a great and super reasonable person. Reddit was lucky to have your help and it’s a shame they don’t appreciate you and mods like you more.
You’re doing great. I’m not on your subreddit, but you don’t deserve people piling on here. Thanks for everything you do, and I hope this transition doesn’t cause you too many gray hairs :)
If the community is as important to the users as you believe them to be then those who truly do value the resources of the community will move.
I value the resources of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH and /r/piracy over the years so much that I came to lemmy. I didn’t see /r/piracy’s initial plans to do an indefinite shutdown as something that would hurt me, but something I fully supported and was more than happy to join them on lemmy to find a new home.
Reddit was why I found communities like those two, but reddit was not what I needed for them to always have to be on. Those who don’t feel the same will just run off to whatever other piracy resource is there regardless of whether mods are removed or different.
So I guess what I’m trying to say as one of the regular people is you don’t need to worry so much about hurting us. And to us this wasn’t just a fight over communities but stuff like the freedom to use third party apps and great third party extensions like RES. I didn’t want to have to use the terrible reddit website on my phone to interact with my communities, or have to use their spyware official app. I was happy mods were willing to fight for users like us who didn’t have any power at all.
You’re doing great. I’m not on your subreddit, but you don’t deserve people piling on here. Thanks for everything you do, and I hope this transition doesn’t cause you too many gray hairs :)
“Do you think Reddit cares? Honestly.”
My post says what I think. Of course they don’t they haven’t cared for the better part of 8 years. It’s why I ran PDS and stopped with using Reddit as of this week.
“But there are people who need these little rest stops. They need a place to post a picture of their Mickey Mouse balloon, or their engagement photo in front of the castle, or their debate about what on earth the writing on some poster says. It makes them happy and there’s a whole blossoming community there, of happy people in a safe space.”
You know that Reddit will use this as leverage whenever they can right?
“We’re just some stupid, terminally-online folks who need to touch grass. Doing unpaid labor for an abusive place that doesn’t care. All to make some little virtual people on the other side of a box (who also hate us) happy.”
Why would you even talk about yourself like that?
If it wasn’t clear I am hardcore in the moderator camp.
I would not be a moderator even if you would glue me to a chair and threaten me to mod or I would be forced to watch every season of seinfeld in that same chair. I absolutely despise seinfeld.
You are literally the gateway between the community and Reddits pockets. Why do you think that Facebook pays a buttload of cash for their moderators.
I come of as harsh maybe, but for some reason I feel like I care more for the moderators then the moderators do for themselves.
You should be proud of the work you do and the shit you take on the daily.
Sorry if I come on strong, but believe me it isn’t to dunk on you or the moderators in any way, shape or form.
I am probably way to invested in this part of the saga so I will stop posting about this part at all.
We care about making our community a welcoming space, a little home on the internet. We care about stopping trolls that see the word “Disney” and want to cause as much damage as possible.
Funny enough with how beehaw is defederating from a bunch of instances that pose a threat to disturbing the safe positive vibes here seems like beehaw would be a good place to start that community here. And help reduce modding oversight with how instances with users who step over the line repeatedly can get the entire instance defederated like what happened to lemmy.world.
I’m not sure how open or closed kbin is to walling off groups that are potentially hostile.
Beehaw doesn’t allow you to create communities. They were our initial choice until we learned that.
Kbin is against hate speech, which is all I ask for. And we had issues with those users on Reddit regardless; Reddit doesn’t instantly ban someone the moment they spout the n-word across 12 subreddits.
Usually AutoMod catches/removes it, then we ban when reviewing modqueue. (Which the official app doesn’t have last time I checked.) AutoMod doesn’t exist here, which makes that harder… but we’re small enough that it doesn’t matter.
You can request communities.
go back to the ivory tower that is reddit.
EnglishMobster explained, that for them, it is still about supporting the community they’ve built there, and it is still tenable to continue with that. You’re response is to exaggerate the current Reddit threat, and get shirty at EnglishMobster. BlackCoffee, you show no consideration for an opinion outide your viewpoint, only recalcitrance.
I show enough consideration because of my post where I go deeper into the whole situation. I also used to be a part of the communities in Reddit.
You are missing my point.
If you really want change you should know what that would entice and what that would bring.
If you just wanted to posture and get brownie points then the 48 hour blackout was perfect for doing something without actually doing something.
But humeur me; How is this beneficial for the community in the long term?
What has Reddit shown that it cared about its communities and moderators over the years?
It does prove Steves point though; It all will blow over and people will bend the knee.
The motives of the community and Reddit do not align in the slightest.
It’s a self fulfilling conditioning that:
- you love something(or thought you love something if you read the follow points)
- you dedicate time to make it better, like building your own themepark or rollercoaster tycoon
- you are in the god view and have control over almost every aspect of the community
- you feel the need and urge to keep those people the visit your themepark happy and engaged
- the time and effort you put in(sunken cost) actually have value to the mods, but not the visitors
- if something bad is threaten to happen to the thing you cared about, you have similar if not stronger emotional response when the author killed your favorite character in the show you loved a lot.
It might be mentally closer to threaten to take away your loved dog/cat cause in reality you bonded with that identity but you don’t actually own the sub.
Sounds to me that sometimes the community needs to actually see the consequences of mods leaving? Because a lot take the attitude of who needs mods just open it up.
And sticking to the status quo instead of breaking it takes away the chance of something even changing for the better even if the outcome could be worse.
Spez knew what an empty threat most of the mods were making.
Agree. You were faced with a horrible choice and the only way to make it would be done in solidarity with all the other mods. BUT. If the intent was to truly make an impact to the wider user base, maybe walking away and starting over would have been a potential way to demonstrate not only to the admins but also to the users that you were unwilling to take any more BS. Just like other users who are walking from the platform. It may take a while but once everything sucks, users will eventually come searching for a new, not sucky home. If you have one available they will find it.
Do you have any plans to start redirecting users to your new spot, while keeping the subreddit open?
Yes, that’s the plan. We have it at the top of our sidebar, and as a sticky post.
I had an AutoMod that automatically mentioned it everywhere but the other mods asked me to turn that one off as it was a little too invasive.
I’m hoping to also make it an announcement that sticks at the top of the page instead of the AutoMod (the current announcement is stale anyway). But that one is waiting on some of the other mods to sign off.
That sounds pretty good! I wish you luck. Hopefully, more of your community will be up for migrating over time or during whatever the next incident is.
How much garbage post you have to weed through on Reddit? Some user suggest to do a silent protest where the mods don’t moderate and just remove the very bad ones. Letting the sub degrade over time. Is that a feasible action? Would that work on a small niche sub?
We do have a very aggressive AutoMod with a lot of false positives. We’re about the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, but people frequently come to ask about Tokyo Disney or Disneyland Paris or Walt Disney World.
That’s the number 1 thing AutoMod catches, but then it also catches people saying something innocent (“XYZ is better at Disneyland than WDW”).
If we turned off AutoMod, we’d quickly become a “generic Disney theme parks” subreddit. I brokered that idea to the mod team before we opened up, but they weren’t completely onboard so we didn’t go through with it.
If these subreddits all had a sticky thread linking to their new magazines/communities on other platforms, then it would help them grow.
But they don’t. They just make a copy/paste post about reddit killing 3rd party apps and “go use alternatives”, most people need directly linking to them with a simple description of how they work.
We do have a sticky thread that mentions our Kbin community at the very top.
It’s also at the top of our sidebar, above the rules.
Could you add something on the post submission page suggesting that folks also submit their content to your kbin community? Maybe don’t push to completely move, just suggest that content submissions go to both places for now.
I’ll have to run it by the other mods.
But they don’t. They just make a copy/paste post about reddit killing 3rd party apps and “go use alternatives”, most people need directly linking to them with a simple description of how they work.
Reddit has been allegedly banning these accounts for spam, curbing the amount of linking to specific alternatives for the most part (except Discord, which IMO isn’t an alternative)
It’s certainly a hard situation, but I don’t think going along with the malicious agenda of the administration for the good of the community is a strong position. At some point you have to be decisive and accept that there will be negative consequences. Critically, it is not your fault! Someone is saying if you don’t do bad thing A, I’ll do bad thing B. If they do B, that’s not on you.
Of course you have to find balance, choose your battles etc., and everybody should have their own take, but the stakes here just aren’t that high for most folks: it’s low grade bullying that you can walk away from, and, in the process, show others that they don’t need to stay there either. Some subscribers will stick with a crumbling Reddit community to the bitter end, but others will see it go sour and look around for where the good parts of the community went. If you shift your efforts to a new setting, then some of those users will follow the gradient up from toxic Reddit to wherever you setup shop. If you work to keep the Reddit community as comfortable as possible, then you are reducing whatever impetus there is to find a better home.
The issue is that multiple Disney subreddits have, uh, issues with those mods (which has been the case for years to the point where explaining the history is part of onboarding for a lot of Disney mods).
what’s the gos? You’ve got me curious.
how dare you take my sub away". Neither one is great.
Neither is missing out on the the Ron DeSantis subtext that must be like spinach to Popeye at r/Disneyland.
Ha. They want that stuff they can go to <other subreddit redacted>.
It’s been bad since Trump. COVID was the worst though.
See how many users r/piracy have already brought here. More will come
The r/piracy sub is an outlier IMO, it tends to attract a particular tech-savvy niche that isn’t afraid to try new things…
I don’t think the same can be said for the Disneyland subreddit where I feel the users would struggle to understand the concept and appeal of a federated Reddit-like alternative.
All that said, I do agree with the “More will come” - reddit’s actions have brought a massive influx of users to lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works
More importantly, are you still able to do your mod work? From the volume you described it sounds so.
But unfortunately there are subs where that is not an option either without 3rd-party tools. All the large subs will collapse one way or another unless Reddit comes up with built-in mod tools very fast. (I know they’ve said they’re “working on it”.)
AutoMod handles most of it. We just go through the queue and manually approve stuff.
However, the app doesn’t have the queue IIRC. So people will be waiting a long time for their posts to be approved. It’ll slow down the sub considerably since I can really only mod from desktop.
I still think Reddit forcibly removing the head mod of r/Piracy is peak irony. They can’t not have people discussing copyright infringement, even through in years prior they were threatening to ban the community.
damn, the employees (probably directly from spez himself) are picking the “troll” route for reopening. r/piracy and r/antiwork? they aren’t even big ones like r/videos!
I wonder if it’s some strategic bullshit to try and scare people. Fuck it, most of those people are the kind who would enjoy using Lemmy anyway.
like a mob boss saying “we’ll start with chopping your fingers off if you dont comply, then we’ll move up to other parts”
Reddit is such a mess.
Reddit is destroying their moderation tools anyway…
When Reddit said moderator tools were exempt from the API pricing, did they mention the tools would stay as is?
I’m assuming not since the mods are still protesting.
I’m out of the loop of the details regarding the impact on mod tools.
I mean most of the mods used third party applications as tools to do their job. With the API changes, almost all third party apps will die, so all mods will lose their tools.
I’m not a mod and can’t exactly understand the situation, but I guess third party apps had easier to use and better/more tools than what official Reddit gives them, so that’s it.
I like what /r/pics did.
We – the so-called “landed gentry” – appreciate that Reddit is made great by its users. Uncompensated contributors populate the platform’s many communities with their content, just as volunteer moderators keep spam and bigotry at bay. Since neither we nor Reddit would be here without you, it was only fair to let you determine what /r/Pics should include… and you overwhelmingly chose to feature only images of John Oliver looking sexy. (Seriously, the final vote was -2,329 to 37,331.)
As such, /r/Pics will henceforth feature only images of John Oliver looking sexy.
It’s great, have a scroll. No intent to derail, here’s the thread on !reddit@lemmy.ml: https://lemmy.world/post/206467
I wonder if a similar stunt would have been possible for /r/antiwork. Any ideas? How about: “You must rest on weekdays. Posts and comments are only allowed on weekends.”
That’s brilliant, hope to see Reddit turn into nothing but a slew of super-specific protest posts.
You’ll love what r/steam did. They were forced open and from what I hear users are now exclusively posting pictures of water vapor.
You’ll love what r/steam did.
I do! LOL! Thanks for letting us know.
That’s fantastic
I want /r/ music to ban all music except covers of ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ or maybe ‘My Heart Will Go On’.
Only acoustic guitar covers of Wonderwall
Darude - Sandstorm
I’m amazed it’s not this song
Or 10 hour cuts of Last Christmas
Maybe im a christmas tree
Should we be brigading it with spam and trash to reduce it’s worth?
I like your idea, but also combine it with the idea behind CatsStandingUp, but each post must be the exact same image, with the exact same title. Make it as boring as possible. To add extra spice: Everyone who posts or comments gets automatically banned by automod, as participation is working and against community ideals. I have no idea if that breaks any site rules, but it would discourage participation.
Everyone who posts or comments gets automatically banned by automod, as participation is working and against community ideals.
So good :D
You made me go to reddit for a quick look, and I’m in love with it. John Oliver is indeed a sexy beast.
You are only allowed to Upload pictures of not doing work
I hate to be a party pooper, but I really can’t see how the subreddits doing things like that are in any way a protest.
I highly doubt Reddit cares what anyone is posting pictures of as long as they are legal, and the engagement is high. The only way to post them is to engage with Reddit, whether on their website, through the official app, or through a third party app that has to pay Reddit money to use the API. That’s exactly what Reddit wants.
And as for the mods: in a real life scenario, I can see how the threat of being replaced is scary because it means losing your income… but here? They were doing free labour, and as soon as Reddit threatened to take away their power over a corner of the internet, they immediately gave in and proceeded to encourage their audience to “protest” by engaging with Reddit.
I think it would have been several times more effective if the mods just all quit, and everyone who is “protesting” by engaging with Reddit in one form or another (posting, commenting, or just looking and upvoting) just left. I really doubt Reddit is even worried about what is happening now.
people go to reddit for the content. if the content isn’t on reddit anymore, they will end up elsewhere. filling reddit up with content that nobody really cares about will dissuade people from using reddit.
imo the novelty of john oliver will wear off soon, and people will want regular content again. so long as mods stay firm that regular content is not allowed, users will be dissatisfied and lower their engagement. though it’s not a perfect plan (people could just use different subs), it’s better than nothing
I really think the point is that posting useless content that actively protests the platform and makes it less valuable and interesting should make it hard for Reddit to show investors that their platform is worth money as they go public, which is why the whole thing started in the first place.
I think the point is this dissuades lurkers, as it’s boring.
The lurkers are the ones upvoting. I’m certain that not posting content would be much more boring. What would lurkers do with a drought of content?
To be completely honest, all of these just sound like a lot of excuses for people to toss their alleged ideals and values aside and keep using Reddit, while soothing their conscience by pretending they are still doing something.
And I say “alleged ideals” because if one drops them as soon as they encounter any resistance and it stops being comfortable to stand by them, then I don’t think it can be said they ever stood by those ideals in the first place. With all respect, I would say they were just playing make believe until things got real and actually affected them. And the sad part if it affected them in the most minute of ways.
Perhaps I’m being too dramatic, but it makes me wonder: if people can’t even organize and keep a strike for one week when it requires this little of them, and a lot are succumbing to the smallest of threats (“you will henceforth no longer be allowed to perform free labour for us”), then what’s the point in even trying to organize and change anything in the real world?
They weren’t forced to reopen. They were threatened with being replaced. Who gives a shit? One can’t even call this cowardly. Who fears losing an unpaid job? This is just pathetic. So much for solidarity. The r/Videos mod team called this from the beginning. They’re prepared to go down with the ship. Of course this would be the natural outcome of a prolonged strike. This is really separating the performative virtue signalling from those who care.
I’m not and never have been a mod. But can understand the conflict of not wanting to reopen but if you don’t you lose a position that you’ve spent a lot of time and energy. They’re probably passionate about their community. Giving that away and seeing someone else destroy all your hard work? Glad I’m not that invested.
It’s called the sunk cost fallacy. “I can’t possibly quit because I’ve put so much time/money/effort into this.”
But… they are literally the mods of r/antiwork, a community based around calling out unfair treatment by bosses and gathering strength to quit and find better employment.
You can’t make this shit up, it’s so stupid - it’d be unbelievable if it weren’t for the fact that it actually happened.
It’s super ironic, I completely agree.
In their mind their worried about the stakes of losing complete control of their haven on reddit and watching a community they built in their free time, start blindly following some puppets appointed by reddit. Reddit will always have that power but so long as the mod sees a possibility of maintaining control Reddit can cowtow them under the guise of “You’re the best mod we have, we want you in control, we just need you to accept this is the reality.”
True, but there is a real danger of changing the tone and direction of a sub with a mod swap. That sub has gone through it.
Yes that’s the risk of a strike, and reddit knows that. When asked if they’d stick to their principals they gave up. Easy as that.
Not only that but handing over the sub to people who might be power-hungry and/or abusive. Hard to see a community you’ve worked for be taken over by those who don’t care about it.
Seeing the community get destroyed is hard, but seeing the whole company the community relies on being taken over by someone who doesn’t care about is okay?! These unpaid janitors seriously need to re-evaluate their priorities.
Don’t forget the addiction to power. Yes, there are all kinds of moderators.
This is such a common attitude, and it’s nonsense. Non-moderators think moderators are “power hungry” when they ban people. While there are some few exceptions, moderators don’t ban people because they like power. Moderators ban people because they’re disruptive and causing trouble.
What moderating is really like, part 1
What moderating is really like, part 2
99% of the people I’ve banned who were not obvious spammers or bots are one kind of troll or another. Usually they fall into three categories: Concern Trolls (“But I’m only saying this for your own good!”), Factoid Trolls (“I’m here to tell you the TRUTH!”), or Disruptive Trolls (dick picks, offensive memes, slurs and racism, etc.).
Roughly 1% of the people I ban apologize for their mistake, remove their rule-breaking content, and either follow the rules or quietly leave.
I regularly get called a power-hungry mod by the crybabies who get angry when they aren’t allowed to break the very clearly stated rules, and repeat their offenses after getting first, sometimes second warnings. They run to other places and go try to stir up other crybabies to come and cause the same kind of trouble.
Moderating is tireless and endless. Jerks don’t get banned for saying “Dur the mods suck! Free Speech!” Jerks get banned because they think the rules are for other people, or because they think that the rules are wrong so that means they don’t have to follow them.
Thank you for coming to my Moose Talk. (Ted is taking a nap right now.)
Different platform, but exactly the same deal moderating Twitch chats. I think my favorite insult that I’ve received was that I was personally “the downfall of Western civilization.”
The upshot to those disruptions happening in an active chat like that though is that everyone sees how much of a knob that person is being and is perfectly happy to see them gone.
Anything that gives you status over others will attract people. How many people do you think would actually want to mod twitch chat if they didn’t get a sword icon?
Honestly… I mod twitch chat for the bot commands to help the streamers for which I mod. I wish I could turn off the sword icon… But I mod for streamers that typically have <500 viewers at a time.
No need to get offended just because I mentioned one of the valid reasons.
“I regularly get called a power-hungry mod by the crybabies who get angry when they aren’t allowed to break the very clearly stated rules, and repeat their offenses after getting first, sometimes second warnings. They run to other places and go try to stir up other crybabies to come and cause the same kind of trouble.”
Isn’t there something about this in the rules/code of conduct or something?
I’ve seen the vitrol that mods get called on the daily.
Why isn’t Reddit taking concrete action against this?
I see it as Reddits obligation to educate the community about moderators and what they do on the daily.
It is in their best interest to of course not do the above because otherwise moderators may actually feel like an important part of the eco system.
And Reddit would not like that.
Officially? Yes, it’s all against the rules. It’s against the rules to harass moderators. It’s against the rules to go attempt to rile up others to cause problems. It’s against the rules to have subreddits dedicated to trying to convince people to go to other subs and harass moderators.
In reality? It has to be very persistent for the admins to take real action. There have been cases where subreddits have been cautioned or (rarely) sanctioned for allowing or encouraging their users to go visit other subs to harass. There have been cases where harassers eventually get their accounts banned, but not before Reddit has smacked them on the hand and said, “No, no! Bad Redditor!” 3-4 times first. More likely, reporting this kind of crap gets you the response, “We don’t see a problem.”
Part of that problem is that a lot of report responses are automated, and you have to know how to appeal and get the attention of humans to even have a sliver of hope that one of them might take action.
It’s a case of too many problem children, not enough human staff to deal with it.
It’s against the rules to create account after account to follow and harass a moderator for over four years but 8? 9? of his alt accounts later, they still haven’t been able to stop this one nutbag from Australia who gets his jollies by following me around Reddit to disagree with everything I say.
I see it as Reddits obligation to educate the community about moderators and what they do on the daily.
Reddit thinks moderators are as disposable as napkins.
I love how the many users are quick to call mods power hungry. Some of these people spent hundreds of hours building up a subreddit and maintaining it and you call them power hungry because they don’t want to lose what they worked so passionate for - for free.
I love how the many users are quick to call mods power hungry.
@Hovenko wrote that really carefully. If you interpret it literally, it basically says “some moderators are addicted to power.”
Which is true. You are also right, most aren’t. But some are.
There are many reasons why are people in general returning to reddit. Addiction, not wanting to let past work go, not giving a crap, giving up on things… I just don’t like labeling them and pretending there is only one which fits the narrative.
You notice how a bunch of subreddit mods are staying on Reddit and reopening their subreddits after the old mods were forced out? Those are the power-hungry ones who want to lord over others, I suspect. They know they won’t have any power over anyone if they leave.
Maybe you should read what I have written first.
You are talking like there was no such thing as addiction to power among mods. And once again - there are all kinds of mods. Gaussian curve applies here as well.
The mods are literally doing work for free. Reddit won’t find competent volunteers, so leaving is the only reasonable choice for anyone with any amount of integrity.
They were not forced, they were pressured. The mods caved to the threat of being replaced, showing everyone that having that little bit of power was always their main priority. I didn’t expect more from dog-walkers.
Yes everyone against labor abuse is a dog walker basement dweller.
Not everyone, but those mods definitely are.
If they really were anti-work and pro-sticking-it-to-the-man, they’d leave Reddit rather than cave to spez’s demands.
One of their mods literally was a 20 hour work week dog walker who wanted to work less.
No, just the ones on antiwork
The general themes on r/antiwork helped me leave a job after being disrespected after asking for a fair raise. That led to switching careers into data science and doubling me salary and doing far more meaningful work. There, I met a colleague, a 45 year old woman, and we were talking about pay equity and our current workplace, and she brought up to ME that she followed antiwork during COVID and how it also helped her realize her self-worth. She’s now moved and found an even better opportunity.
It’s mega cringe a lot of the time, and the value drops off after a month or two of following I’d say, but overall I think it was a force for good. At least in two people’s lives.
Definitely, had a similar experience of r/antiwork giving me a bit of a nudge to leave a crappy job where I had some similarly unfortunate conversations with management. Hope you’re enjoying the new career!
Tell her about setting up an account here. Give her some guidance on which instance to first try, how to subscribe to magazines/communities, etc.
What on earth do ya’ll have against dog walkers? I’ve never seen this as an insult before.
The only professional dog walker I’ve known was a really shitty manager in a powerful position, too, hardly an antiwork guy.
Right, but what’s their alternative? While they’re still mods they can still affect some level of change. If they completely cede to Reddit’s admin, they have nothing.
While they’re still mods they can still affect some level of change.
If they can’t endure even a 1 week strike on a social network then they cannot affect any change anyway because they are a completely powerless farce. Imagine how quickly they’d fold if this were a RL thing with actual consequences beyond their moderator position.
I mean have we forgotten when last year the mod of that sub went to a live interview and the whole subreddit was so ashamed they had to distance themselves from it? I think the day later they said nobody will interview anymore and they removed the person as a mod and wiped any trace of it? They are a joke, this is just another event that proves it.
Ya, I can’t believe people are missing the fact the antiwork mod team has never done a decent job being a good voice to their community in the first place.
Yeah, that was the start of the work reform splinter subreddit.
It’s like, come on AntiWork, you had one job. Or none job. You know what I mean.
Unreal stuff. It looks like spez thinks the PR cannot get any worse so he may as well go full scorched earth.
If that’s the case, he wouldn’t be wrong. I mean, he should just do whatever he’s thinking and get it over with. The users and mods are pissed, all goodwill has been spent.
oh, the irony
At this point, it’s just funny. Reddit Admins couldn’t have selected a better sub for this, it is almost art.
Antiwork mods should quiet quit. Sit back and let the house burn down.
Irony
Mods are forced to work
Nah it’s just power addiction. They can stop any time.
You keep repeating that. Just how many times have you been banned on Reddit? I’m guessing a lot.
Zero. :)
Pretty sure most of the more anarchist mods got pushed out sometime after the whole Fox News debacle already and since then the content has become less spicy too. Watering all that down again, what is even left? “Please master spez I would like to slightly criticise a corporation, am I allowed to do this or is it against the guidelines and duties of moderators?” or what.
Well, it is all for the best, free thinking people will migrate and rebuild, the rest I won‘t miss.
After the fox news thing, the sane ones split and left for r/workreform. Which is a more reasonable community whose tone was, “we don’t mind working but we want to be fairly treated, and the best way to assure that is through unionizing or leaving for better jobs”. None of that “I literally think no one should work and someone else should pay all of our bills” crap.
99% of what made it to /all from there was pretty much “I hate my manager”
I enjoyed the underlying anarchist texts to the movement like Bullshit Jobs by Graeber, The Abolition of Work by Bob Black etc. but yeah discussion of that was minimal and the more people arrived the less there was and I‘m also sure none of that ever made it to r/all.
Ironically, I have a great manager and wonderful job, I just dislike the system as a whole due to a) people around me suffering b) bad experiences growing up I been exploited with internships as somewhat of a cleaner. Thus I like our cleaners more than the CEO and if I were in charge I‘d pay them better too.
Anyway, the biggest advocates for r/antiwork in my mind aren‘t some mods, it‘s actually people like Musk or spez who can‘t help but treat anyone working class like trash and rabble. They push this mentality of everyone should kiss their feet or they deserve to become homeless. As long as they are around, such a movement will persist. I mean it even exists in supposedly-communist China with tang ping and they try to censor it a lot harder, haha good luck! Either they treat people well and foster a positive and engaging work culture or a counterculture arises naturally.
Sorry, now I went off on a tangent all just from this little comment!
Man I miss the old antiwork sub. Peeps back then understood what work meant as a material condition that needs to be abolished.
I’ve heard about some subs being forced back open, but I wasn’t entirely sure if that’s what’s really happening.
This is truly sad. No matter how you protest, the house always wins in this game. Even though this blackout was doomed from the start, at least now Reddit has shown their hand. Now it’s clear that I want absolutely nothing to do wit that corporation ever again.
Federation isn’t like email at all. I don’t know why people keep saying that. You’ll never get a message saying “we’re not receiving email from this server today” unless something has gone horribly wrong.
Email also doesn’t hang with a green loading circle for hours when you try to log in.
No, that was pretty much how email worked for a long time. And IRC.
I remember someone even making a song “I am going to ban your domain” to the tune of “they’re coming to take me away” to mock sysadmins who took this drastic measure too quickly.
Some university servers would block all email from abroad except for some whitelisted servers. My school blocked emails from another school because the students were badly policed and would just harrass other schools.
Some domains were universally blockdd because they were used by spammers and scammers.
This mostly softened into spam folders and increasingly sophisticated filtering, which is dominating today.
There are blacklisted email servers. And when email started you had loading circle for the whole internet.
Email has the same problems as federated lemmy servers.
Mail Servers can end up on distrubuted blacklists and unable to communicate with each other. When office 365 has an outage it causes huge problems because it’s a single large provider having issues. That provider goes down but not email as a whole.
This is the same as what happened about a week ago when lemmy.ml and lemmy.world went down due to load.
I think others are noting how it can be like this. In my experience:
- My kids’ school accounts can only send emails to and receive emails from their teachers’ email addresses. All other emails, including those from fellow students, are blocked.
- I frequently have issues with whitelisted email addresses at work. They sometimes are blocked and I have to go through the tedious whitelisting process all over again.
Yeah that’s how spam filtering now works on email. It’s just in the background and isn’t talked much about because it’s been automated quite a lot. But at the end of the day it’s still writing domain names into blacklist, essentially defederating from those domains.
I’m more seeing it as tiny villages in the same country. Sometimes there’s a duplicate Starbucks over in the other village, but they might have a different daily special. And some villages have beef with eachother, and then you gotta sneak out if you still want to secretly visit your beloved in the other village. Or move over to your summer house in village #3, where you can both meet up without issues.
As someone who runs multiple email servers, this is exactly how it works.
Some email providers will randomly or purposely block emails I sent to them. I get arbitrary blocks or dropped emails on sent emails.
Smaller domains are blocked all the time, ask your local email admin… just because you’re not getting messages about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen
gmail and outlook and yahoo just silently drop my emails so I don’t even get the courtesy of a notification, and it’s almost impossible to get it appealed. The server issues will be fixed with time, reddit used to crash all the time.
