Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave
from the off-with-their-heads dept
The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful tools by jacking up the price on it to unsupportable levels — was about making Reddit more “democratic.”
Except, that’s clearly not the case. For weeks now, Reddit has been ratcheting up the threats to various moderators of subreddits to try to force them to reopen.
The latest is that Reddit started contacting more mods of protesting subs (most have reopened, but many are still engaging in acts of protest) telling them they had 48 hours to tell the company their plans for reopening. Quickly after that, they issued an ultimatum: closed subreddits must reopen.
“This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue” beyond the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that’s still private.
After a mod replied, ModCodeofConduct went even further. “[Millions of] members have lost complete access to this community and that is not going to continue,” the account said. “Wanting to take time to consider future moderation plans is fine, but that must be done in at least a ‘restricted’ setting. This community will not remain private beyond the timeframe we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here.”
In a conversation with moderators of a different subreddit, ModCodeofConduct told them that “continued violation of [Rule 4 of the Moderator Code of Conduct] over the next 31 hours will result in further action.” Rule 4 of that document is “Be Active and Engaged.” That subreddit has since reopened, though in an “archive” mode where new posts will be automatically removed.
The thing is, in many of these subreddits, the users voted in favor of going private. So, for all of Huffman’s nonsense talk about “democracy” and getting rid of what he preposterously called “the landed gentry,” the reality is the opposite. It’s Huffman’s way, or you’re out.
Indeed, there are already reports of Reddit admins being willing to help stage coups to oust protesting mods and install others in their place. Meanwhile, there’s talk of renewed protests on July 1st (the day the API changes go into effect), though who knows how well that will go.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen lots of reports noting that Redidt’s traffic, after an initial dip, has returned to normal, but it’s possible that some of that is just people gawking at the spectacle of the protesting subs that were covered in John Oliver images.
But, perhaps a more concerning issue regarding Huffman’s plans to take the company public in the near future, is that the same reports saying traffic has returned to normal, are noting that traffic to Reddit’s advertising portal… has dropped noticeably.
However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.
For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.
Next thing you know, we’ll be hearing that Huffman has hired Linda Yaccarino to be the new CEO….
Filed Under: ads, communities, moderators, steve huffman, subreddits, threats
Companies: reddit
Comments on “Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave”
Also worth noting: The official subreddit for Minecraft got a little less official earlier this week.
Don't miss reddit.
Coincidentally, I left for a work trip about the time that the first protests started. I was off reddit for a few weeks because i didnt take my phone with me and after getting back I realized I don’t miss it and I wasted too much time on it before.
I have no plans to ever return even though it has nothing to do with the protests. I do support the protests though because charging outrageous fees for the API access is stupid.
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Lemmy is a great alternative to Reddit if you want a similar community experience
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I’d recommend kbin over Lemmy, but that’s because of the behavior of the tankies that developed Lemmy. Either way, the fediverse is much better for discussion than reddit, even if they’re not nearly as populous as reddit (these two points are likely related).
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While i cant recommend lemmy.ml because of the afore-mentioned tankies, Lemmy.world has become the defacto front end of Lemmy, and doesnt have those problems.
You can also always join a smaller instance, such as lemmy.ca, which can still see all the content since its all federated.
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What did they do, exactly? I’ve been seeing vague references everywhere but no specifics.
Incidental traffic
It is not too strange that Reddit is (almost) back to normal visitor levels. While a not insignificant amount of traffic is by people registered/active on the site there is an enormous amount of incidental traffic directed towards the site through search engines.
It’s funny how Reddit allowed racist, bigoted, pedophilic, and violent subreddits to thrive for years, but now suddenly they want to control what subreddits exists. They could have, and should have, run the set of default subreddits themselves to provide a basic platform for people. But they didn’t want to spend the money on it. Even today they could easily create a set of subreddits that are “official” for people to use. They would just have actually pay money to people to maintain and moderate them. And again, they don’t want to do that.
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Spez not only wants to have his cake and eat it too, he wants to take all the mods’ cakes, that they spent their time to make and decorate for free, then smash the cakes in the mods’ faces while calling them names.
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One might think he wants the white supremacist dollar…
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To be fair, they are really easy to grift.
Deleted my account today with “Go fuck yourself, Spez.” as my reason.
Reddit is replaceable.
... good job?
Users and advertisers bailing after a boneheaded CEO implements changes that the people who bring value to the service hate and anyone remotely knowledgeable about how the platform works could have explained were terrible ideas?
Well he did want to emulate Elon…
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But Elon had the $44 billion to lose. Spez is trying to make his billions. But, the way he is going he might just meet Elon at the $0 mark.
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And he’s failing. And that’s sad.
…well, it’s sad for him, anyway.
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And so hilarious for the rest of us.
Re: Re: not all his to lose
I heard that he had to borrow a big chunk, over $10 billion, and so twitter now faces the requirements of debt service. The value of the purchase, in the mean time, appears to have declined.
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Reddit is better than ever now that the uppity mods have been replaced. This is just another example of MM complaining about a company led by a white man he doesn’t like.
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I suggest seeking mental health care seeing that your perception of reality is only tangentially related to said reality.
Granted the quite a few of the mods ended up on the malicious compliance route. Just keep in mind the whole reason of the mod revolt is that Huffmans blatant cash grab without thinking about the consequences (As can be seen by the total surprise that accessibility apps were making use of the Reddit API) results in 0 available apps (since no app can afford the costs, which incidentally are a multiple of the expected income gained from a visitor to the website through a browser without add blocker) to use for moderating. And unless there has been unreported progress only two accessibility apps that were green lighted after the “Oh we’re fucked” realization that they just screwed over every blind person trying to access Reddit and the impending reputational shitstorm that started brewing as a result.
What makes it worse is that for any Reddit moderation at scale you cannot use the basic tools provided by Reddit you need an independently app since those provide the tools needed.
Finally the app makers themselves have said that they are willing to pay, just that they are literally incapable of paying the rate that Reddit demands (Which is 10X-20X above industry wide rates accepted as reasonable/possible to be fronted by app developers while still covering the costs by the provide of the API).
Huffman reacted to this by lying, threats, altering the ToS (which is totally within the rights of Reddit to do unlike the lying and threats) and demands, sometimes ridiculous demands. There was no lets talk this out, there is Huffman the Emperor/Imperator/Dictator thinking he could order volunteers to do as he said or else.
While Huffman stated the protests were nothing his action spoke louder then those claims. He started lashing out at the people who just seriously reduced the chance of his IPO being successful.
So he first removed a few teams of mods to have them replaced for daring to take the sub they were moderating private. Claiming that they didn’t have the support of the users of those subs. So polls went up, stay dark or reopen, and the mods followed those polls. So a bunch more mods were removed for doing what the users of those subs wanted.
At this point the mods went maliciously creative in compliance. they reopened subs but rewrote the rules of the sub to for example only allow sexy John Oliver pictures or put the NSFW tag on the sub (which was merely a warning, not a guaranteed that for example a sub would allow the posting of uncensored pictures of the result of deadly car crashes in the sub). Huffman retaliated, thought he was clever by forcing a review of any sub trying to put up the NSFW tag (and having the reviewers reject them due to there being no NSFW material in the sub due to the rules not allowing NSFW material in a sub without the NSFW tag).
So yeah is Huffman doesn’t come across as a reasonable human being when people report on the current circus that is Reddit it is because he isn’t behaving like a reasonable human being but more like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum that he isn’t getting his way and attacking the people who do not do as he says.
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Who cares about “accessibility apps” and their users?
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The people who make those apps care. And not for nothing, but Reddit being more accessible to more people means more traffic, which in turn means more activity and thus more chances for advertisers to have their ads seen by the Reddit userbase.
Also: For all that you may want to decry “accessibility”, you might want to remember that “disabled” is a status that can apply to you in an instant. No one is immune from it, and on a long enough timeline, you will suffer some form of disability. That shouldn’t prevent you from being able to use an app—and if the official Reddit app won’t provide you with an accessibility option that can help you use the app, you’ll thank whoever does. Except now you won’t be able to because Reddit is effectively killing those apps—a move that you seem happy to applaud because…shit, maybe you just enjoy the idea of others suffering. Who knows, who cares, you’re an asshole.
Re: Re: Re:2 Oi!
I’m not an asshole 🤣
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Every asshole says they’re not an asshole, but their actions, much like your words, prove them to be liars.
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to be fair, everyone has an asshole, most people don’t act like they need to show theirs though
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Anyone who, unlike you, is a real human being, that’s who.
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Boohoo, straight white men are angry that they’re no longer the only voices in the room. Too fucking bad. You’re nothing but futas without tits, boring as hell and a meaningless waste of space.
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If you read the post, you’ll find it’s actually the advertisers rather than Mike that are doing the thing. If you think Mike can’t be trusted to tell the truth, then there are links to other articles not written by Mike or even hosted on Techdirt.
We'll see...
Most of the apps are shutting down at the end of June or July. It will be interesting to see what happens at that point.
If the numbers don’t drop substantially, I expect the CEO to shout it from the rooftops.
Third-party apps don’t matter.
Until they do…
I have seem this reported:
Reddit restoring deleted posts, may be violating CCPA
The place I originally saw it seems to have retracted that post, so … I don’t know?
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Nope. Multiple people across different sites have confirmed that they need to repeat mass deletions of their posts. The way it is described seems that this is not intentional since some part of the deletion process goes through on each iteration.
To bad that the GDPR doesn’t care about intentional or not.
I have already decided that once the Reddit app I use goes dark I’m done with Reddit. Reddit’s official app is complete garbage. I tried to use it several times and it just sucks. I use RiF on Android and have continuously for over 10 or so years. It seems like the CEO is trying to run things like a tyrannical dictatorship not a democracy and there’s plenty of proof of it.
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Tyrannical dictatorships can work fine. Presidential democracies rely on a single person being good for the job for a few years. The problem is that humans are not made for the sycophantry that comes with extended lengths of dictatorship and increasingly overrate their competence in, well, everything. Term limits are a way of confining the damage, and you can see in countries like Russia and Turkey what happens when the president gets to meddle with the constitution in order to kill them.
In the corporate world, there are “time to go” golden parachutes and boards pulling safety lines. Depending on what structures and cultures have become ingrained and/or institutionalised, they may work less than great.
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The solution is simple
Stop supporting fascism! Stop with your white supremacist garbage! Stop being entitled white racist men!!!
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Good.
That also applies to China as well.
Stop promoting Chinese fascism, Valis.
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You first, you CCP shill.
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You never catch the dragon.
I think Spez looked at what Elon is doing and said, “Hold my beer!”
Bots are taking over
As mods tools get removed, bots are flooding subs. It’s a complete shit show.
Re: Before taking a(n unpaid) worker's tools ensure yours are better
It’s almost as though there was a good reason that mods were using third-party tools to do the job…
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Or that Reddit itself bought a third-party tool to be the official Reddit app…
Suspect reality
When musk ran polls and you didn’t like the results you cried suspect while commentators screamed fake.
But when Reddit mods run polls and you like the results you don’t show the slightest doubt.
Here’s a reality check. The polls are rigged by time in at least some cases. The English iphone help sub took the poll overnight us time when the majority of its users were sleeping.
Same for the modern VHs collectors thread. Where most of the users are in east asia it was taken in U.S. daytime hours when most users were asleep.
And that’s ignoring fake polls.
You have a right to protest. Even when that protest is detrimental to 99% of the user base.
The private company has a right to boot you right out the door.
The API users have their own issues
I use/used Apollo. I would have paid $0.99 a month. I wouldn’t pay $4.99. But I would hope that being a paid app would drive further development maybe there would be useful features added later worth the cost.
quitting is the easy way out.
Its ’woe is me’ victim mentality.
Goodbye old mods. Hello new mods.
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Well, traitor, we can do it legally, or we can do it like Lenin did.
The new mods will deepthroat the boot. Use that information as you will.
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Wanting to maintain access to a service I use doesn’t make me (or the vast majority) a traitor. It makes me indifferent to an external issue to my use.
I’ll point out two things.
I personally think the api fee is excessive. From a revenue standpoint, as the Apollo developer pointed out, it would have been easier to set a more industry-standard cost and fed advertising
A large number of protesting subs were simply recreated by the users. The protesting sub loosing most, if not all, of its base. For Reddit, the wise decision is not booting mods but waiting it out as the users simply move to new subs en mas. Such movement is clearly happening.
People don’t stop shopping because a bunch of people stand outside with signs, be it moral protest or striking employees.
People don’t go home when a bunch of people chant to block a movie.
And going private on Reddit simply gets your sub bypassed.
The api cost is extreme, but negotiations on price are taking place. I understand a single developer not wanting to approach the table but it is a possibility. The more standard costs for api access range from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand. I’m not sure what the actual reasons are for the price tag. It looks like it’s a bet to kill 3rd party apps but I have no idea why. And if it really is a revenue issue, a lower more common pricing would bring in far more money than a few high dollar buyers.
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No, that was in reference to your past behavior. Where you defended Trump and his fascist ways.
The new mods, again, will slavishly follow the fascist. You either don’t care about moderation issues, or you wholeheartedly support sycophants and fascists runnung the place. This is something that you cannot simply sandbox away. Didn’t fucking work for 4chan or even the secret club known as the SomethingAwful Forums, though the latter weeds fascists out more effectively.
Are you here to discuss, or simply here to huck “conservative” opinions in the hope no one will pay attention?
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I’m pro speech. That is documented in my history across the internet. Long before Trump was even a celebrity.
Every time someone tries to ban a book, a movie, a game, I’m rushing to get my hands on it.
So try all you want to make it about Trump, for me he’s just another man. It’s not the person, it’s the actions.
Ars has a good write up. Quite a few apps will survive this. A bunch of crap is gone. And unfortunately, a few good ones will be lost.
In reality though, this “protest” has done nothing except create spectacle.
In the news. Not much on the site itself.
The largest subs that went dark simply got replaced. In days. You can talk about feelings all you want but the vast majority of the world doesn’t care like millions of others, I just moved to the new subs with the majority of the same users.
My point is, and was, this is a pointless display. Those that protested lost their users. The mods lost their communities and now they will loose their accounts.
The few holdouts will be replaced. It’s the way life works.
This is internet reality 101. Whatever the intentions, these mods blocked content. The Internet sees content blocks as censorship, and routes around it.
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I was hoping you’d at least appreciate the mods’ take on this particular issue, seeing as you’ve actually had them before…
Unfortunately, the entire thrust of your argument seems to be “deepthroat the boot to keep the damn place running”.
Like a lot of “I am very smart” people have said, the internet routes through these disruptions and the communities, mods included, have moved to or set up other places.
I can see no further discussion on Reddit should be had with you. Especially when you trot out something that already happens, usually for political purposes, in other countries, with the “advice” that they suck the boot of the dictator and “be a good citizen/user/cog in the wheel”.
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“My point is, and was, this is a pointless display.”
And now it is a pointless website. Why should anyone visit, much less create an account upon a pointless website?
The investors will be left with an empty shell which does not pay for itself and is a laughing stock amongst the general population.
Re: Re: Re:4 Et
Except, it’s not. Reddit apparently lost about 1-2% of users since the start of the protest. (Most reports say a loss of 1-2 million at most. One number floating around is 7.8 million but it’s an outlier).
And its way to early to know how many of them stay away.
I find humour in your comment about uselessness. Useless is a sub you can’t access. Notice how many were simply recreated?
This was never going to work out in the way the few mods wanted. For two reasons:
6 of the 10 apps with more than 100,000 users simply negotiated and/or adjusted.
Total api app usage is way below the profit loss count.
Clearly it’s easier to jettison the few users who would not move access wise.
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Just like twitter, reddit will slowly disintegrate into the sunset leaving some poor folk holding the bag .. just as intended.
Your optimism is a bit over the top and somewhat suspect, possibly you are being paid to spew such silliness?
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Reddit and Twitter are very different situations.
To start, Reddit rarely banned users no matter how left or right fringe they were. And the site continued on with very little issue despite that.
We could discuss the reasons for this but that could take hundreds of pages to do so.
Reddit is a 100% user generated forum. Not a social media messenger platform. There is a recordable presence for companies using the site for service and support, but it’s nowhere near the user to user level of subs.
But here’s the biggest difference. Users are talking to users in most cases. You cut off that conversation, they step next door and start again. Unlike Twitter where everyone is talking to each other based on a single entity… resit is user driven. If altcoin goes dark, the 99% will move to altcoin2.
There’s no driving single entity anyone is loyal to on Reddit.
People don’t care who the moderator is or what they feel like doing.
The user base moved next door. Not leave the site.
This is what I said would happen before the protest started. And it is exactly what happened.
Sure a few subs went along and protested willingly. There’s always that aspect of society. For most, protesting mods lost their community.
Wonder what they are thinking. Honestly. You had say 1000 users and now you have 5 and everyone is using the version 2 sub instead.
Some api apps were good. A few were great. But very very few people need them to use Reddit. Ultimately the majority simply moved back to the official app or the website.
I had Apollo. Even paid for the little dodads and bells and whistles I’d never use
Yet most of my use of Reddit was still via the browser. It worked better than ANY app.
And no, nobody paid me to point out the facts. If a sub went dark I went to the new one. Like 99% of users did.
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How’s that boot taste, Trumpist?
it would be funny to me if they remove the mods of some subreddits, then later make it so users can vote out mods, and then users of some of those subreddits vote out the admin-appointed mods and vote back in the mods the admins removed and the subreddits go private again
So, let me see if I have things straight:
The response is now going to be passive striking, either let subreddits become spammed up, or “auto-modding”, the auto-deletion of any non-mod-approved posts that receive any reports. In case 1, the site become useless. In case 2, massive amounts of useful content disappear daily from the site, also rendering the site useless.
I’ve noticed that Google is really pushing Reddit links, almost as though Reddit is paying Google for placement. This would explain the “return to normal levels of traffic”. It will be interesting to see how long any of this lasts.
Read the actual reddit posts-
Honestly if you browse reddit itself the bulk of comments are against the mods/protest because only 10% of redditors cared/used those apps. The polls were open for the *SHORTEST* times on most subs and “new” members were the bulk of votes in favor of closing/privating. Let’s be real the mods threw a fit and Reddit refused to play along with it. There’s honestly so much more commenting that’s against the mods/protest then there is in support of it, and honestly I feel like a larger number of these same mods were the type to ban/auto ban for the dumbest reasons. Reddit will get by just fine and it’s hilarious to think the loss of these power hungry mods will make the smallest difference. If the subs good they’ll get replaced it’s as simple as that there’s plenty of volunteers willing to take their place even without those 3rd party tools. If this “protest” had been more organized and less of a huge middle finger to the users and admins I think things could have come to a different/better conclusion, but the mentality of- “If we annoy enough people they’ll complain and in turn annoy the admins/devs enough to do something” literally read from a mods comments replying against a “this protest is dumb” post. I’d have signed a petition in support even tho I don’t use 3rd party apps and in turn use the web browser because I’m older/don’t care. This “protest” was just pointless and by far misrepresents the bulk of redditors opinions and to think otherwise is just lying to yourself. We’ve been here before we’ll be here again, this is nothing new or surprising if you’ve been online since the AOL days.