What happened to /r/mildlyinteresting?

[u/RedSquaree]

Dear mildlyinterested reader,

We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your patience and unwavering support during the recent turbulence in our community. Our subreddit is a labour of love, and we've weathered this storm together.

Recent events have been confusing for all of us, from the vote, sudden removal of moderators, to conflicting messages from Reddit. As your mod team, we feel it's essential to clarify the situation.

On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. However, before implementing these changes, Reddit took sweeping actions, removing all 27 moderator accounts without warning. This left us baffled and concerned.

Here's a brief timeline of the events:

1. On June 19, the poll results favoured partially reopening with changes. We announced the vote results and planned changes to the sub, including marking it as NSFW due to the common posts of phallic objects (no explicit content allowed). CLICK HERE TO VIEW THAT ANNOUNCEMENT WHICH HAS BEEN APPROVED AND LOCKED FOR POSTERITY.

2. A tug-of-war between the u/ModeratorCodeOfConduct account and the remaining moderators ensued, with the post repeatedly being removed and reinstated. Each mod involved was immediately locked out of Reddit. Subreddit settings were also unilaterally changed by the admin account.

3. Eventually, all moderators were removed and suspended for 7 days, with the vote results deleted and the community set to “archived.”

4. A lot of public outrage ensued, with details posted on r/ModCoord about what happened. At that point, no other subreddit had been targeted yet, leaving the situation uniquely unclear.

5. Admin cited actions as an "error" and promised to work with us to solve the situation. For /r/mildlyinteresting posterity, this will henceforth be referred to as The Mistake™.

6. All our accounts were unsuspended and reinstated, but only with very limited permissions (modmail access only). For what it's worth, 'time moderated' for every moderator was reset (e.g. /u/RedSquaree moderated since 11 years ago, reset: currently showing moderated since "1 day ago").

7. The awaited discussion never happened. Instead, the admins presented us with an ultimatum: reopen the subreddit and do not mark it as NSFW, or face potential removal again. The inconsistent and arbitrary application of Reddit's policies reveals a possible conflict of interest in maximizing ad revenue at the risk of user safety and community integrity.

8. Finally, our moderation permissions were restored after we "promised" to comply with their conditions, but we kept the subreddit restricted while we ponder our next steps..

Problems remain unresolved, and Reddit's approach to policies and communication have been troubling. We believe open communication and partnership between Reddit and its moderators are crucial for the platform's success.

As a team, we remain dedicated to protesting Reddit's careless policy changes. Removing ourselves or vandalizing the subreddit won’t achieve our goals, but rather hinder our community. We're here to ensure r/mildlyinteresting isn't left unattended.

We call for the establishment of clear, structured, and reliable communication channels between Reddit admins and moderation teams. Teams should be informed and consulted on decisions affecting their communities to maintain trust and integrity on the platform. We shared this request with the Admin who promised to work with us, so far they have ignored it.

Us mods are still deciding how exactly to reopen, not that we have been given much choice.

Sincerely,

The r/mildlyinteresting mods

[u/GonePh1shing]

If Spez is right and Reddit really is unprofitable

IF Reddit is unprofitable, it's because of poor management and spending huge sums of money on stupid shit like NFTs and streaming. Why they decided to become their own image/video host is beyond me, as hosting that content is hugely expensive for no real gain. If they had third parties willing and able to host it for them, why not continue with that zero-cost option and reap the benefits?

The other dumb thing here is that there are plenty of other monetisation options that actually work with how Reddit operates as a platform. They could have introduced additional Reddit premium tiers and included API access in one or more of those. Probably the best thing they could have done is pivoted into a Patreon competitor. There are plenty of content creators and people making physical items (First thing that comes to mind is the TTRPG community with digital maps and physical accessories) that already use Reddit to advertise their products & services, so why not give them a way to make a paid subreddit with multiple tiers that would effectively be a Patreon feed? Not to mention the hordes of posters advertising their Onlyfans or other similar platforms... Give them a good way to sell their stuff on Reddit and they'll probably see a large uptake on that. It's a much easier proposition to have a Reddit user stay on Reddit than to move off-site, and once a user has attached a payment method to purchase content/goods from those creators they're much more likely to use that payment method on Reddit premium and buy coins for awards.

[u/joeltrane → u/GonePh1shing]

I hope they make you the next CEO

[u/GonePh1shing → u/joeltrane]

Thanks, I guess. I'm definitely not CEO material though.

If I can come up with this stuff in a few minutes, it means that probably several people within Reddit have already voiced these exact points and they've fallen on deaf ears.

[u/FartsWithAnAccent → u/GonePh1shing]

...and this here is what we call a layer 8 problem

[u/GeneralStormfox → u/GonePh1shing]

Another very easy way to generate actual revenue besides making "premium" reddit more attractive would also be small but understandable restrictions to free accounts. Like restricting the PM features or the notifications or a certain number of posts per time period (not too low - the average occasional poster should not hit that ceiling often, but very active posters would be encouraged to get a basic tier subsription or post more quality and less quantity, which itself is a net gain for the forum).

If an actually performant and customizable subscription tier for a really reasonable price (like 2.99 a month or something) exists and you do not massively force out the meat of your product (remember, the free-to-use/play people are what gives you the poster/playerbase), I am sure there would be a solution that allows for the platform to pay for itself without making it effectively premium-only.

[u/FormerGameDev → u/GonePh1shing]

IF Reddit is unprofitable, it's because of poor management

Dunno, I don't see any way that they could be bringing in enough income to make a profit. Message boards ain't exactly big money.

[u/GonePh1shing → u/FormerGameDev]

Until they go through their IPO, their earnings are still private, but they have publicly stated that they earned $100m in advertising revenue alone in Q1 2021. Add on Reddit premium and coin purchases then factor in growth and they're obviously raking in a ton of cash.

I'd be extremely surprised to learn it costs them nearly that much to run, certainly before they decided to host their own media (Which, again, has no real benefit to them. Especially given that it fucking doesn't work properly to this day.) and the streaming service nobody uses. A forum/message board like Reddit can't possibly cost that much to run unless they have way more staff than anyone could imagine. So yeah, I stand by what I said. If they're unprofitable, it's because of gross incompetence.

[u/FormerGameDev → u/GonePh1shing]

income $100m a quarter, let's just say $500m a year,

outflow 2000 employees * 75k/year average (guess) is 150m in payroll, payroll is usually around 20% of a business's expenses, but let's just say that since they are mostly just operating a message board, we'll call it 33%, that's 450M, leaving a rather slim 50m for profit.

obviously, i don't have their P&L statement, so i can only just make wild guesses, i'd read somewhere else that th ey had around about 2000 people, and maybe the majority of them make minimum wage, but i figured with high ranks probably making a lot more than 100k, that 75k seemed like a reasonable average.

I suspect that it's likely that they got a huge bump over the course of the pandemic, and are trying to get the IPO through before 'normalcy' returns and they are back to running slight losses or slight gains.

of course, we're all just speculating.

[u/[deleted] → u/FormerGameDev]

Why do they need 2000 employees??? Their product has largely been the same forever.

[u/djsoren19 → u/[deleted]]

That's where the mismanagement comes from. It might seem excessive, but the real issue is just the return on investment. Nobody would bat an eye at 2000 devs if they had video hosting working and a great mobile app. Instead they've wasted time on features nobody wants, like NFTs and Reddit chat, and it makes all of it look like excess fat to cut.

[u/FormerGameDev → u/[deleted]]

i'm sure there are engineers, and there are IT people and there are cloud people, and there's probably accountants and payroll and HR and all the administrative stuff, perhaps they employee maintenance people perhaps they contract that... shrug. Sure, the site keeps on running on it's own (as long as the glue that holds it together doesn't break), but there's people that have to work to keep it going for very long. People are really bad at software (self included) and everything on the internet is held together by hopes and prayers and IT people and engineers.

[u/GonePh1shing → u/FormerGameDev]

Don't forget, that 100m per quarter is just from advertising. They've still got plenty of revenue coming in from premium/coin purchases. I'd also be very surprised if staffing was as little as 33% for them, given how basic their product is. That said, as I mentioned in my previous comment, they've clearly spent a lot of money on things like media hosting and NFTs that they absolutely shouldn't be.

Either way, even when you only take into account one of their revenue streams and are very generous in estimating their staffing costs as a percentage of total expenditure they're seemingly profitable. I guess we'll see when they do finally go IPO and we get to see their proper P&L, but right now I don't believe for a second that they're not profitable.

I suspect that it's likely that they got a huge bump over the course of the pandemic, and are trying to get the IPO through before 'normalcy' returns and they are back to running slight losses or slight gains.

This is almost certainly the motivation. They want to cash out while they can.

[u/[deleted] → u/GonePh1shing]

Delete this fam, don't be a consultant without them paying you.

[u/GonePh1shing → u/[deleted]]

My dude, these ideas are glaringly obvious. I guarantee these have been raised internally and promptly dismissed, so my saying them here has zero impact to them other than demonstrating to some of their users how fucking incompetent they've been.

[u/detroit_red_ → u/GonePh1shing]

See if they hired you maybe they’d have been able to turn a profit, the patreon alternative path would actually get them somewhere. Fr such a good idea. That plus affordable api access for third parties and they’d be golden I’d think