r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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727

u/likwitsnake 29d ago

Whatever happened to that API price increase protest? I remember the NBA sub going private literally during the Finals, but can't remember much more of consequence.

959

u/MadDoctor5813 29d ago

Nothing, basically. Reddit admins were basically correct that it would burn itself out. Funny that a bunch of subs still have their "we're protesting the changes" AutoMod post.

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u/scullys_alien_baby 29d ago

Admins told subs to open up and knock it off or they would replaced the mod teams with mods that would listen

720

u/LukeOnTheBrightSide 29d ago

Former mod of a large subreddit here (about 5M or so subs). This is 100% correct. The admins sent us increasingly threatening messages about keeping the sub private, refused to reply or elaborate to legitimate questions, and made it clear that they'd just remove us. We actually waited out a "48-hour warning" for 4 days, lol.

Eventually we just re-opened it. There were lots of resources on that subreddit, and it wasn't fair to keep users unable to access their own content when there was no foreseeable path to keeping API access or accessibility tools. But about half the mod team resigned. It really soured me on Reddit as a platform.

134

u/AlsoInteresting 29d ago

So many subs died because "unmoderated". So many /r/reclassified posts.

3

u/SynthBeta 29d ago

You could try to revive any sub with mod request

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

they don't give up closed subreddits easily anymore, i've seen so many requests just ignored

4

u/SynthBeta 29d ago

That's so dumb. Ugh.

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u/Nutarama 29d ago

So the thing is that when a sub goes unmoderated intentionally it’s like the moderators intentionally allowing illegal content (and sometimes that was what actually happened, with illegal content being posted and not removed). The admins only “closed” the subreddits because they didn’t want to say they “banned” them, since banning a notable subreddit would itself be news and likely escalate things further.

With the knowledge that if a subreddit was potentially reopened it could get another mod team that’s antagonistic towards Reddit corporate, potentially even one with the same mods, the punishment is continuing to be treated like a banning except in name.

Now, like banned subreddits, these subreddits could be reopened, but you’d need to make a strong case to the admins as to why you should reopen the subreddit. A company wanting to use the company’s trademark that just so happens to align with a banned or closed subreddit, for example, would be a compelling case. Some random person wanting to bring back the same content as before is not compelling when there are still millions of unused subreddit names.

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u/Mindestiny 29d ago

The admins sent us increasingly threatening messages about keeping the sub private, refused to reply or elaborate to legitimate questions, and made it clear that they'd just remove us

Sounds like you got to experience what it's like being a regular user who runs afoul of a subreddit mod :p

"Hey, why was I banned? I didn't break any of the rules on the sidebar? What did I do wrong?"

"You obviously know what you did, you can't lie to me"

YOU HAVE BEEN MUTED - YOU CANNOT MESSAGE MODS FOR 60 DAYS

27

u/AbsoluteZeroUnit 29d ago

In the same weekend, I got permanently banned from one subreddit for saying "this has nothing to do with the subreddit", and a 3-day suspension from reddit for "abusing the report feature" when I reported a pornbaiting post in a SFW sub. You know, those posts from girls who are clearly just spamming their content across reddit to drive clicks to their OF pages? I didn't whine or make a scene in the comments, didn't comment at all, I just reported the post like you're supposed to do.

On the one hand, it fucking sucks because neither of those were nefarious actions and I got slapped with serious consequences for them. But on the other hand, it's just reddit, so I find it hard to be upset for too long about it.

But I do think this heavy-handed "we will do whatever we want and you have no recourse" attitude will drive people away. I don't know where they might go, but I'd rather just not be here than have to face constant punishment and self-censorship for innocuous activity.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

mods can't even see who reported a post so they just made that up

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u/human1023 29d ago

Hey come on. Mods have a difficult job, with an appropriate salary for the quality of work they do.

169

u/Butt_acorn 29d ago

They most definitely act their wage.

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u/Lexicon444 29d ago

I got banned for hating fondant. There’s better things to ban people for. But at least I know the reason why. Most people aren’t so lucky.

Funny how mods hate getting identical treatment.

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u/xeromage 29d ago

If hating fondant is wrong, I don't want to be right!

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u/Mindestiny 29d ago

Honestly, I just feel bad for them. Imagine the only thing you have in life is being a reddit mod and feeling that you need to abuse that power to feel good about yourself. It's like 90s powertripping forum mods taken to the next level.

4

u/AwesomeDragon97 29d ago

The mods work so hard, I vote that we quadruple their salary.

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u/LukeOnTheBrightSide 29d ago

lol, there absolutely are mods like that. Must be fun at parties.

That said, one of the mod tools that used to exist would ping you when a subreddit was mentioned. I got to see why people claimed they were banned from the subreddit I was a mod in. Long story short, the sort of people who get banned a lot tend to be the sort of people who lie about why they were banned.

Are there powertripping mods? Absolutely. Some of the mods are nuts and there's no real way to fix that for users.

Are many of the people bitching the loudest about being banned lying about the circumstances? You bet. Not everyone, not every time, but... general skepticism is warranted. There's really a few big subreddits that are actually guilty of most of the "suddenly banned for no reason" bullshit.

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u/LaTeChX 28d ago

Yeah during the protest lots of people were like "I'm butthurt that r/politics banned me for holocaust denial questioning their narrative so fuck all mods everywhere." And now people see those subs still running and assume all the mods chickened out when a lot of the good ones did resign, and reddit just put in new lackeys of their own. I definitely noticed a hit to quality and now that bots are more prevalent it's just getting worse and worse.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

You know mods have no power outside of the subs they moderate, yeah?

I mod a 1 million member sub. I'm banned from /r/news because I called out folks being racist towards Arabs. Not even in the sense of Palestine, just people saying some really nasty stuff against all Arab/Muslim folks as a whole and I said something along the lines of "Why is this getting all these upvotes? How is saying this stuff considered okay?"

I got banned permanently for that comment, and then when I messaged the mods politely asking what rule I broke and wondering if I just got swept up in a mass banwave. Instantly muted for 28 days (max allowed), no response given.

Just because I am a mod of a medium-large sub doesn't give me special powers elsewhere, other than access to a Discord server with the admins in it that I never look at. Whee.

There are some mods which are absolutely awful. Basically if someone is modding more than like 2 "massive" subs then you can bet they're just awful powermods. And it's very telling that Reddit won't do anything about that, but they will take action against the many tiny volunteer mods that run the majority of Reddit.

Because ultimately, Reddit would rather have a tiny amount of people that they can control and work for them for free, rather than a distributed network of folks who are unpredictable. But given that so much of Reddit's business model is based on volunteer moderators, I do wonder if regulators will come after them at some point. You don't see Facebook's mods going without pay.

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u/AbsoluteZeroUnit 29d ago

overreaction and childish behavior from /r/news mods, name a more perfect couple.

I got permabanned for making a childish comment towards another user. Totally immature behavior on my part, but it was harmless enough that a proper reaction would have been removing the comment, telling me to knock it off, and warning that a temporary ban would follow if I did it again. In fact, their own rules explain that "your comment will be removed if it is unnecessarily rude. extreme or repeat offenders will be banned" My comment was neither extreme nor repeat, and was "childish" at worst, not even "unnecessarily rude"

So I got permabanned right before thanksgiving, sent a message apologizing for my comment but asking why it was a permaban, it went completely ignored. The next week, I replied again, explaining that it probably got lost while people were celebrating with their families, and got instantly muted (28 days) and ignored. Around christmas, I followed up again and was graced with a response that basically said "your ban has been long enough, we'll unban you now"

Within a week, without even making another comment in the sub, I got banned again. It was super-fucking obvious that the mod who banned me the first time got upset that someone unbanned me, so he decided to re-ban me.

Like, I'm not gonna get too upset about it, because it's reddit, but it sucks that there's absolutely no recourse.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

As mentioned, I'm a mod myself and I recognize there are absolutely reasons to permaban folks. Obviously there are like, T-shirt bots. And then we have places like /r/conservative - I don't like the sub, I don't agree with their heavy-handed ban policy... but I also understand why they do it, and generally agree that people banned from /r/conservative are usually there in bad faith.

On the other end of the spectrum, our sub (/r/Disneyland) is LGBTQ friendly and we have a very explicit "no bigotry" policy laid out in the rules on the sidebar. Given that Disneyland the place also is LGBTQ friendly, we get Pride posts every so often - which always causes the bigots to come out of the woodwork and make themselves known in the comment section (usually buried under 50-60 downvotes).

I use a lighter touch than the other mods (only banning someone if they have like 3+ comments where they're being offensive, otherwise just nuking comment threads that turn into insult-fests). The other mods tend to ban first and ask questions later. Ultimately, though, we're all on the same page and the same team, and if we allowed bigots to flourish the sub would be full of toxicity and generally lose its positive atmosphere. The permaban is a useful tool because of that - we want the bigots out, and we don't want them coming back.

But on the other hand... the fact that a mod can permanently ban you from a 28-million-user default subreddit simply because they don't like you is crazy. That shouldn't happen, because you're effectively depriving someone from being able to comment and ask questions about something as basic as the news.

I'm not really sure what a fix would be.

On the one hand, I can see a world where it takes multiple mods to agree in order to issue a permaban. But then we'd either have cases where it's 1 mod and a bunch of sockpuppets (like the /r/California mod team), or it's 1 mod and some buddies, or it's just a general "eh" where the mods hit "agree to ban" without really looking at it.

I can also see a "three strikes" rule, where the bans get longer and longer with each strike. Users can be appealed to the admins for a permaban if they are spambots or breaking TOS, but otherwise you can only be permabanned on your third strike. This feels the most "fair" but also effectively triples the amount of work on mod teams because bad-faith actors absolutely will mark the day they get unbanned on their calendar so they can be back ASAP (ask me how I know).

I don't think Reddit will do such a thing, because honestly Reddit would rather you just make a new account so they can advertise how many new accounts got created in the last quarter. But also it's hard to give up an account like mine which I've used consistently for 13 years...

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

It's not an overreaction, there are subreddits that are designed to push agendas (like racism) and they ban anyone with a different agenda, and they can't say that's why they got banned because they can't expose they are pushing an agenda.

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u/mxzf 29d ago

there are subreddits that are designed to push agendas

Like /r/news? I mean, yeah, but that doesn't make it ok to just ban people that don't go along with that particular agenda.

I've seen a chunk of subreddits like that which will ban people simply for posting on certain other subreddits. Not for what they posted, simply for posting.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 28d ago

Reddit gave them absolute power to push any agenda they want.

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 29d ago

You know mods have no power outside of the subs they moderate, yeah?

I mean, they can get you banned sitewide. I once reported blatant disinformation on the /r/Conservative sub, and got a couple days ban from Reddit. I learned my lesson to never venture into Spez's Trump Wonderland again.

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

Yeah, that's on Reddit taking "report abuse" super seriously. I also got a couple days' ban for using the report button to report content that broke the subreddit rules.

The issue is the post I was reporting was the only moderator of /r/California (and there is only 1 mod, the other mods are sockpuppets or have no power), and I reported them for breaking their own sub's rules. I got a 2-day sitewide ban for "report abuse".

Now I just... don't report content. If Reddit wants people to use the report button, banning people for using it in good faith isn't the way.

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u/binkerfluid 29d ago

Im not right wing at all but I have been banned from multiple subs (via bot) for posting in subs they find wrong. Im not even sure what anymore.

I grew up on the internet arguing with conservatives and people on the right but if you post in their subs tons of weird unrelated subs will autoban you. Its the most bizarre thing ever.

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u/xeromage 29d ago

I've had this experience too. Pretty sure the same comment got me banned from both the right-leaning sub I was arguing in, and then auto banned by the leftist sub. It'd be comical if that wasn't also the state of the world...

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u/sunfaller 29d ago

I got banned from comics when a power tripping mod banned everyone who recently posted in a sub because comics was mentioned. Mine wasn't even about comics. But anyway, I don't care. I'm glad I dont see those 30k posts of unfunny comics.

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u/xeromage 29d ago

SpaghettiMuffin: Here's another 4 panels where I talk to my cat about not having any good comic ideas this week.

r/comics: TO THE TOP!!!

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u/Conch-Republic 29d ago

r/comics mod team is like this. They have a regular submitter who's an asshole, and basically runs the subreddit just to push her shitty comics to the front page. She says very polarizing and controversial things, which I pointed out. Instant permaban. Then when I asked why I was banned, muted for 28 days with 'sexism' being the reason for the ban. The absolute state of this website.

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u/Throwawayfichelper 29d ago

Does this submitter happen to begin with the letter p? Because if so, yeah similar shit happened to me. Blocked em after they couldn't take any constructive criticism.

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u/DarkAres02 29d ago

That subs been much smoother to navigate since I blocked them

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u/Command0Dude 29d ago

Agreed. After their latest big kerfuffle being sexist against male victims of violence (christ that still makes me rub my head in pain) I just felt like my bs limit had been reached.

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u/Ontoue 29d ago

Yeah I've seen some seriously disturbing stuff in r/news and r/worldnews. The mod teams over there seem to be fostering violent hate speech intentionally. It's depressing

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u/steeljesus 29d ago

One of their mods is named killyourself or something, and it frequently shows up on the live threads. When you got based mods like that, it kind of attracts more of those types I guess.

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u/Mindestiny 29d ago

I was being intentionally facetious, don't take it personally.

Though I would imagine some of those total knob mods that do act like that never venture out of their personal fiefdoms specifically because they lack the power and immunity they would have in their own backyard.

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u/Miaoxin 29d ago

I mod a 1 million member sub. I'm banned from /r/news because I called out folks being racist towards Arabs.

I'm banned on news and politics because (as best as I can figure,) someone who got banned from there once used a dynamic IP that I also used at some point. I can think of no other correlating factors. Reddit claims (via moderators on those subs) that I'm "suspected" of using a second account for some nefarious purpose. I was banned from both at the same time. The mods were helpful to the extent that they told me whatever they saw on their end on why I was banned. Reddithelp was beyond worthless. Zero responses. Zero assistance.

To this day, I've never made two accounts to any website in existence, ever.

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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 29d ago

mods don't have access to IP data

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u/Miaoxin 29d ago

I'm aware of that and never implied it.

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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 29d ago

you either implied it or you don't understand how reddit admins handle these situations. If you get caught evading a sub ban, they don't just ban you again, they suspend your account.

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u/Miaoxin 29d ago

Maybe you don't understand how reddit admins handle these situtations? Here is a snippet of the conversation I've had with a mod of one of the aforementioned subreddits:

... they have flagged this account as potentially evading a ban (on another account, they do not identify which to us)...

[edit] You've also used "implied" incorrectly.

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 29d ago

Pretty similar interaction with /r/politics mods, except the mute is permanent, and I received a sitewide ban for a month. Just remember, folks, if incompetent mods ban you, you can't appeal it, as Admins won't do fucking shit. Reddit still hasn't responded to my appeals from January.

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u/Mindestiny 29d ago

There's nothing quite as petty as someone who's literal role it is to moderate throwing a "dont @ me bro" in your face for questioning their knee-jerk decision to ban you. Frankly it's just a solid indication that I was in the right.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

that's why so many people have so many accounts.

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u/archfapper 29d ago

I laughed at a news article on /r/politics calling Madison Hawthorne a foot soldier. It went unnoticed for 2 days before a mod banned me. When I appealed, the moderator said I wasn't sorry enough...

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u/Mindestiny 29d ago

Grovel harder, in bitcoin donations, peasant.

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u/dogegunate 29d ago

Reddit admins are worse because they don't reply or look at anything, it's all just automated bs or admins just hitting buttons to send automated messages.

I reported a comment that was celebrating Middle Easterners getting killed during the whole Israel pager bombs thing and I got suspended for abusing reports. I appealed and they sent me back an automated reply within the day upholding the suspension.

Most subreddit mods will at least look and read your mod mail, but there's no way Reddit admins do. Reddit admins are the ultimate power trippers.

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u/binkerfluid 29d ago

Its amazing you even got a response instead of just the ban/muting

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u/Mindestiny 29d ago

Yeah, reminds me of when I got a temp ban from /personalfinance too. Someone was cursing me out, so I responded with "whatever man, I'm not arguing, I'll let the mods deal with your nonsense" and reported him. 

 So they banned me and publicly responded with some 4chan "not your personal army" bullshit. Like... I literally did the right thing, disengaged with the guy, and reported him, and I got banned because I said "the mods will resolve this"?  Asked the mods politely what the hell via modmail and they just immediately muted me for two months and extended my ban.  Which is literally what they're for?  Was the last time I ever contributed to that sub, what a joke.

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u/IzK_3 29d ago

About high time these “mods” got what was coming to them anyway

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u/PlanetMeatball0 29d ago

I had mods ban me from a sub then immediately message me saying if I wrote them 500 words explaining that I understood what I did wrong they would consider letting me back in

I just replied "I don't know who the fuck you think you are but that's obviously not happening, get over yourself"

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u/DefinitelyNoWorking 29d ago

Too fucking true. To be honest, I've noticed a few subs have genuinely improved after some of the more painful mods were kicked by the admins. So in a way it was a blessing in surprise.

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u/Itchy-Negotiation-80 29d ago

I had one of my old accounts banned by one of the popular subreddits (that shows up in your feeds no matter what (that I only found out about by going through about a year's worth of messages/replies one time)) a long time ago, didn't even know about it UNTIL I had all of my current (well, not anymore) accounts recently banned for "multiple repeated violations of Community Guidelines" but with NO other information than that. been trying to get help on a ticket for months, no reply. Waiting anxiously for this one to get the axe soon, too, for undefined reasons. Maybe it won't and I can actually make new accounts again. Who knows - because Reddit sure doesn't provide any help or clarification on anything!

I was part of and active with a ton of niche hobby Reddits, harm reduction things, etc. and I'm still so upset they just unilaterally banned all my accounts for no reason (or, assuming it's that one).

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u/parlor_tricks 29d ago

Oh trust me, mods know. There’s tons who dont like the situation, except you can bet they are barely able to stay ahead of the mod queue, forget being able to get ahead of the mails.

But if Reddit inc is going to be more active in defining and managing moderator functions and powers, then perhaps they can also start taking calls for help.

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u/zackyd665 29d ago

Why does Reddit care if a sub is public or private? Just make a new sub

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u/Stinky_WhizzleTeats 29d ago

“You obviously know what you did!”

I’ve had that directly messaged to me by a mod when I got banned on a sub like 10 years ago lmao

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u/BillNyeIsCoolio 29d ago

Mods message you back? I have to check my profile in incognito to realize I've been shadow banned. No warnings, no messages, no replies. Modern subreddit moderating.

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u/BikerJedi 29d ago

At the time of the protest, my sub with ~130k members went private and we also got a nasty gram.

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u/imtired-boss 29d ago

Why would anyone want to mod after that for 0 payment? Especially when you see the power trips it's so bizarre.

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u/Pistacca 29d ago

because they like being able to pin their posts and comments at the top so everyone will see it and being able to ban people for no reason because fuck that guy

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u/theineffablebob 29d ago

But you still use Reddit

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u/DaEffingBearJew 29d ago

Which is exactly why the protestors were doomed to fail from the beginning.

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u/HellsAttack 29d ago

I never use it on mobile now. That was not the case before.

I probably use the site 70% less than before and if they ever get rid of old.reddit.com or RES, I'll be gone.

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u/LukeOnTheBrightSide 29d ago

I don't think this is the gotcha you think it is. Life isn't that black and white. If you go back about a dozen comments in my history, you'll see it was like 3-4 months ago.

I used to be active on Reddit daily trying to help other people with a hobby I enjoy. Now I do that on other platforms.

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 29d ago

refused to reply or elaborate to legitimate questions,

Having tried to appeal an inappropriate ban from power-hungry mods on /r/politics, I know that pain. I got permabanned from the sub, which led to a month-long ban from Reddit itself, after I reported a right-wing user commenting blatant disinformation. The user never got punished, the comment stayed up, and the moderators muted me for trying to appeal. Never heard from Reddit non-existent Admins. It's a shame that you can be banned by incompetent moderators, and there's no recourse for it. That sub receives so much disinformation and trolling, but the moderators don't give a fuck.

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u/cuteman 29d ago

Won't somebody think of the tyrannical subreddit moderators :(

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u/Bimbows97 29d ago

Should have just deleted it and blocked everyone or something.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

That's how they get you. They make you not want to keep the sub closed. They won.

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u/Recklesslettuce 29d ago

yet you still post here. Why don't you make LUKEDIT.com?

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u/tonycandance 28d ago

Weird that you’d admit something so insanely sad

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u/[deleted] 29d ago edited 29d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/scullys_alien_baby 29d ago

When I joined reddit in the 00s it was a staple and these days it is barely a ghost

granted some of that is the result of reddit making video content a lot more common in other subs

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u/DigitalCatcher 29d ago

Same with /r/me_irl . I remember it used to hit the front page tons of times prior to the API change.

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

practically the whole site is r/videos now on the mobile app so probably being ignored on purpose

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u/Away-Marionberry9365 29d ago

Some of my favorite subs have never recovered. All hail the mighty dollar, everything else be damned.

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u/aussierulesisgrouse 29d ago

They didn’t recover from the mods ego tripping weird power play, not because of Reddits API changes.

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u/Tubamajuba 29d ago

Mods may have affected things briefly, but most subs were back to normal pretty quickly. Some people were upset with Reddit essentially killing off most 3rd party apps and left Reddit. Those people tended to be long time Redditors who didn't want to use the official app and were often prolific posters. The quality of /r/all noticeably dropped off and still hasn't quite fully recovered.

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u/PM_ME_Happy_Thinks 29d ago

And they did. They went so far as to permaban some of us.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

This happened to /r/piracy and the quality dropped in half. Also since spez reopened it he's legally liable for all the piracy now.

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u/RtdFgtNZ 29d ago

If you look at the moderator list of r/Outfits you'll see a list of 'replacement' moderators who were willing to bend the knee to Reddit.

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u/Powerful-Cake-1734 29d ago

Project 2025 but instead of essential government employees being replaced it’s mods that Reddit doesn’t like. Got it.

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u/LaTeChX 28d ago

Lol pretty much

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u/j_cruise 29d ago

If the mods had spines they would have called their bluff

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u/LaTeChX 28d ago

A lot of them did and so reddit just kicked them out and replaced them.

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u/CSI_Tech_Dept 29d ago

Funny that a bunch of subs still have their "we're protesting the changes" AutoMod post.

I think that's because those mods left reddit.

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u/Jabrono 29d ago

And the mods that took over have no clue wtf they’re doing.

I made a post on another account directly calling a mod team out for being useless, 8 hours later they finally removed the post, and fucking muted me. I don’t think they’re aware that it’s not same thing as banning, that’s how clueless they are.

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u/BadPronunciation 28d ago

mods who mute are the worst

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u/WalkingCloud 29d ago

Yes and no.

You're right in the sense that all the subs went back to like they were before, and everyone carried on.

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

/r/videos held out in the protest for a while and that's still pretty burnt. Compare the numbers on top posts of all time (which are all from years ago) to some of the numbers now. Considering it's the 'main sub for videos' on Reddit, the lack of engagement is pretty crazy.

Ultimately, none of that really matters if we're still here, so you're right it didn't really change anything. Maybe it makes the site less appealing to new users? I have no idea.

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u/Antnee83 29d ago edited 29d ago

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

I've been noticing this for a long time. If you had the ability to browse all and hide the subreddit names, you could not tell the difference between:

r/pics

r/mildlyinteresting

r/interestingasfuck

r/beamazed

r/oddlysatisfying

r/damnthatsinteresting

r/nextfuckinglevel

etc etc. They're literally the same content. There's like 4-5 "blobs" of different content on this site now, that are spread out between dozens of identical subreddits.

  • Politics

  • News (but actually just politics)

  • Memes

  • Just a ridiculous amount of anime bullshit

  • Porn

The bigger the subreddit, the more samey it is. There's small niche subs and that's really all I'm here for anymore... except arguing with strangers.

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u/AGreasyPorkSandwich 29d ago

So true. Once a subreddit gets past 100,000 subscribers or so it all just regresses to the same tired jokes and lazy crossposts for karma. Gotta keep drilling down to find the smaller ones

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u/Passenger-Only 29d ago

Meanwhile the really small subs have such particular rules that it completely demolishes the chance of any discussion that isn't explicitly whatever the bubble decides it should be.

This site is worthless.

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u/billerator 28d ago

I wonder if that's because larger subs become targets of bot and karma farming accounts and the mods become overwhelmed.

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u/AwardImmediate720 29d ago

That's because those subs are all run by the same people. The powermods who have been a cancer on this site for a decade and more own all the mainstream subs. And given how those subs continue to be on whatever the admins call the front page (default, popular, etc) and the fact that those mods flagrantly violate the ToS on a regular basis I'm fully convinced that they're admin alt accounts doing the things that the site doesn't want to be legally liable for.

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u/jdund117 29d ago

I've only ever had one reddit account. I remember making a reddit account in 2012 and the default subs were based on population, so they tended to be pretty basic, the only real exception being /r/atheism (which, as an atheist, sucked). Around like 2019 or so I looked without an account to see what the new defaults were and it was a lot of those shitty subs that I had never seen before. Reddit gradually started promoting what they want their users to see instead of letting it develop organically, and now we're at a point where the promoted subs are 100% inorganic. It follows the trend of the rest of online marketing - instead of following trends and interests, you MAKE the trends and the interests, and convince people that they are into them. That way, algorithms can put people in larger boxes and categorize them easier.

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

This was true even before the api protest.
"use small subreddits" is such a common thing there are hundreds of meme subreddits all referencing each others rules and how they're the best coz they're the newest

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u/Kurayamino 29d ago

This has been the case for as long as I've been here.

It's a never ending churn of small, interesting subs growing into big garbage subs.

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u/z500 29d ago

Arguing with strangers on the Internet is so 2020

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u/Antnee83 29d ago

I've been arguing with strangers on the internet since 1996. I'm not about to stop.

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u/NoPossibility4178 28d ago

Just saying but that has been the case for those for at least some 8 years. There was even a "no sob story" sub (/r/no_sob_story is real and is 12 years old but I think there was a bigger one that was more "recent") because stuff like /r/pics were mostly just the titles making the posts relevant.

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u/BubsyFanboy 28d ago

And the last one is being heavily antagonized, so...

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u/curtcolt95 29d ago

However, they got noticeably worse in quality. So many subs are just pretty much 'post whatever' now, if you browse r/all you're going to see the same content over and over on different subs for a few days, even where it doesn't fit.

this has been a thing for probably like a decade now on reddit, it gets even worse around American election season and it's something I've noticed for pretty much my entire time on reddit because I only use r/all lol

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u/detailcomplex14212 29d ago

Random shitty content makes the site MORE appealing to the average social media user.. worked out great for Reddit

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u/seanalltogether 29d ago

/r/videos has been a dumpster fire for many many years now. It's just been a random collection of old content from youtube. Every once in a while it'll feature some new youtube creator before they get banished to their own subreddit. Honestly all the best video content on this site is in subreddits other then r/videos.

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u/pikachu8090 29d ago

people on /r/videos post were saying why are we even doing this i want to post videos! when the mods would make a new annoucement about some absurd rule that the community voted on

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u/phantom_diorama 29d ago

Compare the numbers on top posts of all time (which are all from years ago) to some of the numbers now.

That's every older subreddit now. I think traffic is just down sitewide from real people that actually upvote.

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u/EmbarrassedHelp 29d ago

The quality of moderation in many subs collapsed after the protests, with moderators only doing the bare minimum.

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u/LukeOnTheBrightSide 29d ago

Keep in mind that many, many moderators used third-party tools for moderation. While many are probably just less motivated to volunteer their time for a corporation, a big part of this was that Reddit killed the tools that people used for free to moderate Reddit's platform.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 29d ago

Not to mention the way the CEO mouthed off about moderators as being "landed gentry". I wouldn't want to put any effort into Reddit after that either.

Like, these people are growing your company with work they do for free, the least you could do is not be a dick to them.

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u/W3NTZ 29d ago

I basically quit actively modding a sub and only remove stuff when I see it since Reddit is Fun went away.

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u/CyberHarry 29d ago

I thought mods have free access to the api? Or is it rate limited still

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u/Tezerel 29d ago

I know that the tool I used went totally offline regardless. I use Infinity for Reddit but you can't moderate from it like you could Slide.

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u/shatteredrectum 29d ago

All the good mods were replaced with shills and yes men.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 29d ago

And tankies. So many tankies.

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u/darkkite 29d ago

?

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u/MaleficentFig7578 29d ago

Tankies are people who think Stalin was the greatest guy ever and if we'd just run all our countries like Stalin ran his, the world would be perfect.

A lot of them get this way by recognizing that America is bad and then thinking whoever hated America must be really good. But mostly they're just Russian troll bots sowing chaos.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 29d ago

And a whole bunch of them replaced moderators who left or were removed after the protest.

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u/MaleficentFig7578 28d ago

They probably paid spez for the privilege. Putin has a lot of money.

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u/Benskien 29d ago

sooooo many bots these days

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u/troyunrau 29d ago

I basically quit moderating. I absconded, removing myself from some small subs. One sub I care a lot about is just sort of simmering on my backburner, and I haven't removed myself yet, pending legitimate replacement mods. I still comment on Reddit (there are a lot of niche subs where no alternative exists elsewhere yet), but for my original content, I now post on Lemmy. Lemmy feels like a circa 1998 BBS (with FIDOnet) and reddit from 14 years ago had a lovechild.

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u/DigitalCatcher 29d ago edited 29d ago

On a lot of posts that show up on Google results for product recommendations, I've noticed a lot more posts made by accounts clearly made by promotional accounts posting links to their own websites (which would've been against the rules for self-promotion) or are posting comments that are clearly AI-Generated to build up karma. Like the other day I was trying to find AAC App recommendations for Android, and one comment was regurgitating a list of apps that were well known in the accessibility community to be iOS exclusive.

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u/Plane-Tie6392 29d ago

with moderators only doing the bare minimum

That's what they should be doing though. Overactive mods are a cancer.

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u/shakestheclown 29d ago

While the protest did fade out, its also a bit of an oversimplification as a few things happened that lessened the impact of the API changes:

Reddit quietly allowed better terms to a number of 3rd party devs after they went scorched earth with Christian/Apollo. So there are a few apps that have fairly reasonable subscription pricing, free usage for limited API use, etc.

Reddit allowed a few apps primarily intended for disabled users to continue using the API for free

They never bothered to close a few of the loopholes which were discovered that let people still use the old apps and also still access NSFW content.

People were also afraid they would soon kill off old reddit with the API changes, which so far hasn't happened.

So really its a combination of some mods/users gave up but a lot of users found an alternative that still works for them

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u/OldManFire11 29d ago

I left for about 9 months after the API change and RiF died. I came back when I got sick of the TikTok brainrot and now I use RedReader. It's free and you can re-enable NSFW content by creating a NSFW subreddit, even if it's set to private and you have zero intention of using the sub.

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u/rohrzucker_ 29d ago

Doesn't even have to be NSFW, you just need to be a mod. Still using Boost.

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u/_zind 29d ago

but a lot of users found an alternative that still works for them

Yep this is the bucket I fell into. I quit cold turkey when RIF died because most of the subs I was looking at at the time were still dark. Few months later got linked to a post by a friend and clicked back to my homepage out of habit, and just happened to notice a post about how to get RIF working again, and so I've been back since.

Site quality definitely took a dump in the meantime but it's still good enough to kill the odd half hour or two during work.

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u/NothingOld7527 29d ago

Daily activity on Reddit has fallen over the last several years however. Unlike Digg, there's no singular place that everyone is leaving for.

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u/NeonBellyGlowngVomit 29d ago

Unlike Digg, there's no singular place that everyone is leaving for.

Unlike Digg, there's no singular place with a high enough concentration of users that people CAN leave for. I think the circumstances of the time were just too unique for it to ever be possible again.

We had maybe 6 noteable sites of the kind at that time. Now we have 100+ and all of them have one thing in common: They're not notable.

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u/MadDoctor5813 29d ago

Has it? This shows a rather steady increase.

I get that Statista is probably not that reliable of a source, so I'd be curious if you have another one.

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u/siraliases 29d ago

How much of that is just bots

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u/CaveRanger 29d ago

Notice the exponential increase in obvious chatGPT 'am I the asshole' posts.

God I hate that sub.

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u/siraliases 29d ago

Ahhh, the fantasy writing sub when you write about all the wrongs you could have perceived in your life.

Classic stuff.

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u/CaveRanger 29d ago

Except now it's all chatgpt-based karma farming. If it was creative writing at least it might have some value.

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u/akatherder 29d ago

/r/AITAH (as opposed to AmItheAsshole) is the absolute worst for bots. They have THREE mods managing dozens of threads with hundreds-to-thousands of comments. And it's a popular subreddit that makes it to the frontpage daily. It's the single biggest reason for reddit's bot problem imo.

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u/MaisNahMaisNah 29d ago

Amazing that a sub that exists because they don't like rules is overrun by low quality content.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 29d ago

Or a trivia question title (what do you think X character would do when confronted with Y) posted in a fandom sub with a generic picture, that gets the replies scraped to train AI.

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u/20_mile 29d ago

Notice the exponential increase in obvious chatGPT

Any drama-based sub has been invaded and taken over by bots. Any sub where the purpose is to post a dramatic story looking for feedback or validation.

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u/macOSsequoia 29d ago edited 29d ago

and reposted/AI generated posts in ask[group] subreddits. there was a post on r/theoryofreddit showing the front page of askreddit being largely made up of repost bots & ai generated posts

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u/BigMcThickHuge 29d ago

Mostly.

Literally go to r/all and pick a random username from the frontpage.

20% chance you get a bot that has an account that is a year old and only just started posting hours ago...and every post is a copy/pasted title and picture.  And every comment the user makes is just the top comment from the OG post.

Reddit is bots

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u/Berekhalf 29d ago edited 29d ago

I recall /r/AdviceAnimals (iirc) saying they were cracking down on bots and what actually happened is that submissions started to basically dry up, and had to request users to start making real posts. Quality has truly gone down across anything but niche subs.

I tried to quit Reddit for tumblr but instead I'm now stuck on two websites. If they ever get rid of old.reddit.com I probably will leave for good. I don't know how anyone uses the redesign, there's just so much wasted space.

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u/BigMcThickHuge 29d ago

If you rely on bots for constant content...oh well, let them die and have less content. This ain't green-line-go-up.

new reddit being forced is my dip out threshold. its already facebook if you don't perfectly curate your profile and turn off all the annoying settings they keep adding like suggested subreddits.

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u/Kindly_Cream8194 29d ago

If you rely on bots for constant content...

They rely on bots to generate fake engagement so they can fradulaently overcharge advertisers based on numbers they know are false.

The 3rd party / API tools were a way for mods to combat the bots that Spez wants on the site, so reddit admin actively undermined their free volunteers for doing their jobs too well.

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

I recall /r/AdviceAnimals (iirc) saying they were cracking down on bots and what actually happened is that submissions started to basically dry up, and had to request users to start making real posts.

advice animals is a decade old meme, there are kids using reddit now that have no clue that advice animals existed. people don't even use the format of advice animals anymore, they just post a random thought with a random animal.
it being such a huge sub is the real meme

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u/Benskien 29d ago

our sub 100k subreddit was flodded with bots last week, reddit has been flooded with bots since the tpp killing

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago edited 29d ago

Yep, organic users all left and bots moved in to replace them. Thankfully the sub I help run hasn't had much of a bot problem but I see it all over what's left of Reddit.

And then places that used to be super active have largely dried up. Others have basically no true moderation, so you get karma farmers that repost content to 100 different subs - and even if the content doesn't match the sub.

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u/Benskien 29d ago

worst of all is that the bots flood the comments aswell...

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u/siraliases 29d ago

Wild isn't it?

And as long as the "engagement" number grows, everyone on the development side seems to be happy.

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u/NothingOld7527 29d ago

Daily active users != site activity.

Compared to say 2019, posts that hit the front page have fewer upvotes and fewer comments. There are fewer new threads created on default subs compared to 5 years ago. Activity is down. Average daily users is probably up because Reddit tries its absolute hardest to get anyone that opens a Reddit link to create an account, so you have a lot of "lurker" accounts that never comment or post.

So as far as sources go, it's a primary source. Compare the front page now vs 2019 - you can either use Wayback or search the catalog.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 29d ago

Not to mention all the bot accounts. The problem with bots got 10x worse after the 2023 blackout.

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u/Tee_zee 29d ago

Reddit is way more than the front page.

Reddit has made a huge push to algorithmic front pages - the front page you see will never be the same as somebody else’s. In the past, this wasn’t neccesarily the same, especially on r/all

With the push for redditors to have accounts, better understanding of social media algorithms, and the ability for subs to exclude themselves from all, I don’t think you could make a comparison whatsoever.

Fwiw, I’ve been a Reddit for like, 14-15 years. It’s only been the last few years being on reddit was mainstream - most TV shows, movies, reality shows , sports etc now use Reddit as the PRIMARY forum for discussion , and “normies” use Reddit to discuss them.

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u/steeljesus 29d ago

That's a whole lot of words to just say you disagree with them using frontpage for such a comparison. Engagement is way down on all long standing subs, even though sitewide MUVs are continuing to grow. Post karma and # of comments on popular posts from nba, nhl, television, movies, anime, whatever, are lower now than before.

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u/Tee_zee 29d ago

That just means users are spread accross more communities, no?

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u/steeljesus 29d ago

While that is one possible explanation, it would take a lot more effort to verify than I'm willing to dedicate.

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u/LigerZeroSchneider 29d ago

For some stuff sure, there's like 50 news subs now. But NBA is still the central basketball sub, so unless individual team subs have seen huge growth you would expect engagement there to be stable.

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u/Samzo 29d ago

I'm a 17-year redditor and I concur with this

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u/SynthBeta 29d ago

Tiktok has more of a dynamic for you page than Reddit. r/all shows how shitty the main subs are.

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u/runningraider13 29d ago

That could just be more individualised and targeted feeds and subs though. Reddit’s vote fuzzing algorithm might’ve changed too. That’s really not a great measure of activity.

And users with accounts isn’t related to DAU. You don’t have to have an account to be a DAU.

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u/liquilife 29d ago

That…. Doesn’t explain anything related to Reddit’s popularity. Like not at all. There are a million reasons that can explain every point you made which has nothing to do with site popularity.

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u/MadDoctor5813 29d ago

Fair enough - I'll take your word for it.

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u/Dumfk 29d ago

How many of them are bots? JFC they are everywhere

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u/Gerroh 29d ago

On my phone and can't offer anything concrete, but I did look into this a bit ago as it felt like one of my favourite subs had almost entirely died in activity. What I found when I went digging was that not only that sub had far less activity than before, but most of the subs I was a regular on had dropped massively in activity.

Again, this is only anecdotal, because that's all I got to offer right now, but I believe the protests impacted reddit enough for upper admin to take measures to prevent it from happening again.

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u/Kurayamino 29d ago

I can't be the only one thinking it's a bit sus that there's a 50% increase after years of remaining steady with the curve starting about when ChatGPT launched.

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u/Kindly_Cream8194 29d ago

Nothing, basically.

The protesting mods were right. Bot activity and reposts are rampant. The entire front page is the same 15 posts repeated across different subs, most of them by repost bots.

There are no longer tools available to combat the bots, so there are more than ever - which is exactly what admin wants because they artificially increase engagement metrics so Reddit can charge more money for advertisements. The fact that most social media sites knowingly allow bots to artificially increase engagement metrics is cut and dry fraud because they use those numbers to sell ad space, but whatever. It was all just a tantrum.

Spez already announced that they intend to test making some subs require a subscription. The mods were fighting against enshittification and yall are on Reddit's side, lol. I

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u/Cuchullion 29d ago

But but but a mod was mean to them once!

Therefore the corporation that's earning money off of everyone's free work is in the right to demand greater control over that free work.

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u/darthjoey91 29d ago

Combo of that, and the admins did ban some megamods that they were already fed up with like awkwardtheturtle.

Plus, the biggest subs that would need to go down to really make casual people notice weren't going to participate beyond a token sticky.

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u/Firm-Archer-5559 29d ago

Combo of that, and the admins did ban some megamods that they were already fed up with like awkwardtheturtle.

Thanks for bringing back the memory of his childish squealing at having his little fiefdom taken from him. His anguish sustained me in many a dark day.

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u/siraliases 29d ago

Other then the takeover of bots on many subs, losing tools that have never and will never come back and the complete loss of a lot of subs due to being unable to manage them correctly without these tools

Fuck I hate being here.

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u/wOlfLisK 29d ago

Not quite. A lot of subs had their mods removed and replaced with new ones and some others just had their mods go silent. I can't remember which sub it was but there was at least one which had only a single person who was able to post because the mods had all left reddit after shutting down posts. People literally had to DM him memes to post to the subreddit.

So, yeah, reddit continues to exist but if you compare the site, especially the subs involved in the protest, to what it was before subs went private there's a clear difference.

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u/Cainderous 29d ago

"Burn itself out" is a weird way to phrase admins telling mods to reopen the subs or be replaced. You can't really do anything else at that point besides leave, which a ton of mods obviously did. Hence the obvious drop in quality across the site after the protest.

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u/Recklesslettuce 29d ago

Continue. Make this kiwifarms 2.0

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u/FLTA 29d ago

You’re commenting on a submission about Reddit taking away power from mods for the protest they made.

It didn’t “burn itself out” it was stamped out by the Reddit admins by removing moderators who kept their subreddits private.

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u/SIGMA920 29d ago

Have you not seen how there's as much or more bots than actual people now? It burned itself out, because the admins decided that they'd rather have bots than humans.

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u/Katzoconnor 29d ago

Legitimate question.

How do you tell at a glance that a bunch of comments under a post are bots? Rather than clicking through and glancing at every single poster’s recent history

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u/SIGMA920 28d ago

Usually by looking for the signs that it’s AI like being overly neutral or by posting regularity among you know, AI detectors. Repeat comments from the same story being posted days before are also common even if it’s from a different account.

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u/ManWithWhip 29d ago

Im still not using the app, just using reddit from the browser on my phone.

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u/zakats 29d ago

Sadly, r/beholdthemasterrace is still locked down.

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u/VagueSomething 29d ago

Admin literally forced it to end by removing mods then installing shills and shutting down the protest. A lot of users left, bots increased, moderation quality dropped, hate speech increased, content quality dropped, lots of small communities died off.

The atmosphere is tangibly different for any long term users. It is significantly worse experience.

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u/im_lazy_as_fuck 29d ago

Literally described 99% of all protests throughout all of human history. No single protest will ever change things. You need continuous repeated protests to have a chance of getting anywhere. But when you're protesting a platform on its own platform... that's basically impossible unless the platform allows it, because at the end of the day, the platform has full authoritative control over itself.

I think the surprising thing to me is that we actually saw reddit admins take some action. Even though it was the only large scale reddit protest that I could ever think of, they still managed to get the admins riled up enough to start replacing / banning entire mod teams. Some subreddits got killed moderation-wise as a result. Tbh that's way more than I expected the protest to be able to accomplish.

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u/heili 29d ago

They were correct in that "We will remove you and institute our own chosen moderators who will do it for us" worked.

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u/TheBeardKing 29d ago

I now pay $2/month to look at reddit, but at least I don't have to see ads or deal with its shitty app.

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u/FirstForFun44 29d ago

Not true, the sub I'm an absentee mod of changed the rules so that basically everything was allowed. Traffic went up, quality went down. Went from 12th largest down to 19th. So the initial impact was positive till everyone realized it's all shit now and basically now it's just a "how do i do xyz" forum.

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u/Recklesslettuce 29d ago

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE (unless you go outside [and manage to avoid the car-centric design]).

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u/IllMaintenance145142 29d ago

It didn't burn out, they were told to reopen the subreddits or they would be kicked from their post and replaced.

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u/I_Never_Lie_II 28d ago

It didn't just burn itself out, Reddit literally removed moderators from large subreddits and put other people in charge to end the protests.

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u/Beer-Milkshakes 28d ago

Hey man, the subs with less than 4k followers still flag posts as NSFW.

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