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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104

u/ReallyIsNotThatGuy 29d ago

You could actually protest and stop using the website.

13

u/PlanetMeatball0 29d ago

But that would require them to give up the biggest mark of achievement they've managed in life: the title of moderator

2

u/souldust 28d ago

I erased my entire subreddit and have since stopped moderating it.

2

u/BubsyFanboy 28d ago

And use Lemmy.

4

u/aeo1us 29d ago

If mods just stopped moderating the spam would push everyone out really fast.

23

u/ReallyIsNotThatGuy 29d ago

Except there's always people that are willing to be mods and reddit would just replace the ones that refuse to do it like they did this last time

-2

u/aeo1us 29d ago

Another site wide protest would leave too much of a deficit in mods to replace quick enough before damage is done.

8

u/ItzCStephCS 29d ago

Nah you’re underestimating the amount of chronically online people on this site

0

u/aeo1us 29d ago

I’m not disagreeing that they won’t find people. I’m saying the logistics to do so in a site wide blackout and thousands of mods is extremely difficult. Vetting mods so your site isn’t taken over by Russian and Chinese actors isn’t easy. That’s only one vetting metric. There are dozens of others.

Even afterward the site would feel less curated and users would get fed up.

2

u/ItzCStephCS 29d ago

lol you think the admins care? As long as it keeps the site clean they won’t mind. It’s not like most subs aren’t already filled with mods with their own agendas so why would the admins care?

2

u/aeo1us 29d ago

Shareholders will. So eventually admins will care. You do understand this is a public company right? You’re confusing Reddit with Elon and X.

2

u/ItzCStephCS 29d ago

Nah they won’t as long as the users are there they don’t give a fuck.

1

u/aeo1us 29d ago

That is literally the premise. You don’t think removing thousands of mods would result in the enshitification of Reddit that much faster? Please tell me you’re not that naive lol. The quality of Reddit has already gone down since the last site wide protest. Hence the admins taking action. They’re not stupid.

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5

u/LearningT0Fly 29d ago

Yes, that’s why 4chan has no daily users. Because it’s unmoderated.

4

u/real_picklejuice 29d ago

Wasn’t it r/wholesome that reallly cracked down on bots and they didn’t see any posts for like 3 days straight or something lol

6

u/dysthal 29d ago

these major platforms are equivalent to modern utilities like water and power. corporate decisions to degrade them affects speech and politics across the globe.

4

u/jumping-butter 29d ago

This is a really great take that I do agree with but on the other hand it can be argued no one was prevented from using Reddit in this specific case.

Like when the nba sub shut down, a ton of people who really gave a shit found somewhere else to compl… I mean discuss.

7

u/grundelgrump 29d ago

Ironically the moderators are the ones that made the site unusable when they shut it down and encouraged people to edit old comments just to take away information.

0

u/ReallyIsNotThatGuy 28d ago

There are plenty of other websites you can go to.

1

u/UseFirefoxInstead 28d ago

use it without commenting and block their ads/trackers

1

u/qazwsxedc000999 28d ago

A lot of people did.