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Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators From Subreddits Continuing Apollo-Related Blackouts

xARx2 said:
lemmy and kbin exist! anyways, i was replying to someone who stated that federated stuff wouldn’t take off — but it literally has. it’s being proven right now that decentralized, federated communities are strong enough to a) attract users, and b) be sustainable — all without corporate marketing/funding. federated stuff is super dope, and i hope you can check it out if you haven’t yet!
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I'm currently trying kbin (terrible name) right now. I looked at Lemmy and it makes no sense to me. If we're using the email analogy here, does every email domain have its own isolated subreddits that don't connect to the other domain's subreddits? That sounds unworkable... but from what I can see that's how it works. kbin seems to function about identical to reddit and doesn't hurt my head so I think I'll use that.
 
zach-coleman said:
The mods of r/Apple are weak. There is no way Reddit can replace the entire site’s mod force in any reasonable time frame and Reddit knows it. This was the most predictable threat they could have made and yet apparently none of the mod teams predicted it. Even if Reddit did delete all of the blackout mods it would be a near fatal blow to the site. Would cause months of Reddit having to step in on hastily appointed power tripping replacement mods.

I would comment this on their thread but I already deleted my account.

Edit: Also, Reddit is certainly going to replace them once this dies down. Either with a new team of humans or with an AI. There is no way they're ever going to allow an event like this to happen again.
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While they are at it, fake user engagement with AI too. Who needs users that need to be taken care of? AI can be tailored to do whatever you want (ahem, nothing serious has ever happened On that yet we all know :rolleyes:).

In a more serious note, I think they are going to replace all mods eventually with AI. They will start to replace them today. And bots are going to be more powerful than ever. Heck, even CEO can be replaced By AI, and Reddit can be the first company in the world to be fully operated and managed by AI, if they decide to pull the trigger. If anything, social media company is the best to be completely operated by AI.
 
vipergts2207 said:
Because without mods each sub becomes a mini 4chan.
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What matters is: does that affect their bottom line By promoting mini 4chan? Are they courageous enough to give that a shot? Can that happen and will that happen? No one has those answers yet I believe.
 
zach-coleman said:
I looked at Lemmy and it makes no sense to me. If we're using the email analogy here, does every email domain have its own isolated subreddits that don't connect to the other domain's subreddits? That sounds unworkable...
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They are separate, but not isolated - the separate servers are talking to each other constantly.

When you send an email, it goes to your server, then your server sends a copy to the recipient's server, and the recipient loads the email from there. It's the same system... but with a few extra protections in place to deal with spam/etc (servers can be cut off if they behave badly... email servers do that too but not as well).
 
abhibeckert said:
They are separate, but not isolated - the separate servers are talking to each other constantly.

When you send an email, it goes to your server, then your server sends a copy to the recipient's server, and the recipient loads the email from there. It's the same system... but with a few extra protections in place to deal with spam/etc (servers can be cut off if they behave badly... email servers do that too but not as well).
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The way the site displays, it appears that for example Lemmy.ca has a Lemmy.ca.Woodworking, that if Lemmy.one also makes a Woodworking page they would be two different places. This seems extremely confusing and would make reddit-style communities impossible...
 
wrcousert said:
Abandon ship!

Seriously, it's time to call it quits. How hard would it be for former Redditers to create a viable alternative to Reddit?
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Elon Musk could have build an alternative to twitter with $100 million. But the reason he paid a ridiculous amount to buy it was all the existing content. The tweet history, the followers, the active users... Even with all the active support from the tech community for Mastadon, it has nowhere near the engagement of Twitter. The tech platform is less than 5% of the work involved in building an online social media company.
 
zach-coleman said:
If we're using the email analogy here, does every email domain have its own isolated subreddits that don't connect to the other domain's subreddits? That sounds unworkable... but from what I can see that's how it works. kbin seems to function about identical to reddit and doesn't hurt my head so I think I'll use that.
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Yes, each instance has its own subreddits (known as "magazines" or "communities") which will often overlap.

However, you can subscribe to a subreddit from any instance (unless the instance mods banned it). So you can subscribe to @technology@lemmy.ml, @technology@beehaw.org, and /m/technology on kbin. When you search for "tech" subreddits you will find all three, and if you subscribe to all of them then you can interact with them in the same way regardless of their host.

That sounded weird to me at first, too. But then I realized it's not that different from reddit, where I also occasionally subscribed to multiple overlapping subreddits (e.g. /r/politics and /r/politicaldiscussion). And when I scroll through political headlines, I usually don't pay attention to which subreddit it came from. So in practice, overlapping subreddits are not as jarring as you might think.

BTW, kbin and lemmy are no different in this regard. Kbin has simply recreated a lot of subreddits from Reddit, but often users have gravitated to the lemmy instances instead. For example, right now a lot more users are on @technology@lemmy.ml and @technology@beehaw.org than on /m/technology on kbin.

When you search for new subreddits, it will helpfully indicate the current subscriber count so you can ignore unpopulated instances. The pareto rule seems to be in effect, so most of the action will be concentrated in a few instances (today, everyone is mostly posting in lemmy.ml and beehaw.org).
 
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fastspinecho said:
Yes, each instance has its own subreddits (known as "magazines" or "communities") which will often overlap.

However, you can subscribe to a subreddit from any instance (unless the instance mods banned it). So you can subscribe to @technology@lemmy.ml, @technology@beehaw.org, and tech on kbin. When you search for "tech" subreddits you will find all three, and if you subscribe to all of them then you can interact with them in the same way regardless of their host.

That sounded weird to me at first, too. But then I realized it's not that different from reddit, where I also occasionally subscribed to multiple overlapping subreddits (e.g. /r/politics and /r/politicaldiscussion). And when I scroll through the headlines, I usually don't pay attention to which subreddit it came from.

BTW, kbin and lemmy are no different in this regard. Kbin has simply recreated a lot of subreddits from Reddit, but often users have gravitated to the lemmy instances instead. For example, right now a lot more users are on @technology@lemmy.ml and @technology@beehaw.org than on tech on kbin.
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If this is how decentralized social media is going to work, they're going to have to put more effort into discoverability. People are going to want to just subscribe to the most popular "technology" group they can access, but from what I can tell kbin mostly buries other magazines from different instances. I did successfully subscribe to @technology@lemmy.ml from my kbin account thanks to your help, though.

I've also been trying to post a photo on kbin for about 15 minutes now, but I think the simple truth might be that the "post a photo" prompt is broken. Hopefully this is more ready for prime time soon...

Edit: I just found out Lemmy has a light mode. I might have to switch teams in the morning.
 
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For better or worse, this is a feature not a bug. Multiple "technology" groups means that no wannabe Musk or /u/spez can singlehandedly destroy a community, because everyone already has a second home.

Kbin's search does favor its own subreddits, but at least both the lemmy.ml and beehaw.org versions are in the top 5 results. I don't want to discourage you from experimenting but both of those instances have their own peculiarities. For example, beehaw.org seems to be insisting on an admission essay right now. When asked why I wanted an account, my complete reply was "I am a reddit refugee interested in chatting about XXX and YYY" (both of which are innocuous topics). Their reply was "Your application was rejected. It's likely because it did not contain enough information for us to make a judgment call on if you're a good pick for Beehaw." My next stop was kbin.

I haven't tried to post images on kbin, but I know that they are or soon will be integrated with pixelfed. Pixelfed is to Instagram as Kbin is to Reddit as Mastodon is to Twitter.

Finally, I'm not sure what you mean by light mode, but kbin does have a light theme in the settings.
 
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You knew this was coming. making subs not active was never going to go down well. there will be plenty who don't care about the blackouts and would take their place

looks like apple one is back. NBA still down.
 
iSaul said:
A little design-thinking workshop could help the Reddit execs quite a bit. They're so focused on gatekeeping their API, they've forgotten WHY they want to gatekeep it in the first place -- increasing revenue. Seems like there are a number of easier ways to increase revenue without alienating your most important and dedicated users.
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This is exactly what I don't get. How is it that the execs are so far removed from their product?
 
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jonblatho said:
I, too, could substantially improve my cash flow by simply choosing not to pay my rent and other bills.
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I, too, can avoid lawsuits because...magic.

And AWS must always keep my servers on, even though I didn't pay my bills. Because that's how the world works.
 
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What needs to happen now is for ALL subreddits to resume the blackout.
I’d like to see them replace mods for ALL of them. Yeah, good luck with that.
 
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