this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Why don't they move here? They are being exploited there anyways
And give up their power as mods of a large subreddit and starting again from scratch? Most of them probably aren't willing to do that.
I'm a mod of /r/Disneyland, and we recreated our sub over here on Kbin ( @Disneyland, https://kbin.social/m/Disneyland).
The issue is that we had 500k subs on Reddit. That sounds like a lot, but in reality it equates to about a dozen posts a day, maybe less.
Over here on Kbin, we almost have 100 subs - and I'm really proud of that! - but 100 subs is basically nothing. A fraction of a percent of people are actually content contributors, and the whole community rests on them. Then combine that with the fact that we're a niche subject (not some general thing like "video games") and that impacts what can be contributed.
On top of that, the magazine is fairly empty. Not barren - we have a few posts - but it certainly looks and feels empty. And because it's empty, nobody wants to post, which means it stays empty.
Compare that to Reddit, which has a very dedicated community for us. Not a massive community, but certainly a passionate one. We care about our community; we've stewarded it for years. All of us mods started out as members of that community (the subreddit founder is long gone), and we're all unpaid volunteers that want to keep that community healthy.
Reddit threatened to take it from us and give it to another mod team for a related Disney subreddit that played along with the admins. The issue is that multiple Disney subreddits have, uh, issues with those mods (which has been the case for years to the point where explaining the history is part of onboarding for a lot of Disney mods).
So the issue was reframed - either we reopen our sub on our terms... or we stick to our guns, force Reddit to remove us, and get replaced by a different mod team. This other team is known to be harsh about banning users for any kind of dissent, they abuse their mod powers to spread anti-vax nonsense all over their "non-political" subreddit, they have multiple subreddit drama threads talking about their actions, they've been gunning for all of the Disney subs for years... and they'd immediately jump at the chance to reopen the subreddit we've worked hard on so they could run it their way.
When you look at it like that... there's only one real choice. I hate Reddit, but our community doesn't deserve that.
I realize saying "we choose to keep our powers for your own good" makes me sound like, oh, I dunno, "landed gentry"... but users don't see that side of moderation or Reddit drama, and frankly they shouldn't have to.
So we opened and are taking the abuse. Users are torn between "you caved, scabs" and "told you this was a useless gesture, how dare you take my sub away". Neither one is great.
But there's more to it than what appears on the surface, and frankly that's true across a lot of subs.
I do not understand these posts at all.
It sounds like that you are just not interested in building a new community and rather go back to the ivory tower that is reddit.
If that is so just say it.
What are you gonna do when Reddit is gonna implement the next thing that would be unbeneficial to the community?
If you know that the possible new mods are asses, why not call reddits bluff?
Let them see what good moderation is about and what happens when you don't care about the good moderators for years.
You are probably afraid that a new mod team would do just a good a job as you and you will be forgotten after a day. Then of course what would be all this for if change wouldn't happen? Other questions you are asking yourself can entice; Is my moderation position really that hard to take over? Are the changes really affecting me?
You are probably afraid losing something that you put your own time and effort in and the idea that someone would ruin it or just take your place is a situation you are not ready for. I would understand all that but then why black out at all? Rigorous changes after 48 hours only happen in Disney movies, you should know that.
Sorry to say but most of the community does not give a damn about moderators and you know it. They care about the content that is provided to them that is what they are hooked on.
This only shows that Reddit has full control over you and your actions and they can do whatever they want to whomever they want because you will bulge the first second they threaten to take your moderations position away.
For the life of me I cannot understand why people would gladly be providing money in Reddits pockets, while the community and moderators don't see a penny, don't see any user improvements, get constantly lied to, while getting bend over on every turn.
I am gonna say this again; I thought moderators actually got paid by reddit. I was baffled when I heard a few days ago they weren't. I thought and still think it would be absolutely ridiculous to invest your time and efforts for a profit making company for absolutely nothing in return.
In the meantime Steve huffman is spitting in your and the communities face every step of the way, not caring about you or the community at all.
I have a whole lot of respect to the people who gave up their mod positions just to make a stand for themselves.
I really don't mind if subs stay open, if you like to moderate be my guest. If you don't agree with the blackout, sure.
But the posturing about the greater good for the community, just don't.
Alright, one point at a time:
If we weren't interested, we wouldn't have founded the community. We're now maintaining two. The Disneyland subreddit links to Kbin in its sidebar. While I'd agree that Reddit is somewhat of an ivory tower, bear in mind that it's a community we've cultivated for years and we have a sense of responsibility for them.
Link here, like we already are. We've never participated in "Reddit drama". The fact that we took a stand as-is was a big step for us. We even committed to "indefinite", not just 48 hours. It wasn't effective, and we caved after 110 hours or so. Lessons learned.
But when (not if) Reddit shoots itself in the foot, we can have a community here ready for them. Right now it's small. To a certain extent, that's positive... the mod tools on Kbin are lacking. But it's not like we're abandoning the community here.
Spez is taking inspiration from Elon. He's going to do more dumb things. He's already talked about the dumb things he wants to do. There'll be other waves of migration, and we want to make sure that anyone who still wants the space they had (but doesn't want to use Reddit) can have a home.
Do you think Reddit cares about asshole mod teams? Honestly. Remember, the "new mods" already run a major Disney subreddit. If Reddit cared about them being assholes who regularly wind up on SubredditDrama they would have taken action already.
Also bear in mind that I am one person on a team. There are others who work alongside me that have voices which should be heard and respected. To that extent, a lot of them didn't want to even risk it. I don't have the authority (by design) to unilaterally override them.
Absolutely correct. We're the unpaid jannies, the suckers who need to touch grass. That's not sarcasm, btw - I really do think that. It's absolutely ridiculous that we do it at all, especially given the amount of abuse we get from... well, basically everyone.
Spez doesn't care about our users. We know that. Frankly, there are a lot of places on the internet that are run or controlled by those who don't care about others.
So spaces that do care are important. You can call it posturing, but it's the truth. If we didn't care, we would've quit a decade ago.
We care about making our community a welcoming space, a little home on the internet. We care about stopping trolls that see the word "Disney" and want to cause as much damage as possible.
It is absolutely ridiculous to care. Because you're right - the site doesn't care. We are giving them value and expecting nothing. They depend on us to care, and they treat us any way they want because they know we're too goddamn soft to let harm come to the communities we try and protect.
But there are people who need these little rest stops. They need a place to post a picture of their Mickey Mouse balloon, or their engagement photo in front of the castle, or their debate about what on earth the writing on some poster says. It makes them happy and there's a whole blossoming community there, of happy people in a safe space.
What on earth do I even get out of my "posturing" otherwise? A stupid green badge that says "please yell at me?" I don't even get that badge outside of my sub. I'm not a powermod; /r/Disneyland is the only major sub I mod. The only others I run are teeny tiny, maybe 600 users. We're not a Reddit partner community that gets wined and dined.
We're just some stupid, terminally-online folks who need to touch grass. Doing unpaid labor for an abusive place that doesn't care, promoting a different abusive monopoly of a company that doesn't care. All to make some little virtual people on the other side of a box (who also hate us) happy.
Have you considered shifting to a model of only permitting disneyfied John Oliver image posts?
"Do you think Reddit cares? Honestly."
My post says what I think. Of course they don't they haven't cared for the better part of 8 years. It's why I ran PDS and stopped with using Reddit this week.
"But there are people who need these little rest stops. They need a place to post a picture of their Mickey Mouse balloon, or their engagement photo in front of the castle, or their debate about what on earth the writing on some poster says. It makes them happy and there's a whole blossoming community there, of happy people in a safe space."
You know that Reddit will use this as leverage whenever they can right?
"We're just some stupid, terminally-online folks who need to touch grass. Doing unpaid labor for an abusive place that doesn't care. All to make some little virtual people on the other side of a box (who also hate us) happy."
Why would you even talk about yourself like that?
If it wasn't clear I am hardcore in the moderator camp.
I would not be a moderator even if you would glue me to a chair and threaten me to mod or I would be forced to watch every season of seinfeld in that same chair. I absolutely despise seinfeld.
You are literally the gateway between the community and Reddits pockets. Why do you think that Facebook pays a buttload of cash for their moderators.
I come of as harsh maybe, but for some reason I feel like I care more for the moderators then the moderators do for themselves.
You should be proud of the work you do and the shit you take on the daily.
Sorry if I come on strong, but believe me it isn't to dunk on you or the moderators in any way, shape or form.
I am probably way to invested in this part of the saga so I will stop posting about this part at all.
If the community is as important to the users as you believe them to be then those who truly do value the resources of the community will move.
I value the resources of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH and /r/piracy over the years so much that I came to lemmy. I didn't see /r/piracy's initial plans to do an indefinite shutdown as something that would hurt me, but something I fully supported and was more than happy to join them on lemmy to find a new home.
Reddit was why I found communities like those two, but reddit was not what I needed for them to always have to be on. Those who don't feel the same will just run off to whatever other piracy resource is there regardless of whether mods are removed or different.
So I guess what I'm trying to say as one of the regular people is you don't need to worry so much about hurting us. And to us this wasn't just a fight over communities but stuff like the freedom to use third party apps and great third party extensions like RES. I didn't want to have to use the terrible reddit website on my phone to interact with my communities, or have to use their spyware official app. I was happy mods were willing to fight for users like us who didn't have any power at all.
You're doing great. I'm not on your subreddit, but you don't deserve people piling on here. Thanks for everything you do, and I hope this transition doesn't cause you too many gray hairs :)
You're doing great. I'm not on your subreddit, but you don't deserve people piling on here. Thanks for everything you do, and I hope this transition doesn't cause you too many gray hairs :)
You sound like a great and super reasonable person. Reddit was lucky to have your help and it’s a shame they don’t appreciate you and mods like you more.
Funny enough with how beehaw is defederating from a bunch of instances that pose a threat to disturbing the safe positive vibes here seems like beehaw would be a good place to start that community here. And help reduce modding oversight with how instances with users who step over the line repeatedly can get the entire instance defederated like what happened to lemmy.world.
I'm not sure how open or closed kbin is to walling off groups that are potentially hostile.
Beehaw doesn't allow you to create communities. They were our initial choice until we learned that.
Kbin is against hate speech, which is all I ask for. And we had issues with those users on Reddit regardless; Reddit doesn't instantly ban someone the moment they spout the n-word across 12 subreddits.
Usually AutoMod catches/removes it, then we ban when reviewing modqueue. (Which the official app doesn't have last time I checked.) AutoMod doesn't exist here, which makes that harder... but we're small enough that it doesn't matter.
You can request communities.
EnglishMobster explained, that for them, it is still about supporting the community they've built there, and it is still tenable to continue with that. You're response is to exaggerate the current Reddit threat, and get shirty at EnglishMobster. BlackCoffee, you show no consideration for an opinion outide your viewpoint, only recalcitrance.
I show enough consideration because of my post where I go deeper into the whole situation. I also used to be a part of the communities in Reddit.
You are missing my point.
If you really want change you should know what that would entice and what that would bring.
If you just wanted to posture and get brownie points then the 48 hour blackout was perfect for doing something without actually doing something.
But humeur me; How is this beneficial for the community in the long term?
What has Reddit shown that it cared about its communities and moderators over the years?
It does prove Steves point though; It all will blow over and people will bend the knee.
The motives of the community and Reddit do not align in the slightest.
It's a self fulfilling conditioning that:
It might be mentally closer to threaten to take away your loved dog/cat cause in reality you bonded with that identity but you don't actually own the sub.
Sounds to me that sometimes the community needs to actually see the consequences of mods leaving? Because a lot take the attitude of who needs mods just open it up.
And sticking to the status quo instead of breaking it takes away the chance of something even changing for the better even if the outcome could be worse.
It just highlights how Spez knew what an empty threat most of the mods were making.
Agree. You were faced with a horrible choice and the only way to make it would be done in solidarity with all the other mods. BUT. If the intent was to truly make an impact to the wider user base, maybe walking away and starting over would have been a potential way to demonstrate not only to the admins but also to the users that you were unwilling to take any more BS. Just like other users who are walking from the platform. It may take a while but once everything sucks, users will eventually come searching for a new, not sucky home. If you have one available they will find it.
It’s certainly a hard situation, but I don’t think going along with the malicious agenda of the administration for the good of the community is a strong position. At some point you have to be decisive and accept that there will be negative consequences. Critically, it is not your fault! Someone is saying if you don’t do bad thing A, I’ll do bad thing B. If they do B, that’s not on you.
Of course you have to find balance, choose your battles etc., and everybody should have their own take, but the stakes here just aren’t that high for most folks: it’s low grade bullying that you can walk away from, and, in the process, show others that they don’t need to stay there either. Some subscribers will stick with a crumbling Reddit community to the bitter end, but others will see it go sour and look around for where the good parts of the community went. If you shift your efforts to a new setting, then some of those users will follow the gradient up from toxic Reddit to wherever you setup shop. If you work to keep the Reddit community as comfortable as possible, then you are reducing whatever impetus there is to find a better home.
Do you have any plans to start redirecting users to your new spot, while keeping the subreddit open?
If these subreddits all had a sticky thread linking to their new magazines/communities on other platforms, then it would help them grow.
But they don't. They just make a copy/paste post about reddit killing 3rd party apps and "go use alternatives", most people need directly linking to them with a simple description of how they work.
We do have a sticky thread that mentions our Kbin community at the very top.
It's also at the top of our sidebar, above the rules.
Could you add something on the post submission page suggesting that folks also submit their content to your kbin community? Maybe don't push to completely move, just suggest that content submissions go to both places for now.
I'll have to run it by the other mods.
Yes, that's the plan. We have it at the top of our sidebar, and as a sticky post.
I had an AutoMod that automatically mentioned it everywhere but the other mods asked me to turn that one off as it was a little too invasive.
I'm hoping to also make it an announcement that sticks at the top of the page instead of the AutoMod (the current announcement is stale anyway). But that one is waiting on some of the other mods to sign off.
That sounds pretty good! I wish you luck. Hopefully, more of your community will be up for migrating over time or during whatever the next incident is.
How much garbage post you have to weed through on Reddit? Some user suggest to do a silent protest where the mods don't moderate and just remove the very bad ones. Letting the sub degrade over time. Is that a feasible action? Would that work on a small niche sub?
We do have a very aggressive AutoMod with a lot of false positives. We're about the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, but people frequently come to ask about Tokyo Disney or Disneyland Paris or Walt Disney World.
That's the number 1 thing AutoMod catches, but then it also catches people saying something innocent ("XYZ is better at Disneyland than WDW").
If we turned off AutoMod, we'd quickly become a "generic Disney theme parks" subreddit. I brokered that idea to the mod team before we opened up, but they weren't completely onboard so we didn't go through with it.
what’s the gos? You’ve got me curious.
Neither is missing out on the the Ron DeSantis subtext that must be like spinach to Popeye at r/Disneyland.
Ha. They want that stuff they can go to <other subreddit redacted>.
It's been bad since Trump. COVID was the worst though.
See how many users r/piracy have already brought here. More will come
More importantly, are you still able to do your mod work? From the volume you described it sounds so.
But unfortunately there are subs where that is not an option either without 3rd-party tools. All the large subs will collapse one way or another unless Reddit comes up with built-in mod tools very fast. (I know they've said they're "working on it".)
AutoMod handles most of it. We just go through the queue and manually approve stuff.
However, the app doesn't have the queue IIRC. So people will be waiting a long time for their posts to be approved. It'll slow down the sub considerably since I can really only mod from desktop.
I still think Reddit forcibly removing the head mod of r/Piracy is peak irony. They can't not have people discussing copyright infringement, even through in years prior they were threatening to ban the community.
damn, the employees (probably directly from spez himself) are picking the "troll" route for reopening. r/piracy and r/antiwork? they aren't even big ones like r/videos!
I wonder if it's some strategic bullshit to try and scare people. Fuck it, most of those people are the kind who would enjoy using Lemmy anyway.
like a mob boss saying "we'll start with chopping your fingers off if you dont comply, then we'll move up to other parts"
Reddit is such a mess.
Reddit is destroying their moderation tools anyway...
When Reddit said moderator tools were exempt from the API pricing, did they mention the tools would stay as is?
I'm assuming not since the mods are still protesting.
I'm out of the loop of the details regarding the impact on mod tools.
I mean most of the mods used third party applications as tools to do their job. With the API changes, almost all third party apps will die, so all mods will lose their tools.
I'm not a mod and can't exactly understand the situation, but I guess third party apps had easier to use and better/more tools than what official Reddit gives them, so that's it.
Sounds like a lot of work. And that’s not really their thing
Its really only a little bit of work, with significant rewards.
Still not their thing.