this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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It's a shame how shabbily reddit's board and u/spez (and his lackeys) have treated reddit's users and mods. They benefited enormously from free content and hours of unpaid moderation, yet they chose to throw it all away.
This screams “Please stop this and go back to doing work for free.” They keep threatening but know they need the free labor.
Exactly. And it's driving me crazy how many mods are caving. Like, I get that you care about the community and want it to continue on, but will it even be the same now that you know how little control you actually have? Will it survive the next insane, profit driven decision Reddit makes and refuses to negotiate on? Just rip the band-aid off now like /r/interestingasfuck and others did and let them remove you. We've seen that they can't actually replace what was lost, so let them try.
Some communities weren't even the same anymore after those 48h protests. And you can basically feel which parts of the community instantly left the moment they realized all that talk about protesting was bullshit and it was purely symbolic.
"But if I lose my fragile grip on this iota of power, I'll have nothing, and I'll BE nothing. I can't start over again from nothing!"
I strongly believe that that is exactly what is subconsciously going on there. The human mind is addicted to power, no matter which form.
I never really thought about it but I totally see which mods were actually protesting and which mods used it to “protest” and add some spice to their mundane non-medieval memes
Power over something is appealing to humans. I notice it in myself as well.
If you look around in general, at all different human communities and situations, you will see how it manifests itself almost everywhere. In the government bureaucrat that lets someone wait just because they can. In the child that takes another child's toy even though they don't even want to play with it themselves. In the teenager that participates in mobbing. In the owner that overly scolds their pet. In the politician that doesn't have any values and just says whatever is necessary to get votes. In the parent that tries to make their child behave in a certain way. In the boss that micro manages their employees. In the community moderator that can ban anyone they please.
I could keep going.
Power is a means, but it is very often also just an end. I think it's really important to be aware of that, because power just for power's sake is imo one of the most dangerous state of minds one can have.
Oh yeah I probably didn’t articulate my point well enough because I need more coffee but for better or worse power is… well… empowering and there’s both good and bad examples of this. I also think some of the users were too defeatists about it saying we can’t change anything and to that I say, “it’s not about the ~~money~~ changing stuff, it’s about sending a message”. But when that message is r/memes going “oh unm ok we’re gonna protest by making all our memes medieval TAKE THAT REDDIT!! Please don’t remove us.”
Looking back I saw which mods used their power for the better to drive a community they cared about and which were more in it for the power
Using a game I play r/planetside may not be the best example but it’s a decently niche game. By indefinitely blacking out our toxic little echo chamber ultimately had a ton to lose and very little to gain given the odds of protests succeeding. Given how our community wasn’t massive I’d bet it’s still blacked out. But despite us always flaming each other and developers I think the mods cared becuase they didn’t cave on their community and go “post planetside but add a cat to the corner that’ll show Reddit how mad we are”, no, they shut down and I’m still looking for a stable planetside community but they stuck to their guns
I kinda went on a rant and forgot my point was so I’m just gonna end here
Over on /r/dota2 it was different. Mods basically didn't care and just joined the protest because it was voted so by the community. Then, when another vote was made later where support dropped a bit to "only" 60% supporting some form of protest, they just opened up the subreddit and haven't talked about anything since.
Now some are on [email protected] but since there was no effort to migrate anything it's only small.
Maybe if your mods are more committed you could ask them to link to an alternate community on Lemmy in their "subreddit private" message?
Apparently there is a [email protected] I guess I missed it because Memmy had issues showing communities in the search tab
Them replacing mods is what scares me the most. My subreddit is for advice for stretching piercings. If I continued to protest or even outright deleted my subreddit, and they restored it and replaced the mod team, what quality of moderating should I expect? Like I get it on meme subs, not hard to moderate that sort of content. But I know damn well they aren't going to get people with experience relative to the more specific subs.
I get that, and respect it very much. You care about others and the community you've helped create. But Reddit is now actively exploiting that care for their own profit. Reddit draws value from your community and the advice it offers others. If that advice is poor then yes, people will suffer, but that's on Reddit for allowing this all to happen how it has, not you.
You can never delete a subreddit once created. Ever. That’s why many are editing, then deleting, their comments.
The best you can do is to create a community on Lemmy and invite your redditors to the new community.
That's where we are now, the migration has begun. But now, I'm stuck with a foot on each boat while I spread the word.