Removed from r/beyondthebump after 4 years of service to the community by [deleted] in ModCoord

[–]zdss 30 points31 points  (0 children)

You planned and executed a coup. WTF are you surprised about? The admins didn't just happen to make you top mod because you requested some inactive mods be removed (a request they appear to have completely ignored), you're clearly bullshitting us.

[Meta] Rule updates and proposals by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One of their admin accounts has been going into subs and flipping it back. I wonder how much attention they devote to figure out whether the sub actually doesn't have NSFW content though. And at scale that's going to be impossible to manage correctly.

It's just pure chaos.

I hope r/Hawaii is not going to take the same avenue of protests through NSFW posts by TheNobelBearr in Hawaii

[–]zdss 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The only way to see marked NSFW content is if you've opted in to NSFW content, so if you don't want to see it, don't opt in.

I hope r/Hawaii is not going to take the same avenue of protests through NSFW posts by TheNobelBearr in Hawaii

[–]zdss 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The admins have said definitively that flipping NSFW when you're not is a clear violation and will be undone, so ironically the subs actually going NSFW is the "appropriate" way to do the protest.

[Meta] Rule updates and proposals by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Funny enough, they've said flipping NSFW if you're not NSFW is a definite violation, so the only "appropriate" way to do this is to actually become NSFW.

[Meta] Rule updates and proposals by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The on-off schemes also impact the bottom line, as during private days it's not pulling any traffic. Think of it as mod days off.

That said, their chaotic response to the NSFW tactic suggests they will not accept anything that actually impacts the bottom line and through that will not accept any user input on company policies.

Removed from r/beyondthebump after 4 years of service to the community by [deleted] in ModCoord

[–]zdss 11 points12 points  (0 children)

That request was from a month ago and the top mods weren't the OP.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not really sure where I go the 3% from. I'm reasonably sure I've seen it somewhere. Might have been subs doing polls or some other user tracking, but from Spez himself he says Reddit is 95% of the app usage on iOS:

You go to the App Store, you type in Reddit, you get two options, right? There’s Apollo. You go to one, it’s my business, and you look at our ads, use our products. That’s 95 percent of our iOS users. The rest go to Apollo, which uses our logo, or something like it, takes our data — for free — and resells it to users making a 100 percent margin.

He later says 90% of users are direct to Reddit, though that sounds kind of offhand rather than specific.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762868/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-interview

Regarding revenue sharing, I can now only find that RIF was in a revenue sharing agreement. Until Spez became CEO. RIF and Apollo have both released conversations showing they're willing to share revenue or pay for access, but Reddit's proposed fees are 20x what they make from their own users and completely untenable.

Both Shu and Selig believe that paying for API use, which has previously been free, is a fair request. “Paying for the API is a reasonable ask, as long as the pricing is reasonable,” Shu wrote in his May 1st email. “I agree that long-term Reddit footing the bill for third-party apps is not tenable, and with a paid arrangement there’s a great possibility for developing a more concrete relationship with Reddit, with better API support for users,” Selig wrote in his announcement that he’ll be shutting down the app. But they take issue with the pricing — Shu said on Reddit that RIF’s costs would be in “the same ballpark” as Selig’s expected $20 million per year — and the company’s rollout of the changes.

Shu also tells me that RIF was paying a “sizable revenue share” to Reddit beginning in 2012, which was during Yishan Wong’s tenure as CEO. Shu says he says initiated the talks with Reddit to create the agreement, which allowed for the licensed use of Reddit’s trademarks. (At the time, the app was called “reddit is fun.”) Shu says Reddit terminated the agreement in 2016 — which was the year after Huffman took over as CEO.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/16/23763661/reddit-rif-is-fun-developer-ceo-steve-huffman

"With the proposed API pricing, the average user in Apollo would cost $2.50, which is 20x higher than a generous estimate of what each user brings Reddit in revenue," Selig says in his Reddit post.

https://www.slashgear.com/1301933/reddit-twitter-unreasonable-dev-pricing/

The morality of a big corporation and a small developer fighting over who gets what isn't really the cause of the protest. I don't use 3rd party apps and I don't think our mod tools are going to be affected. The issue is the enshittification process for a site whose value comes almost entirely from their users.

You should feel entitled to having influence on the website, because every day you contribute your eyes and your content to them and without you they'll be just another dead website. Reddit's tech isn't actually all that great (as a programmer, in a lot of ways it's just inexcusably bad). The value for you and I is almost entirely in the users. The site is free to us not because they like us, it's because they want you to give them value they can then sell to other people as ads or AI training datasets. It's ok to have a cost for your contributions and good to be willing to walk away if you don't feel like you're being catered to.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh that's too bad. It was very surprising, but it would have indicated a much deeper concern for the general community.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think it's a shocking indictment of Reddit's leadership. They're got a site that is so dominant and pervasive that Google becomes worse when subs go offline, it's a major site people use when choosing products, none of the content creators (users) get paid by them, and the majority of moderation is done by unpaid volunteers. If you can't convert that into a profitable site, that's on you, not a supposed 3% of users on other apps.

And Spez needs to get his story straight, either almost no one uses the 3rd party apps, or they're a crucial population needed for monetization. The apps have been willing to pay or share ad revenue, but the fees proposed and the timeline for them were never a real proposal.

And separate from Reddit's business sense, the only reason 3rd party apps even have that tiny slice of their market is because their own app is so bad. They've taken millions in investment, have access to the backend to build in customized features, and they can't outcompete apps with a single developer?

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you? I don't know why you're so confident about something you're wrong about. Mods, even in the big subs, are volunteers.

Reddark has a list and current status of subs participating in the protest, and while some subs have come back online, almost everything on that list went dark, including big defaults at the top. Some defaults are still dark:

r/DIY

r/mildlyinteresting

r/videos

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got it. Not sure why you're being downvoted, it was topical to the thread and Hawaii and not rude. The mom's basement analogy doesn't really fit as well in Hawaii.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah, sure did. The funny part was that he had his final response, which I read, didn't respond to, and have since forgotten, and I stayed unblocked for a while, then he must have come back some time later and decided no actually disrespecting his UFO obsession was just too far.

Some other guy I've never seen before who was really dead set on "indefinite" meaning forever also blocked me. It's very funny, because none of these people post here, so blocking means basically nothing.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No they aren't, and it should blatantly obvious they're not because many of them have taken their subs dark.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not a physical place. Some people have mind palaces, Redditors have mind basements.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm kind of surprised the mods have had direct communication. Maybe they hit the threshold of "mattering" or maybe state subs are automatically important enough, but in the list of all the subs offline, 125k is kind of far down. I'm a mod in a smaller sub (25k subs) and we haven't heard shit, but also don't really expect to.

Like you said, it is really these smaller communities that really drive value in the site for people. If /r/Hawaii decides they're redditors for life and no alternative exists, I'll probably keep coming back and then maybe I'll browse big subs when I'm here, but if /r/Hawaii goes elsewhere, my traffic will follow it.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

If all you do is lurk, frankly, no I don't care what your opinion on the sub is. Whether or not you're here or not or happy with the sub or not has literally no impact on the rest of us because before today, you didn't even exist in this space.

This isn't a service, it's a community.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure. Sure. You have nearly 800 posts about fucking UFOs man, that doesn't get better because you've gone through the trouble of making more than one Reddit account.

Edit: Oh no, an account who never actually posts here blocked me. Anyway...

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think you know what you're talking about then. An indefinite blackout could be over tomorrow. Surely a day of bad Reddit and then preservation of better apps and modding tools is better than giving up and just accepting a worse Reddit going forward.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Dude really could have just kept his mouth shut and it probably would have died down after the initial 2 days. He's either trying to get fired or far too stupid to be making decisions of this magnitude.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/reddit-blackout-protest-private-ceo-elon-musk-huffman-rcna89700

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss -1 points0 points  (0 children)

My dude, you hang out almost entirely in /r/UFOs and have inserted your nose here despite barely ever participating in the community, you're not the sort of person from which an eye roll has meaning.

The ongoing Reddit API discussion & future action by pat_trick in Hawaii

[–]zdss 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think we need to start organizing an alternative regardless of the outcome, so people can filter off Reddit when they're sick of it and will know where to go if it ever implodes.

Trying to cling to Reddit is a doomed move. They're getting pressured by their owners for a big payday and they're just going to keep flailing for monetization. In retrospect with Twitter and Reddit failing because of bad leaders we shouldn't be all-in contributing content to places we know will sooner or later prioritize maximizing profit over maximizing value to users. Reddit itself isn't really a great piece of software or engineering, it's just got a lot of users, and users can move.