Steve Huffman, the Reddit CEO, told NBC News in an interview that a user protest on the site this week is led by a minority of moderators and doesn’t have wide support.

  • spaceraser@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    “Congratulations, you’ve just been promoted as the lead moderator of /r/Whatever. We’re going to need you to unlock the subreddit.”

    “What? What happened to the other mods?”

    “Don’t worry about it. Just unlock the subreddit.”

    “Why don’t you just unlock it? You’re the owners, you can do whatever you want.”

    “We’re going to need someone to moderate it when it comes back online, and we don’t have the money for that kind of manpower. Please focus, I need you to unlock the subreddit and prepare for the community to come back online.”

    “Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”

    “That’s unfortunate, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

    You’ve been removed as a Moderator of /r/Whatever

  • Zigzagged4044@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    To be honest, I didn’t expect the Reddit CEO to get this defensive about the decision. It seems like with each move he’s just putting more gas on the fire. He probably should have just stayed quite and let the inconvenience of the blackout make the Reddit community shift their anger to the mods to finally open up again.

  • alex_02@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    How to kill a company 101. I think we should take notes from Elon Musk and this clown.

  • MrFunkEdude@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    This is expected. Of course Reddit wasn’t going to allow their subreddits to be hijacked.

    I’m glad I deleted my account. Crappy company. Worse CEO.

  • Kekin@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    That idea of users voting out moderators off their positions if not implemented properly it could be abused. With how many bots and throwaway accounts there are, a voting system for that I don’t see going well.

    Maybe I’m missing something, maybe they end up implementing it well. Either way I doubt I’ll back to reddit. I quite like it here.

    • vfrunza@fedia.io
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      1 year ago

      I feel like the voting system is just an excuse to start removing mods or threatening them with removal. It would be so easy to abuse, and with so many consequences to a mod being removed by vote.

      • panoptic@fedia.io
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, this is going to get used to cause bizarre and gross takeovers of subreddits.

        spez is really trying hard to speedrun being Elon Musk

  • moggie@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    I’ve seen a lot of suggestions to delete your content before deleting your account, and if you’re in Europe, to file a GDPR data removal request. Since reddit is nothing without the content, that seems like the way to go.

    • Loc_Nar@fedia.io
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      1 year ago

      I was going to do that, but then I realized that over half my comments were: “LOL”, so I just deleted my account.

  • realslef@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    Strictly speaking, he’s correct that it’s a minority of moderators because there’s a lot of zombie subreddits on there which didn’t take part in the protest. Still not a good look to be picking fights with your biggest contributors.

  • realslef@fedia.io
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    1 year ago

    If these rule changes happen, should we login to reddit to vote against spez’s hand-picked mods as needed, (and campaign against them?), or is it best to stay off there still?