- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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I’m starting to get convinced that Redditors and mods are just gluttons for punishment by that platform.
They’re planning on kneecapping old.reddit in this update too, and you see all the typical howling about “if they kill old.reddit I’m leaving fr this time” while at the same time, another big thread one comment lower is about all the ridiculous bans that people have gotten. And this is a mere two years after the API fiasco.
Why do people continue to use a platform that has proven time and time again that the asshole(s) in charge do not give a single fuck about them?
It’s not about the platform but it’s where most of the people are. There’s just not a lot of people here, especially in relation to niche subjects.
There could be if people had / acted in accordance with any kind of principles of self respect. They’re ants in some rich mega douche’s ant farm, donating their time and energy to their captor, but refuse to make the fucking 6-inch journey to a free ant hill beside them.
Almost all of us are here because of the API bullshit. Those who stayed did us a favour, I reckon.
Fuck it’s been two years…
Reddit is in an incestuous relationship with Google. So it’ll remain relevant as long as it’s results keep getting into the front page of the biggest search engine. Add to that, the results getting fed into AI responses.
Influencers and marketers love Reddit at least as much as they still love Twitter.
I’m surprised that Reddit has any active users, personally. It’s just so… Fake now.
It limits mods to 5 subs with over 100,000 monthly visits it seems reasonable to limit the mods reach they all have back deals going on to push agendas and ads it’s pretty fucked.
Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
Reddit users, as have Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, etc., have all demonstrated that you can do whatever the fuck you want to them and they’ll just keep coming back for more, no matter what.
Even after decades of abuse, you can open up a brand new platform (Threads) and they’ll join by the millions.
Its like almost like the sites are drugs and the users are junkies that will do anything for a hit.
I recall recently a post that alluded to the fact that the two industries that call their customers “users” are drug companies, and online services.
Site is already broken
Me literally every time my friends start bitching about Instagram.
I’m always like “who the fuck uses Instagram?” I guess I’m living in a different world entirely.
One of my DnD groups only share IG memes so I never see them because I don’t have IG.
My negative outlook on life pushes friends away so I don’t have that problem.
What’s the second logo?
First picture I found on Google for each because I’m lazy but there they are with pictures attached.
Piefed
Lemmy
Mastodon
Pixelfed
The outer right one? This is lemmy. A link aggregator like reddit
Right. But what’s the one on the left?
Pixelfed
Piefed?
It’s like Lemmy but with consolidated comments, flairs, spoilers, polls, topics, feeds (like multireddits), proper blocks, hashtags, piped video integration, disclaimer messages, better mod and reporting tools.
Is it like, a whole other network with different people or is it like a different front-end to the lemmyverse ? This is kind of confusing ? And what about that “kbin” I keep hearing about, is that the same deal ?
Remember this big discussion? https://lemmy.ml/post/36058152
PieFed has had that feature for a long time, and many more besides. https://join.piefed.social/features/
Is there a piefed/mbin backend server or is it just an alternative webui client ?
I’m thinking of switching to a self-hosted single user lemmy instance and run all 3 self-hosted clients to my self-hosted server, is that practical ?
Yes, backend server.
https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/INSTALL.md
You could run all 3 but it would be redundant as they all have the same content and people :D
Lemmy is a software that people can host on their computer, and many people doing that form what is essentially a bunch of mini-reddits that can talk to each other to create one big platform.
Piefed is trying to fulfill the same goals as Lemmy, and is even fully compatible with Lemmy, so someone hosting a piefed server on their computer can join in with all the Lemmy servers, and to the Lemmy people, it appears to them like any other Lemmy server.
But underneath everything, the code base is entirely different. The commonality they share, along with mastodon, is they all use ActivityPub, which is the standard that allows them to all communicate and be compatible with each other, just like there’s an email standard.
Kbin (now Mbin) is yet another Lemmy compatible software that you can host on your computer, but it also tried to implement features that make it more like mastodon (twitter-like), so it can act both like reddit, with threads and comments and communities around single subjects, or be like mastodon and work with hashtags and following individuals instead of communities, like a microblogging website.
They also use different interfaces, but it’s only visible to people who directly use that server; to others who access it from their home server, it’ll adopt the look of the software their home server is using.
So as an example, you are using Lemmy since your home server is Lemmy.ml. if you visit a community hosted on a piefed server from within your Lemmy, like [email protected], it’ll look like any other Lemmy community.
But if you directly go to that piefed server by going to https://piefed.social/c/fullmoviesonyoutube you’ll see it from the piefed interface, since you’re accessing that piefed server directly.
All of three of the different federated Reddit-like softwares are intercompatible, so they all make up one big network.
Neither. It’s fully compatible with Lemmy but different on both the front and backends.
Summoning @[email protected]
It’s a different frontend with different features. You could be reading this very post on a Piefed instance instead of a Lemmy instance. Ditto for kbin.
At the risk of agreeing with Reddit:
Under new rules rolling out over the coming months, a small number of users will be required to leave some of their moderator posts so that they aren’t moderating more than five subreddits with 100,000 monthly visitors.
That sounds perfectly reasonable. Reddit has a massive powermod problem.
It could be viewed as reasonable if viewed alone. I think that its fine and could make a lot of sense for control over their platform.
The history of reddit sheds a different context in my mind though. Mods are volunteers. Subreddits were established to moderate themselves, implementing nuanced rules for their specific topics that might differ from other subs that need completely different rules and approaches. Its part of what made reddit unique compared to alternate sites.
Then they made moderating much more difficult by eliminating third party apps. Then they started implementing their plans to take the platform where they wanted it, which is fine because its their platform, but they wanted all their mods to do a bunch of work and in a certain manner to make it so. Very demanding on free labor.
So there’s mods still around and they want to restrict them more? Who knows, maybe that’s a great idea but they made the mess they’re in. This decision isn’t a single on on its own, its part of a stack of them.
Given Reddit’s past unreasonableness, I wouldn’t be surprised if this otherwise reasonable explanation has an alternative motive.
*ulterior
Thanks, I wanted to say that but I couldn’t figure out how to spell it.
That’s what I guessed. Alternative is a fine alternative word though.
While ulterior is probably a better way to say that alternative motive also makes sense given the context.
*exterior
*widdershins
The motive is these mods hold a decent amount of power on the platform that they wish to reduce. They don’t want a repeat of the API protests.
Now /u/spez will have all the power
Yeah that is exactly it. They didn’t want mods to be able to disrupt the site again, so they’re looking to make that more difficult.
God, I am so glad I left that place.
Gotta boost user numbers.
Or obscure them considering not letting people see sub count only daily/weekly activities
This is actually another of Reddit’s decisions that I’m in agreement with. Subscriber count isn’t a very useful number, it largely just measures how old a subreddit is. You can already see how old the subreddit is much more accurately by looking at its founding date.
If they’d added, yes. But removing it completely is just a way to hide how many are on the platform.
Or left in a protest
That’s it. It’s the illusion of fairness and it takes away reddit jannies’ ability to show off their powermod status, and that’s the only incentive they have not to use sockpuppets for every sub they mod.
True, but Reddit let this problem fester for a long time.
What’s interesting to me here regarding this, is Reddits current preparation timescale. This isn’t going to be enforced until March 31st, 2026. This tells me that Reddit would have been unprepared for a complete mass-walkout of community moderators during the 2023 Reddit API strikes. A large chunk of Reddit during that period was genuinely inaccessible. But after a few token gestures and a few examples made of some especially rebellious mod-teams, most of the striking moderators returned.
A huge opportunity was missed by people running major communities to functionally degrade Reddit in at least the medium-term as a website. You can’t just hastily promote random people to replace moderators Reddit is either forced to remove or who leave voluntarily. The average person is likely too lazy, too arbitrary and too corrupt to effectively oversee communities of notable sizes.
The quality of reddit took a massive hit after the strike and never recovered.
That was my reaction too. I don’t feel like digging in to see if it’s actually bad though. Not gonna affect my life.
Its probably related to the whole paying users thing.
We all presume that being the mod of several large reddit communities doesn’t include the possibility of sidehustle financial benefits.
Yet, humans are innovators of corruption! And I can only assume that any multi-mega-subreddit moderator has worked out something to make what is obviously a full time job worth their time.
I heard mods of big subreddits can get basically sponsored by big companies and go to events. Half the pc gaming subreddits have what are basically ad posts pinned by the mods.
Yeah. I mean, I remembered seeing someone named awkwardturtle on there and they moderated like some 30+ subreddits? That’s ridiculous.
Users like that should not have that much power.
Yes, but they are also doing this to deleverage their mods and consolidate censorship power with corporate
The problem with powermod isn’t that they exist, though. Moderation of a large sub is still done by volunteers that have had to hack solutions together because they don’t get a lot of support from Reddit. It helps Reddit to have experienced mods overseeing several subs because they bring with them experience on how to handle high profile and large scale moderation efforts. They are a technical talent pool that Reddit relies upon a lot.
The problem is that Reddit has shitty mod governance. It still uses rank by add date and offers no ability for users to kick a mod out except for TOS faults. Reddit doesn’t want to fix mod governance issues because it creates a legitimate mod power structure and Reddit doesn’t want to give that much power to users, including mods.
That said, Reddit’s shitty mod governance was copied directly to Lemmy.
Not really. The powermods arent bringing anything unique moderation except a network that allows them to control content for a specific audience. This is not about enforcing subreddit rules its about subreddit mods pushing an agenda across their subs and pushing sponsored posts outsides reddits ad program.
Its overall a good thing but the powermods will be replaced with reddit admins doing the ame
The powermods arent bringing anything unique moderation except a network that allows them to control content for a specific audience.
It depends who. There are some that build tools and procedures for handling large forums. They may also share best practices across different subs.
As for controlling content, it isn’t like a corporation or political group can’t create 20 accounts and take over subs. That’s already happened on Reddit.
Its overall a good thing but the powermods will be replaced with reddit admins doing the ame
Or sock puppet accounts. Banning the current set of mods without a plan on who replaces them doesn’t fix the problem.
They can still share tools and best practices but now they cant be involved in the post to post moderation.
As for controlling content, it isn’t like a corporation or political group can’t create 20 accounts and take over subs. That’s already happened on Reddit.
You cant do this if the mods are already doing this because the mods will remove the posts. Giving them a huge block of control over a majority of the content on the platform.
It would have made sense if done years ago. Doing it now is suspicious.
it’s already broken
The best way to leave reddit is to get permabanned.
They use weirdly aggressive fingerprinting to make sure you don’t make any new accounts, too. What a bunch of weirdos.
Can corroborate lmao. They’ve saved me so much time that I usually spent correcting misinfo, but I guess that’s what they want on their platform. Anyways Lemmy’s been an okay replacement.
Can confirm. You can have the mildest takes and still get permbanned.
Did you know, that saying Neo-Nazis should be named and shamed is a permbannable offense?
Reddit is becoming Xitter 2.0 and I’m really hoping the remaining human users on there figure it out soon.
lol can confirm
Yes, I expressed outrage at a disgusting state sanctioned murder in Iraq and suggested the invaders perpetrating these horror deserve to see the same kind of violence in their own cities. Permaban of the entire website forever. I could easily evade the ban but, this was also when the API trouble and the “reddit is fun” app stopped working. The writing was on the wall, duck that place and everyone in it. I won’t be taken hostage anymore.
I never looked back and I’m glad I did, I was wasting so much of my precious time in that ducking disgusting dump. I hope Lemmy doesn’t Septemberify for a long time. I really hope steps are taken to prevent centralization and owner dominance of Lemmy before it becomes reddit with extra steps
Lenny doesn’t really work like that. It’s not just one site.
Look, without agglomeration there is already a strong bias for any topic to have just “one big community” on “one big server” like lemmy.ml. Because why would anyone post anywhere else than the one community with the most users.
That’s the same reason everyone is on facebook and reddit. This is a fatal flaw of Lemmy. Just because there are many servers that doesn’t resolve the problem of centralization if everyone posts in the same community of the same big server.
And no one will manually subscribe to 1500 “books” communities with 5 user each, even if they existed. The solution is a single view that sees all “books” community by default.
I disagree. It’s not the fact that everyone goes to one, it is the fact that you can go to others if you want. It is fluid. You can migrate. It happens too. A lot of communities just switched to PieFed.
I feel like I went through withdrawals, took like a month to get over it, now I rarely use reddit, not missing anything, just thought I was, I guess I do miss reddit from like 2015, but it was getting worse every year, one of my last posts months before my permaban was asking for alternatives. (It’s how I found lemmmy lol)
Reddit is also at a point where everything has been asked and is asked again weekly, i don’t really need to post/comment anything myself and my votes mean nothing because of the volume. Most of my comments would get lost in a void.
There’s still way too many niche communities on Reddit that just haven’t taken off on Lemmy e.g. alternative and non-team sports.
There’s a ViolentMonkey script that can automatically delete all of your Reddit comments. I just run that every few days.
It’s not ideal, but it’s the best that I can do if I value access to those communities, which I do.
It’s so easy
Imagine still using Reddit in 2025.
Must I?
Piefed/Lemmy/Fediverse: freedom from capitalist tyranny. True organic, human communities.
Reddit is cyberpunk. It’s a world governed by a corporation that acts as its government and only cares about its shareholders, not its citizens.
I’ve been off Reddit totally since 2023, so part of my understanding may be out of date, but before that I was on for many years and watched how powermods became powermods.
Thus this situation is very unusual. Reddit never did anything about the powermod situation before, but now, suddenly, it’s a big deal. For years (over a decade, at least) users have been screaming about the worst abuses on the site being from powermods, and time after time Reddit bent over backwards to not only avoid doing anything about it, but seemed to grasp every opportunity to enhance the problem any way they could, shutting down complaints rather than the power trippin’ bastards that were regularly creating the problems.
Note that powermods very frequently mod the largest subs, which is how they became powermods to start with: modding a sub that got big and then being invited to help mod new subs that then also grew in popularity.
For myself, I don’t think anyone would give two shits if “powermods” only had an aggregate total of 500 users each, but very frequently they have millions, even tens of millions. Looking at the largest subs on the site and the powermods on those subs, and how many of those powemods are crossovers on equally dominant subs, you see the same core group of powermods across all the top sites, give or take a few individually here and there.
Strangely, this is the group Reddit is now disbanding.
Another thing to consider is how many powermods went on to become admins over the years. At least a handful: I don’t know the exact number anymore but it’s non-zero. Powermods who are admins are especially useful to Reddit, because they ensure that the c-suite has direct control over some of the largest subs without ever appearing to do so.
All this is to say that the powermod situation has been mutually beneficial to Reddit admin for ages, which is why they never changed it or even really acknowledged it.
But now, for the first time since 2005, Reddit powermods are suddenly a problem. So what’s changed? Cui bono?
My guess is that Reddit admin is about to a) yank the entire site to the hard right by removing pretty much all effective human moderation and thus preventing powermods from being able to stand in their way across the largest subs (some of which we’ve already seen and the article addresses), and/or b) introduce some other vile change or policy that is certain to piss off EVERYONE, including every non-bot mod on the site, to the point that admin expects a general revolt even among the powermods and need to dilute the individual power of mods in advance.
One very hypothetical change that could do the trick is Reddit forcing mods, including powermods, to quietly engage in collecting evidence of and reporting users and content that admin would like to sell to the current US admin, for example: intel which Reddit is well situated to provide and for which the current administration has already been calling in the wake of a certain recent death. What if Reddit decides to go all in with the present political trajectory, looking for political power as well as the payout they’re usually in it for, and in so doing force mods to comply or lose their subs? It’s not like Reddit hasn’t already done it for less.
Again, these are just my own musings. But whatever the reason, Reddit admin calling it quits with the powermods suggests something much larger than just another light rehabbing of Reddit power structures.
When i read the section on how they’ll no longer be responding to complaints i had the same exact thought you did. Triming the fat to make the change easier on themselves in the future.
It’s interesting to see the site treat it’s unpaid workers more and more like low level employees. I guess capitalists just can’t help themselves.
The mods under discussion are the ones that mod more than FIVE large communities. if those people haven’t figured out a way to make that a paying gig, then they’re doing it wrong.
What kind of meat stick would do this? I still just literally cannot understand why someone would put themself in this position, no matter how entrenched into their parents basement they are, or how bad they smell.
I imagine they get paid by intelligence agencies and advertising to shut down inconvenient and critical topics, positive discussions of competitors or criticing of the product, via overbroad catch all rules and moderator discretion.
Things just as likely to happen on Lemmy until every user participates in crowd sources moderation, all moderation actions become transparent and moderation are only optional action lists executed client side
(no modlog is not transparent, it’s quickly autodeleted and very hard to search, therefore difficult to audit broadly and even if you found violation, you will find only deaf ears to complain about it)
Speaking as a former top 1%er redditor… figuring out how to do it and being willing to do it are two completely different things.
Life would be so much easier if I lacked basic human ethics. :)
“Man, I wish I didn’t have a moral compass. I would have so much stuff!” - my brother after another coworker was fired for getting caught stealing.
