cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/37870004
reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).
the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.
another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.
size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.
we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.
I don’t disagree, but I think the heavy-handed moderation was often in service of “cleaning up” to make the website more commercially palatable. Like when they pulled r/atheism as a front-page reddit.
For me, the out of control engagement bots constantly commenting on my comments was the last straw that made me leave.
when reddit started heavily restricting r/all is around when it fell IMO
Same thing happened when Christians ruined Tumblr. I still miss the porn.
r/atheism as a default subreddit was one of the biggest problems with reddit, honestly. There’s only so much smug self-satisfaction that a website can handle before going to shit.
You’re basically emphasizing my point. Reddit started as a subreddit meritocracy. Any and all subreddits could have content on the front page, so long as said content received sufficient upvotes. However, atheists are the most hated religious minority in the U.S., so their content had to be suppressed to cater to commercial interests. It’s viewpoint suppression to cater to the lucrative majority.
I dont think that emphasizing a community based on smugly pointing out the superiority of themselves over alternatives is the best way to counter that, though.
That community was not in any way a healthy community, due in large part to their status as a default community. It was less a way for people to commiserate and share philosophy and more a giant pissing contest to see who could shit on others the most.
I think the skeptic/movement atheist community shouldn’t be allowed to forget that the earliest MAGA adopters were from specific sects of their movement
Yeah, that whole online Atheist “movement” such as it existed, was deeply reactionary, and we don’t really talk about that enough.
The problem is, they get so trapped up in the vague-at-best definition of “civility”, that they allow propagandaised bullshit as lit as its polite.
This isn’t how a community should be run, and it’s why the divisionists pretty much own the comment sections in any political posts and communities.
No mods have the balls to tell these fuckos to kick bricks.
So, you want mods that power trip harder, just in the direction you like?
I dont fully disagree, but it would be a very hard role. They’d be volunteering to cop abuse from all sides relentlessly.
The direction of democracy shouldn’t just be the direction I like- it should be the direction EVERYONE likes. And when there’s people yelling that both sides are the same and trying to convince others not to vote-
Yeah… I think the mods need to quit being so chickenshit and kick those assholes the fuck off the instance entirely.
.ml would welcome them with open arms. They can preach to the choir there all fucking day long.
A duopoly is not a democracy.
That’s the tough part of democracy, getting people to agree. And if the assholes outnumber everyone else, then you’re in trouble.
IMO, if we want mods to be more aggressive, we need to empower them to be benevolent dictators. Otherwise its far too easy to fallback to doing nothing. Modding is already a thankless task, telling mods to toughen up and endure the hate doesnt help that.
I’m telling mods to toughen up and kick the Russian psyop trolls the fuck out.
Yeah, but if you think that anyone who legitimately disagrees with you is a bot, you are mistaken. We can have good conversations about our differences here if you want. Or you can just shout at us and call us tankies and bots, even though we actually agree on a lot of things.
pelmeni is so delicious though
Yes, actually.
Set the rules, and enforce them. If you, as a user, don’t like the rules of the community, don’t fucking post or comment there. It’s not power tripping to take out the trash. Take the free speech absolutism bullshit to Twitter.
Woah, I’m not advocating for free speech absolutism, you’ve misunderstood my position. I want more empowered/activist mods as well, all I am saying is that it isnt simple.
The problem with “set the rules and enforce them” is that the assholes will rules-lawyer the mods into the ground. They’ll post stuff that the flirts around the edges of the rules, and when punished for it, will harass the mods relentlessly via yepowertrippingmods.
There’s no quick and easy solutions here.