I would love to know how many mods are no longer moderating, have reduced their moderating, or have left Reddit altogether after this whole situation.
I haven’t been on Reddit since the third party apps shut down, so I have no idea what’s going on over there now.
I personally resigned from a subreddit I founded and moderated for 11 years. Had nearly 300k subscribers but enough is enough.
Reddit isn’t like it was when I started using it 17 years ago and it’s not going back.
Fuck Spez.
@TheColonel @TimTheEnchanter 17 years ago is pretty much exactly when reddit became accessible. You were there from the very beginning.
I've been there for 14 years, and this kerfuffle has killed all enthusiasm I had for staying. I've switched to using reddit's RSS feeds for the few subs I can't give up yet (mainly those related to the Ukraine war) but I expect I'll stop using it altogether in short order.
On the plus side, it's furthered my deep distrust of big tech companies.
I felt like a Reddit old-timer and I have (had?) been on there 12 years, ha ha! Seventeen years is wild! I don’t have much enthusiasm for staying/going back, either.
Seventeen years is wild!
Tell me about it! It was hard nuking 17 years worth of content–effectively my online identity–but it was the right thing to do.
FWIW, from a Reddit old timer, Lemmy feels a LOT closer to those early days than whatever is calling itself Reddit these days.
I'd like to thank you for what you did.
I had been on Reddit for a similar amount of time, but I had cycled through a number of usernames during that period. So it wasn't nearly as big of a loss for me as it was for you—I appreciate the lengths you went for supporting the cause. Thank you. 
14 years here and did the same. Deleted it all. And have not been back on reddit since jul 1. Im pretty happy with lemmy so far. And yea it feels like old reddit. Time will tell
I moderated two subreddits over 1m users, one over 250k users, and a handful over 10k users.
Every. single. one. of my team members has left, except for one on one of the tiny subreddits.
Some of our most active mods on /r/android left once their apps stopped working. We still keep it up with barebones modding, with a prominent link to !android@lemdro.id. Something I'm noticing is that people who were banned from communities on Reddit for inflammatory remarks, trolling, and spam are carrying over their vitriol to the Fediverse.
At this rate there won’t be any mods left to respond to the admins’ feedback request!
Working as intended then.
I and another dude modded a 30k+ sub. There were 5 mods, but the other 3 are basically gone at that point, and I was brought on because I was active in the community. We both left, and within a week users are complaining about the slacking mods and wondering why spam is getting through, why discussion threads aren't posted, etc.
We didn't do anything with the shutdown, as it wasn't "our" community to shut down. We were just brought on for workload reasons. But we're both gone now, and the cracks were showing immediately.
Sadly, I'm fairly certain it's literally just me in the equivalent fed community. Haven't seen any other subs, at least.
I used to moderate a lot of huge subreddits. Eventually got into the top 50 moderators by subscriber count. It was never a power trip, I just really enjoyed cleaning up garbage from the mod queue.
Obviously reddit is still running without me, but I used to do a shitload of unpaid labor to help keep that site clean. It was worth doing at the time, but everything I used to like about Reddit is gone. I don't regret doing the work, and I don't regret leaving.
I stopped moderating all of the niche subs (that I created) except for two and have, basically, let the mod team run things. I only dip in to check modmail in case a mod needs me. Otherwise, I don't use Reddit at all. Beehaw!
The niche subs are the ones I’ve missed the most, honestly. There were some really great little communities on there!
Yeah, niche ones provide the most value since the popular ones are the easiest to replace with the larger user base that seeks them out. Too many niche subs sold themselves short on their importance when it being niche was what kept people coming back over leaving due to lack of alternatives for that interest.
I still visit using the website in a desktop browser because I can't help myself, but it's noticeably different, even on subs like r/games where there was never a shutdown at all. The weekly "What have you been playing?" topic isn't getting nearly the number of responses as it normally does, and those responses aren't as well moderated. They used to be very good at keeping people on topic and formatting their posts with game title/system/etc. but all of that is getting a little sideways now, too.
Prior to the API fiasco, Reddit Inc had demonstrated a pattern of promising changes to the mods which they failed to deliver timely if at all. They've acknowledged this pattern, promised to do better, then failed to deliver time and again. That part isn't new.
Then the API changes were announced and the Reddit community gave Reddit Inc the loudest and most decisive rebuke they ever have. That was the feedback conversation. And Reddit Inc went forward with their plan unchanged. No concessions were made. No concerns were addressed or alleviated. Reddit Inc was informed of what this decision would break and they went ahead and broke it anyway.
As a former mod, there is nothing left to discuss. There is no reason to believe Reddit Inc will act on anything that doesn't agree with what they've already decided to do. I'm not going back to that kind of abusive relationship. They had their chance to listen to feedback and made it clear that they won't.
That's a great point. The entire last 2 months have been continuous feedback sessions. The Ama with spez is full of well upvoted feedback. There was a simple 5(?) item list with direct feedback and requests during the blackout with steps on how to accomplish it.
Reddit inc proved in the last to months what they do with feedback
I modded a 10M+ sub for years and years and it is laughable how inept reddit's engineering team must be when it comes to developing mod tools. They literally have open source teams hacking mod tools into browser extensions and they still couldn't figure it out.
After a while it became abundantly clear that this kind of boring, iterative feature engineering was just not well funded compared to other parts of the company.
Very well said! Reddit’s lack of any response to feedback is one thing. However, to actively act like there has not been provided feedback already is disingenuous and well just more of what Reddit has proven they want to be. If they would come out and actually address the already provided feedback, I still wouldn’t trust them as far as I could metaphorically throw them.
The July metrics must have shown them engagement is plummeting, especially content submissions, which have been garbage since the blackout. One look at r/all shows most posts being up for hours and sometimes days at a time - it used to be a matter of minutes. Doubtless this is also reflecting in their traffic metrics as well.
As someone who contributed there since the pre-Digg days, after discovering the Fediverse, I'm never going back. Reddit arrogantly assumed that there was no other platform mods and contributors could go to that would provide what they do. But when it comes down to it, the Fediverse does what Reddit did, with more features, flexibility, and without the threat of centralized mismanagement. The only thing Reddit had that the Fediverse doesn't was an audience of millions, but the audience follows the content, and the best place to create content online is right here, right now, right here, right now, right here, right now.....
Welcome to the next evolution of the web, Reddit, and to the realization that you pushed your audience to evolve past their need for you.
Reddit fucked around and it found out.
Don't forget they deleted premium and awards completely. They seem to be making the worst possible decisions at every turn. It's absolutely breathtaking.
The cynical side of me thinks that perhaps the recent "enshittification" of large platforms like reddit and twitter is actually part of a larger campaign of class warfare.
There's been a very noticable discontent among average working class people since the pandemic, when "essential employees" realized that's just a euphemism for "your health and life don't matter". There's been a lot of noticeable efforts by workers to organize and exercise their power since then -- Starbucks, Amazon, UPS, the railworkers etc. The most high profile attempts in recent history.
The common denominator has been that reddit and twitter have been the main hubs through which people have been organizing and raising widespread awareness. And they are movements that are starting to bridge political gaps as even right-leaning people realize they're getting screwed by hyper-capitalism.
So part of me thinks the destruction of these platforms is not out of incompetence, but is a deliberate attack on that growing consciousness and an attempt by the corporate world to exert control.
while reading you post, I visited reddit. the latest i' seein on HOT All and HOT Popular is 6hours old post and the oldest is 15 hours. It truly has slowed down over there. and I did not see much interesting original content, most are reposts.
Yep - I watched the same thing happen at Digg after they went down the path Reddit is now. Within 3 months of their infamous redesign, it was a ghost town.
Reddit will likely limp on longer, but I think they severely underestimated how badly they've harmed their own business.
Reddit admins: "Surely nobody will actually like Lemmy. It's like if you took reddit back in time 10 years. Smaller, more niche, less brand activity, pretty much just die-hard nerds. Who could possibly prefer something like that?"
It's like early reddit, except they replaced the conservatives with tankies.
Always gotta have the "we don't go there, tis a silly place" area of a new social media
So, we’ve all had a... time on Reddit lately. And I’m here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the “now what?” conversation.
acknowledge that our relationship has been tested
This is so emotionally manipulative / abusive, and says everything anyone needs to know about reddit/spez. It's like if someone burns down your house and says "look i'm here to acknowledge that your house has been burned down, but we can still work things out bestie <3"
What, after firing all of them and removing their best tools?
But hey, they’re “leaders and stewards” of their communities now, and not the landed gentry!
One day they'll even be paid for the huge amount of free labor and content they provide Reddit!
Almost certainly. Well, maybe, anyway. Probably. Right?
You're welcome to give all the feedback you want, just don't expect anything to happen because of it.
I've got inside knowledge of where this valuable feedback is going, try and keep it private tho
https://giphy.com/gifs/drivetribe-may-james-bin-TFOPahsj5kaAiKIYPy
I'm tired of saying the same things so have a fun analogy for Reddit:
You have a sandbox, invite people to build sandcastles. So they come and build them and a lot of people are checking your sandbox out.
Then you stomp on everyone else's sandcastle so that your overturned pail of sand stands the tallest, and laugh in their faces.
Now you're wondering why everyone left and is mad at you?
I love how sassy The Verge's coverage of reddit is.
Maybe reddit is how they got their content most of the time. The verge trully is a redditor.
Its the guy that answered 2 questions in an AMA pretending they want feedback. They got all the feedback in the world.
Reddit has shown the middle finger to users' decade-long commitment, ignored all complaints, and demonstrated it doesn't care, which has destroyed all trust.
Now, Reddit is asking, "Can we be friends now so you can continue to work for us for free? We want to follow through with our plan of cashing in and need your contribution."
Mods: We want better mod tools. PLEEAAASEE!!!!!!!!!
Reddit: Here's a pizza party
archive.org link to the r/modnews thread. Needless to say it's not going down great.
edit: updated link with a newer snapshot
So, we’ve all had a... time on Reddit lately. And I’m here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been tested, and begin the “now what?” conversation.
"I am allowed to hint towards the idea that we may have fucked up but I am not allowed to say how we may have fucked up if we did indeed fuck up which may not be the case. Could you, once again, reiterate what you think we fucked up and how we can fix the alleged fuck up? We haven't decided to do anything, aren't claiming fault, and are refusing to bring forth solutions to proposed issues."
"Now that we have that out of the way, let's chat!"
I feel bad for that VP, because I don't see them being able to affect the kind of change that the mod community wants.
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