Mods react as Reddit kicks some of them out again: “This will break the site”
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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.
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I've been off Reddit totally since 2023, so part of my understanding may be out of date, but before that I was on for many years and watched how powermods became powermods.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.
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The best way to leave reddit is to get permabanned.
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.
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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.
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.
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The outer right one? This is lemmy. A link aggregator like reddit
Right. But what's the one on the left?
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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.
Yes, but they are also doing this to deleverage their mods and consolidate censorship power with corporate
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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
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Further, subreddits will stop displaying subscriber counts and instead show their “unique number of unique visitors over the last seven days, based on a rolling 28-day average,” Reddit’s rep said. Notably, old.reddit.com will not get these new stats but will still lose subscriber counts.
That's hilarious
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The best way to leave reddit is to get permabanned.
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.
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Right. But what's the one on the left?
Pixelfed
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Site is already broken
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Reddit can ban users across vpn with their automated system. Its even easier if they have tasked someone to look into doing it. I doubt people are taking enough steps to prevent the browser fingerprinting that gives them a unique signature.
Well they haven't figured out how to ban on my VPN
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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.
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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.
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I'm only on reddit for a few subs and the pointless awards. I'm hovering close to 500 day in a row award lol
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Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
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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.
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*ulterior
Thanks, I wanted to say that but I couldn't figure out how to spell it.
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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.
