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Rod Hilton

I can't even wrap my head around this. Days ago the discussion on /r/piracy was about if it was worth continuing to protest, knowing that reddit likely hated the community and would actually prefer if a piracy-focused community left.

And now they are forcing other mods into control to force it back open.

A piracy subreddit. Devoted entirely to discussing illegal activity. Forced by the company to stay open, because they are that desperate for the traffic.

reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1

51 comments
Andres Jalinton

@rodhilton
It's such a counter intuitive move and I love seeing the desperation as they fail to notice that people does the network, not the other way around.

Rod Hilton

Meanwhile the original mod has set up a lemmy instance and made it clear they're lifting all the rules they had to follow to play nice with reddit corporate in order to not get shut down altogether. And as a result, the main content contributors have moved over anyway.

/r/piracy was the first subreddit that I saw actually directing people to the lemmy replacement in the message about the community being private, and their migration has been the most effective by far.

DELETED

@rodhilton I'd like to think that enough people like me have just deleted their reddit accounts that reddit will see some kind of negative outcome to this blatantly anti-user attitude but i'm not convinced

Rod Hilton

@pvellamagi Yeah I mean just like Twitter it has so many users that if even a good chunk leave, there's still plenty more.

My contention though is that, as with Twitter, this kind of thing causes your BEST users to leave. So while it doesn't become a ghost town right away, it takes a noticable hit in quality.

BeingHere

@rodhilton @pvellamagi I think this is the key point that is being missed by people who don't use reddit - the mods are the power users, the volunteers who make the site function. The mods and the content creators are the ones being pushed out by the recent actions. Most people just comment or lurk - 80/20 rule. Huffman is pushing out the 20% that make reddit what it is.

Rod Hilton

@demvoter @pvellamagi yep precisely. Every one of those subreddits survives on the back of people that are almost weirdly obsessed with keeping it running.

Some of the bigger subs, those mods are performing the equivalent of a full-time job. How they fit that in with earning a living is anyone's guess.

The delicate relationship between the platform itself and the devoted community builders that are building 100% of the site's content, FOR FREE, really needed to be handled with kid gloves.

Rod Hilton

@demvoter @pvellamagi I simply don't think these power mods are going to want to stay in a relationship with Reddit after this. Hell, even if spez beck-pedaled the damage is done.

They're going to have no choice but to HIRE full-time mods to keep these communities open. Literal employees.

Which then makes every subreddit a corporate product, and mod decisions reflect corporate attitudes.

What they leave up is the responsibility of the company, not "a bunch of volunteers we don't control"

Scott

@rodhilton @demvoter @pvellamagi The fascinating thing to me is that he hasn't back pedaled at all, tripled down at this point. It's kind of impressive how he doesn't get it.

DELETED

@maxburn @rodhilton @demvoter honestly it all made sense to me when I read a blurb of an interview on here where he talked about meeting with Elon Musk on the topic of running social media... that anyone could look at Twitter right now like it's "successful" is baffling but here we are

J Miller

@rodhilton @demvoter @pvellamagi Seems like an opportunity for the Fediverse to pick up world class volunteer mod talent, which we desperately need.

Piousunyn

@JMMaok @rodhilton @demvoter @pvellamagi

Mastodon is a good example of world class volunteer mods. Been on Mastodon for months now and is way above any of the others.

Mostly Cloudy

@demvoter @rodhilton @pvellamagi I was mostly a lurker and a rare commenter, and I walked away completely. Got no time for that elitist bullshit.

Benjamin

@rodhilton @pvellamagi People seem to think these kinds of products will disappear suddenly, but that rarely happens. MySpace has been failing for 15+ years and still exists. IBM has been on the rocks for… 30 years?

Even when something big dies, it can take years and years. Sun Microsystems stuck around for like 15 years after they kind of stopped mattering.

nul42

@pvellamagi @rodhilton I'm with you. I just deleted my reddit account. The reddit experience has been declining for years and the leadership is clear that reddit will only get worse.

aeternum

@pvellamagi @rodhilton They won't. All they care about is cashing out on their IPO. Once that happens, they don't care what happens to reddit.

Thr-ealist

People are shocked when a manipulative and censorious platform behaves in manipulative and censorious ways against them

Justin FItzsimmons

@rodhilton oh no, that sounds awful that they've created their own lemmy instance with no rules that prevent them from doing piracy! can you let me know where it is so I can block it from my network?

Luis Villa

@rodhilton @CatherineFlick I read this as /r/privacy the first time through, which made the punch line when I clicked through even better

FirefighterGeek :masto:

@rodhilton I've heard some groups are now only allowing content featuring "Sexy Pictures of John Oliver" -- and the results are apparently fantastic.

FirefighterGeek :masto:

@rodhilton Regardless - at this point even if he wins, he loses. They've demonstrated to the investment community why supporting an IPO for reddit is a losing idea.

Deus

>

Yes, that u/spez. The guy who moderated r/jailbait. Also known as Steve Huffman, CEO of reddit (former r/jailbait moderator.)

Uli Kusterer (Not a kitten)

@rodhilton Hoping that ends up as a lawsuit against Reddit. Haven't they now technically made available pirated content?

Rod Hilton

@uliwitness no one of the rules was always no direct links to pirated material. It was more discussion-focused, links to resources, etc.

Though that's one of the rules that's being lifted on lemmy, last I saw magnet links are allowed now.

vascorsd

@rodhilton @uliwitness will make it much easier for law enforcement to bully them to shutdown or persecute people there. The rules were actually good since it allowed for the existence of the community. Hosting and managing a community of such sensitive topic without the protection of a big corporate will be hard and will not survive long.

Musser

@vascorsd @rodhilton @uliwitness Without good moderation tools on Reddit r/piracy most likely won’t be able to keep those rules there either.

I think we all can be pretty sure the music, gaming and movie industries biggest focus will be on Reddit with millions of users rather than a lemmy instance which isn’t even remotely close in user count.

Rafe Culpin

@rodhilton Wild speculation: They were ordered to keep it open so the police could track the users?

Musser

@RafeCulpin @rodhilton My guess it’s their investors whose ordered this or spez came up with yet another brilliant idea to upset their money generating users even more. Even subreddits which have no legal issues have been threatened to get the mods replaced if they don’t open the subs up again.

J.P. Wing

@rodhilton “The Good Wife” had it right when they spoofed Reddit as “Scabbit”.

Ro 👁️ :verified_purple:

@rodhilton I'm amazed that, out of any other subreddit that they might have chosen, they chose r/piracy. Surely companies that want to pay for advertisement would love that!

DELETED

@rodhilton reddit is to toxic for me these days. Dumped my account a few weeks ago and I am enjoying reading elsewhere.

Mister Shade

@rodhilton That’s a new level of stupidity, we need to get some scientists to study this.

Tofu Golem

@rodhilton
That idiot CEO had a large number of users and moderators generating content for free.

All he had to do was listen to them and address their concerns.

This would have involved listening to certain app developers and addressing their concerns.

Now the whole platform is probably going to die.

Harksaw

@rodhilton I intend to see to it that any man who sails under a pirate flag or wears a pirate brand gets what he deserves: a short drop and a sudden stop.

fool

@rodhilton Wow.

How many other subs are they forcing?

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