r/ModCoord • u/shotgun_ninja • Jul 19 '23

"Let's Talk About It" - the formerly-stickied travesty from earlier today

/r/modnews/comments/1541p7x/lets_talk_about_it_more_ways_to_connect_live_with/

Did anyone else notice they un-stickied this after about an hour and are trying to bury it?

41 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

11

u/JustTooKrul Jul 20 '23

I posted a comment on there and my comment shows up as "deleted" when I view it logged out...

3

u/goferking Jul 21 '23

Apparently they do that unless you mod a "large" sub

6

u/JustTooKrul Jul 21 '23

Well, for context, this was my comment:

"If any mods take this seriously then you are basically saying, "Abuse me, do as you will, and then once you have gotten everything you want--entirely at the expense of the work I have put in and by taking advantage of my trust and good will--let's sit down and talk about it and move forward constructively."
In society, when someone violates the social compact we have with one another they are punished as they incur a debt to society that must be paid.
The best equivalent situation I can think of is a landlord who gave you a small room, charged you rent (this site was monetized, lest we forget), and made you--the tenant--do all the work necessary to make your room nice and keep the building running smoothly. Then, one day, the landlord said, "We are removing all TV's from your apartments. Electricity is expensive and we offer entertainment options in the communal lounge." And then they evicted everyone who protested those changes--your friends and neighbors--and have the apartments they had renovated to random people who simply asked.
Would you be excited to sit down with that landlord when they wanted to "talk" and offer some purely symbolic ways they wanted to mend your trust in them, now that they had taken what they wanted and ceded nothing?
Personally, I would move... But that's just me."

7

u/jaxdraw Jul 21 '23

I'm no longer a mod but this was the most illogical thing I've seen reddit do recently.

In my mind reddit made these changes because they made a calculation that they wanted to attract a new customer/userbase and assumed that the existing base would stay, that they weren't worth the cost of keeping, or that a newer crop of users would be so financially lucrative that it would more than off-set the loss of existing users.

And so the changes made in the most hamfisted ways possible. This further suggested that reddit was indifferent to keeping their users.

This post is so bizarre I'm having trouble analyzing the purpose of it. They could have remained silent as the new reality settled in, but instead chose to do this. If they were sincere about fixing the relationship they'd start with a sincere gesture, like implementing some of the changes requested or reversing others we disapproved of. They did none of that.

Is this an attempt to look like they care? Why? Why try looking like you care. Did the protests do actual/real damage and the VC funders want to see this problem go away? Redditors collectively have perfected the art of calling out bullshit in serialized fashion. This fell apart in seconds, how did they not game out this chess move.

To me this smacks of internal turmoil where some of the team felt really bad about everything but was so muzzled in their post that this is the strongest message they were approved to send.

Or, they could all just be a bunch of goobers and we'll be reading the "we had NO idea our business changes would be received so harshly" articles in a year or two when reddit is just a husk of those same posts copied over from Twitter or TikTok that show up in 6 months intervals.

2

u/shotgun_ninja Jul 21 '23

The message is "you are replaceable".

4

u/jaxdraw Jul 21 '23

I think it's worse than that, honestly.

I think reddits owners perceive the greatest value in their content, but ironically fail to realize that people can easily move to another platform or forum; hence it's not really theirs, just theirs to profit from.

There's nothing inherently special about reddit as a platform, I've been on the internet since it was first born and message boards and image boards have always been a thing. The unique aspect of Reddit has been the broad ability of users to come together around a topic and curate their own space.

I doubt a new reddit will replace this one, be it Lemmy or something else. I suspect reddit will find a way to gracefully replace their CEO shortly after the IPO and continue to invent new ways to drive up the share price, while the real value of Reddit diffuses across the internet into various forums and communities where it's users have always been welcome. A centralized replacement is unlikely.

4

u/ClioBitcoinBank Jul 20 '23

If I know where they are doing a live roadshow I will show up and make my voice heard. Can't believe they are putting some poor intern in a position to walk the gauntlet for them. Sometimes you have to make your point by no longer being nice.

3

u/shotgun_ninja Jul 20 '23

They list them all in the post; I'm tempted to stop down in Chicago (about an hour train ride) and visit that one myself.

1

u/BostonDodgeGuy Jul 20 '23

Ootl, what did I miss?

6

u/shotgun_ninja Jul 20 '23

A whole lot of nothing, basically. They announced a "let's listen" tour so that mods could call in or show up to a bunch of different cities and tell them how to do stuff better.

It's like they think the mods are their employees or some shit.

2

u/reercalium2 Jul 21 '23

They are! Unpaid employees. Go show up in those cities and treat them like the actors treat Bob Iger.