Reddit tried to sticky this post for moderators around 12p CST today, and they’ve since tried to bury it. Thought it might be good to back up the link here.
Here’s a screenshot so you don’t give the site any traffic
That’s the most wishy-washy weasel-word corporate PR professional bullshit post I’ve ever seen
“Here, let’s give you more ways to give us feedback that we can then promptly ignore”
Also, I am running out of idea, can you give me some?
“We’re gonna have meaningful weekly meetings with all the hundreds or thousands of you, and we’re gonna take the opportunity to really listen. Now, this isn’t just some platitude to quiet you until we take the company public, but you know, we might suddenly get too busy for these once we’re diving into our piles of cash.”
“We’re gonna compile your input and file it away somewhere safe. Look! I already bought a basket to hold all of them and lined it with a plastic bag! And when my comment can gets reeeeeeaaaallllllly full, I’ll file your comments into a larger bin until the city files those comments with the other valuables!”
“We wanna show you how much we care. We care sooooooooo much that we’re gonna visit you on our “Fuck you, I Wanna be Rich” vacation! We’re gonna see the country and occasionally talk to people in a patronizing tone. For all the shit-holes we don’t feel like visiting, we’re gonna throw you a pizza party! It’s gonna be super revolutionary cuz it’ll be a virtual pizza party! Pay for your own food and watch us eat pizza while we explain to you that you’re not really upset with us, you’re just scared of change and passionate about things that don’t make us rich. Remember to dress up nice, we’d hate for you poors to make us look bad.”
Nailed it. Virtual pizza party really drives it home.
And we won’t really tell you what we’re up to as a company either. You’ll find out with everyone else when we pull the rug from under you
Good riddance
Yes they problem is we haven’t given them enough feedback. Surely if we have them now feedback they would understand the problem. Shutting down the entire website for multiple days was not clear.
Here’s a condensed version:
“It’s not that mistakes were made, you just got angry. Spontaneously. Weird how that happened, when we love you just, like, so much.
Anyways, let’s move on. Fill out a form to become a member of an unpaid focus group.”
Don’t forget, “We’re gonna pay some of our staff to go to cool cities to meet several of you! What an incredible opportunity for them to get frequent flier miles and for you to show up (again, unpaid) at a fake meeting in your free time. This will surely have some kind of impact on how we run things, in that nothing will change whatsoever.”
Thanks for the screenshot
And here’s a screenshot of a hilarious comment that I found in the modcoord discord
Hey thanks
They absolutely need to be called for killing a platform.
fuck reddit’s board. fuck u/spez and his lackeys.
Unlucky, didn’t see this until after I clicked. The new default for posts about reddit here on Lemmy should be that any links are just screenshots or archived versions or something
Pardon my literal autism, but can you explain the problematic implication for me, friend? I don’t understand it ^^
Pretend your the mod of a moderately sized subreddit. You have third party tools you rely on to help keep your community functioning. Reddit takes away your tools, then tells you “you can spend more of your free time in a pointless meeting with us”
Oh, okay, yeah. That make sense. Gotta love that spineless, landlord-during-COVID-style victim-blaming speak. : /
It also is the statement “we’re here to listen to you” in response to a protest with a lot of clear demands. There was no concession or acknowledgement of the possibility of any. There was no apologies for the absolute assholery of the CEO. There wasn’t even an acknowledgement that they’re the ones in the wrong.
It’s like if you’ve been sleeping on the couch until your spouse stops cheating on you and they say “I know you’re mad, but let’s talk this out after work tomorrow” like no, you have to say sorry and that you’ll stop, then we need to talk about how to rebuild the shattered trust.
More of your free time to do our jobs for us while we make some extra cash. What a weird way to do business.
You get my Lemmy Gold 🏆
Edit: extra bonus for dark mode screenshot!
May I have some Lemmy gold? 👉👈
You can have lemmy lemon🍋
🍋👊🥤 then you punch the lemon until you get lemonade.
Ahhh, lemons: they truly are the grapes of the fist…
🥈you get second place.
Something about this participation-silver hurts far more than it should.
“Second place is the first one to lose.” — Abby Lee Miller - Dance Moms
thanks. my /etc/hosts file still has: 0.0.0.0 www.reddit (break link) .com
(I find this helps me break habits)
It just brings up RiF for me, which doesn’t work. I’ve only 99% left though, so I can’t pihole it. I copy over some content and use the pages that turn up on Google search results.
I picture the employees playing rock, paper, scissors to determine who was going to have to make that post; I can’t imagine any of them didn’t know how this was going to play out.
…And the dude that won (lost?) didn’t even know how to link his own username. It looks like he did it via an actual hyperlink! Now that is fantastic example out of touch management.
Not a fan of the mobile site making me pinch and zoom the whole page just to get a better look at an embedded image.
Of course I’m not a fan of embedded images in comments all together and hope they make that like a toggleable thing.
It will get there, eventually.
On one hand Im happy to see that dumpster fire ignite even more. Then on the other hand Im happy to see all those mods end up not being listened to and frustrated by those who have the power.
You reap what you sow, suckers.
honestly this reads like someone who wants to make things right, but is being held back
I can’t tell what that person’s intent is because the post is filled with “I’m sorry you’re upset” platitudes that accept no responsibility or even an understanding of why the mods are so upset in the first place; just more unpaid work they’re expected to do to keep it from happening again.
Yeah. Even if you fully trust this person, this person isn’t Reddit. I don’t think they can do what needs to be done.
Appreciate you!
Ta much.
A mod event in Mumbai? lmao
This comment needs to be pinned lol.
Thanks!
Much love for the post
Here’s a screenshot so you don’t give the site any traffic
The hero we need
Let me get this straight- they want mods to have live business meetings with them? As if they’re employees?
I anticipate in the future that that mods will be required to fill out weekly TPS reports. However, if you only have one subreddit you’re moderating, please use up the old cover sheets. If you’re moderating two or more subreddits, please use the new cover sheet. Did you get the memo on this? I’ll send you a copy of the memo.
Yyeeeaaah, I’m gonna need to to stay late and do some more moderating.
If they don’t use those cover sheets properly they are going to get tackled by Terry Tate
At this point, I fully expect reddit to ask the mods to pay a subscription to maintain their mod status in the future.
Once the floodgate of bad decisions has started, it’s not really possible to stop it.
“Reddit as a hosting service. We provide you the infrastructure and discoverability necessary to build and maintain a growing community. Yours for only $50/month!”
Now imagine companies openly buying moderator positions to take over their own subreddit.
It can always get worse.
This comment thread reads like a corporate brainstorming session.
"hmmm. But is there any way we can exploit brown people in some brown country while doing this?’
all that is missing.
The word “openly” is the only thing that separates your comment from currently-happening-reality. Plenty of subs and their mods are bought and paid for.
Also this whole post from the VP is such a load of shit. “We have a seat for you at the table… if you want it.” Boy only a VP in a big corporation could keep a mouth so loaded with horseshit.
Don’t give them ideas because that’s actually kind of too brilliant for them — instead of selling ads only, also directly sell the user base to interested parties.
Weekly meetings.
And they will also tour the world! That will surely help with their profitability.
I love that everyone is mad in the thread
I’m also confused why they’re still on Reddit and not over here. Join us, content creators and talented people.
Just came from Reddit. Still testing it out.
Welcome. I am enjoying the Connect app with AMOLED theme and small icons and text. Feels RIF-like.
For me its Voyager
Why is my comment box white text on a white background? I can’t see shit.
We made it that way as a prank.
Jokes aside, sorry that’s happening to you, hopefully you’ll find a solution. Failing everything, get on Jerboa.
They’d rather gargle reddit balls and complain about the taste than to lose their mod status. Nothing else to it. Let them gargle, they have the platform they deserve.
That’s a rather rude thing to say about people whilst they make an effort to help their communities.
Cool, they can use their subreddits to reroute their communities to better platforms then.
I’m starting to see the bad Reddit mods on Lemmy as well.
Yeah it was just a matter of time. Some of Reddit’s problems weren’t due to the corporation but due to human nature and the kind of people that seek out power.
If we could figure out a way to reward good mods without encouraging overmoderation, I think that would make a huge difference. Also kinda hilarious if it’s financial, if Lemmy starts paying some of its mods while Reddit continues to exploit them for free, but it would require a revenue source.
Damn, really? Which communities?
I keep my account so when I see things like this I can go shit on them from a great height.
Thus providing the engagement they need.
Less engagement than before though
As much as it would be amazing to move everyone over, reddit communities represent years of cultivation and community organizing. Trying to rebuild that again isn’t an easy task, and it shouldn’t have to be done at all. This site should belong to the people who put in all the unpaid volunteer hours, not money-grubbing shareholders and CEOs. I can see why some people are so reluctant to abandon the community efforts they have worked diligently on for years. That being said I hope they all decide to ditch reddit and come over here as well.
I’m also confused why they’re still on Reddit
Because they can’t bring themselves to give up their mod status and “power” on there.
ehh, im over here, i saw the link from here to here, and posted my 2 cents where i can lend support… while basically having quit reddit.
All moderators are, at best, sub-human.
The sad truth is that Lemmy is still a very buggy pile of alpha software that barely works.
I wouldn’t call it alpha, but man, does it have UI problems.
Removed by mod
I disagree. I had to reload the page to post the previous comment. Because text box was not opening when pressing reply. And that happens regularly. And there are like shit loads of other bugs. And don’t get me started on Jerboa… You see, I have 20 years of software development experience. Lemmy as is today is great, but it’s a very very early alpha. Buggy as hell and completely unusable by anyone except for enthusiasts. It doesn’t even be publicly accessible in my opinion.
I don’t care about bugs much myself, I have my workarounds. But your average Joe will be shocked by the state of Lemmy. And that will hurt Lemmy in the long run. The dev team should focus real hard on improving end user experience and fixing bugs. Nothing else matters at the moment.
No mention of the tools they fucked up that they are replacing? Just a bunch of meetings for people who aren’t employees? Lmao get bent.
What a trainwreck of a thread
OP:
This community filters comments from anyone who isn’t a mod of an active community with more than 50 subscribers. […]
Yep, you’re right. It should be disclosed on the sidebar. We won’t do it right now for obvious reasons, but will have this updated before the next post.
So we’re witnessing a thread of angry mods being angry, OP is cherry picking comments and still can’t manage to listen to them.
Also many of the people complaining that their posts are being filtered are mods of communities larger than 50 users, one person pointed out that they mod two subs of more than 500,000 people.
So they lied while acting pretentious, again. To the surprise of no one.
Hey ChatGPT, write me a tone deaf, mealy mouthed, corporate doublespeak screed that completely ignores everything that’s happened for the last month. Be sure and add lots of bullshit about how we will now “listen to mods” and have useless meetings every month.
write me a tone deaf, mealy mouthed, corporate doublespeak screed that completely ignores everything that’s happened for the last month. Be sure and add lots of bullshit about how we will now “listen to mods” and have useless meetings every month.
LMAO I literally fed your prompt into ChatGPT adding only last month WITH REDDIT and the result is…well I’ll let you decide for yourself:
Dear Valued Members of our Community,
We hope this message finds you well. As a corporation committed to fostering a vibrant and inclusive online community, we must acknowledge that the last month has been filled with important developments. We understand that you may have concerns and feedback about recent events, and we would like to assure you that we are dedicated to addressing them in a meaningful manner.
Our commitment to transparency and openness remains unwavering, and we are fully aware of the importance of listening to the voices of our valued moderators. We recognize their invaluable contributions to our platform and are eager to collaborate with them more closely moving forward. To that end, we are excited to announce that we will be implementing monthly meetings where we can engage in productive conversations and work towards mutually beneficial solutions.
These meetings will serve as a unique opportunity to foster a culture of continuous improvement. We believe that by providing a forum for discussion, we can collectively identify challenges and collaboratively explore ways to enhance our community experience. Your feedback is integral to our growth, and these sessions will enable us to listen to your concerns and ideas actively.
At our core, we remain committed to upholding the principles that have made us a beloved community. The spirit of openness, diversity, and respect are cornerstones of our platform, and we intend to reinforce them further through the establishment of task forces, committees, and subcommittees dedicated to addressing specific issues.
We understand that recent events may have raised questions about our corporate values and practices. We are keenly aware that the phrase “tone deaf” has been used in recent conversations, and we genuinely want to acknowledge your concerns. As we move forward, we are committed to learning and growing as a platform, acknowledging where we have fallen short, and working diligently to improve our processes.
Your trust is paramount to us, and we appreciate your continued support as we strive to create a positive and enriching experience for all members of our community. We firmly believe that together, we can build a stronger, more empathetic, and more inclusive environment.
Thank you for your understanding and patience during this time. We value your feedback and look forward to the journey ahead as we make our community even better, together.
Best regards,
[Corporate Representative’s Name]
[Corporate Title]
[Company Name]
You’re awesome, I knew that post came from an AI! 😂
Yep. This is totally good enough to outsource PR speak to AI. ChatGPT has this down pat.
I specifically use it for this purpose lol.
You know what the best part is? ChatGPT doesn’t know about the reddit thing, because it’s training data is 2021 and earlier. This is as bland as the actual message and it was written without knowledge of the problem at all.
I love this so much. :)
c/bestof
Lol this saga is just too funny to me now that I’ve jumped ship. The admins just keep digging
I really thought I’d have a harder time leaving, it hasn’t been bad at all. Maybe a day of habit and then poof, I’m free.
There’s a couple of communities like noncredibledefense and ask historians that I still miss but I recognize that communities won’t spring up here overnight
Be the change you want to see and start them!
There is a noncredibledefense here that I should post in more, but I only have an undergraduate degree in history so I wouldn’t feel right posing as a historian
AskHistorians is s particularly special place. It’s not as simple as just starting it.
I miss that one too. Have the mods there discussed moving to Lemmy?
I recall reading they were moving to discord if I’m not mistaken
deleted by creator
Dig up, reddit, Dig up!
They can’t even do bullshit PR correctly. You do the listening tour before the steady stream of unpopular decisions that go against the feedback you just collected.
Holy cow. They’re treating them like employees… Or subjects being given hours in which they can petition the king.
The type of people who would subject themselves to this are… I don’t know man. I really don’t.
What are you upset about? $0/hr is a generous salary.
Yeah, but the perks!
The intent is to provide moderators with a sense of pride and accomplishment.
Best part is…top voted comment…crickets…
Great acknowledgement reddit.
VP of community right there. Has leadership written all over them.
Honestly I moved over here a couple months ago and haven’t had the urge to look back. I love this place.
Out of curiosity I read that post and top comments. That place just smells tainted now. If that post is on tenth accurate I feel bad for anyone that feels the need to stay and be part of that drama.
The fediverse has felt just so much more comfortable and safe. I hope it stays this way.
This place feels like Reddit felt back in the early '10s. It’s great.
This is the reason why I never posted anything on Reddit but started here.
Part of the glory days of the internet. We should recreate more of that.
Exactly! I remember the excitement back in 2006/2007 when I first tried it. Not much content back then, but it felt like freedom.
Where’s all the jokey banterous subs?
It’s far better than reddit is but real discussions still aren’t allowed to happen. Before 2016 or so I was still subscribed to /politics because while we didn’t always agree, we could at least discuss. Then in 2016 everyone got TDS and became a fragile child, unable to handle adult topics without banning or reporting. Wrongthink became a reality. And it’s very much a reality here at lemmy.world and other large fediverse instances.
Before 2016 you didn’t have right wing bots convincing all the fringe morons to band together for fascism. I was on Reddit before, discourse was civil until the right went crazy and started believing anything that aligned even slightly with their views. Then anyone who disagreed was a “fragile child” or criticizing their leaders was met with the likes of “TDS”. All they do is parrot buzzwords.
deleted by creator
I don’t mind downvotes. But I cannot debate when banned.
And there is no subtlety in the mods behaviour. They ban based on dog whistles that only they can hear.
I only go back for the 2 or 3 very niche communities there, although honestly if feels like even those have dropped in content. I haven’t even logged in, just browse once a week or so. Lemmy is 100% of my toilet time now.
They are “inviting” mods to do even more free work in furtherance of Reddits profitability
They’re expecting the mods to keep the mods from protesting things done against mods in the future.
The way they talk to the mods is absolutely infuriating and the “best” part is they they don’t even recognize it themselves.
Right!? I strait up heard in my head:
Um, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9:00, that would be great. Mm-Kay?
Hey Mr Manager, 11181514@lemmy.world here, some dude on Lemmy. So, we’ve all had a… time away from Reddit lately. And I’m here to recognize it, acknowledge that our relationship has been idk fine I guess, and begin the “hey man how’s it going?” conversation.
Not trying to be rude but what part specifically rubbed you in the wrong way? I can see it came off as a little formal but nothing that struck out to me.
Also, that “we have had…a time” line is just disingenuous as hell. That’s younger-millenial colloquial, and the social context for it only works when there isn’t a power imbalance. This guy’s a VP at the company that’s been kicking people around: he doesn’t get to take that tone.
I guess some people react to it and other don’t. I’m not trying to be rude either - I just mean that the language that you call “formal” comes off as extreamly disconnected from the community to some of us.
Reddit should be grateful for moderators working for free to moderate their site, and the way they talk to these moderators is absolutely fascinating. I can only assume it comes from living your life around corporate bullshit to the degree that it becomes normal to you.
Normal human decency, friendliness, sense of humor, compassion… Reddit leadership doesn’t have these qualities. Corporate bullshit is a term for when you fake these emotions to reach a strategic goal, such as trying to make people work in the same direction even when it’s not in their interest to do so.
I think the part where they pretend like they give a shit
It’s specifically the “I’m here to recognize it and acknowledge it and talk about it” part followed up by no recognizing, acknowledging, or talking about anything substantial.
I see that negative vote count has been removed and now the post just says “0”. We’re living in the thin-skin age.
Reddit has always done that for posts
Actually not always. I remember the good ol’ days of early Reddit where you could have astronomically negative votes on posts. Back in the simpler times when r/f7u12 and rAdviceAnimals ruled. It was only a feel years ago when they changed how upvotes and downvotes worked
Back in my day, they did have negative values. I want to say the EA Star Wars Battlefront fiasco was about the time they switched to hiding how very hated a post/comment is.
They used to not even be combined. You had separate up and down vote counters. The they combined them, and you could go negative and even get a cross it it was controversial.
I think you are right. Only comments could go below zero.
Why any moderator is still giving that website their time I have no idea. Is it just an addiction at this point? Just leave, the reddit owners actively mock you and despise you.
Is it just an addiction at this point?
Yes
Some of us have built real communities over there, full of people we know and like. Those places have lasted years, and it’s like Cheers.
I do not fault people for wanting to keep that alive. And no, moving hundreds or thousands of people to a new platform isn’t feasible, especially when some features like private communities don’t yet exist.
you don’t need to move hundreds of thousands of people to a new platform, you just need to move the people you know and like.
I’m super old, I’ve been around on the internet since the early days. we always did this, we always moved. reddit was a place we moved to once, Now i left that behind because it’s shit, its falling apart and its run by pricks. But it’s okay because you just move to the next thing. the idea of dying on a sinking ship for the addiction of not changing something is really quite new.
In addition, it’s not like that community is going to vanish if some people move and some don’t. you just don’t have to prop up reddits bloated crappy website by actively supporting it with moderation.
Sorry, I meant to say hundreds or thousands. I’ve edited it.
You’re preaching to the choir here. I’ve obviously moved. But lots of others haven’t, and I’m not going to fault them for wanting to keep those relationships alive.
I think you’re overly simplifying the issue regardless. Communication platforms are only as good as the people on them. Case in point, a bunch of my friends and I used to use Google Chat until the XMPP kerfuffle. I wanted to move elsewhere, but all my friends didn’t want to use anything else; Google worked great for them. So, sure, I created a jabber account, signal accounts, wire accounts, etc. They’re all a waste because I’ve got nobody to talk to. My mom isn’t going to use jabber. (I now use Matrix to connect to all those accounts like Google Chat, so I get to have my cake and eat it too. But I’m still technically using their platform, and my friends didn’t move, so I don’t count that.)
Same thing here. Sure, I can use Lemmy on the toilet to get my memes or whatever. Engage in other conversations and debates (like this), but that’s just one facet of how I used Reddit. My friends aren’t here. And they aren’t coming anytime soon; they don’t care about what Reddit is doing, they’re not mods, they don’t use 3rd party apps. So yeah, I still use Reddit a couple times a week from my desktop to check in with that community. I feel bad doing it, but I’d feel bad not doing it too. Maybe one could say if they were truly my friends they’d come with me, but there’s far more of them than me.
That’s why I’m here.
Good Lord that admin is insufferable.
“We’ve had a … time.” You’re a … douchebag.
I mean they’re just doing their job. Blame the board of directors and CEO. What are they supposed to do? Contradict the main strategy and get fired?
They’re a PR robot, not really acting as a person but a machine
I disagree completely.
First, I thought we’d already collectively agreed that “I’m just following orders” doesn’t cut it as an excuse.
Second, he’s a VP, and as someone in a position of leadership he’s very much an active part of the problem.
I’ve known companies where a VP title doesn’t mean much of anything. At the end of the day, he takes orders from the CEO and the board. What do you expect him to do?
The only thing that would make people happy would be reversing the changes. Is he gonna come out and say “hey everybody, I’ve unilaterally made the decision to go against the board and reverse the changes”
They would just delete the post and fire him.
Or would he say “yes we are a very bad company and our CEO did bad things. I’m very sorry but this is the best I can do”
He’s getting a sit down and is lucky if he doesn’t get fired.
There’s literally nothing he can say that will a) stay in line with his job title and b) alleviate the concerns of the users
Also “just taking orders” is a valid defense for many many many transgressions. It only really breaks down when we start going into crimes against humanity / war crimes like at the Nuremberg Trials. And I don’t know about you, but a private company exercising their God given right to fuck their consumers is a bit different than mass genocide.
Having said all that, and on a tangent. What would you do? You’re a Nazi soldier. You’re not a zealot, just the average Joe Schmoe who joined the army because of a long family history. You think of yourself as a good and tolerant person and don’t really like the Nazis but you go along with it because you rather like breathing.
Your commanding officer gives you a gun and tells you to shoot a Jew in the head. If you refuse, you get sent to prison for insubordination or maybe just get shot in the head right on the spot.
What do you do? If you kill the Jew, you end up getting tried for war crimes after the war and boom you’re getting executed anyway.
Really the best thing to do is shoot yourself in the head because you’re busted either way. That’s the position people like the VP are in. There’s nothing you can do. I don’t blame him the slightest- he’s doing his job. Blame the people giving the orders.
As VP he most likely stands to get a decent payout from the IPO.
It’s easy to think of Reddit as a dictatorship where everyone is deathly afraid of big bad spez, but the reality is that these types of corporate structures are usually completely rotten at the top.
Let me put it another way: do you think if spez were to be run over by a bus tomorrow, anything would change?
I’ll ignore your comments about the Nazis before we Goodwin this thread, but dude, what an awful comparison.
Ok maybe I went a little overboard on the comparison - I spent some time reading about the Nuremberg trials because of your comment and how lots of people used the “my superiors ordered me to” as a defense
My point mainly is - regardless if VP agrees with it or not. He probably does agree with it otherwise he wouldn’t be VP.
The point is he can’t really contradict the board’s decision regardless. Yes I agree it’s not spez by himself. They’re setting him up to take the fall just like they did with Pao back in the day.
I’m just saying - VP is just doing his job. He likely doesn’t have much influence, at least on this topic. Spez publicly put his foot down and that’s that. Can’t contradict at this point.
And I understand “I’m just taking orders” isn’t always a defense, we also must consider that this is totally legal and unethical for them to do. I don’t agree with it - which is why I got off reddit. But it’s their private platform so they’re well within their rights
Tldr: hate on the board and people who steer the ship imo
They’re also a VP of Community. As someone with such a specialized purpose specifically in this area, we should have expected a better performance.
We need to take responsibility for what we do. “Just doing my job” has been an excuse used for centuries to do atrocities.
But this is not an atrocity. This is a bad attempt at PR that would have been done by any employee because they would have been told. I don’t have anything against a PR person, just the Reddit corporate leadership
I think they’ve realised that they can do pretty much whatever they want, and the majority of their user-base will just vacantly scroll through cat videos and adverts all day long regardless.
The TikTok-ification of the internet marches on.
Thanks! I really didn’t have enough to be depressed about until this comment. 😂
deleted by creator
