Also most people don’t really care about the API/3rd party app thing. It doesn’t impact them and it looks from the outside like a bunch of dorks with no lives getting worked up over nothing.
I’ve been on Reddit since the digg migration and I’ve never felt the need for an app, old.reddit.com and Adblock works perfectly fine on the phone. Better than Reddit’s mobile site.
It doesn't affect them directly, but the moderation tools a lot of subreddits need are built into third-party apps because Reddit refuses to build mod tools itself, and when those stop working then the job of moderating large and active subreddits will become vastly more cumbersome and frustrating, and far less efficient.
Maybe this issue only affects 0.1% of users, but those 0.1% of users do a lot for the site that depends on functionality that Reddit is unable or unwilling to provide.
It also seems as though a lot of moderators of larger subreddits are starting to see how little their users understand and appreciate the amount of work that goes into moderating a subreddit. When those mod tools are gone and their jobs get harder, they're going to get shat on even more than they already do by those users, because of the issue that those users said was just "a bunch of dorks with no lives getting worked up over nothing".
> It doesn't affect them directly, but the moderation tools a lot of subreddits need are built into third-party apps because Reddit refuses to build mod tools itself, and when those stop working then the job of moderating large and active subreddits will become vastly more cumbersome and frustrating, and far less efficient.
I checked yesterday and some widely used mod bots are already down. https://www.reddit.com/user/Blank-Cheque took all their bots down 10 days ago until the third-party apps change is reverted.
• AssistantBOT, AssistantBOT1 - This was broken by the Pushshift API cutoff. It's widely used for tracking sub usage statistics. The author is working on fixing it, but the last update was three weeks ago.
• Flair_Helper (Blank-Cheque) - This makes removing posts easier, especially on mobile. I haven't used it in anger.
• FloodgatesBot (Blank-Cheque) - This applies posting limits for users. There are a couple competitors, but I'm not sure how many are still running.
• Quality_Vote (Blank-Cheque) - This is used to allow users to remove unpopular posts. It can save a lot of moderation work in the right kind of sub.
• SafestBot (Blank-Cheque) - This is widely used by subs to ban spam and troll accounts. SaferBot, it's only alternative, was closed to additional subs some time ago.
What tools do they actually need? It seems to me like Reddit mods mostly automatically ban people for participating in subs they don't like. Last time they went on strike en-masse they were upset that Reddit didn't give mods more ability to track and spy on users in an Orwellian fashion
I made one comment on an anti-parent hate subreddit to try and explain why I thought they were wrong to automatically hate people for having kids, and then the subreddit for new parents automatically banned me. I tried to ask the mods on the subreddit for parents to unban me, and they muted me, and then Reddit gave me a temporary ban from the entire site for "harassment" of the mods
So far as I'm concerned, I'm happy to see the end of the little pocket dictator mods and the admins/Spez. It'll be a lot nicer if I can keep completely separate throwaway identities for talking about diapers and talking about philosphy
It's sad to see comments like these. It just reminds me that people will so readily take the work of others for granted.
The thing about the work mods do is that it's mostly invisible. If mods are doing their job, spam is getting deleted, reports are being serviced, and no one notices a thing. The subreddit seems to be working fine without them! It'd be easy to trick yourself into thinking they provide no utility. Even worse, since you don't notice the good work being done, all you do notice is the bad work (i.e. power tripping). Which, don't get me wrong, can be bad.
But tbh the complaints I've heard about "Orwellian" mods are completely overblown. I've used reddit for over 10 years and subscribed to hundreds of subs. I've had my posts removed by power tripping mods maybe a handful of times. The number of times I've seen a subreddit go to shit due to lax or nonexistent moderation is much much higher.
I want to be charitable here, but honestly, I looked over the list of mod tools someone posted in a sibling comment.. and most of them are just tools to attempt to blacklist people for wrongthink
I'm sure there are some small subs where the mods aren't huge jerks and benefit from usable tools to fight spam and deescalate flame wars, but I think we'll all be a hell of a lot better off with a bunch of unaffiliated or loosely-affiliated topical forums than we are with this current panopticon. The mods will be better off too: A guy moderating his own website will have better tools to combat spam and punish whatever he defines as trolls within his own kingdom.
This made me curious, and I'd never heard of this tool, so thanks for making me aware!
To further my point, I just looked myself up (same as my HN handle), and I only found 7 comments removed by mods. Most of which were honestly fair to remove, in my opinion.
Absolutely agree with you. My experience with Reddit moderators is that they are largely abusive, arrogant egomaniacs and I have absolutely zero sympathy for their hardship caused by lack of API access.
This is pretty much like people who say that we could just get rid of the police because all they do is harass everyone all day anyway.
Users in a well behaved system never notice the fantastic amount of work that goes into keeping the system well behaved. If you do your job right as few people as possible know you exist. It's the dilemma of the maintainer: extremely vital component of the system who everyone thinks does nothing in the best case and enraged at when something breaks in the worst case.
“…but the moderation tools a lot of subreddits need are built into third-party apps because Reddit refuses to build mod tools itself”
Why should the users care? Less moderation and more open speech would drastically improve most subreddits. This seems like it’s more and more just tantrum throwing from mods who almost feel embarrassed they’ve devoted thousands of hours of free work to a corporation that literally doesn’t care about them at all.
Moderators also ensure quality, by removing posts that don't follow rules.
For example, /r/ExperiencedDevs is one of my favorite subreddits. They have rules around the types of questions you can ask. These rules are put into place to prevent the subreddit from becoming like /r/CSCareerQuestions, or to prevent an influx of memes.
Without these tools or these moderators, I have a feeling some subreddits will become more generalist and possibly drop in quality.
I go to /r/ExperiencedDevs (and other subreddits moderated in a similar fashion) for a very specific set of posts and expectations for questions. I don't really want to see memes, jokes, etc. in the subreddit, as I have other ones to go for that.
Less moderation doesn't mean we turn into some Ayn Rand-ian bastion of free speech and justice and the american way. It means you see more onlyfans spam and ads for VPNs.
This comment contains one of the most-repeated pieces of misinformation from the whole blackout: moderation tools. Reddit has stated repeatedly that moderation tools will be exempted from the API changes.
"We will ensure existing utilities, especially moderation tools, have free access to our API."[1]
Many moderation tools relied on the Pushshift API; Reddit cut their access off last month. Pushshift will supposedly be restored (https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/13w6j20/advancin...), but access must be approved by Reddit and is only open to mods with a Pushshift account; there are also additional usage restrictions. IMO it's an open question whether Pushshift or most services using it will ever be restored. Pushshift is now owned and managed by NCRI (Network Contagion Research Institute), which is based around selling the data to intelligence agencies (https://networkcontagion.us/technology/). Access for moderation tools isn't really part of their business model.
An additional factor is that the third-party app cutoff cost Reddit a lot of goodwill. Many mods reply heavily on third-party apps; they're much easier to use for moderation. Some subs such as r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns (393k users) have announced that they'll shut down because of this (https://www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/144tn...). Some popular bot developers such as u/Blank-Cheque have already taken their bots down. My other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36343447) lists some of the affected bots.
But the app developers are not developing the apps as moderation tools, they are operating them as income projects by providing features users want. The mod users of their apps are a tiny subset, and they are underwritten by all the regular users.
There is a balance struck by any business when setting prices, and I would wager that every one of these app developers put a lot of thought into it based on Reddit's broken commitments. The mod userbase is not enough to support a single app, so this is just forked tongue doublespeak in the final analysis.
Unfortunately it seems that most of the reddit users/subs participating in this "strike" aren't interested in the facts. I see /r/science says it is private due to accessibility changes and it links to a Verge article, but the Verge article actually says that accessibility apps are exempted.
the whole point is Reddit says that accessibility apps are exempt except in those cases where the app that offers accessibility does, you know, other things that people want their apps to do.
Ok thanks for the explanation. From what I can see the issue is also whether the app is commercial or not, so it makes sense for reddit to restrict commercial apps that make money off their content. As people are saying, the best solution is for reddit to just make their own app/website more accessible.
Many of the facts aren't reported in the Verge article.
Last month Reddit cut off the Pushshift API (https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/134tjpe/reddit_dat...). It was widely used by moderation bots such as AssistantBOT. Pushshift will supposedly be restored (https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/13w6j20/advancin...), but access must be approved by Reddit and is only open to mods with a Pushshift account; there are also additional usage restrictions. IMO it's an open question whether Pushshift or most of the services using it will ever be restored. Pushshift is now owned and managed by NCRI (Network Contagion Research Institute), which is based around selling the data to intelligence agencies (https://networkcontagion.us/technology/). Access for moderation tools isn't really part of their business model.
Accessibility apps are exempted only if they're free and noncommercial; they also can't access NSFW content. Many popular third-party apps that blind users rely on (https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/1447ibp/what_apps_me...) are commercial and will either be shutting down or have an uncertain future. It's unclear how many apps will make the transition; they weren't given anywhere near enough notice.
Reddit's CEO has publicly lied about discussions with Apollo's developer (https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...). Their credibility with developers is almost nonexistent. The Verge reporter may be taking their word for it, but few moderators and developers are.
The changes they've already made have led to many popular bots being shut down. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36343447) lists a few of them. u/SafestBot, one of the affected bots, is widely used to ban spam and troll accounts. It's a moderator at 342+ subreddits. If brigading is a serious problem in your sub, then your life has gotten a lot harder.
The official mobile app is hot garbage and uniquely poorly suited to moderation. Third-party apps save much of the work and are much easier to use. Some subs such as r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns (393k users) have announced that they'll shut down because of this (https://www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/144tn...).
I had a look at saferbot, but it doesn't seem like a good solution. In all the examples given the problematic subreddit was eventually banned by reddit. It just never makes sense to ban people for posting on a subreddit, because they could be disagreeing with it. The only time things like that are useful is if you ban all the people who like a post, but reddit doesn't give that capability.
It sounds like that trans sub just needs to farm out some of the moderator tasks rather than one person doing it all. If they have that many subscribers then they presumably have a lot of people who can help moderate.
> I had a look at saferbot, but it doesn't seem like a good solution. In all the examples given the problematic subreddit was eventually banned by reddit. It just never makes sense to ban people for posting on a subreddit, because they could be disagreeing with it. The only time things like that are useful is if you ban all the people who like a post, but reddit doesn't give that capability.
If your subreddit is being brigaded, then eventual bans don't help. It took years for r/The_Donald to be banned and over a year for r/NoNewNormal to be banned; meanwhile their users were trolling and brigading all over Reddit.
> It sounds like that trans sub just needs to farm out some of the moderator tasks rather than one person doing it all. If they have that many subscribers then they presumably have a lot of people who can help moderate.
They have 393k users, but how many are both interested and suitable for moderating? It's not easy to find good people, especially on a sub like that where mods are regularly harassed. Here's a concrete example (https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_cod...).
Right now, 100% of my usage is old.reddit.com and 0% of my usage is on the new design. These numbers won’t change if they remove old reddit — I’ll just stop using the site.
I keep hearing this repeated by people who use the site. Honestly, no they won't. At least the vast majority of them. There's literally no viable replacement.
For tech people, you're looking at the viable replacement. For other people, if they're deliberately going out of their way to avoid the redesign after all these years, they may replace it with nothing (and be happier, as most people find they are when they quit social media).
I wouldn't call the user experience "perfectly fine" though. It's about as "perfectly fine" for exploring the content on a phone as pasta with ketchup is perfectly fine for eating. You won't starve but you also aren't really having a good time.
HN is fine on desktop but I don't really enjoy it on mobile much. Tiny tap targets, font sizes and spacing seem a bit "off", etc, and so I use a third party client.
Have similar feelings about old reddit on mobile.
What it comes down to is that yeah they're better than new reddit, but that's not much of a bar to clear and if I'm going to be spending extended periods of time using a site/service the experience needs to be good not just passable.
There are some good HN mobile clients. On iOS I use (and purchased) Octal [0]. I find this particular mobile experience far superior to the HN website.
> Also most people don’t really care about the API/3rd party app thing. It doesn’t impact them and it looks from the outside like a bunch of dorks with no lives getting worked up over nothing.
This may be a case where certain people are more important than most people.
> looks from the outside like a bunch of dorks
It appears the "dorks" are the certain people who have been making Reddit work for most people.
Are they? Despite everyone saying this, Reddit seems to be humming along. I log onto the front page and have something of the "normal" reddit experience. For instance, "heh. Look at that fish, that's crazy". I mindlessly scroll past all the "REDDIT IS BEING BAD" posts the same way I scroll past Youtube drama posts, or "How Elon is ruining Twitter" drama posts. I'm here to look at funny pictures.
Maybe I'm in a reverse sub-bubble, but outside of the tech circles complaining, the protest still seems to be "what protest?"
> Maybe I'm in a reverse sub-bubble, but outside of the tech circles complaining, the protest still seems to be "what protest?"
My wife noticed day-1 of the protests (I know because she asked me for the TL;DR of WTF is happening) and she doesn't move in tech circles, and the subs she likes (liked?) are all pop-culture stuff. Pretty sure she's just not been using reddit since then, as all of what she cared about is gone. Other non-tech friends of mine also noticed within 24 hours of the protests starting, with similar "well, damn, guess I'll find somewhere else to waste time" reactions.
But, all of the people I know who use reddit use it only for a few subs, and hardly ever visit the site's front page except by accident. I don't know anyone who's like "I'll just go to the Reddit homepage and look for something interesting that it's decided to promote", though I'm sure such users exist (and may even be the majority, for all I know).
You realize this is anecdotal and not statistical evidence of the larger population of Reddit users, right? What percentage are like your friends, versus how many continue to use Reddit, or will go right back when things return to normal, one way or another?
Seems self-explanatory. They're fighting for profitability, prioritizing mass-appeal, prioritizing ads, and maintaining two UIs in an advertising business sounds like a huge hassle. I'm too lazy to edit the URL so I don't even know - does old.reddit.com even support the giant image ads?
Also, old reddit has to remain mostly unchanged for it to fulfill its purpose, which means marketing can't incessantly twiddle things with A/B tests and push crap like NFT avatars.
This whole Adblock thing is gonna come to a head with the modern “economic headwinds” I think. Like, how did people think it was gonna work out…? YouTube and Reddit would just keep going forever with some sizable percentage of their user base earning them 0 money?
we either need to start paying for stuff instead of the bullshit invasive Display Ads model (half measure), accept the death of Adblock (I imagine I’ll get HN hate mail for even suggesting such a thing), or nationalize/otherwise remove the profit motive from these companies. I don’t see “the two main online forums for public discourse randomly decided to a) lurch towards far-right Russian propaganda and b) change everything in their push to get their VC investors some ridiculous return on investment, respectively” as an acceptable thing. Sadly my preferences aren’t exactly big news, and I assume the reaction from society at large will continue to be “oh no! Anyway…”
You could have written this comment about tape decks, CD ripping or Napster. In the end, what's technically possible always wins. As long as adblockers are technically feasible they will continue.
Napster didn't win though? It got crushed by giant media conglomerates. They were able to stifle easy piracy. With legal warfare, and actual decent products, they pretty effectively funneled people into legally consuming digital content, limiting piracy, and replaced physical ownership (CDs) with ephemeral subscriptions.
Napster the company didn't win, but file sharing and distributed sharing is the reason Spotify doesn't cost $1,000/month and we are no longer buying tracks for $1 on the iTunes store.
Because what most people wanted was listening to music, not owning music. And a lot of them are ok paying a fee periodically to do so. It could have been the same for movies, but siloes and prices are making this frustrating.
If they shut out third party apps from official APIs, that isn't game over. Those apps can still scrape HTML and while the new reddit frontend is modern and can easily combat this, old.reddit is an unmaintained static target.
They presumably know this or if they don't, they soon will. To avoid allowing app devs to run around the API changes they have to either continue maintaining the front end or cut the dead weight. Given their decision making lately, I'm going for the latter.
Either I switch to the new interface and be grumpy about it for a few weeks until I get used to it, or I stop going on Reddit and spend less time mindlessly consuming content? Or maybe I spend more time on TikTok/Instagram short form video? I’m not really worried about the bad spez taking away my reddits.
This is a fundamental issue with your analysis. Reddit mods are integral to the site’s operations, and they aren’t employees they can just order around.
Reddit official app and new website both suck, majority of my friends use reddit, but none of them use official clients - all third party apps or old.reddit.
I also love old.reddit.com with RES, but I have no illusion that Reddit likes it too.
It seems likely to me that the same factors that motivate Reddit to do away with high-quality, user-oriented third party frontends will also motivate it to do away with old.reddit.com and RSS.
I mean I like Apollo but I’m not going to waste my time getting involved in aimless slacktivism if the overlords of Reddit have decided they no longer want to do something that makes no business sense. I’ll just move on to their official app, I guess.
Agreed. I'd argue most don't even know what an API is. Eventually super moderators will end this standoff and reddit subreddits will be restored, the masses wont even care like they don't now.
i used to think old reddit was great and all i needed on the ipad until someone convinced me to try apollo... it’s simply 1000x better in all regard. stupidly fast and clean.
Yeah, the biggest issue for me as a Reddit user is despotic mods. And frankly, this shut down is another good example of how problematic they are. There was important information these past few days I couldn't get to because mods locked it away behind this blackout. A handful of mods had polls, but for most subs the mods just decided they were going to lock away all the user created content, and did so without the community having a say. Which is ironic, because that's the same thing they're complaining about Reddit corporate doing.
I’ve been on Reddit since the digg migration and I’ve never felt the need for an app, old.reddit.com and Adblock works perfectly fine on the phone. Better than Reddit’s mobile site.