The Reddit strike after a month

Anybody who's a big social media user, whether or not they're that familiar with Reddit, is probably aware that about a month ago, many subreddits went on a 24-hour "strike," closing their subs over protests about Reddit's decision to greatly up the fees for third-party apps that are used to improve the user experience, mainly on mobile versions. This is being done in part to improve Reddit's business model and possibly in second part to to gussy up Reddit for an initial public offering.

Here's what I blogged at the one-week mark, and this is an update on that, with new items of the past week and with updates I had appended to the original worked into the body.

First, in what was the first update to the original, per the shitstorm at r/NBA, pretending to actually be striking for a week but actually being fucking hypocrites for having a Game 5 post that was apparently inter-moderator discussion. And, they look like the biggest hypocrite yet for banning the Redditor who called them out. Salute to u/kingtupperware.

They're also hypocritical about WHY they reopened, per another commenter:

every other major subreddit that re-opened yesterday admitted they've gotten a threatening mail from admins 

while this sub: "we reopen cos we accomplished enough, we made reddit promise that they will improve the official app, the boycott WON. 🤓🤓🤓🤓" while entire point of the protest was API price increase and saving 3rd party apps. they spammed front page with "dont let reddit kill 3rd partt apps" etc etc 

r/nba pussy ass mods saying "we are reopening because we won, they said they are gonna improve the official app" is such a laughable pussy statement. 

they couldnt even be honest. absolute pussy ass bitch behaviour. 

if the mod yesterday said "look, imma be honest, we didnt accomplish shit, and we dont wanna lose our mod positions, thats why we reopen" they wouldnt get roasted as hard.

Bullshit. And patronizing, too. Anybody who's followed the "strike" knows that there was no new "motion" over the weekend.

Mods then populated the feed with a bunch of posts, probably put up by themselves, from what was missed, besides the Game 5 insider trading thread, like the suspension of Ja Morant, etc., and some old NBA trivia. (And, by timestamps, it seems they did it already late Saturday night.)

That said, for more regular and hardcore users of r/NBA than me? The way this works is, until you get a chance to vote out any mods, you go to r/basketball first, and at least semi-boycott r/nba.

Then, per this OP, yeah, there's the issue of r/NBA seeming to engage in insider trading on taking down non-insiders' versions of duplicate posts on hot and breaking news. (r/NFL, from a lower interaction base, may be worse; r/MLB doesn't seem to have such a problem.)

That gets me into the main new item, from The Verge.

Most mods who talked tough backed down about as easily as r/NBA did. This:

Is the bottom line.

The conflict has demonstrated how crucial Reddit’s community is to the site and also revealed the limits of that community’s power.

The piece cites an r/DIY mod hating on Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's "ask me anything," basically calling it and him irritating. Hareuhal (no first name given, probably his handle) then gets at the edges of something else I noted in the original, with this:

“Going dark for 48 hours was kind of a silly thing for any of the subs to plan,” Hareuhal said. “We joined in on the ‘48 hours’ but also stated and knew it was most likely going to be an indefinite [shutdown].” 

A day after the 48-hour window had passed, more than 5,000 subreddits remained inaccessible. It was around then that Reddit started to crack down on moderators.

Really? You didn't expect a crackdown, even after Huffman could have been seen as supporting that pre-facto in his AMA?

Reddit corporate allegedly started looking for "defectors" to replace mods at still-dark subs, and per the r/NBA pullout above, that worked. (Unfortunately, there's still no voting available there to vote out the hypocrites.) The Verge piece updates by noting that subreddits trolling Reddit by making all posts NSFW have in fact had mods removed since my one-week post. It may have done the same — the piece isn't clear — to those who decided to do nothing but post John Oliver GIFs and videos, etc.

Then, there's this:

Mods and developers, however, say that Reddit lost in one big way: its users are really mad. 

“I think Reddit has got what they wanted, but I’d hardly consider it a win,” Selig said. “I’ve been on Reddit for 13 years, and I’ve never seen Reddit’s community have a lower opinion of the site’s management.” 

“Communities are made of and shaped by people,” said MostlyBlindGamer. “They’re built around a culture and trust. Many people are already deleting their accounts; many have started moving to federated free and open-source alternatives.” (I’ve heard a lot of people talk about Lemmy, Kbin, and Tildes.)

Really? Actually, no, I'm still mad first at r/NBA hypocrites as mods. And, that doesn't count the BlueAnon at r/politics and the Nazis at r/AcademicBiblical. See, mods, this is why you're self-inflated Dum Fuqs. And, why Huffman eventually rolled you. I'm "meh-mad" about the whole scenario, but no more. And, contra one Substack link posted by Kuff the other day, no, this isn't the same as Twitter, and anybody who claims it is doesn't understand social media that well.

Those alternatives to Reddit? From my original, more on these alternatives from Endgadget, which notes that all of them, for now, are "niche," like Mastodon vs Twitter.

Reddit's subs and their moderators largely  brought this on themselves. Yes, reddit sucked as an OS. And? You volunteered your services, and site tweaks, for free. So now, just like Steward Brand's "information wants to be free" and the internet "teaching us" that it should be free, now corporate Reddit wants to continue the exploitation. And, third-party app makers, who water-skiied in the wake, shouldn't be surprised that new turbulence has hit. You made money on the cheap and now you're not.

No. 2 on bottom lines is that folks like Apollo and its developer, Christian Selig, said they liked the changes originally. But, Reddit doing it "well and reasonable"? I guess its price tag wasn't reasonable for him.

I don't know if Selig tried negotiating more with Huffman. Huffman did make the apps free for accessibility-based communities, he said. Let's say he offered Selig a price of 75 cents on the dollar. Let's add that Huffman himself notes, in my original piece, that Selig has admitted making "millions." Would Selig have accepted, or still been a holdout, with a 25 percent reduction? Don't know, but ...

Let's say "holdout." That should show Reddit mods just how little Reddit is financially valued in today's social media world. Deal with it.

And again, the claim that Reddit is "the last page of the Internet"? That's much more an indictment of Google than a tout of Reddit.