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Weekly General Discussion - July 17, 2023 <-> July 23, 2023

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  • (Accidentally cross-posted in the previous weekly. Here's my re-crosspost from ethfinance.)

    This post is relevant to ethfinance, as it really underscores that we don't own our community here, Reddit does. If as a moderator your community's desires are at odds with Reddit's desires (not rules, mind you - desires), they will permanently ban you if you choose to stand with your community instead of siding with them.

    As we know, a few weeks ago Reddit cut off access to the API. Many subreddits went dark for a couple days to protest. Some subreddits rightly realized that a protest with a defined end date ultimately doesn't make their voice heard, and they wanted to make their voice heard. The /r/dndmemes subreddit was one such subreddit.

    Now, one of the rules made clear by the Reddit admins is that you're not allowed to label harmless posts as NSFW to try to harm Reddit's ad revenue. In my opinion, that's fair enough. Content should be properly labeled.

    The members of the /r/dndmemes community, however, wanted to continue making a point without violating this rule. So in protest of the API changes, the community decided to changed their meme subreddit into a pornography subreddit. Full-on, D&D-style NSFW content. Every post was tagged NSFW, because every post was NSFW.

    The problem came when Reddit simultaneously announced a new rule, retroactively banned moderators who violated that new rule, and then started manually removing content from the subreddit. Here is a post from one of the remaining moderators that explains.

    This afternoon, r/dndmemes received the following message from the Mod Code of Conduct account:

    If you suddenly begin to post, or approve content that features sexually explicit content to your community in order to justify the NSFW label, we will immediately remove and permanently suspend moderators who have participated in this action. 3 moderators have been permanently suspended and removed from the mod team for participating in this activity already. They are not to be added back to the team under any account.

    Moments later, and without further warning, the following mods were removed from the team and permanently suspended from Reddit:

    • u/Dalimey100

    • u/4cheese

    • u/EquivalentInflation

    As part of their community action, the Reddit admins also removed two of the NSFW flairs that the community had begun using, so it was no longer possible to properly categorize or filter new posts to the subreddit. In the aftermath, due to these sudden changes the Reddit admins made against the community's will, the remaining mods have marked new submissions to the subreddit manual approval to stem the tide of now-banned NSFW content. They're now swimming in a sea of posts that follow the mods' own rules, but don't follow the new rules Reddit Inc has decided to impose on their community, and they're expected to moderate their subreddit according to Reddit Inc's imposed /r/dndmemes rules.

    (part 1 of 2)

    • (part 2 of 2)

      This kind of direct community intervention is completely unprecedented in Reddit's 18 years of operation. Reddit has historically had a very laissez-faire approach to their communities, letting their communities themselves - represented by their community moderators - dictate what they want the content of their communities to be, and how they want their communities to be run. They've held this laissez-faire attitude even to a fault, letting the top mod of each subreddit unilaterally dictate subreddit rules and unilaterally add and remove other moderators, even at the protest of their community. A great example of this was when the /r/bitcoin community wanted to remove theymos as a top moderator due to his wildly unpopular community policies - Reddit Inc did nothing. Of course, that's all flipped on its head now. Reddit is no longer a host for independent communities run by individuals - it's a host for one big community run under the discretion of Reddit Inc, where ownership of "your community" is a privilege that can be taken away unilaterally at the whims of Reddit Inc without recourse.

      I foresee a time before too long, perhaps within the next few years, where the /r/ethfinance moderators will have to face a similar choice - whether to side with the desires of Reddit corporate, or whether to stand by the desires of the community, be permanently banned from Reddit, and be replaced with Reddit's own hand-selected moderators.

      With ethfinance, of course, the divide between the community and Reddit Inc will not be a divide of SFW/NSFW, because that's not this community's style. It will be a divide over the heart of what ethfinance means to us. Perhaps it will be the inability for communities to opt out of Reddit community points, causing ethfinance to drop in quality due to points-chasing in the same way ethtrader did. Perhaps it will be the discontinuation of old.reddit.com along with the incessant enshittification of new.reddit.com and the official app. Maybe it will be site-wide automod deletion of external links (in the style of YouTube comment automoderation), removing a crucial information-sharing tool from this community.

      Whatever the divide is between ethfinance and Reddit Inc, it will stem from this community's desire to just be left alone to do our own thing, in conflict with Reddit's desire to step in to make changes to the community to increase their own ad profits (because shortly, they'll have public shareholders to answer to!) And Reddit Inc is the one with the keys to the server rack, so ultimately, whatever they want to do, they will do. Just one of the perks of running permissioned forum software on top of a permissioned database.

      I share this because I truly believe that at some critical mass of platform enshittification, the "magic" of this community will leave /r/ethfinance and go somewhere else, just as it left /r/ethtrader to go to /r/ethfinance all those years ago. And it's important to keep your eyes and ears open, because wherever the magic goes, so will follow the alpha, the good friends, the counterculture that makes ethfinance such a fulfilling and worthwhile place to visit.

      Finally, a parting meme to make light of Reddit admin logic:

      https://i.imgflip.com/7sz8kv.jpg

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