subreddits – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Reddit Ramps Up Its Threats To Protesting Mods, As Ad Buyers Leave

from the off-with-their-heads dept

The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful tools by jacking up the price on it to unsupportable levels — was about making Reddit more “democratic.”

Except, that’s clearly not the case. For weeks now, Reddit has been ratcheting up the threats to various moderators of subreddits to try to force them to reopen.

The latest is that Reddit started contacting more mods of protesting subs (most have reopened, but many are still engaging in acts of protest) telling them they had 48 hours to tell the company their plans for reopening. Quickly after that, they issued an ultimatum: closed subreddits must reopen.

“This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue” beyond the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that’s still private.

After a mod replied, ModCodeofConduct went even further. “[Millions of] members have lost complete access to this community and that is not going to continue,” the account said. “Wanting to take time to consider future moderation plans is fine, but that must be done in at least a ‘restricted’ setting. This community will not remain private beyond the timeframe we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here.”

In a conversation with moderators of a different subreddit, ModCodeofConduct told them that “continued violation of [Rule 4 of the Moderator Code of Conduct] over the next 31 hours will result in further action.” Rule 4 of that document is “Be Active and Engaged.” That subreddit has since reopened, though in an “archive” mode where new posts will be automatically removed.

The thing is, in many of these subreddits, the users voted in favor of going private. So, for all of Huffman’s nonsense talk about “democracy” and getting rid of what he preposterously called “the landed gentry,” the reality is the opposite. It’s Huffman’s way, or you’re out.

Indeed, there are already reports of Reddit admins being willing to help stage coups to oust protesting mods and install others in their place. Meanwhile, there’s talk of renewed protests on July 1st (the day the API changes go into effect), though who knows how well that will go.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen lots of reports noting that Redidt’s traffic, after an initial dip, has returned to normal, but it’s possible that some of that is just people gawking at the spectacle of the protesting subs that were covered in John Oliver images.

But, perhaps a more concerning issue regarding Huffman’s plans to take the company public in the near future, is that the same reports saying traffic has returned to normal, are noting that traffic to Reddit’s advertising portal… has dropped noticeably.

However, Similarweb told Gizmodo traffic to the ads.reddit.com portal, where advertisers can buy ads and measure their impact, has dipped. Before the first blackout began, the ads site averaged about 14,900 visits per day. Beginning on June 13, though, the ads site averaged about 11,800 visits per day, a 20% decrease.

For June 20 and 21, the most recent days for which Similarweb has estimates, the ads site got in the range of 7,500 to 9,000 visits, Carr explained, meaning that ad-buying traffic has continued to drop.

Next thing you know, we’ll be hearing that Huffman has hired Linda Yaccarino to be the new CEO….

Filed Under: ads, communities, moderators, steve huffman, subreddits, threats
Companies: reddit

Reddit Tells Mods That Protesting By Changing Sub To NSFW Violates The Rules

from the fuck-u/spez dept

The enshittification of Reddit continues. Yesterday we wrote about the next move from protesting mods to switch their subs to NSFW, which strips those subreddits of ads, and how Reddit was experimenting with removing the mods who did that. For what it’s worth, just a few days ago, Reddit insisted in a comment that it wasn’t “threatening” mods with removal, and then just days later it literally did remove the mods, so nice going Reddit comms: you’ve completely fucked over whatever credibility you might have had.

Anyway, late on Wednesday, a Reddit admin admitted that the company was changing its rules to say that if you change your sub to NSFW in protest, that violates the rules:

That’s a discussion where a mod asks if “transitioning from SFW to NSFW is allowed” and the main admin account that interacts with moderators, ModCodeofConduct, replied:

Thanks for asking this, we’ll have messaging going out to affected communities later today. Changing a previously SFW community to a NSFW community in order to protest Reddit policies is inappropriate for members of your community and not acceptable overall. People subscribe to communities based on the content at the time of subscription. Communities can gradually change as they grow, but this is not what we are observing and not in the best interest of the users being subjected to that content.

Incorrectly marking your community is a violation of both our Content Policy (rule 6) as well as the Moderator Code of Conduct (rule 2).

This is similar to the language that was used by Reddit’s spokesperson a day earlier, accusing the mods of violating both the Content Policy (which, you’ll recall, Reddit took down for a while) and the Moderator Code of Conduct.

But… this excuse is bullshit. The content policy rule 6 reads:

Ensure people have predictable experiences on Reddit by properly labeling content and communities, particularly content that is graphic, sexually-explicit, or offensive.

Obviously, that’s for the reverse situation of what’s happening here. That rule is clearly designed to say that if you’re hosing NSFW content you can’t label your sub SFW. Spinning that around to say that subs labeling themselves as NSFW violates that policy is just ridiculous, obnoxious lawyering.

As for the Mod Code of Conduct Rule 2, that excuse is also bullshit. This rule is for the sub to “set appropriate and reasonable expectations” and then says:

Users who enter your community should know exactly what they’re getting into, and should not be surprised by what they encounter. It is critical to be transparent about what your community is and what your rules are in order to create stable and dynamic engagement among redditors.

And so, again, you could obnoxiously lawyer this and claim the switch goes against “expectations,” but in looking over various subreddits making this change, most of the ones I’ve seen held votes of their community and asked them what they wanted to do, and clearly stated their intentions to the members of that subreddit.

So, the blanket statement that switching to NSFW in protest violates those rules is clearly inauthentic bullshit.

Even worse, moderators are reporting that admins have started removing memes making fun of CEO Steve Huffman, as well as comments from angry Redditors repeating the “fuck u/spez” mantra (“spez” being Huffman’s username). They’re posting images of the ones that they claim are deleted. It’s unclear if those are actually being deleted or what’s going on, but Huffman has admitted in the past to editing comments that criticized him. And while he promised never to do it again and said he just did it out of frustration, I’m guessing he’s pretty damn frustrated right now.

Mods are continuing to fight back, and some are pointing out the ridiculous hypocrisy in all of this. For example, the mods of r/Canning (a subreddit for how to safely can food) said they received another threat from admins, and pointed out in response that they’re literally doing exactly what their community asked them to do, so to claim that they’re going against community wishes is bullshit:

We agree that subreddits belong to their community of users — and so when 89% of our users voted that we should blackout the community until Reddit backtracks on their current API access stance, we followed the communities request that we close shop.

The mods of r/Canning will continue to follow the wishes of our community first. If you wish us to make the subreddit public again, you will need to meet the demands of our users; to whit that you re-open discussion with 3rd party application developers, reduce your outrageous API pricing, and give them a minimum of 6 months before that pricing takes effect.

That is what the users have asked of us as their moderators. If you sincerely care about the “Subreddit belonging to the community of users” you will meet our demands, at which point we can discuss re-opening the subreddit. Should you prematurely force our subreddit public against the wishes of the vast majority of our users, our users will know the truth of the lie as to whom the subreddit really belongs.

In comments later in that thread, the mod from r/Canning points out that canning is a very tricky process, and done wrong can create real harm. They fear that if Reddit replaces them with mods who don’t know much, it could create real dangers. I’ve heard similar things from other mods of other subs as well. While certainly not all mods are perfect (many are far from), unilaterally dumping the most active ones and replacing them with corporate lapdogs creates real risks.

Or then there are the mods from r/PoliticalHumor who decided that if Huffman wants “democracy” rather than “landed gentry,” he’ll get it. They’ve made all members mods:

But, again, it’s incredible that someone needs to remind the dude who created Reddit how Reddit users react to any sort of threat to their way of doing things. Reddit is the place where the users don’t give a shit what you want. They want to fight for what’s right.

Perhaps Huffman is right that he’ll wait out his users. But I can’t see how any of this plays well for his investors, or how this speaks well of Reddit’s future as a community site.

Filed Under: nsfw, protests, rules, steve huffman, subreddits
Companies: reddit

As Reddit Threatens To Hand Over Closed Subs To New Mods, Subs Strike Back With Sexy John Oliver

from the john-oliver-beats-spez dept

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman really seems to underestimate the kinds of people who sign up to be Reddit mods, and their willingness to go to extreme lengths if you start pushing them. We’ve discussed the nonsensical nature of Huffman’s new API efforts, as well as his stupid response to the subreddit blackout which caused many subreddits to remain on strike. We also discussed his incredibly entitled position about how third party apps that made his site more valuable owe him money.

But, incredibly, Huffman seems unable to stop digging.

After initially suggesting that he would create policies to allow Reddit users to “vote out” moderators who were striking (in the mistaken belief that “ordinary” Reddit users didn’t support the strike), Reddit sent out a not very subtle threat letter to moderators of the still striking communities.

The whole letter stinks of traditional union-busting practices, starting off with an attempt to divide the striking mods to see if the company can peel some away from the strikes:

We are also aware that some members of your mod team have expressed that they want to close your community indefinitely. We are reaching out to find out if this is the consensus reached by the mod team.

Subreddits exist for the benefit of the community of users who come to them for support and belonging and in the end, moderators are stewards of these spaces and in a position of trust. Your users rely on your community for information, support, entertainment, and finding connection with others who have similar interests. Ensuring that communities are able to remain stable and actively moderated is incredibly important to the people seeking out these spaces to make and foster connections.

Then the threat, worded in a way such that Reddit could later pretend it wasn’t actually a threat:

If there are mods here who are willing to work towards reopening this community, we are willing to work with you to process a Top Mod Removal request or reorder the mod team to achieve this goal if mods higher up the list are hindering reopening. We would handle this request and any retaliation attempts here in this modmail chain immediately.

Our goal is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is made available for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community, please let us know.

And, of course, after this letter became public, Reddit pretended there was nothing at all threatening about it:

“We have not threatened anyone,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said in a statement to The Verge. “That’s not how we operate. Pressuring people is not our goal. We’re communicating expectations and how things work. Redditors want to reddit and mods want to mod. We want mods who want to mod to be able to do so.”

Come on, Tim. None of us were born yesterday. Everyone knows it was a threat to remove striking mods.

And, of course, all any of this does is continue to erode trust in the platform. As Scharon Harding over at Ars Technica rightly notes:

Reddit’s battle with devs, mods, and users is just the most recent version of the struggle. Reddit felt like something that the community built with the company, but while Reddit was happy to offload the responsibility for content creation, moderation, and (until recently) app development to third parties, it wasn’t willing to hand over real power.

Sudden, unaffordable API pricing (Reddit will charge $12,000 for 50 million API requests) and Reddit’s obstinacy are also harsh warnings to devs about the risks of building something totally reliant on a platform they don’t own. Many devs thought Reddit would always allow reasonable pricing for its API and have put in years of work based on that assumption. In the future, devs should think twice about building products based on properties they can’t control, assuming a company will always be supportive and reasonable (or even agreeing with them about what “supportive” and “reasonable” mean). That could mean a future where devs are far less incentivized to create innovations.

But hell hath no fury like a Redditor being jacked around by clueless pointy-haired bosses, and the mods struck back. Given the clear (yes, Tim Rathschmidt) threat of replacing of striking mods, possibly through a sketchy “voting” process to remove, as Huffman ridiculously called them, “the landed gentry, two of the biggest striking subreddits held a vote, just like Huffman wanted. Okay, well maybe not “just like” he wanted. Instead, r/GIFs and r/pics held a poll on whether they should “return to normal” or “only allow images featuring John Oliver.”

Let’s just say that Huffman’s belief that the average Redditor just wanted things to return to normal showed a profound misunderstanding of the average Redditor’s desire for funny chaos over helping a company make money. Here’s how the vote on r/GIFs went:

Yes, that shows “return to normal’“ receiving NEGATIVE 1,851 votes, while the John Oliver solution received 13,696 votes. Other subreddits joined in the fun and the results were even more extreme. r/pics voted for John Oliver pics with a vote of 37,331 against negative 2,329. Of course, r/pics went beyond the r/GIFs requirement of just being pics of John Oliver to them having to be sexy.

Then r/aww joined in as well, with its community voting in favor of only “adorable” pics of John Oliver (or his adorable Japanese mascot Chiijohn), with the Oliver pics winning by an even larger vote: 48,506 in favor and negative 2,691 voting to return to normal:

Oliver took to Twitter (unfortunately…) to support the Reddit protests, saying “have at it”:

He then included 10 photos of himself that would aid the cause. Here are a few:

And, of course, other subreddits are joining in as well, including r/Piracy, which has said that “only sexy pirate John Oliver artwork” may be posted.

Scrolling through the various subreddits, all you see are pics of John Oliver, including some that are arguably not entirely safe for work (depending on where you work, of course).

Meanwhile, Steve “this will pass” Huffman may have even more pressing matters at hand as a ransomware group has said that it will release a bunch of leaked Reddit data if the company doesn’t roll back its API policy changes (and pay the hackers $4.5 million).

Not to condone the hacking/ransom demands, but seems like the company might have been better off not pissing off its most active users?

Filed Under: api, john oliver, mods, protests, strike, subreddits
Companies: reddit

Reddit Communities Decide To Extend Boycott After CEO Says It’s Almost Over

from the downvote dept

Oops.

As you likely know, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, desperate to show Wall St. that his company can make money, decided to lock away the information on Reddit behind a paywall by turning Reddit’s free API to paid, creating quite a mess. In response, thousands of subreddits went dark on Monday, with a plan for most (though not all) to come back today.

But, on Tuesday, Huffman’s internal email to Reddit staff leaked to the Verge, in which Huffman continued with the same dismissive attitude towards Reddit’s users that he showed in last week’s AMA.

There’s a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we’ve seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would.

Elsewhere he notes, again somewhat dismissively, that the subreddits will come back on Wednesday. He also claims only around 1,000 subreddits went dark, but multiple reports show the number was actually closer to 8,000, and that includes many of the most trafficked subreddits like r/funny, r/gaming, r/music, r/science, and r/todayilearned.

One page visualizing the blackouts noted that, of the 500 top subreddits on the site, over 70% either went private or restricted (black is private, brown is restricted).

Perhaps because of Huffman’s dismissive attitude, a bunch of subreddits are saying that they’re no longer planning to reopen today, but will follow r/Music’s lead and stay dark indefinitely:

“Reddit has budged microscopically,” u/SpicyThunder335, a moderator for r/ModCoord, wrote in the post. They say that despite an announcement that access to a popular data-archiving tool for moderators would be restored, “our core concerns still aren’t satisfied, and these concessions came prior to the blackout start date; Reddit has been silent since it began.” SpicyThunder335 also bolded a line from a Monday memo from CEO Steve Huffman obtained by The Verge — “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well” — and said that “more is needed for Reddit to act.”

Ahead of the Tuesday post, more than 300 subreddits had committed to staying dark indefinitely, SpicyThunder335 said. The list included some hugely popular subreddits, like r/aww (more than 34 million subscribers), r/music (more than 32 million subscribers), and r/videos (more than 26 million subscribers). Even r/nba committed to an indefinite timeframe at arguably the most important time of the NBA season. But SpicyThunder335 invited moderators to share pledges to keep the protests going, and the commitments are rolling in.

Now, plenty of subreddits have decided to come back, and I don’t think anyone is begrudging those who did so. But it’s incredible how every time Huffman opens his mouth, he seems to make the situation worse, rather than better.

That’s not leadership. It’s desperation.

Filed Under: api, boycott, steve huffman, subreddits
Companies: reddit

Was It The Same Corrupt Team That Investigated/Stole From Silk Road That Now Subpoenaed Reddit?

from the questions,-questions dept

On Monday, Andy Greenberg over at Wired published a story about how a Homeland Security ICE agent, based in Baltimore, had sent a subpoena to Reddit, demanding info on five users who had been posting to the subreddit r/darkmarkets, which (you guessed it!) is where lots of people discuss dark markets like Silk Road and the recently shut down (and all money taken) Evolution. It appears that the subpoenas were trying to track down more information about who was behind Evolution:

Earlier this month, a Baltimore Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent sent a subpoena to Reddit demanding that the site turn over a collection of personal data about five users of the r/darknetmarkets forum. The subpoena appears to be the first hint of a federal investigation of the recently defunct massive online market known as Evolution, which sold drugs, weapons, and stolen financial details. All five targets of the subpoena were involved, to varying degrees, in the Reddit discussion of that black market?s abrupt disappearance two weeks ago, in which two top administrators apparently absconded with millions of dollars worth of bitcoin belonging to Evolution?s buyers and sellers.

According to a copy of the subpoena shared with WIRED by one of the forum?s moderators who was named in the document, the DHS seeks information that includes the names, IP addresses, dates and times of site visits as well as other data that Reddit likely doesn?t possess, including the users? phone numbers and financial data. (Reddit doesn?t even require an email address to sign up.)

For what it’s worth, Reddit’s privacy policy notes that it does collect IP addresses and holds them and other info for 90 days — meaning that if any of the users weren’t careful, they may have revealed some information about themselves. Though, seriously, if you’re deeply involved in a dark market doing illegal things, and then posting publicly to a subreddit without covering your tracks, you’re basically asking to be caught.

That said, what struck me most was the fact that this request came from Baltimore. Because right about the same time that Greenberg’s story came out, the Justice Department was revealing its criminal complaint against two of the key federal agents involved in the investigation of Silk Road, who (according to the complaint) stole a bunch of money from Silk Road, extorted Silk Road’s administrator and also engaged in a bunch of other nefarious actions, including issuing a fake subpoena to Venmo, engaging in civil asset forfeiture against Mt. Gox accounts and discussing other similar activities.

And both of those guys were… based in Baltimore. It’s not entirely clear if the two allegedly corrupt federal agents — Carl Force of the DEA and Shaun Bridges of the Secret Service — were part of this same Homeland Security investigations team, but it wouldn’t be entirely surprising to find out that it was the same team. One hopes that whoever is involved in that investigations team now, isn’t doing similar corrupt activities as mentioned in the criminal complaint against Force and Bridges. However, given how those two appeared to abuse their position, and given that there’s a high likelihood of the subpoena coming from the same team, it certainly raises some additional questions. And that’s not even mentioning the concerns about other corrupt individuals in these investigations, including a Homeland Security agent who went by the name “mr. wonderful.”

That’s not to say that the subpoena to Reddit is problematic. It may be perfectly legit (though it does appear that at least one of the people that the subpoena was digging into is just Gwern Branwen, a well-known security researcher who insists he has never sold any illegal products on dark market sites). Still, the criminal complaint from earlier this week certainly raises serious questions about any of these fishing expeditions, especially by a team coming out of Baltimore.

Filed Under: baltimore, dark markets, dea, dhs, investigation, secret service, silk road, subpoenas, subreddits
Companies: evolution, reddit, silk road