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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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I think that's a good thing in the long run. A lot of reddit moderators are absolutely shit people, and having an actual process to remove them is a good thing.
It should go without saying fuck u/spez and that his motives here are absolutely malicious in nature, but I do see some small good coming from this.
Along with the "better mod tools" ... I was laughing my ass off when the fuckstick spez said that while they cut off the 3rd party apps, they are diligently working and will soon have "better mod tools" immediately. Which of course prompted someone to link to a quote from spez himself saying almost verbatim the same thing 6 years ago.
Self burn - those are rare.
In 2018 spez defended use of the n-word and I’ve been itching to leave since. I hate I needed an alternative to leave, but liking it here.
I think they're rolling it out rapidly at this point in time for the same reason that they've resisted it for years - it's going to 'force' subs / mods to become more populist and more easily bent & manipulated by the whims of people "outside" the community, like reaching them via /all or similar.
No denying that Reddit has been ass as far as accountability and addressing problem moderators - but unless this mechanism is made super arcane black-box shit to prevent manipulation, this is very liable to result in tightly focused communities getting completely redirected.
Worse IMO is how much anything like a mod "election" is like grade-school Class President elections - it's not about realistic campaign points, or about accomplishing meaningful things, it's about popularity and talking hot shit, regardless of practical outcomes or larger implications. The kid who is gonna abolish detention, make recess four hours, and give our free gummy frogs every Tuesday is gonna win the vote - even if they can't realistically make changes to the school and can't afford candy for the class each week.
Just wait until spam rings start hijacking small subs via botnet mod votes.
Then we also don't know if the action is just temporary to just remedy a problem before IPO or a serious consideration. Rolling it out quickly is moronic too because what about smaller subs & targeted harassment.
It might also cause some interesting problems.
What happens if a sub votes out all the moderators of a sub, before there are any new ones?
Could they remove Reddit devs from /r/Reddit or /r/Reddit.com? Being admins, they could probably just put themselves back on, but the imagery of them being forced off their own sub is a little funny.
I'm sure there would be zero abuse of this functionality to harass pro or publicly out LGBT moderators and remove them from their positions.
Lol yeah this is not what happens. If anything, it's the "pro-LGBT" would be the ones abusing this system to take over subreddit, and it's impossible to deny at this point. It was funny seeing Bardfinn fail at taking over subreddit in spectacular fashion once as the head mod managed to get his account back before it submitted the request. These mods would even spam CSEM using sock accounts then report the victim subreddit for being unmoderated. Subreddits would go into approved posting mode to defend against this. So no, you've pegged the wrong people that'd abuse such a system.
EDIT: source
Oh it certainly can rub both ways. I've been publicly out as trans since 2015 and am quite outspoken against the modern LGBT community (and banned from half the spaces at this point anyway). That certain grifters and power hungry individuals have figured out how to game the modern moral system doesn't mean that there is never any legitimate harassment towards LGBT individuals.
"Listen and believe" is quite possibly the dumbest thing to become a mainstream argument. As if nobody would ever figure out they can abuse this policy to lie or have ulterior motives or want to air petty drama or want to paint a target on someone for their followers to harass. Minorities are to be treated as God reincarnate and can do and say no wrong. Want to be the shittiest, most toxic person on Earth? Go ahead! Just be sure to say you're trans so anyone who calls you an asshole is being transphobic. It's OK to do vile things like spam child porn on a forum you don't like in an attempt to get it shut down or seized by authorities. The ends justify the means after all!
I'm well aware of AHS's bullshit over the years and the many, many, many times they've tried to shut down subs I browse.
Pretty obvious that these tools only apply to dissenting subs… after this all blows over, there won’t be a single reddit employee even looking at this system
They even explicitly stated that!
This system is being implemented for the sole purpose of kicking out mods that are keeping subs private. It's absolutely retaliatory. There's no chance that they maintain this system as an actual long-term change to reddit's mod removal policies. It would be too much overhead to staff.
You want Nazi's taking over? Because that's how you get Nazis taking over.
I think it’s a weird way to look at moderation as if it was democratic. Voting bad mods out is one thing, but I don’t think you can just vote new good mods in. Moderation is a lot of unpaid work. Even if a large part of a community is unhappy with a mod decision, removing the mods doesn’t mean there will be people with that much time on their hands to step up, and even if there are, it’s not easy to choose the good ones among them by a simple popular vote…
Some of the subs I was on had some elaborate setups with mod tools and bots and the mods were still quite busy. Replacing them with randoms who then also don’t have access to the tools would be entirely pointless.
On the other hand, it's a terrible system to have mods as unassailable tyrants.
As an example, I was banned from a popular sub for corrective someone about a minor detail of a shooting. I correctly cited the appropriate state law in question, and I was banned for being a right-wing extremist. I am a leftist, and linked numerous comments I had made in the past that reflected as such. The mods made a vague excuse about how my comment would just cause unnecessary confusion and muted me. People like that should not be allowed authority over anything, let alone a forum for public discourse.