A post from r/apple explaining why they were forced to reopen their subreddit after planning to close indefinitely.

Quotes from the r/apple announcement:

Reddit’s asshole CEO u/spez made it clear that Reddit was not backing down on their changes but assured users that apps or tools meant for accessibility will be unharmed along with most moderation tools and bots. While this was great to hear, it still wasn’t enough. So along with hundreds of other subreddits including our friends over at r/iPhone, r/iOS, r/AppleWatch, and r/Jailbreak, we decided to stay private indefinitely until Reddit changed course by giving third-party apps a fair price for API access.

Now you must be wondering, “I’m seeing this post, does that mean they budged?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. You are seeing this post because Reddit has threatened to open subreddits regardless of mod action and replace entire teams that otherwise refuse. We want the best for this community and have no choice but to open it back up — or have it opened for us.

NOTE: The URL linked to this post is a web.archive.org archive linked to a Libreddit instance to prevent Reddit from taking down that post from the internet + prevent giving Reddit direct traffic. Other links linked here go straight to Libreddit urls or to news articles. No links here lead directly to Reddit.

Libreddit is a third-party web client hosted by third-party servers.

Link to full post

EDIT: fixed grammar.

  • TheCuriousCoder87@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    Honestly, they should just force Reddit to replace them. Let’s see how long Reddit lasts without experienced moderators.

    • hyperyog@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is what I said to another person:

      I’m assuming just current reddit admins are going to take over or getting some certain moderators from subreddits (that aren’t even of high ranking) to take over and remove the higher rankings from power, which then they will be the ones reopening the subreddits.

      Now that I read it this sounds like a coup d’état

      where I got the idea from: https://lemmy.world/post/101237

      • axtualdave@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        If reddit employees start engaging in actual content moderation, reddit will run up against the DMCA’s safe harbor protections, which means reddit becomes responsible, as a company, for all the content on the site. Or, at least, in those subreddits.

        Ain’t no way the legal team is going to let an employee do the actual moderation work. But you’re right, they’ll find someone who will do it for the power.

        • HawkMan@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          of they remove mods because they don’t do the job the way they like, they’re still under the same law…

          You can’t sidestep laws by simple workarounds

  • LostCause@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Spez also apparently called the mods “landed gentry” which is hilarious coming from a rich fuck behaving like a king towards some people who work for him for free!

    • ewe@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, that elicits a comparison to the feudal system that I don’t think is flattering to him.

    • animist@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      That dude is cringe af

      Most of those mods aren’t property-owning with titles of nobility so spez is wrong on more levels

  • Decompiled@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Spez is now being outwardly hostile toward the community. His plan isn’t working and he is afraid. From a strategy perspective, he should negotiate and for moderators, they should continue until he negotiates.
    This doubling down by the moderators will work. The doubling down from Spez will only damage Reddit further.
    When they IPO (assuming it is more than 50% equity) we could probably buy enough shares to force him and the board to resign.

  • JelloBrains@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    The subs should do rolling blackouts on important dates to their communities, Apple announcement day, blackouts… Iphone update days, blackouts… and so on.

    It seems quite clear that nobody at Reddit has ever had any form of PR training, The Verge says their PR person was basically saying two different things and contradicting themselves the article goes on to say “I don’t know how to interpret that, or his other replies explaining that the current actions might be a pastiche of interpretations of different rules instead of just Rule 4 — but it all makes me wonder if the conspiracy theorists among us were correct.”

  • kloud@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    They should just leave then, along with all the users supporting the blackout. Not bending for that lying piece of shit is the best thing you can do for the community. Doing what he wants and reopening the subreddit only empowers him to continue ignoring and abusing the community. If reddit thinks they can forcefully open up hundreds and thousands of subreddits and figure out the moderation for all of them, so be it, I don’t even want to know how it goes. If you genuinely don’t like what spez is doing, delete your reddit account now and stop visiting the site, otherwise you’re supporting him and his actions.

    • somniumx@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I think this behavior is my breaking point. Going from “I just don’t log in anymore” the last few days to “I’ll get home today, nuke my account and overwrite everything”. I’m done.

  • tubbadu@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    u/spez said:

    We, even in disagreement, we appreciate that users can care enough to protest on Reddit, can protest on Reddit, and then our platform is really resilient enough to survive these things.

    Wtf reddit

    • TWeaK@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Honestly I kind of wonder if this is all some kind of coordinated power grab to crack down on public spaces in the build up to 2024 elections.

        • TWeaK@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think Occam’s razor would reach that conclusion when you look at all the different services that are in decline. There’s no one person tying them all together. At least, no one that is publicly known.

          Peter Thiel comes close for Twitter - he financed Trump, along with a few sinister businesses, and he tried (and failed) to make a Twitter competitor. Thus it makes sense that he’d tap in his old business partner Elon Musk to remove Twitter from the equation (make no mistake, Twitter isn’t dying because of Musk’s mismanagement, it’s dying because of a leveraged buyout saddling it with $13bn of debt). However that doesn’t really cover any other service, such as reddit, Discord, or whatever else.

          Regardless, we, the people, are being dispersed and our ability to organise suppressed.

      • ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        bruh, that’s been happening. it’s part of why the discussion quality on reddit is in such accelerated decline.

        • TWeaK@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think the real reason the discussions on reddit have been in decline is because

          • reddit promotes controversy and ragebait, as this has been proven to “increase user engagement”.
          • more recently reddit has been wielding the ban hammer hard and perma banning people over things they would previously let slide.
  • BigBorner@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    But active communities are relied upon by thousands or even millions of users, and we have a duty to keep these spaces active.

    Dont kill 3rd party apps then.

  • tubbadu@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Please guys, we need a petition “u/spez wants to replace protesting moderators that does not bow to his will: we want to replace him as Reddit CEO then”

    • JasSmith@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      The r/Videos mods called it from day one, and they at least claimed to accept that outcome. I salute those guys. I suspect other mods like r/Apple were never really serious.

  • Ginkko117@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    How could someone force mods to reopen? Blackmailing? Or they just really don’t want to lose control over subreddit (and possibly see it “shittified”)?
    I also wanted to write just how stupid it sounds and that things like that were impossible on the forums of ye olde internet - but actually they weren’t, admins could do anything if they wanted, lol

    • ErikT738@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      By just appointing new mods and removing the old ones? It’s not that hard. The subreddit’s quality will probably suffer.

  • Lightninhopkins@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    I see no proof of anything here, sorry. All I see is a link to another instance where someone said they were mods of /r/apple