I’ve been the main moderator of the same community since 2016. This evening, i approved my last comment.
I’m leaving for two reasons:
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Reddit went public a week ago. I didn’t volunteer to work for a publicly traded company, i volunteered to work for a community. As long as i live under capitalism i accept that my labor will generate value for shareholders, but damned if i ever do it for free. (this is not a Faulkner quote)
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April 1st is coming and i’m scared they might do another r/place. Doing in r/place 2022 and 2023 has left me dejected and bitter and i don’t want to feel obligated to participate again.
Leaving felt like ripping myself off of something warm i’ve been comfortably glued to for a long time. Still recommend it for anyone still giving Reddit shareholders free labor
EDIT: there are too many comments to respond to, but i’ve appreciated all of them! Thank you
The only thing I remember about r/place was that they dropped it anytime they did something stupid, like kill the free API, and that they would mod the content which made it a bot spam war fest.
Also the Pakistani flag getting defaced by r/Chodi because insert rent free joke here.
They did that once actually, when they killed third-party apps they decided to do a surprise r/place hoping it would calm people down. In July. Not even a year after the last one. It came as a horrible surprise
and if you leave and abandoned that sub by delete your account. admin just need to find a new mod on that sub
Someone should put Reddit’s stock price graph on r/place.
This is silly to me. So you’re happy working for free at a private company, but not a public one? The fact that them going public was known for a while was fine? The lack of care they showed you as a private company while taking the shitty concrete steps to go public were all fine?
If yu want to take a hard look at your role, when the last revolt during the API changes happened, the revolt failed because mods like you wouldn’t stand up. So it’s funny to me to see what the “final straw” is for you, because in the grand scheme of things, it seems like nothing.
I certainly don’t understand why you would move to another place in the Internet and announce this silly view.
I can agree with your point, the API changes should have been the breaking point. Keep in mind there’s going to be a lot of different final straws for people though, it is inevitable as traditional social media collapses into itself. The best time was yesterday, the next best is now.
I totally get that - but coming to another platform to announce it is just funny to me, and I think the questions I asked at the start were valid and I’m genuinely curious about the answers.
No need to be an asshole about it, the important thing is that he moved on, the path he took is not relevant.
I didn’t think I was being an asshole. The questions I asked were genuine, and I think I was pretty neutral with pointing out how OP shares blame in the situation they are in.
And, through all that, i summed it up with how silly this whole situation is - especially when you look at how OP is responding in the thread. This comes across as a “look at me, I did something good, tell me how nice I am” post. Given the rest of the situations context, just ugh.
“This is silly to me”. Followed by a bunch of snide questions.
“the revolt failed because mods like you wouldn’t stand up”. Throwing blame on someone that did nothing that harmed you directly, and that even assumes a niche mod would have had any impact in the results at all.
“I certainly don’t understand why you would move to another place in the Internet and announce this silly view.” Then you go on to call them silly again, and criticize them for making a post in the proper C/ for that kind of venting.
Then your entire comment here is repeating that, doubling down on the same thighs, and then accuse them of begging for attention.
I get it. You didn’t think you were being an asshole. You were. To avoid that in the future, try not using language that denigrates, belittles, or dismisses someone, and you are much less likely to end up being an asshole. And you 100% were being an asshole. If there were a textbook in being an asshole online, your two comments could serve as perfect examples of how to do it without resorting to cursing. That’s pretty much the only thing you could have done to make it worse without going entirely off topic.
One asshole to another? You gotta either learn not to be an asshole, or own that shit and not pretend you aren’t.
If you have it in you, please recreate your previous subreddit here in the fediverse. There’s less tools, but also far less users, and plenty of room to make tools.
A ton of niche communities didn’t make it over here during the “exodus”. Any little bit helps.
Yes please
Shameless plug: /c/Sekiro, /c/Bloodborne
Doing my part :)
Gotta actually link things if you want people to find them, my friend! 😉
I’m always too lazy to link properly. Thanks for helping out :D
We need auto conversion ao that c/communityname actually links to the community if it exists on the home sub of the user (for example as a suggestion)
I never understood the point of place and why it made people become so evil.
Place was loved by people because it was interesting and showed lots of human ingenuity. People were so angry that reddit abused it in an attempt to take attention away from the criticism and protests. Especially because it was assumed to only happen every 5 or so years, and having two close together felt very abusive by reddit.
Good on you.
I walked away from my sole moderatorship as well, but I think my contribution was considerably less significant than yours… I moderated a tiny all-but-dead niche interest sub where I was also basically the only poster.
That’s, like, no difference whatsoever from what I do here. So I just upped sticks and moved to Lemmy, with no noticeable change in my life or workflow.
I left my community of 12 years with >4M subs a year ago, when they killed the API. Without third party tools, my time modding had more than doubled. I spent almost as much time on reddit as I did on my full time job at some point.
I wonder if they don’t even want mods. Just AI/algorithms and ads. What is 100 well moderated, mindful discussions worth compared to a single, well targeted ad?
Honest question: what did you feel you got out of modding? I feel like it would be a thankless endeavor and would bring absolutely no satisfaction at any point.
It started as a very niche community when I joined, so being a mod actually felt like being a “recognized” member of the community without doing a whole lot. And when the sub started growing, keeping the trolls out was more of a necessary chore to preserve the peace, that I did without really thinking about it.
Only once I left I started realizing how much time it consumed. I’ve signed up for a phd program since I left and I still have more free time despite the research and a full time job. That’s how much time it consumed in the end.
How was place a bitch for mods? I honestly never heard anybody talking about it and im genuinely curious
I felt a duty to not only place pixels but also coordinate efforts. Picking the design, updating the design, spreading information so the people placing pixels know what’s going on, advertising, talking to other communities…
I don’t remember them very well but i’m pretty sure i’ve had 4 hour nights for the entire duration. For place 2023 i spent most of my waking time in Discord calls.
And all this for a game that can be emotionally devastating. Getting overrun by a streamer feels shockingly similar to having big kids trample your sand castle, it’s this little thing that you built together getting destroyed by stronger people and they’re mocking you relentlessly.
Gah. Ok yeah that sounds like ass.
I’m sorry. The corporate assholes don’t deserve to pad their fat wallets based on your free labor, but it’s still absolutely the loss of something you love when you step away and it hurts. I’m still grieving losing Apollo and all of the goofy, weird ass little subs and brilliant human beings who made me laugh and cry every day on Reddit. It’s not been replaced in my life. It took millions of us almost 20 years to make that stupid website something incredible…I can’t deny that it was incredible at points.
It’s gone, it’s just a website now and an app with ads every 3rd pixel just like the rest. There is still some good content and good people, just as there are on TikTok, Bookface, X and insta. The decent shit that is there, on all of the platforms, is overwhelmed by their horrible algorithm trying to sell you shit and increase engagement to monetize your every click.
If there’s good shit on any of those sites, I’ll surely read about it here. If not, it’s not worth it.
I miss Apollo and Reddit too.
Second time for me. I migrated about ten years ago from Metafilter, which I eventually rage quit. That really fucking hurt, and Reddit filed that niche in my life (but not the meeting IRL or helping IRL part).
Now I’ve had to go through the same thing with Reddit. I’m into Lemmy, Mastodon, and Bluesky, but it’s not the same. I hope it’s just not the same, yet.
I don’t know that anything will be the same because it took so long for everyone to gather there and make 100,000 thriving communities about every random little thing from rare diseases to Pokémon made from toilet paper tubes, sexy John Oliver, kids getting hit on the head. If got interested in some random TV show, you could find a sub where there would be 100 interesting conversations about it. That just doesn’t exist outside of Reddit. Where even could it? Fucking Quora? Facebook groups?
I don’t know what anyone could have done to preserve it though. If it’s POSSIBLE to slap a million ads on it and make a billion dollars, but definitely ruin it forever…it’s inevitable. Nothing can stop that.
Thank you for putting into words some of the emotions I’ve felt over the last 9 months.
I’m tired of being monetized. They have more than enough money.
That must’ve been tough to do. You have the respect of at least one internet stranger 🫡
Lemmings did the tough thing months (years?) ago when thousands of third party apps and community development went to waste.
He took the easy way out and helped spez IPO.
Some of us take a longer path than others. All are valid. Sure, maybe some have better outcomes, but no one should be criticized for taking a step on the right direction, however late it may be. You don’t know what they’ve been through or what it meant to them. If you’re only going to be negative then you probably just shouldn’t comment.
You call it “a longer path”, I call it having your cake and eating it, and whining about it
Congratulations! You’re doing the right thing. Reddit is trash now.
Bring it here. We need good moderators. Welcome back to the original corporate free Internet. It’s great
Why do people like r/place, and why do others hate it? I never understood the phenomena.
The first time /r/place was offered was markedly different from the others. The first was a free-for-all hellfest for a long while where organization wasn’t even secondary or tertiary to the experience. Then came the age of “reason” and brands and flags sprouted up, obliterating any semblance of originality with an uninteresting mob of paint rollers. The second go around, there was nothing new, everything was pre-planned and strategically plotted, and genitals were a big no-no. To answer your question, novelty and the spontaneous lack thereof. Freedom and the spontaneous lack thereof.
Then came the age of “reason” and brands and flags sprouted up
Ugh. The domination of the space by advertisements and just plain nationalism is so lame and nauseating. I don’t know if it’s mainly bots or just peoples’ general lack of creativity, but it sucks.
My understanding is it’s mostly bots. Not bot accounts so much, but people running scripts using their main accounts. I’m not totally sure on this, but I’m pretty confident I read about scripts communities used for their drawings.
It’s like that Woodstock concert in the 2000s. You can’t just recapture magic like that by repetition.
Spontaneity is spontaneous.
It’s like an MMO for pixel art. The best part of MMOs is all the other players. The worst part of MMOs is… all the other players.
How do you gear/level up? What are the currencies?
So accurate.
The first r/place was one of those unique events in history. The later ones didn’t work because people now knew what it was, techniques to use, and of course bots. I think the most enjoyable was how it not only sparked comradery within various subreddits to support their design and keep it alive, it also brought together some “opponents” to do the same (thinking my experience with the Star Citizen/Elite Dangerous agreement to help each other).
Also streamers were a lot more influential on place 22 and 23 than they were in 17. Streamers are external to the website, don’t particularly have a dog in the race other than themselves, are encouraged to create spectacle, and the kind of personality that makes you a big streamer is not conducive to being a good neighbor in a competitive pixel art game. So while i hesitate to say that there was anything about Reddit in particular that made Place 2017 a good event, i do think the presence of streamers made 22 and 23 much worse.
Yo, I was mired in modding for several years. It felt good to maintain that space, and I helped create the best community for one of the most popular mobile games. It wasn’t the general community, it was the analysis/strategy focused sub, so we had very tight moderation policies. That made a lot of people mad, both those that wanted to post more general content, and those that wanted to rage about the game/developer. The work is constant and nearly thankless, not to mention unpaid.
Your point of not doing volunteer work for a publicly traded company is an excellent one. I definitely felt pride in doing that kind of community service for a public space. Now that Reddit is profit-driven and answering to shareholders, it’s asinine to do that work for free.
