- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
- tech@pawb.social
- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.ml
- tech@pawb.social
lemmy.world IS NOT a general discussion area. find another community.
my bad…
-manitcor
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@manitcor Wtf!! What an asshole CEO
So far Spez’s legacy includes, in no particular order:
- Changing other peoples’ comments
- Starting a war with the 3rd party app devs who made reddit the easily accessible platform it is (browsing reddit on the toilet wasn’t nearly as common before the first apps came out, and all of the first ones were 3rd party)
- Being a moderator on the jailbait subreddit, a community for sharing sexually suggestive pictures of underage teenage girls
- Forcing new moderation teams on communities whose moderation he didn’t agree with
- Straight up lying about the 3rd party apps and their developers every step of the way
Way to go, Steve Huffman! You had a community of volunteers build your platform for you and now you’re taking it all away from them. I’m sure this won’t backfire.
I posted this previously elsewhere.
The statement from r/watchredditdie when they closed the sub really put things in perspective for me.
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian have gone so far as to renege on their promise of listing Aaron Swartz among Reddit, Inc’s founders. Such an egregious breach of contract - only performed once their agreed-upon co-founder no longer walked the earth - could only be carried out by immoral individuals acting in fundamental bad faith. In this way and so many others, Reddit is dead.
spez is also a doomsday prepper who dreams about living as some sort of lord in a post-apocalyptic feudal society
“Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”
I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.
In a post-apocalyptic world? That skinny nerd (not to be meant as a slur, I myself am a nerd)?
Yeah I sorta doubt that. He’d need to 1) not be an asshat and 2) have a fair bit more physical size, strength and fighting ability
I wonder if this assclown realizes that his fortune will be worth fuck-all if society collapses, and with it goes his power.
" I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader." No steve, it’s 100% egotistical.
I have spent a lot of time with very rich people over the years for work and they will certainly bite it incredibly early in the apocalypse. If someone is born into wealth, they are almost always fundamentally inept in basic ways. The longer someone stays rich, the more inept and abstracted from the world they become. They are entirely ensconced in a bubble of their own making. Money opens so many doors and protects them from so many just basic consequences of living that they entirely forget that those obstacles exist.
They are also just constantly, constantly being glad-handed and yessir’ed into an excessive amount of confidence. They know it too, but they can’t really trust anyone so they just make friends with people who they know would steal the wallet off their corpse but happen to be nicer about it than the other ones who would also do it because they have nowhere else to turn. Other rich people aren’t trustworthy to them either because they are only either more or less rich, above or below them.
It’ll go down pretty much how it did in the last third of the movie Triangle of Sadness. They are building bunkers that their handlers and others will actually live in. Not to mention that anyone that knows they were a potential engineer, actively or passively, of the downfall of man will have someone to take it out on right in front of them.
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Is your comment threatening him? Why are you blackmailing him, man? How is he going to work together with you now that you’ve so aggressively threatened him?
Why is your comment so badly coded? I can’t help you optimize your comment, Google didn’t help me write mine.
I posted this previously elsewhere.
The statement from r/watchredditdie when they closed the sub really put things in perspective for me.
Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian have gone so far as to renege on their promise of listing Aaron Swartz among Reddit, Inc’s founders. Such an egregious breach of contract - only performed once their agreed-upon co-founder no longer walked the earth - could only be carried out by immoral individuals acting in fundamental bad faith. In this way and so many others, Reddit is dead.
Wow I didn’t know he ran r/jailbait. Gross.
He was forcefully added as a mod on the subreddit. Reddit used to have a system which allowed you to make someone mod without requiring them to accept.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/1477psa/comment/jnuy0xf/
When people add you as a mod, you can still leave. He never did. That subreddit in particular was known to have the blessing of the reddit admins to operate and eventually made ‘subreddit of the month’. Then a news org picked up that reddit was hosting this content and then they shut it down.
They were well aware of what was going on. Andrewsmith is right, there is some plausible deniability there, but with the everything else we know about Steve Huffman, I’m not so sure I can agree with his assessment that it was forced upon him.
Andrewsmith is right,
As he often is. That guy knows more about Reddit than Huffman does. Hope he moves to Lemmy.
He let Ghislain Maxwell mod a bunch of subs until she eventually went to jail. It was common knowledge that its was her account but no problem from the pedo reddit admins
It was never proven that the account was hers and it was literally just users automatically claiming that account was Ghislaine Maxwell because that account stopped posting around the same time she got arrested. Nothing bugs me more than that myth being parroted as if it was proven fact.
U/maxwellhill was a monster‽ Say it isn’t so…how could he have known…FUCK spez
While it’s certainly better than actively moderating a community…
Is being the admin of a website that actively hosts jailbait and required a massive media outrage to finally remove it that much better? I get free speech and all, but I mean, the subreddit straight up catalogued which pictures were “fap material” and encouraged people (including parents) to take candid photos of the children around them.
A community like that wouldn’t last a millisecond in a server I host.
It’s not like it was a small sub either, IIRC. I’m not going to google jailbait to find the stories, but it must’ve been a few hundred thousand subscribers I think. At a time when the big subs had a few mill at most.
Even though it was ethically very bad, it was legal. And Reddit had a policy of not removing content, unless it was illegal or doxxing.
The fact is that they wanted to follow the same principles as the government, and allow complete freedom of speech. And if you are following freedom of speech, the ethicality of content is irrelevant.
Reddit never approved of r/jailbait. They simply allowed it.
Ahhh, ty. It did seem even worse than expected for him to have been actively running that sub.
Forced promotion
He did not
Changing other peoples’ comments
Wait the guy changed someone’s comment?
Yes. I believe it was people on the donald subreddit, which could be seen as funny, because most sane people (myself included) don’t agree with them politically, but it’s still a huge misuse of admin powers and proof that he has no integrity. Can’t let other peoples’ rights be violated if we want to keep our own.
Yeah he changed one comment saying: “Fuck u/spez” by replacing “spez” with one of the r/the_donald mods. This was also done silently so no * to indicate the comment had been edited.
Yeah, he got busted for it and wrote a half asked apology claiming he would change. Claimed he was just trolling…
Fuck u/spez
Fuck u/spez
Yes, its even listed on the Wiki page for reddit under 2016 controversies
Has it been removed? Seems to jump from him becoming CEO to the banning of loli?
Further down the page under “Other Controversies”
Further down the page under “Other Controversies”
Yea this will kill Reddit. Maybe not right away but soon.
WAIT. Spez was a mod on fucking r/jailbait??? WHAT???
Being a moderator on the jailbait subreddit, a community for sharing sexually suggestive pictures of underage teenage girls
This one is a lie, he was added as a moderator by another mod, at a time when anyone could do so. Lets please stop spreading this.
He actually moderated jailbait? I always assumed he was the type of person to have an alt for it, but to actually use his real account? What a scumbag.
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I think that anyone who’s been around reddit long enough knew this was coming. Reddit isn’t a free and open platform, and never was. The admins allowed moderators free reign just so long as they didn’t do anything that reddit didn’t want.
This wouldn’t be a proper Reddit replacement if an anonymous user didn’t take the time out of his day to type that “free rein” was the correct spelling here
Well damnit you are right - in both that it’s not proper reddit replacement without grammar nazis, and that “free rein” is the usual term. It could be argued that reign also works in this case because some moderators seemed to be under the impression that they were unchallenged kings within their subreddit kingdoms.
It is?? I’ve been typing it wrong my whole life.
I’m still writing ‘reign’ though.
I think “reign” is like “rule”. - A king reigns over his people.
“Rein” is the thing that horse cart drivers use to control the horses. So the rope that goes from horses mouth to drivers hand. You can either “rein (in) the horses” for them to do something, or you can let them “free rein”, meaning they can run as they please.
I always imagined it like a king being able to freely reign over his people - so that he can freely do whatever he wants in terms of governing them.
well that interpretation certainly works here as well :)
Then free reign could also be an eggcorn.
Til what an eggcorn is. Yeah, absolutely.
Same, but I’m happy to know the correct term.
Fuck u/spez
Fuck u/spez
Fuck u/spez
Fuck u/spez
u/spez will be gone soon. Remember his name: Steve Huffman.
Also remember that he used to moderate r/jailbait.
Honestly not too surprising. But good luck moderating the bigger subs without the old volunteers.
lmao, good fuckin luck replacing dedicated volunteers with one or two shitty ones obsessed with power
lmfao no kidding. part of me is waiting to see the shitshow that happens to some subs without proper moderation. just the amount of bullshit thats gonna be submitted is gonna be intense. and the trolls, oh lord the trolls are gonna have a hayday with once properly moderated subs.
For example, /r/nba went dark for a Finals game - the final Finals game where a champion was crowned.
I’d love to see one or two lower-tier mods take over that sub. It’d become a complete pile of shit.
Gallowboob 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Gallowboob sounds so familar. Who was that again?
He for a time had the highest karma score of any user. He stepped away from the platform. Many redditors felt it wasn’t a coincidence that the platforms most successful user was also close personal friends with one of the founders (Alexis) and accused the platform and the user of collusion.
The reality of his situation likely lies somewhere between his and Reddit’s position that his content rose to the top purely organically and other users’ position that his content rose to the top purely through manipulation. He got his start legitimately making funny memes for Photoshop battles but then at a certain point started manipulating the platform (with Reddit’s tacit approval) for his own personal gain
I think an important part of the story is how he was very obviously getting deals from companies to use reddit to advertise their products. Remember when he just posted the netflix logo animation?
I was trying to find some history of that. I recalled him getting monetary compensation for posting (which is what I was trying to allude to with “personal gain”) but I couldn’t find any specifics. I even kinda think his personal friendship with Alexis had to do with Alexis getting some of the money from advertisers directly in the whole scuzzy affair
He was Reddit’s biggest power user, moderator of a significant amount of major subs, constantly on the front page and had the most reach of the website.
He got caught using alts to boost himself and his account was deleted.
You’re thinking of unidan. Gallowboob just sort of stepped away after getting a job doing whassawhahum mumblemumble.
I think you’re right, I have merged the two together its been so long.
Are you partially mixing him up with Unidan and that whole “jackdaw” thing years ago? Or for all I know they both met the same demise lol.
Don’t remember if he’s a mod at all, but he’s notorious for the sheer amount of submissions across a lot of popular subs, I think.
I haven’t thought of that name since before COVID at least holy shit. Probably longer. What a throwback. Reddit used to be so different
Juicy tidbits here for those interested.
Don’t worry, the mods will be paid now. Just by the NRA, Walmart and Russia.
Reddit is about to be run entirely by shills who will hop into mod spots.
I don’t think it’ll be that simple
There are sooooo many fuckin subs, and while I know there are small handfuls that oversee dozens and dozens, the niche ones that really help user retention will suffer.
Like, it’s not the huge million+ subs that I’m missing, it’s the smaller localized fandoms and obscure memory subs that I’m really missing.
But quality will slip. You can’t just substitute care, concern, and domain knowledge that built a community for some rando. The pillars of the communities are moving on and going elsewhere.
People all over reddit have been removed about supermods and the concentration of power forever. This is what reddit wants, this is the way they become filled with qultists. Easily manipulated, stupid, profitable, and valuable to the next billionaire who wants their own media outlet.
Yeah but that supermod legend is actually just not true anymore, of the 5 only awkwardturtle and some other guy didn’t have their account removed, and the two just stopped being present basically.
Reddit is doomed without mods and Moding a “default sub” is absolutely impossible without third party tools.
That’s why the CEO was pushing the importance of shipping their own mod tools on deadline. My guess is that there will be more automated moderation like Facebook uses.
Everybody knows that it was bound to happen. Reddit is hopeless and the blackout on its own won’t do good in the long run.
That’s why I’m trying to kick this out:
If you’re EU you canAll those in EU can ask reddit for the entirety of your data as a GDPR request, much easier than downloading it yourself, especially since some apps have limits to how many posts they can fetch.Asked for mine last week and still hasn’t arrived, but I’ve been an active user for 17 years so yeah, might be taking a while to get those tape backups from the basement or something :P
Poor intern is in the basement writing it all down with a quill and ink. Expect the pony to arrive with your parcel in 10-14 months.
They say it can take up to 30 days, so I think you have a bit more waiting to do :D
No, no. They say it can take up to 30 days, yes.
But that’s not the correct wording. It legally needs to be done under 30 days (well, one calendar month), if you’re a EU citizen.
If they do not, I highly encourage you to contact your country’s data regulator and complain about it.
Oooh, thanks for the clarification! It wasn’t clear to me it was a legal constraint.
I haven’t submit mine yet, I was waiting for the blackout to end, but I’ll sure check my calendar and report to my data regulator if they don’t comply.
p.s. yes I’m a EU citizen
Well, just a heads up, I might have wrote total bullshit (sorry about that!).
I tried to find a reference to the “one calendar month” rule in the EU’s legalese, but I didn’t find anything.
What I found is that depending on your country, the data regulator might require services to give you your data in 30 days or less, but this might not be the case everywhere in the EU. The relevant legal article for this can be found here: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-15-gdpr/
I am not a lawyer anyway, so your best bet would be to message an organization that fights for personal data protection to ask them about your rights in your home country.
Sorry about the confusion once again, as I might have been wrong!
It’s ok :)
I’ll start by sending my request and see if they respond within 30 days, if not, I’ll search my government website to know what to do.
Your post has been useful anyway because it made aware there might be other legal obligations than just sending your data.
@satouru @ulu_mulu The one month rule is in article 12(3):
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679#d1e2182-1-1
“The controller shall provide information on action taken on a request under Articles 15 to 22 to the data subject without undue delay and in any event within one month of receipt of the request.”
I have a feeling they got a massive number of those,ni am one of them as well.
You don’t have to be in the EU to make a GDPR request, right? If I understand correctly, they can’t actually check.
They do know which country you’re from unless you use a VPN all the time, tho I personally wouldn’t lie (fake my IP) for something as serious as this.
They would know what country I’m currently in, but I could still be an EU citizen using a VPN or traveling outside the EU. IANAL, but I’m pretty sure my data would still be protected by GDPR.
Granted, I am not, but the request worked anyway lol
They could check, but that’s more expensive than just complying.
They could check, but that’s more expensive than just compying
I’m in the US, but thank you.
I’m in the US and I got mine, but it took a couple days. I would imagine they’re quite busy these days servicing those requests.
Same
ok :) editing my comment in case other people are EU .
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I did this back when the Apollo shutting down post when out from Christian. It took a bit of googling to find out how to do this so thanks for putting it all together for others. I had 10 accounts spanning all my time on Reddit since the Digg days and did a fully scorched earth on it all, because you know, fuck u/spez.
For someone who has a really small subreddit, isn’t much of a computer person and mainly uses mobile, how would I go about importing my content here?
I love how you advice to generate gibberish through zompist.com
You are translating all your content into a new conlang!
I PDSed my acc yesterday but i should’ve edited with “We are having issues loading this comment. Please try again later” lmfao
Data/Content/Information now is very important (indispensable). In the Age of Information (Actually to me, the Real Cultural Start of IT upon the advent of Artificial Intelligence AI), keepers (companies of holding) of databases (such as Reddit databases) have finally found the value of it for metabolic profitability (
extreme exploitation) with the help of AI, greatest ever analyses. It will be my best (after nothing happens in Reddit decision) that I will painfully LITERALLY delete all my Reddit posts, comments and even my info about myself (or why not archive on my storage for future migration and then delete on the platform itself) on the day before Reddit make undesirable changes (to not only mods+devs but also the real clients, Reddit users enjoying Reddit), so that they won’t exploit information about me further for their sinister abuse soon probably.
Deleted my account, removed Apollo, starting to feel at home on Lemmy. No way I’m going back.
A lot of these people volunteered their spare time to manage communities for no pay. Wondering how far downhill a lot of these subs will go with Spez putting himself in charge of everything.
they won’t. Spez is learning how much of reddit’s success has nothing to do with reddit itself. hopefully we have all learned from the messy and long experiment with letting corps control our gardens.
He’s not learning anything LMAO
Corporations NEVER learn
His name is Steve Huffman, and he’s a former mod of r/jailbait and as such a paedophile.
This comment needs to be a lot higher.
Dude for real! I thought people were just saying that because fuck the guy but no it’s actually true. Pretty fucked up! And as far as I had seen on Reddit it wasn’t ever mentioned before although that’s probably because Spez would have shadowbanned and deleted/edited the comments if it did ever out him.
They killed Aaron Swartz and close sourced Reddit. That was really the end. People such as the Lemmy founder, knew it which is why they built this, to free us from those power structures. Spez and people like him deserve to burn in their own special hell.
The great migration is here and we have to work as hard as possible now to preserve this work and freedom from such people. Spez and Reddit, is finished, if we will it so.
Is it just me or is this going directly against what Reddit once aimed to be?
It feels reassuring being here in Lemmy away of that shit show.
I’m just waiting for substitutes of my old groups to start populating instances here. I’ll be deleting my reddit account probably before the end of the month when RIF goes offline.
Same, honestly it feels like a fresh start, but without all the bad shit of Reddit (I’m not even counting the recent API scam).
This is why they need to link an alternative like Lemmy and encourage to share it around.
Reddit doesn’t disallow mods from posting “Join us on Discord” and this will create a slow and steady move to a new platform.
This post seems somewhat disingenuous. One of the mods Cedarwolf posted his side of what happened 2 hours prior to this post appearing, and if we were to believe his side of the story the top mod who hasn’t been active for a year just decided to join the blackout against other mods wishes.
Yes, it’s two conflicting stories but he claims to have evidence that he’s been inactive. Basically, people should look into this more than assume truth in the headline.
Both /r/tumblr and /r/AdviceAnimals had shaky mod teams. Even though I completely disagree with the admins on everything else this made perfect sense. Plus out of the 8k subs that blacked out only 2 had admins intervene which makes me think it really was just mods fighting and the admins stepping in.
I’m in a number of subs with an inactive top mod who can’t be removed because they threaten to demod people from larger communities where they also hold high up inactive positions…
def link and ill put it in the body, i just posted it as i ran across it this am
They can’t just re-open subreddits and expect it to go over smoothly. These subs will collapse without moderators.
Sure they can. They’ll outsource moderation to Bangladesh, pay mods like $0.20 a day, and double the number of ads shown.
Considering they didn’t pay any of the moderators as is, I don’t think they would pay for them now.
You don’t think they would pay a pittance for mods they can control and who will quell dissent like the blackout before it ever gets off the ground?
Why would they when you can find plenty of power-hungry bootlickers who’ll do it for free?
Lol … All you have to do is give moderators permissions to a teenager with an axe to grind and they’ll work for free for years
I hate Reddit because of all this stupidity … I’ve jumped ship not looking back and I’m staying on Lemmy
They didn’t pay anyone anything so far and if they do that they are doomed for a different reason.
Tbh $0.20 a day won’t get you very far even in Bangladesh nowadays. Moderation costs will be quite high in the end for them.
Will it get you the definition of hyperbole?
yup 100%
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I just returned for a couple of minutes and it’s a fucking shitshow. I don’t know if it has become worse or if it just feels like that because Lemmy is much more friendly, but Reddit seems to be much more toxic right now.
It is also so obvious that people are trying to use this as some kind of coup. Users interact with the thematic, get explained what the blackout is about, just to comment complete bs about it one comment later. They are acting dumb to gain momentum.
I really hope this will end up in a worldpolitics situation.
There seems to be a correlation between civility and willingness to put up with spez. If you’re willing to put up with all the bs he’s been spewing since this started, you’re less civil. All the respectful people came here, or are finding other replacements. People who don’t care stayed, and it shows.
Makes a lot of sense. Its a fun y microcosm for this kind of conservative attitude that is permeating through society. “No, change is scary and we will not only be against it, but will also be actively hostile towards it.”
“People should be free to spout hate and bigotry with no consequences.” The difference between reddit and real life is that people who don’t want to deal with that bullshit don’t have to move, they can just not use the site.
Fear the people that love peace and quiet, for they will do anything to get it.
spez is right-wing, thus right-wingers tend to side with him. Hope he enjoys his site full of his low-effort shitposting buddies!
You hit the nail on the head! It’s going to be full of ick just like Twitter. Ah well.
oh its def toxic, there are certain types running rampant and some people get VERY grumpy when deprived of thier volunteer curated entertainment feeds.
I had the same observations as well! Not sure if it’s just my confirmation bias, but it does seem like reddit feels a lot more toxic right now. I feel like it really is compounded by how relatively welcoming lemmy has been for refugees recently, alongside it still being fresh. I feel like I can be more open here as well, and many others probably do so too.
I noticed that too. Like a lot of people are upset that users would mess with a company. r/JoeRogan is much more toxic than usual like a flood gate opened
Joe Rogan has always been toxic, its the alt right with a wig
Straight up, all the good subs locked themselves and all of the reasonable people walked away.
Twitter just did the same thing. Spez said he wasn’t gonna mimic twitter and then fully mimicked twitter.
Yup. The good mods were what kept reddit from fully devolving into a cesspool. Now the trolls and shitposters who craved less moderation will get it. They can have it.
