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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by thawed_caveman@lemmy.world to c/reddit@lemmy.world

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:

  1. 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)

  2. 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

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[-] mysoulishome@lemmy.world 205 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 65 points 3 months ago

I'm tired of being monetized. They have more than enough money.

[-] ArbitraryMary@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

I miss Apollo and Reddit too.

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[-] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 126 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 36 points 3 months ago

Shameless plug: /c/Sekiro, /c/Bloodborne

Doing my part :)

[-] TeaHands@lemmy.world 33 points 3 months ago

Gotta actually link things if you want people to find them, my friend! 😉

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[-] stoly@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago
[-] confluence@lemmy.world 87 points 3 months ago

That must've been tough to do. You have the respect of at least one internet stranger 🫡

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[-] popemichael 62 points 3 months ago

Before June 2023, I was a mod on several Reddit communities for about 13 years and outside of Reddit since the turn of the century. I just kinda stepped back once the Reddit BS happened.

10 months later, my happiness and over all quality of life has improved. Not only am I no longer stressed (bye bye moderation based nightmares!), but I have way more time to dedicate to my passions and goals.

I thought that dedication to holding together a few niche communities and battling the "bad guys" defined me and gave me a sort of immortality.

I was VERY wrong.

Our great grand kids won't be trolling reddit archives, telling everyone how "cool" grandpa was.

The greatest thing I ever did to improve my QOL was step away from moderating and leading communities on the internet as a whole. Doubly so if they involve political talk.

[-] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 55 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I participated and organized the Lemmy banner on the last r/place and it went pretty well. If they ever decide to do another r/place, I don't know if I'll do it. If people haven't left already then they might be stuck there but idk.

I was pretty happy with doing lots of alliances last time with the Fuck Spez Coalition, Germany, and a few others. I just don't want to visit that awful site, it already hurt me a lot last time participating it at all hours of the day and fueling traffic so I probably won't do it again.

Edit: I believe this was the final result

https://lemm.ee/post/2028359

https://lemm.ee/post/2033816

[-] Ethanol@pawb.social 14 points 3 months ago

oh hey, I was there too! Worked at the save3rdpartyapps logo, was really nice seeing everyone collaborate but it got really stressful at points. People were greedy for canvas space. Was a bit disappointing that we could only do so much, the banner was really small after all. But at least the protest didn't go unnoticed with the giant "FUCK SPEZ" across the whole canvas.

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[-] Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 50 points 3 months 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.

I sincerely hope you said this in multiple places on Reddit

There will be a lot of people who don't realise that that's precisely what the IPO means

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[-] viking@infosec.pub 41 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] mysoulishome@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

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?

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[-] fixerdude2@lemmy.ca 41 points 3 months ago

I deleted my account and left the spez wasteland months ago. You should consider it too.

[-] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 3 months ago

I left my communities as a moderator last summer already, but kept my account because of a few communities I wanted to keep interacting with. However, after this IPO thing I decided to completely cut it and used a tool to mass delete my comments before deleting my account altogether. Felt relieving!

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[-] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 39 points 3 months ago

I’m a capitalist and I would never do free work for a public company. Now I don’t mind a hobby but a public company isn’t a hobby.

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[-] Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 37 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] Splatterphace@lemm.ee 35 points 3 months ago

Why do people like r/place, and why do others hate it? I never understood the phenomena.

[-] janNatan@lemmy.ml 66 points 3 months ago

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.

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[-] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 50 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] ech@lemm.ee 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Then came the age of “reason” and brands and flags sprouted up

Ugh. The domination of the space by advertisements and just straight-up 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.

[-] SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 3 months ago

It's like that Woodstock concert in the 2000s. You can't just recapture magic like that by repetition.

Spontaneity is spontaneous.

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[-] Rhaedas@fedia.io 23 points 3 months ago

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).

[-] thawed_caveman@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] venusaur@lemmy.world 33 points 3 months ago

Congratulations! You’re doing the right thing. Reddit is trash now.

[-] dumples@kbin.social 31 points 3 months ago

Bring it here. We need good moderators. Welcome back to the original corporate free Internet. It's great

[-] mp3@lemmy.ca 28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I did the same thing last July, left to switch full-time to Lemmy (I registered my first Lemmy account @mp3@lemmy.ml a long time ago EDIT: jeez 5 years ago already?!) and somewhat abandoned my account.

I was then approached by the lemmy.ca admins, asking if I would be interested to help administer the website, which I gladly accepted. I do not regret one minute giving my time to the fediverse.

I went back to Reddit last month to remove my account from being a moderator on all the communities I was part of. I didn't even tell anyone, I just left. Reddit is way past its prime.

[-] nutomic@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 months ago

I still remember your name from the early days, it's great that you stuck around! How much Lemmy changed in these few years...

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[-] Furbag@lemmy.world 27 points 3 months ago

r/place has had the soul sucked out of it past the first iteration. I'm not even going to bother checking it this year because I can see the future and I know what the canvas will end up being - bots maintaining flags. I'd be nice if they restricted it to accounts that are at least a year old, but at this point all the accounts people were botting with the last two years are qualified under that definition.

Cool idea, consistently horrible implementation.

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 26 points 3 months ago

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.

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[-] FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io 25 points 3 months ago

Fuck em, welcome to the fediverse!

[-] livus@kbin.social 24 points 3 months ago

@thawed_caveman sorry that happened to you, it sounds difficult. But I think you've made the right decision.

Hope you find a silver lining. For me, moving to the fediverse has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. It's fun being part of something cool that can never be sold out by people like Spez.

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

Possible Spin: you get paid the same and have more free time?

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[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 22 points 3 months ago

Shit, man, I know how it feels.

I wasn't any kind of big mod, but it was something I did out of love for a set of related hobbies/interest and the folks that took part in them. I had only really started being a relatively busy mod maybe six months before the shit hit the fan last year. I was having fun, expanding wikis, shooting the bull with everyone. Managed to streamline some automod stuff to filter out bots and trolls. Didn't even mind most of the crap that goes with modding like having to throw a ban or whatever because idgaf, so it was done and over and forgotten once it was necessary.

It was fulfilling in a way I hadn't thought I would have after my back gave out and I couldn't work. I do some volunteer stuff that got started during the height of covid, but that was weekly even then, and had dropped off a lot. So having that "work" to keep my mind busy was nice.

So, yeah man, sorry you had to bow out, it sucks.

[-] Kribensis@lemm.ee 21 points 3 months ago

I’d been on Reddit for 13 years and finally managed to detox by doing two things only.

  • Uninstalling the app from my phone (along with LinkedIn, which I have to use, but despise). Since the browser experience is terrible, that was half the problem.
  • Strategically muting subreddits that annoyed me.

Wall of text about why (but I’ll use paragraphs):

In recent years, I started noticing that everything discussion-oriented was either a Dunning-Kruger driven echo chamber or a total circlejerk for the default progressive opinion on that subject. And, anything content-oriented was reposts.

Quick caveat: I’m not saying that every progressive position is bad, only that I enjoy forming my own positions without getting yelled at. Also, I don’t know OP’s sub and I’m sure it was well-moderated. I’d imagine quitting as a mod would be emotionally harder.

Anyway, for a few weeks, whenever some low-info/naive/didactic opinion or recycled content popped up, I muted that sub.

The last to go was my professional sub, since I’m in a small field. But once I realized all I’d done there in 13 years was help people starting out, but never once received help myself (since there are virtually no posters with experience), I was good to go. I can mentor elsewhere and probably help way more.

Once I muted stuff, I had a few content subs left like r/urbanhell or r/catio, or other fun stuff I want to keep. But my feed is suddenly super quiet, so I just open it once a week, like a magazine.

It’s not quite quitting, but that’s for when Huffman (or whoever replaces him) realizes that to move the revenue needle, they need to block adblockers like YouTube, or go fucking nuts with sponsored posts, or sell personal data, or build their own LLM on everyone’s posts, or whatever they’re gonna do.

And it probably won’t be Huffman anyway, since he just dumped half a million shares at $50+ and can therefore buy an island, so he is absolutely out of there 😂

Meanwhile, if I’m Reddit’s Unix admin or whatever and have waited for years to vest my equity, I can’t even sell for another 5.5 months. It ain’t gonna be $50+ then. Brutal.

And that’s how it goes. Never again. I don’t miss it, since sending Lemmy memes to my Signal chats replaces most of the hijinks and sex/the outdoors replaces the dopamine.

[-] RemoveEgoDivineFreedom@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago

Had a 12 year old account. Just got permad. Honestly feels like a weight off my shoulders. That place was making me so toxic.

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[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

How was place a bitch for mods? I honestly never heard anybody talking about it and im genuinely curious

[-] thawed_caveman@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

Gah. Ok yeah that sounds like ass.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago

Welcome to life!

[-] 3volver@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

Before I left I edited all of my comments to say "fuck u/spez". Very relieving to get the fuck out of there. I fucking despise the idea of working to make money for the rich, never will. If they ever create an economy that forces me to work, the only labor I will do is to make sure they never feel comfortable again.

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[-] Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

r/place wasn't nearly as good as the time 4chan gave us all Nazi my little pony.

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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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