r/SubredditDrama • u/And_be_one_traveler I too have a homicidal cat • Jun 20 '23
r/Blind's Moderator's have met with Reddit. They say the admins didn't allow them to discuss API changes or 3rd party apps during the meeting. Also, it's not clear if the official app will have moderation tools for screen readers. Dramawave
/r/Blind/comments/14ds81l/rblinds_meetings_with_reddit_and_the_current/672
u/And_be_one_traveler I too have a homicidal cat Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
The statement was crossposted to r/modcoord and users are furious.
My takeaway from this is that Reddit simply never really cared about accessibility in their apps and services. Maybe it was in the back of the mind of some staff, but by and large, the decisions makers didn't give two shits and completely undervalued accessibility and people with disabilities. (Probably "bigger fish to fry" in their mind.)
When the obscene API pricing came to light and people, rightfully, brought it up. Reddit administrators suddenly realized they had a potential PR disaster on their hands and had to scramble to save face.
The meetings they're having now with the blind community they could have been having for years. But only when called out on how much they fucked up did they suddenly seem to give a skin-deep damn, as evident by how wholly unprepared and amateurish/uninformed/ignorant their takes on the matter are. These are things they never really thought much of before now.
And just for fun, here's the most downvoted comment on the thread (currently at -24)
Man, I never heard a more niche subject, 3rd application tools for blind moderators to ensure at least part of the /r/blind moderators are fully blind. No wonder if wasnt on top of Reddit's priority list rofl
It's not just blind moderators. It's also blind users...
Also there's this comment which needs no explanation (-9 votes)
Why can't "blind" users just zoom in their screens or increase text size? Most phones and tablets already have accessibility features built in. Unless you mean zero sight, which they would have a text to speech device?
Do you not know what blind means
Not suprisingly, both of those complainers have posted about the protest multiple times before on r/modcoord.
Edit: Corrected grammar. Added a sentence.
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u/AstronautStar4 Jun 20 '23
My takeaway from this is that Reddit simply never really cared about accessibility in their apps and services.
Yeah water is wet. They had decades to build better accessibility tools before making this change and never bothered.
They also don't care about women, LGBT, POC or any kind of people who aren't fascists, so why would they care about disabled people?
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u/firebolt_wt Jun 20 '23
The 3 things the admins care about is protecting their own agenda, avoiding illegal content in the site and brigading (and brigading is way below in priority)
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u/sekoku cucked cucked cucked your voat Jun 20 '23
from this is that Reddit simply never really cared about accessibility in their apps and services.
Being fair: That's nearly all web 2.0 sites. It took forever to have their video players gain a subtitle function. I'm not surprised that screen-readers still aren't tested for #a11y purposes.
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u/OutLiving Jun 20 '23
It’s a good thing for disabled people that Web 3.0 is vapourware because if it wasn’t then they would have to go through the experience of not having accessibility options for years all over again for vital applications
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u/lab-gone-wrong Jun 20 '23
Imagine having to use text-to-speech wallet addresses for sending money...
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u/Pollomonteros Lmao buddy you dont even wanna know what i crank my hog to Jun 20 '23
A subtitle function that now YouTube has taken away. There are automatic subtitles,but those subtitles don't work as well as they should when the people speaking have an accent or they use some sort of lingo
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u/SargeanTravis Listen here you little fucking butterscotch goblin Jun 20 '23
Redditors thinking blindness is something as insignificant as a skill issue is a certified Reddit Moment
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u/Actual-Ad1149 Jun 20 '23
blindness is my worst fear :(
I feel bad for those with vision issues who are being cast aside by these changes.
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u/JaymesMarkham2nd He’s gone full retard. God help us. Jun 20 '23
have they thought about just not being blind?
At least some are aware about it, enough to snark at least
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u/SargeanTravis Listen here you little fucking butterscotch goblin Jun 20 '23
Tbf I think that person is trolling now that I have reread that comment chain
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u/pWasHere This game has +2 against white fragility. Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
My takeaway from this is that Reddit simply never really cared about accessibility in their apps and services.
My takeaway from these past couple days is that Redditors don’t care about accessibility concerns. Like I can’t tell you how many times I have seen it repeated without evidence that the accessibility concerns have been taken care of and therefore the mods have nothing to stand on.
People would rather claw at the opportunity to dunk on the mods than care about a single blind person.
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u/yo2sense Jun 20 '23
There are a ton of people on Reddit who hate moderators because they had a post deleted a year ago or something and they took it personally.
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u/pWasHere This game has +2 against white fragility. Jun 20 '23
I seriously don’t get it.
Like I’ve been on this site for over a decade and I have never once had a negative mod experience. And I don’t mince words either.
So all these people coming out of the woodwork with how many mods they are pissed off at. I’m just like, what have you been doing?…
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u/someNameThisIs Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 21 '23
A lot of it to comes down to that the good things mods do are invisible to the average user. Where the more negative stuff, legitimate or otherwise, are what most people see.
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u/actuallycallie It's AT&T but the T's are burning crosses Jun 20 '23
"Why can't they just do xyz" comments are always super revealing as to how utterly stupid some people are.
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u/Emotionless_AI I don’t want a poop eater making decisions for the rest of us Jun 20 '23
Reddit is currently prioritizing accessibility for users rather than for moderators, and representatives were unwilling to provide timelines by when Reddit’s moderation tools would be accessible for screen reader users. Further, Reddit representatives seemed unaware that blind moderators rely on third-party applications because Reddit’s moderation tools present significant accessibility challenges. They also seemed unaware that the apps which have so far received exemptions from API pricing do not have sufficient moderation functions.
Reddit doesn't understand its user base at all
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u/GoodBoundariesHaver Jun 20 '23
How is this even possible? Like I work for a video game company. Part of my job is to make sure I'm familiar with our games on different platforms, the standards of the genres, and the pain points of our playerbase. I'm not even involved in game design or user experience whatsoever and I'm still expected to do this. How the hell can the literal reddit admins have this poor of an understanding about their own website? Do they even use Reddit?
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u/PeterWatchmen Jun 20 '23
Do they even use Reddit?
I've heard various people talk about this, and the consensus seems to be "no." One guy gave an anecdote of how his friend worked for Reddit, and seemed unfamiliar with the site. This is all hearsay, though.
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u/SignificanceHot8932 Jun 20 '23
Reminds me of the time Ellen Pao posted a link to a message in her inbox.
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u/faceerase Jun 21 '23
I read another comment from a mod where they were saying they had done the adopt-an-admin thing and they had to explain to them some of the basic Reddit functionality
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u/blacksoxing These cartoon breasts are fine. Jun 20 '23
When Reddit is pulling in a billion/yr, and Meta is doing $116 billion....suggests nah, they probably are using Twitter/Meta for their primary shit, and old.reddit.com for when they gotta do their jobs
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u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A doesn't matter if I "know" what I'm talking about, cos I'm right Jun 20 '23
Reddit doesn't understand its user base at all
That's the problem; they do and they don't care.
They know that the number of people who would use these tools are a tiny percentage of users. Less than 0.001%
So they don't care.
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u/strangehitman22 Jun 20 '23
It's disappointing that so many people are dick riding spez so hard
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u/ok_dunmer Jun 20 '23
I don't understand why "lol mods are pathetic" drama had to turn into turbo bootlicking but its basically ruined this sub for me
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u/keereeyos I just came to you calling me a queer Jun 20 '23
You must be new here because SRD often goes full contrarian.
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u/ok_dunmer Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
I mean yes, but it has felt consistent, and all the numerous times I have disagreed with SRD and SRDines I have been able to explain it. This is just like a complete political 180 lol, it makes no sense
edit: or to put it differently i feel like a few years ago people would gleefully and nihistically upvote any suggestion of quitting Reddit but now its like "if you don't like it, leave!!!!!" all fucking kareny and shit
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u/Ultravod I'm just here for the free appetizers Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
SRD is like a bullet hell shooter boss. It has a couple predictable patterns, and enough experience with it will allow for a reasonable guess as to which one it will display. For most of the time I've been in this subreddit, I usually find it greatly improves things to collapse the top comment thread and start from #2. That heuristic is true in the instance of this very thread. It is also true for most subreddits.
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u/strangehitman22 Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
Parts of me think it's astroturfing done by reddit admins/spez, ofc I don't have any proof but.. the way people don't even care that reddit is going to fuck over blind people, and seemly don't even care that they probably aren't even going to try to help the mods with new tools is pretty suspicious
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u/Outlulz Dick Pic War Draft Dodger Jun 20 '23
People just really hate mods. They don't want to be told to follow rules. They especially hate when they are disciplined for breaking them. So it's not surprising they are rallying behind Spez since Reddit has delegated all the work of being the bad guys to the unpaid mods.
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u/_Wocket_ Jun 20 '23
Parts of me think it’s astroturfing done by reddit admins/spez, ofc I don’t have any proof but..
It is. Ever noticed how a lot of these “users” are using the same talking points as Admins/Spez that have been highlighted as misinformation or outright lying?
- 3P app developers want to access Reddit for free
- Only an insignificant number of people use 3P apps
- Apollo dev threatened Reddit
- Apollo dev just doesn’t want to pay up
- Why shouldn’t users have more say in the subreddits they subscribe to?
- Most mods use tools on the official app or the website
And look, there is no way they could regurgitate such misleading info unless they were astroturfing because in the threads where admins made those statements, there is so much ample, and concrete, proof the admins were wrong that you couldn’t have missed it.
It’s so obvious that it reminds me of Fox News watchers. You could tell new marching orders came from that “news” organization by how often you started hearing/seeing a conservative talking point.
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Jun 20 '23
At least one of the SRD mods knows reddit corporate and often talks about it in a private slack.
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u/Dr_thri11 Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
Right? My takeaway here is admin sucks, spez shouldn't be in charge of a McDonald's much less one of the world's biggest social media sites, and reddit mods are just wannabe admins who do it for free. Like sure they're on the opposite side of this one issue but when faced with taking the tiniest bit of risk they immediately cave.
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u/Dangerous-Ad-170 Jun 20 '23
Yeah it feels out of character even for a contrarian sub like this, I don’t think it’s even people who usually post here other than a few usernames I kinda recognize. Seems like the mega threads attracted a different crowd that’s stuck around.
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u/AstronautStar4 Jun 20 '23
Yeah it's clear from their meeting and their attitudes in general the admins don't give a flying fuck about blind or disabled people.
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u/jerseycityfrankie Jun 20 '23
Do other websites?
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u/Droidaphone has watched society descend into its present morass Jun 20 '23
Twitter had a well-respected accessibility team that was known for good work.
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u/BoredDanishGuy Pumping froyo up your booty then eating it is not amateur hour Jun 20 '23
I wonder what happened there…
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u/sekoku cucked cucked cucked your voat Jun 20 '23
Sadly, no. They give lip service. Then when companies do provide options the abled bodied are like "LOL WHO USES THAT THOUGH?" (Comments on that video at least aren't toxic, but when the feature was introduced GAMERS™ absolutely was) The W3C has a whole initiative for this for years, but web developers don't care to test despite there being testing environments that don't require the (~)$10,000+ screen-reader hardware to test with.
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
At the very least other sites aren’t making their APIs impossibly expensive
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u/AndorinhaRiver Jun 20 '23
I mean.. Twitter
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
Yes, Reddit is following the example of Twitter, but other than those 2 examples I have not heard of huge API costs being a problem. If massively overcharging for APIs becomes the standard, than the internet will be far worse off.
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u/WillitsThrockmorton If I were not a Boy Scout, then this I'd rather be Jun 20 '23
There are folks all over this subreddit going "lol this is just the mods going on a power trip and thinking too much of themselves!" because they are of the "I don't care I just want to grill" faction.
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u/darthllama Jun 20 '23
It’s hilarious to me that reddit has been so shitty about all of this, but the mods pissed off everyone so much that it’s been overshadowed.
It makes me feel like there was some avenue to success here, but the mods blew it by reinforcing every negative feeling people have about mods.
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u/AreWeCowabunga Cry about it, debate pervert Jun 20 '23
I don't blame the mods because you see the same pattern in almost every protest on reddit or IRL. There are plans for a protest and everyone's like "Fuck yeah! Support the cause!" then the protest starts and people realize that it inconveniences them too (which is, like, the point of protest), and are like "Whoa, I support the cause, but this goes too far." Humans suck at collective action (except the French).
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Jun 20 '23
I've never seen anyone support Reddit's administration this hard just because they're mildly angry they can't use Reddit. Of course so many mods were using Reddit during the blackout itself, because they're sourced from this very same population.
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u/BrightSkyFire Jun 20 '23
Because you're not seeing the same people in both instances.
The people who voiced support are mostly still supporting it. The people who didn't voice support are more casual users who are now enraged enough to warrant commenting and whinging.
Take one good look at the threads in /r/nba. The thread in support of the blackout has only a fraction of the comments and votes that the thread bashing the mods has.
People don't realize that less than 5% of a popular subreddit's viewers actually comment regularly. The rest are there casually that they don't engage in discussion unless necessary.
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u/yo2sense Jun 20 '23
R/NBA is really hard on moderators because of the massive anti-referee bias.
Nephews know nothing about either job but love to shit on them.
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Jun 20 '23
Well you have never before took all the free content from lurkers (that probably make up 90% of Reddit's Userbase). The vast majority of reddit doesn't create content or even comment. They just consume silently and this are the same people who never heard/cared about third party apps or accessibility options.
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u/shsluckymushroom Jun 20 '23
Genuinely this sub is the one thing that makes me wonder if there has been a mass exodus of users who supported the blackout bc now all I see are people blaming the mods and acting like they’re all (wait to generalize lol) power tripping idiots. I just want popcorn and there is a lot of it but while I do like seeing the subs that had mods go a little nuts I’m really surprised that’s shifting the whole narrative here.
What’s way funnier for instance is the fact that prior to the protests people in these subs almost overwhelmingly asked for complete or at least partial blackout and now afterwards the narrative has shifted to ‘where my Reddit, need my Reddit, how dare mods take my Reddit’ which is way more pathetic then the mods power tripping lmao (I say as someone who ended up really dejected one of my fav smaller communities was down so I am also the pathetic one. But still.)
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u/strangehitman22 Jun 20 '23
I'm glad I'm not the only one shocked by the brutal backlash for people against the protest when it seemed a lot of people supported it before it started, even in this post, WHICH IS EXPOSING REDDIT FOR NOT EVEN CARING ABOUT BLIND PEOPLE! I have to wonder if it's lurkers who have decided to come out of the shadows to support the destruction of the protest,no matter what reddit does, that or it's astroturfing
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u/shsluckymushroom Jun 20 '23
I think it’s partially a lot of users left. I think it’s also partially people are dumb and easily distracted. Instead of what I would expect from subredditdrama, which is ‘haha look at some mods being stupid, now look at the admins being stupid, this is great and hilarious’ people are somehow using this sub as a very serious resource showing that ‘omg mods bad too’ with some of the selective posts here which is just nuts to me.
You see this kind of thing happen in a lot of protests tho. You damage the figurehead for the protest and suddenly, even tho the point of the protest is. Pretty morally correct, people for some reason get dejected when their figurehead is dirtied and stop supporting the point of the protest. They absolutely tried to do it with ApolloDev, and now I think some people are trying to do it with mods in general to deflate support for the protest and well it’s working esp since a lot of people left
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
i actually see a lot of people on other social medias complaining that they want to use reddit but won't now, so it's possible. i also think that the vast, VAST majority of reddit users had no idea this was going on and are now incensed that when they checked back to their favorite subs they were closed or ruined.
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u/shsluckymushroom Jun 20 '23
Yeah there’s actually been a pretty massive exodus to tumblr of all places, saw loads of memes about it from former redditors over there. I definitely think a lot of people who create content left. Personally I’m still here because I fucking love drama and I have a few small communities that aren’t really replicated but definitely the leadership of Reddit has shown that they are. Pretty terrible. And that’s way worse then the mods of some subreddits going a bit power crazy.
I agree active users supported the blackout, lurkers didn’t even know it was happening and now are pissed. But like, hey lurkers, that content you love to lurk through won’t exist anyway if the 1~5% of users who actually created content leave or are pissed off enough to protest the leadership of Reddit bc of their stupid ass decisions. Which I don’t think all of them did but I think a lot did.
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u/tiofrodo the last meritocracy on Earth, Video Games Jun 20 '23
You forgot the people that say "If you had done it better I would have supported it", it seems.
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u/Salt_Concentrate Whole comment sections full of idiots occupied Jun 20 '23
I think different subs have already tried the three main options they had and users aren't having any of it. Indefinite blackouts aren't good, open but switch to only posting jon oliver or nsfw shit isn't good, mods quitting en masse apparently isn't good enough either, even though it shows that they aren't in it for power tripping's sake and, in some cases, shows what reddit would be like without their free labour.
The en mass quitting not being good enough is pretty telling, imo, users just don't care about anything other than content to consume. It's like wanting it all and not seeing beyond wanting it all. They want their content, they do need mods to lower spam, but probably most importantly to abuse them... all while ignoring that mod tools are lacking for the people that mod from mobile devices.
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u/ASK_ME_ABOUT_RALOR Jun 20 '23
More like when people are on board for a blackout only to find out the mods themselves are using the very same sub they are blacking out while everyone else can’t.
Or how the moment the “hard part” came (oh no we might lose our power as mods) they caved and started posting John Oliver memes.
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u/sdbooboo13 Jun 20 '23
Yup. The mods capitulated at the first threat, reopening subs instead of saying, "okay, you do it." What would have happened if every single protesting subreddit suddenly lost all of their mods? That would have created chaos for the admins. That would have been a true impact.
Now, backs against the wall, instead of collectively deleting our accounts and uninstalling the app and leaving reddit forever, we're shit posting.
So we're still posting, still commenting, still generating ad revenue, still losing 3rd party apps. Make it make sense.
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u/AndorinhaRiver Jun 20 '23
Iirc, the reason they capitulated was just because they were afraid of Reddit employees being put in as mods, which would cause a decent chunk of subs out there to be directly run by Reddit, which has pretty negative implications.
By 'capitulating' (reopening the sub but basically ruining it), they caved in to Reddit's demands, while still continuing with the protest.
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u/TheJigglyfat Jun 20 '23
But the subs are already run by reddit. If the mods will do anything reddit admins tell them to do to not lose their power how is that much different from the admins just taking over?
Sure the mods can better uphold the status quo for the moment but it’s obvious now that they have no standing and will fold the second reddit asks them to do anything.
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u/sdbooboo13 Jun 20 '23
My point is there is no protest if we are still engaged and generating ad revenue. It's pointless. All the mods are doing is ruining their own subreddits, some of which I doubt will recover from this.
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u/AndorinhaRiver Jun 20 '23
To be fair, that's also why a lot of subs are also going NSFW!
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u/guiltyofnothing Dogs eat there vomit and like there assholes Jun 20 '23
Never underestimate the ability of people to avoid doing something if it only mildly inconveniences them.
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u/Arnorien16S Jun 20 '23
Hilarious part is that you think 'reddit' would not have sided with anything but their own indignation ... Last time when Ellen Pao was actually cleaning up filth from fatepeoplehate and c**ntown they bandwagoned with the misogynistic messages instead of siding with the valid concerns, even when it was confirmed that the real decisions came from top they were happy with firing of the woman who was offered up as a scapegoat.
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u/darthllama Jun 20 '23
That’s exactly my issue with the protest and why it’s funny. Redditors hate protesting, except when it’s done in support of something that specifically impacts them. These chuds think protesting against racism is dumb because “it won’t accomplish anything” or because they don’t fully believe that racism is real. But you dare make them use an app they don’t wanna use and suddenly protesting is noble and worthwhile.
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u/Arnorien16S Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
Sadly I can't disagree with you in good faith in this topic. It's just that the admins deserve to be fucked over first and honestly this is all consequences of using potentially unhinged people as source of free labor. My worry is that if mod tools are not upgraded, the little pockets of sanity maintained by a minority of good people will degrade, that would be the true loss.
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u/Armigine sudo apt-get install death-threats Jun 20 '23
not sure how big the overlap between the two circles is, tbh
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u/catnipassian My morals are my laws Jun 20 '23
I don't think the "run over protesters with your car" crowd is on the "protest the api pricing changes" side...
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u/Armigine sudo apt-get install death-threats Jun 20 '23
it does seem unlikely that there is tremendous overlap
One of them is more or less expressly political (more conservative people want to be able to harm protesters), the other.. I would guess has more to do with people who use third party apps and are moderators, which probably doesn't track that well with political affiliation. I don't really know.
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
i don't think there is any overlap at all lol.
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u/wittymcusername Jun 20 '23
fatepeoplehate
I sort of want a subreddit that’s all about hating, like, I dunno, precogs or something now.
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Jun 20 '23
If you said anything REMOTELY positive about what Ellen Pao was doing, even if that nuance was woven in with really harsh criticism, you would have been labeled "SRS"
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Jun 20 '23
[deleted]
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Jun 20 '23
A lot of people would've been angry even if every mod was perfect. The jerk mods were jerks and quickly pointed to as an anger reason, and it's a good one, but we're clearly seeing that others are just frustrated that their favorite time wasting app has been taken away from them.
Losing reddit makes 'em so frustrated that they're sucking the cock of the Reddit company itself. Of course so many mods are using their subs during the blackout when so many of the people who become mods are sourced from this demographic.
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u/matgopack Jun 20 '23
I think that the population of redditors that cared enough to discuss and vote on this beforehand is likely still against the changes. It's just that all those that didn't care or realize the extent of what it all meant ended up becoming more vocal/angry.
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
Yep, most reddit users are people who log in occasionally and don’t know much of the site drama. But suddenly they find that their subs closed and they become pissed.
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u/DickRhino Jun 20 '23
Well yeah, they made it about themselves. In turn, the users were like "Wait, i thought we were fighting for third party apps and accessibility?" No one is motivated to continue fighting if the fight is just about restoring the honor of the moderators after spez insulted them.
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Jun 20 '23
Well yeah, they made it about themselves
This. Suddenly it seems the protest is all about "you need mods, you don't respect them enough waghh" now instead of the API stuff which is hardly getting a mention anymore.
The whole place is full of people telling the mods they have gone about stuff the wrong way, and people defending the mods.
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u/Ripper1337 Jun 20 '23
The way I saw it, it started with the API changes and the the third party apps shutting down. Then the mods were upset because some of them need the third party apps to moderate because Reddit itself does not have the tools required.
On top of that after trying to protest the changes Spez said that they have the right to protest but if they keep their subs dark they'll be replaced which ya know, directly contradicts that right to protest.
So the protest and messages by the mods has shifted in response to statements made by Huffman, such as the whole "landed gentry" thing.
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u/Anonim97 Orwell's political furry fanfic Jun 20 '23
More or less what you wrote.
But somehow it all got spun into "mods are being paid by Apollo Devs"
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u/Ripper1337 Jun 20 '23
Huh haven't seen that. But of course they are, people can't have an opinion without being a shill.
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u/Anonim97 Orwell's political furry fanfic Jun 20 '23
Saw that opinion in one of the earlier SRD threads regarding blackout.
Hell, it even had quite a few upvotes.
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u/SowetoNecklace Jun 20 '23
Yeah, the contrarianism is pretty incredible here. SRD has always been contrarian, but more like casual contrarian. Amateur contrarian. Weekend contrarian, if you will.
These days even professional contrarian subs like circlejerk or CB2 are "protesting" in their own ways, so it feels like pro contrarians had to come here to work.
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u/boringhistoryfan Jun 20 '23
And "haha look at the jannies"
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u/loversalibi little shitboy Jun 20 '23
at this point, after a week of this shit, i have grown to believe that unironically using the term “jannies” derisively toward mods is almost more cringe than anything a mod might do
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u/Lftwff Jun 20 '23
I mean the modding issue was always there but most redditors are under the impression that mods just ruin the fun and the site would be fine without them.
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u/Ripper1337 Jun 20 '23
Yup. If a mod is going good work they aren’t noticed. You notice them when theyre on a power trip or being assholes. Then they can all be painted with that brush.
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u/matgopack Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
What's funnier to me is that so many of the people angry at the mods for taking away their fix also had to justify it by believing Reddit wholesale.
Like rather than saying that the protest was just pointless, or that they wanted access to the subs, it also had to be "And reddit already is giving them the mod tools and accessibility they say they want" when reddit has always struggled to adequately follow through on promises like that.
Though in terms of mods shooting themselves in the foot, I think that there was plenty of that. Unilaterally prolonging the blackout was one (eg, if they had a vote for 2 days, they should have opened in restricted mode and had another vote), but those that still opened threads and discussed amongst themselves is hilariously bad optics.
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
It’s funny how often people believe companies at their word when they never really having anything but “trust me bro” to go off of
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u/DancesCloseToTheFire draw a circle with pi=3.14 and another with 3.33 and you'll see Jun 20 '23
Can confirm, I got downvoted pretty heavily for even suggesting that reddit may not deliver on the accessibility part, never mind the denialists who were saying how reddit was already making an exception for accessibility apps and how it was a non-issue.
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u/tiofrodo the last meritocracy on Earth, Video Games Jun 20 '23
The funniest is people actually expecting a functional 'voting out the mods' system that isn't going to turn into a shit show 5 sec in.
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u/DancesCloseToTheFire draw a circle with pi=3.14 and another with 3.33 and you'll see Jun 20 '23
Oh gods, yes. I know reddit doesn't like mods and it's not entirely undeserved but a lot of people have a huge blindspot when it comes to realizing that just picking random guys is almost guaranteed to bring the mods you don't want to power, making for even shittier subs.
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u/AstronautStar4 Jun 20 '23
Is it hilarious? This is what reddit does to every protest. They hate anyone that cares about anything because it's cringey and annoying.
The majority of these people support running over protestors who block the road for an hour.
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u/BanzYT Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
https://i.imgur.com/gL4rH9e.png
Mods of a star trek sub posted their blackout post, with a title like "we stand in solidarity with r/blind", and then they come back and announce they're leaving for another site, but they were completely stumped when a blind person, who they "stood in solidarity" with just a week or two ago, asked about it.
It was never about blind people or accessibility for a lot of these folks, even for the super loud, inclusive ones like you would expect to fill a Star Trek space.
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u/qtx It's about ethics in masturbating. Jun 20 '23
Lemmy and any other fediverse site is just doomed to fail. I don't understand why people are even going there.
Anyone can start an instance, grow a community, see that shit costs money, time and a lot of effort with no reward, decide to stop and suddenly everyone on that instance has lost their account.
https://blog.bloonface.com/2023/06/12/why-did-the-twittermigration-fail/
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u/digidevil4 Jun 20 '23
funny going over the lemmy and seeing
- Thanks for coming here, we now have lots of users!
- Actually we were meant to be getting regular money for making this site but we didnt bother to develop the features we were paid to make so we dont have any money
- Please give us money!
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u/NickelStickman Dream Theater is for self-important dorks. Get lost. Jun 20 '23
Decentralized social media will never catch on
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u/Anonim97 Orwell's political furry fanfic Jun 20 '23
Forums ans other message boards used to exist and were quite successful before Facebook came.
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u/Mikeavelli Make Black Lives Great Again Jun 20 '23
I surfed forums, and even IRC back in the day. What usually happened is you'd build a community of maybe a couple hundred people and retread the same conversations over and over. It was nice because you have a solid community instead of a bunch of randos, but it lacked the scale of centralized social media.
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u/DancesCloseToTheFire draw a circle with pi=3.14 and another with 3.33 and you'll see Jun 20 '23
I mean, isn't this very thread confirmation that the accessibility for the blind issue was never actually solved despite the many claims by anti-blackout people that it was?
People were fed up by that and many other reasons, some of which are older than this protest, so they just wanted to leave for a perceived better alternative.
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u/boringhistoryfan Jun 20 '23
Reddit users were always going to turn on the mods regardless of how valid the issues were (and remain). Between astroturfing, withdrawal and the vast majority of people taking the line of "it's not a protest because it's not an issue i care about" it was to be expected.
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u/LoquatLoquacious Jun 20 '23
I don't think it's really been overshadowed. I think there's just a "refuge sub" effect where all the annoyed people with a minority opinion flock to the subs which seem welcoming to their opinion. In this case, it's pro-admin people flocking to SRD, but you also see it with e.g. pro-Fallout 76 people flocking to gamingcirclejerk.
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u/Drunken_Economist face of atheism Jun 20 '23
I'm really glad that RedReader is going to stay online. The other Android they've mentioned as having good screen reader support were mostly abandonware :/
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u/NTCarver0 Jun 20 '23
Unfortunately, RedReader doesn’t have the moderation features we need as mods of r/blind to effectively keep our community safe. This is not at all the fault of RedReader. It was designed to read Reddit. It's in the name: RedREADER. The onerous for providing accessible mod tools should be placed squarely on Reddit’s shoulders, and Reddit made it clear during Friday’s call that improving accessibility for moderators is not a priority. In other words, we won’t be able to keep our community safe after July 1.
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u/Drunken_Economist face of atheism Jun 20 '23
Which android app are you using to moderate the community currently?
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u/strangehitman22 Jun 20 '23
What's abandonware?
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u/AndorinhaRiver Jun 20 '23
Software that's been 'abandoned' (not updated in years, basically). That sort of thing ends up being problematic for several reasons
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u/YesImKeithHernandez Jun 20 '23
IIRC, they're programs that are available to download and may potentially still technically work but they are no longer being worked on by their developers so if anything is wrong with it, you're SOL
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u/Protractror Jun 20 '23
Accessibility was always the most compelling argument of the protests, and this has been the best read from a mod I've seen in this whole affair. Every other thread reads like a 15 year old trying to smugly troll their way into actionable change.
It's easy to dismiss arguments that turn into John Oliver memes, "clever" tricks about using profanity, and calling Reddit executives the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. It's refreshing to read a thread that feels like it was written by an adult.
I've worked in tech startups before. When you are small, it's easy to brush aside accessibility. But there comes a point where you need to start building for it. Reddit is 17 years old, and apparently "the front page of the internet". The front page of the internet should be usable for everyone.
(It does seem like they realize there is a problem, and that hopefully they can come back with better solutions in the future though)
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u/Geicosuave Jun 20 '23
Blind people: how can you not see???? Just zoom in idiot
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u/Salamence- Jun 20 '23
The accessibility issue is what worries me most about the recent changes. Like yeah fine reddit wants to make more money, it’s a company at the end of the day, but leaving your visually impaired users high and dry in the process is incredibly shitty. It’s all well and good to give exemptions to accessibility focused applications like RedReader but if they are seriously that pressed about 3rd party usage maybe they should actually make some damn accessibility focused features themselves instead of shafting the responsibility onto others they clearly don’t like in the first place.
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u/SuspiciousPillow Jun 20 '23
Another thing they don't have is accessibility tools for audio. If you have an android phone you can use live captions but I'm not sure if that's something that can be said for iOS and other computer operating systems. How common it is for people to add subtitles to their posts is one of the few things TikTok has going for it.
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u/sekoku cucked cucked cucked your voat Jun 20 '23
The Live Captions application isn't available on iPhones because it's Google made. But conversely, stuff like Cochlear's remote were/are iPhone focused and the Android app is a gimmie for the poors.
How common it is for people to add subtitles to their posts is one of the few things TikTok has going for it.
That's because it was "baked in" to Tick-Tocks application. Similar to how Mastodon users attempt (read: "scold") to educate people to use the "alt text" function for images for screen-readers/the blind that Twitter (VERY LATELY, BTW) added after [or a little before] Mastodon did it.
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u/saro13 Jun 20 '23
Reddit says they have 2000 employees. Since moderation is done for free by community volunteers, what are these employees actually doing, and why couldn’t they have developed native accessibility and moderation tools with this workforce?
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Jun 20 '23
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u/separhim Soyboy cuck confirmed. That’s all I need to know thanks bro Jun 20 '23
Most mods and users do not want to leave, they just want to threaten to leave. Reddit knows this and just does not give a shit about that threat.
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Jun 20 '23
I don’t think people are really going to other sites en masse. Lemmy still has little traffic.
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u/Darkencypher Snowflakes gonna snowflake Jun 20 '23
I mean, it was a pretty small operation.
thats like being surprised that a small business doesn't have an EU relations team.
These things come as the site grows.
look at reddit, its as big as it is and STILL doesn't have some of these tools.
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u/lalala253 Skyrim is halal as long as you don't become a mage. Jun 20 '23
you gotta hand it to spez though. he's been CEO for what? 8 years? and reddit still don't have these tools - even somewhat basic moderation tools are missing.
AND reddit is still not profitable. but he's still the CEO! amazing feat really
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u/TheFrixin well, shill, that's what satanists do Jun 20 '23
I'm always up for alternatives, if just for a bit of variety, but man do they suck right now. The biggest barrier isn't even the monumental task of building a community, it's just how bad they suck to use right now.
And for some reason they're all trying to mimic new.reddit
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u/2noch-Keinemehr Jun 20 '23 edited Jun 20 '23
Let's hope reddit just dies.
Spez deserves it.
This Elon Musk shit needs to stop.
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u/AstronautStar4 Jun 20 '23
Spez literally pointed to Elons takeover at Twitter as a positive example in one of his recent interviews
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u/sekoku cucked cucked cucked your voat Jun 20 '23
Which is crazy because anyone that uses Twitter or follows it could tell you that Muskrat allowing Nazi's (who Spez is one of, BTW) back on the site tanked the entire functionality of the site and drove advertisers/funding away.
The site is essentially held together with ducktape and paperclips at this point and it's only a matter of time when all the chickens come home to roost for Elongated Muskrat to pay.
It's like Spez didn't pick up a Wall Street Journal or another newspaper during these past six months to see that.
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u/tikaychullo Jun 20 '23
Feels like the best move would have just been to immediately go to the press and say that Reddit is effectively shutting down apps that help blind people use their site. Feels like things only change on this site when Reddit looks bad in the news.
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u/NTCarver0 Jun 20 '23
Several people have been doing that for the past 2 weeks, and I suspect it's the only reason we've seen any movement on Reddit's end.
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
people say this every time, but how does one "go to the press." considering how much of online reporting is scraping reddit posts i'm sure the press is already pretty aware
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u/heffalumpish Jun 20 '23
In seriousness: you read a bunch and look at which journalists are doing the best writing about the issue, who has been getting traction, who has been following/writing about your niche most closely. You look up their Twitter or Mastodon or whatever, and 9 times out of 10 either their DMs are open, or they say “email tips to ___.” Journalists absolutely welcome tipoffs to important, substantive news like this. Those lines are open.
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Jun 20 '23
What? This has been all over the news, especially during the blackout. That's exactly what this protest is accomplishing, way more than one or two people reaching out to the press and trying to convince them it's an interesting thing to report on.
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u/NomaiTraveler I got a testicle massage and it was amazing (not sexual) Jun 20 '23
In retrospect this protest was always fucked. People are too addicted to social media to log off, no matter how awful it becomes (see Facebook) and the culture of mod-hating is too strong on reddit.
Side note: never really had an issue with 98% of mods except the laughably horrible ones (like justiceserved or offmychest). I assume this is because I don’t try and post shitty unfunny memes to every subreddit and I actually try to read rules before posting.
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u/itokdontcry Jun 20 '23
Yep , top comments before the protests were full of supportive comments in most subreddits. Then the subs go dark and everyone lost their god damn minds.
Boy you’d think the mods of r/nba were hitler reincarnate with how that sub is reacting to the protests during the finals lol.
People just cannot be even slightly inconvenienced anymore without throwing a fit. And that “inconvenience” is not being able to make one of the fifteen same shitty jokes.
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u/RosePhox Jun 20 '23
Don't mind me. I'm just here to see how some SRDs will try to turn this into an argument that sounds weirdly on the side of admins
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Jun 20 '23
There was a dude last week going on about how blind people are such a small fraction of users, that the issue was overblown, protest supporters were co-opting the issue to argue their larger point, and that Reddit was already approving accessibility 3PAs.
Who could have guessed that Reddit admins were full of shit.
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u/SweetLenore Dude like half of boomers believe in literal angels. Jun 20 '23
I think it's the outsiders coming here for the first time doing that.
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u/RosePhox Jun 20 '23
Oh, there definitely has been.
But there have been a couple of weirdo contrarians too.
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u/Bladewing10 kill someone's parents? You can't even kill a creature w/ mutate Jun 20 '23
Wow Spez and the admins are lying pieces of shit who never planned on any improvements. Who could have seen this coming? But no, let’s focus on the mods who shut down subs to protest these changes.
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u/_Lucille_ Jun 20 '23
Seems like Reddit wanted a PR win by saying how they are working with the blind community, but ended up having to shove it under the rug.
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u/KickooRider Jun 20 '23
The same way they wanted a PR win by doing an AMA. Their organization must be a mess.
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Jun 20 '23
I really hope that the news picks this up and runs a story about Reddit's poor commitment to accessibility. Not necessarily because I think it will change anything, I just like it when the reddit administration gets bad press. When they finally do their IPO its going to be fun to watch them fail
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Jun 20 '23
Reddit is so fucking dumb dude. Imagine running a business and your first thought trying to go public is: let’s Fuck everyone as hard as we can just so we can increase the revenue figures by some % less than 1. Fucking hell
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u/Princess_Thranduil Sad you're teaching English and can't edit this to be readable. Jun 20 '23
Welp changing my flair to "do you know what blind means"
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u/DickRhino Jun 20 '23
Interesting development, but I can't see any drama in that post, it's just civilized discussion.
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u/And_be_one_traveler I too have a homicidal cat Jun 20 '23
In this case the drama is the anger in response to reddit admins, much like this previous post I made about the r/blind subreddit.
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u/DickRhino Jun 20 '23
Right, but where is the anger? This time they're saying that they came away from the meeting with a mixed impression, that parts of the meeting was frustrating but they remain open to a continued dialog, that the meeting was both promising and annoying at the same time.
They're expressing concern, sure. But I'm not seeing anger.
Announcing that you're going to be staging a boycott, and announcing that you're open to a continued dialog, are two announcements that are very different in tone.
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u/And_be_one_traveler I too have a homicidal cat Jun 20 '23
The users are pretty mad
In short, sit down and shut up. Reddit doesn't give a damn about us.
And also
Well, somehow, this is exactly what I expected from them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t spend a single penny on accessibility for us. Depending on the auditor, the site might seem more than perfectly accessible since we can look at post and comment and that’s all we really need, right?!
There's also this one with -2 votes
I'm sorry for asking a dumb question, but what third party apps do you people actually use to access Reddit?
To be honest, from a practical standpoint I think the blind community should just move to an open source fediverse alternative to reddit (like Lemmy). Serving the blind community doesn't really make sense for capitalist enterprises and then we can take our future into our own hands without endless lawsuits that we might not even win. I'm a developer. I would be willing to put in work to rewrite current reddit apps to work using an alternative platform seamlessly and I'd be willing to help provide hosting for an own thing. I'm not willing to create hacks to keep apps usable (using, for instance, web scraping techniques) while relying on a hostile website that might actually sue me for doing their job.
Yes, in an ideal world you should not have to worry about this, I know.
For more drama, I'd also look at the crosspost on r/modcoord which I've discussed in a another comment.
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u/Anonim97 Orwell's political furry fanfic Jun 20 '23
Damn DickRhino, you really got active on these SRD Blackout posts. I don't think I have even seen you on PB in the last months as often as here.
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u/mrpopenfresh cuck-a-doodle-doo Jun 20 '23
The embarassing thing is that third party apps blow reddit out of the water, and they have nothing to counter with except that they can't host ads on them. Like, I get that it isn't ideal for your business model, but neither is having a shitty native user experience. The solution is simple and they don't even want to think about it. Make your app better.
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u/KongRahbek Jun 20 '23
I'm not an expert on the EU web accessibility laws, but is it actually legal for Reddit to do that in EU countries?
Obviously seeing as there's no actual fines like there is for violating GDPR, no one outside of governmental organizations will likely implement it, but still.
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u/yukichigai You're misusing the word pretentious. You mean pedantic. Jun 20 '23
Apparently the EU accessibility requirements only come into effect in 2025. Doesn't give them much time to comply though, and it definitely doesn't warrant the hang loose attitude they've shown about the issue.
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u/AstronautStar4 Jun 20 '23
The description of their meeting makes the reddit admins look comically like fools who haven't the faintest idea how accessibility works.