Wasn't vice supposed to die or something? Well thankfully they haven't because this article is such a great treat

How the situation is resolved will determine the direction of one of the last good social media sites and will impact how people interact with it. A complex argument over the specifics of API pricing is, actually, a battle for the soul of the human internet, and an important labor dispute that will partially determine whether people or corporations control the internet.

CEO Steve Huffman is playing a dangerous game which threatens to break huge portions of the site, as well as the apps that millions of people use to access it (nontrivially, Reddit is also imperiling its status as a destination for porn).

not the fricking pr0n how will I coom now

“This one feels decisively larger, better coordinated, and more impactful,” than past protests, said Stevie Chancellor, a former Reddit moderator and current assistant professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota who studies Reddit and social media moderation, in an interview with Motherboard.

>studies reddit

for all of its flaws, is a very good website, one of the last major websites whose day-to-day activities are largely governed by its users rather than being controlled exclusively by an engagement algorithm, top-down moderation rules, and megalomaniacal billionaires.

being jannied by agp deadbeats is so much better dummy

... blah blah blah words words words ...

Even if many moderators like what they do and enjoy some of the power that comes with moderating and guiding a community, they bring unmistakeable monetary value to Reddit the corporation. Li was the lead author of a paper published last year that found Reddit moderators work at least a collective 466 hours per day, which would cost Reddit a minimum of $3.4 million a year at a wage of $20/hour.

and yet THEY DO IT FOR FREE

“We traditionally think of all this volunteer work as a labor of love. But at the same time, this is really valuable labor for companies, and the moderators go through so much stress and pressure, and trauma to do this work.”

pat yourselves on the back for traumatizing jannies

So, there is a version of this story where, in a quest for profitability, Reddit essentially exerts dictatorial power, ignores its moderators, makes it more difficult to view porn on its site, screws over blind people, and centralizes power and attention around its official app at the expense of the much better apps many people use to access the site.

never has spaz sounded so cool

anyway

I recommend at least skimming the article as it's unintentionally hilarious but um I hope you liked the quotes I picked out

r/technology thread (funny)

top comment, +389

A 17 year old Reddit mod wrote this

and all the other comments are basically the same