Probably 1/2 of the users on this platform are here as a protest against Reddit. Either the API stuff, or the admins nuking your account, or the mods being… goofy. Or the users, or who knows what.

What’s your story?

  • Meatwagon@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    17 hours ago

    I joined reddit in 2011 or 2012. Was quickly made a mod of a support subreddit for a medical condition I had. I filled up the sidebar with resources and posted every day trying to help people. Even sent money to people who couldn’t afford physical therapy.

    I built up a mod team of wonderful people. We traveled to meet each other IRL a few times and even went to Washington D.C. together to advocate for more research funding for our condition.

    We took over abandoned related subreddits and even created new ones where we saw a need.

    All this to say I really put effort into bettering Reddit, building communities, and making it a cozy place with helpful resources.

    The API shit happened. I never lost RiF because I just used the cracked versions of it, but what got me was how the Admins were threatening their mods. Up until this point the subreddit you built was yours. Entirely yours. You could do whatever you wanted on it because you’re the one who built it. Mods could run rampant and ban everyone and the admins wouldn’t do anything. It sucked when it happened to you, but that was the tradeoff of Reddit. At least your subreddit was yours. The admins that day showed that wasn’t true.

    If the subreddit wasn’t yours then what was the point of doing all that effort? You were just an unpaid employee now.

    I stepped back a bit but didn’t leave. My subreddit still needed me. I still had Rif working. But I stopped curating the sidebar and wiki.

    Then Reddit allowed people to start hiding their post history and made decisions that caused my mod toolbox to stop working without replacing those tools natively on anything except their shitty app.

    Without my tools I can’t moderate efficiently so I stopped. Without seeing post history I refused to rely to people. Bots destroyed a subreddit I enjoyed despite like 50 reports from me alone. So I stopped going on Reddit. Only one mod remains active of our subreddit and she’s on the verge of quitting too.

    I’m focused on here, bluesky, and discord now. I still have to use Reddit for a niche gaming community but I just lurk now, and only go maybe once a week versus how I used to post 20 times a day.