Some version of "these comments are a donation to the community and the idea of taking your ball and going home is anathema to what we are trying to build here"
which is a long way of saying "we think our shit don't stink"
I've recently (over two months) deleted my Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook accounts and was not impressed by what I found when I went to delete my HN account.
I understand that there are other options (reset password to random gibberish, run a script to delete my comments) and none of that would provide the catharsis I aimed for so I'm still here, for now, I guess.
Edit: looking at the other replies next to mine, I think "we think our shit don't stink" was an accurate description of what's going on here.
"I've had it with social media sites. I thought HN could be a last bastion, then I saw a dude arguing that he wasn't sure tuberculosis was as bad as it's made it out to be and decided it was just as shitty there as everywhere else. I went to delete my account and found out I couldn't, which hilariously strengthened my resolve to delete the account.
I'd say thanks but I think it's extremely stupid that you're making me resort to this method to achieve the desired result that a half dozen other sites had no issue letting me get to without explaining why or waiting in a multi-day queue, so I'll just say, I hope you have a nice day."
I answered that in my original post: "I understand that there are other options (reset password to random gibberish, run a script to delete my comments[, or, third option I'm inserting now, which seemed obvious to the point of not bothering to state it, just stop using the site]) and none of that would provide the catharsis I aimed for so I'm still here, for now, I guess."
I find that fascinating because I deleted a ten-year-old account attached to my Real Name because of how quickly what it showed me degraded after he purchased it. I'd say 80% of that was from the elevation of blue checks to the top of every thread, 10% of it was seeing his dumb-assed tweets no matter how hard I tried to avoid them, and 10% of it was recommending people I absolutely did not want to see.
Doesn't sound that bad, I hope they do it. And word on the street is they've started. I'm not really sure why they have to even ban the mods. Just tell them it's over and ask them if they want to resign, and keep an eye on them incase they misbehave.
I didn't say ban, I said remove, not that I think there's much of a difference. I hope they do it too, although I expect for entirely different reasons than you do. Funny to see "Reddit Delenda Est" come full circle in a way.
I think mods might be a bit like members of US Congress. I expect that if you asked redditors if they think the mods on reddit are good, they'd say no...unless you asked them if the mods of the subreddits they use are good, in which case they'd say yes. Not convinced that removing the mods and reactivating the subs will go as well as you seem to.
This doesn't sound like a problem to me? Moderators are random volunteers from the public, not Reddit employees. Feels like it should be trivial and easy to dismiss and replace them. Not like they can file a labor dispute with the company...
I mean...something like 70% of subs are private at this moment. I deleted my account before the API changes were announced but it's easy to see that most of the subs I used are still private. I'm trying to get a dedicated server running for a game I started playing and the Google searches I've been doing for answers on some of the settings all return a shitlaod of reddit results I can't access.
Your experience is yours, mine is mine, but given the objective fact of how many subs are currently private, I see no reason to think your experience is typical.
Due to some quirk of when and how I used the Internet, I not only never used Digg but have only really heard of it in relation to the exodus you mentioned. So, interestingly, I don't remember the exodus but I also feel like people talk about Digg.com all the time (as a cautionary tale).
Digg was a social bookmarking site like Reddit. It originally ran on user submission of links, user voting, and then user comments on those links. It had a separate slew of problems than Reddit does today but it did have a similarity in laughably myopic and user despising management.
Digg decided that taking user submissions didn't make them enough money so they changed the model to letting sites pay to submit links. Digg basically turned into PRWire with a comment section.
This and other issues pissed off a lot of users. Then there was a massive protest where all the submissions and comments said go over to Reddit. Reddit's user base ballooned with former Digg users. Digg went forward with its stupid submission changes and a significant percentage of users stayed on Reddit and Digg became a ghost town of PR submissions and astroturf comments.
Like Reddit the value of Digg existed almost entirely in its user base. Once the users left there was no utility left in the site. It was a darling of "crowd sourced" content so without the crowd there was no content.
> Digg basically turned into PRWire with a comment section.
Plus compared to Reddit, any kind of real discussion was a pain in the ass. (As opposed to a bunch of people sequentially shouting into the void in an un-threaded manner.)
Yes agreed, I'm in the same boat as you. I hear about the Digg Exodus all the time, have for many years. It's often mentioned when talking about the origins of Reddit too.
I used to read Digg heavily and joined the exodus to Reddit after, I think the outcome was similar but back then Reddit was popular enough and it had no power mod problems as Digg, also transitioning was easier because it was just web version and no native client. This time a third client alone as Apollo can make people go away.
I also came here to comment on that word choice. It's disgusting to activate a clause of a contract that both parties agreed to, when neither party seems to have a substantial power imbalance relative to the other? Seems pretty odd to me.
I think I could say that it's disgusting if you view it as a mafialike group getting ready to cause a financial shock for their own gain to the detriment of everyone else...
But that's a hyper specific view point that I doubt many hold, but I feel like that's the view the author has.
That's not the disgusting part. It's the assumption by banks that they will be bailed out (by us) for their bad investments if the investments are large enough.
And even more disgusting that taxpayers and their elected representatives keep allowing this to happen over and over again. There is no accountability.
It's a 32-day-old account named after the bad guy from a Star Wars movie. I'd be suspicious of them before even reading the comment, which was fairly bonkers. As for substantive rebuttal of their statements, others have already done it elsewhere in the thread.
If I was in a room with someone who said "I think the world would be better off if everyone in this room except me were dead", I think you'd understand my nervousness around and dislike of the person.
You said there should be 6.9 billion less people on the planet and when asked if you'd be one of the 0.1 billion remaining people you said yes and basically acknowledged you'd already said too much. If that's what you left up, I shudder at whatever this [1] might have been
> If I was in a room with someone who said "I think the world would be better off if everyone in this room except me were dead", I think you'd understand my nervousness around and dislike of the person.
No, what you said was, you think the world would be better off if 6.9B people were dead and you were one of the remaining 100M. And what I'm saying is, those two statements are not very different.
This would be chaos. Most of the big subreddits have a combination of bespoke bots and complex automod configs that even the current mods struggle groking. Reddit would lose a ton of quality through poor moderation quickly if you put everything up for grabs.
Looking at /r/all today, it seems like there's still enough big front-page subs with mods to at least temporarily reallocate responsibilities. Most of the big subs are controlled by "power mods" already who administrate many subs. I think there would absolutely be a significant longer term loss of quality, but my guess is that in the shorter term Reddit could just give the keys to those subs to the 'power mods' who have remained.
I think you'd be surprised. Nature abhors a vacuum and there will be many users waiting in the wings for the tiny internet power of that prestigious mod hat.
Not to re-start a five-day old flamewar but the discussion you linked to seems pretty divided and my personal opinion is that the answer to your question seems to be "no".
which is a long way of saying "we think our shit don't stink"
I've recently (over two months) deleted my Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook accounts and was not impressed by what I found when I went to delete my HN account.
I understand that there are other options (reset password to random gibberish, run a script to delete my comments) and none of that would provide the catharsis I aimed for so I'm still here, for now, I guess.
Edit: looking at the other replies next to mine, I think "we think our shit don't stink" was an accurate description of what's going on here.