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

  • @mysoulishome@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1691 year 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.

    • Digitalprimate
      link
      fedilink
      English
      41 year ago

      Second time for me. I migrated about ten years ago from Metafilter, which I eventually rage quit. That really fucking hurt, and Reddit filed that niche in my life (but not the meeting IRL or helping IRL part).

      Now I’ve had to go through the same thing with Reddit. I’m into Lemmy, Mastodon, and Bluesky, but it’s not the same. I hope it’s just not the same, yet.

      • @mysoulishome@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        21 year ago

        I don’t know that anything will be the same because it took so long for everyone to gather there and make 100,000 thriving communities about every random little thing from rare diseases to Pokémon made from toilet paper tubes, sexy John Oliver, kids getting hit on the head. If got interested in some random TV show, you could find a sub where there would be 100 interesting conversations about it. That just doesn’t exist outside of Reddit. Where even could it? Fucking Quora? Facebook groups?

        I don’t know what anyone could have done to preserve it though. If it’s POSSIBLE to slap a million ads on it and make a billion dollars, but definitely ruin it forever…it’s inevitable. Nothing can stop that.

        • PorkSoda
          link
          fedilink
          21 year ago

          Thank you for putting into words some of the emotions I’ve felt over the last 9 months.

    • @abbadon420@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      21 year ago

      If there’s good shit on any of those sites, I’ll surely read about it here. If not, it’s not worth it.

  • @wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1041 year 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.

    • @RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      -36
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Lemmings did the tough thing months (years?) ago when thousands of third party apps and community development went to waste.

      He took the easy way out and helped spez IPO.

  • /home/pineapplelover
    link
    fedilink
    45
    edit-2
    1 year 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

  • @Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    451 year 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

    • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      11 year ago

      Anyone who comments on Reddit is now giving free information to the capitalists. I don’t care if people don’t go anywhere, so long as they abandon Reddit.

  • 🔍🦘🛎
    link
    fedilink
    English
    351 year 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.

  • Neuromancer
    link
    fedilink
    341 year 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.

    • roguetrick
      link
      fedilink
      61 year ago

      It’s possible to craft a public company that has bylaws strict enough to make it like a good nonprofit, but why would you do that and still pay taxes?

    • stebo
      link
      fedilink
      221 year 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!

      • @Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        21 year ago

        I tried that with my account and got it permabanned. Locked my 600k karma with a fake ass “you violated Reddit prime directive”.

        • stebo
          link
          fedilink
          11 year ago

          Just for deleting your comments? Well I guess your account was taken out of existence either way so ¯\_⁠(⁠⊙⁠_⁠ʖ⁠⊙⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

    • @janNatan@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      561 year 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.

    • IndescribablySad@threads.net
      link
      fedilink
      411 year 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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        23
        edit-2
        1 year 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          121 year ago

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

          Spontaneity is spontaneous.

  • dumples
    link
    fedilink
    271 year ago

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

  • m-p{3}
    link
    fedilink
    25
    edit-2
    1 year 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
      link
      fedilink
      101 year 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…

      • m-p{3}
        link
        fedilink
        71 year ago

        I could recognize that name anywhere, hello sir :)

  • @mlg@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    231 year 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.

    • @thawed_caveman@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      31 year ago

      They did that once actually, when they killed third-party apps they decided to do a surprise r/place hoping it would calm people down. In July. Not even a year after the last one. It came as a horrible surprise

  • @Furbag@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    221 year 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.

  • southsamurai
    link
    fedilink
    201 year 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.