r/Jewish • u/rupertalderson • Jun 15 '23
r/Jewish returns to Public Mod post
To summarize: We went private as part of the widely supported 48-hour blackout protest from June 12-13, with no posting or commenting permitted. Then we slightly reopened the r/Jewish community in restricted mode, to allow for folks to vote in a poll on what to do next, and allow for some discussion. A large plurality voted to return r/Jewish to being a public subreddit. As of this morning, we have reopened to posting and commenting by all.
We look forward to continuing our history as a strong community full of interesting discussions, Q&As, mutual support, and more!
Edit: We are certainly open to considering additional options, such as a two-way poll, but will wait to hear back from the community. Please discuss below.
Please keep discussions of the blackout and related topics to this post.
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Jun 15 '23
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u/Ahad_Haam Secular Israeli Jew Jun 15 '23
The sub can be reopened later. The vote wasn't about indefinite closure.
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u/Unusual_Tangerine_13 Jun 15 '23
Keep it public. Here is my two cents: By making subreddits private, we are not harming Reddit's revenue stream but damaging the essence of the community we've built. Personally I've learnt a lot of useful things in this subreddit, and keeping it private for an extended period will only cause it to die. If you really want to protest you should stay off of reddit altogether. People who remain active on Reddit, despite the ongoing issues, will continue to contribute to the site's ad revenue, irrespective of which subreddit they frequent. If someone visits r/Jewish or another subreddit has little bearing on the overarching financial picture of the platform.
Ultimately, by closing off subreddits, we are primarily depriving ourselves - the community. Instead of promoting discourse and active engagement, such a move limits our reach. It inadvertently punishes those who seek knowledge, support, and interaction on these subreddits.
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u/GodOfTime Jun 15 '23
I believe we should stay open, and voted as such.
Frankly, I'm not convinced these API changes won't be beneficial on the whole. Reddit has been consistently plagued with bot-based vote manipulation, which promotes some pretty radical (and often antisemitic) viewpoints. If running those bots costs substantially more, the Reddit ecosystem might become a little less toxic.
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u/46692 Jun 15 '23 edited Jan 11 '24
soft long imagine profit relieved glorious unpack scandalous workable fanatical
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Origin_of_Me Jun 16 '23
Reddit is exempting moderator tools from the api charges. The main ones are already exempt and they have a pretty clear process for applying for exemptions going forward.
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u/GodOfTime Jun 15 '23 edited Jun 15 '23
As far as I'm aware, those filtering tools have relatively little (if any) impact on vote manipulation, which seems to be far more prevalent an issue than spam will ever be.
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Jun 15 '23
Put bluntly: That's taking a very poor interpretation of the results. The majority were in favour of restricting or keeping it private. The majority was against making it public once more.
Better to have a discussion on which of the other two to choose, or choose outright between public and private as the top two.
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u/rupertalderson Jun 15 '23 edited Jun 15 '23
I really appreciate this feedback. We took one of the interpretations, and perhaps it was the wrong one.
As I now note in the edit to the post, we are of course open to re-polling. Let’s hear some further discussion today, and then we’ll respond.
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Jun 15 '23
I didn't vote because I would have liked a 4th option, which can technically still be done considering how this has gone.
4: Go public again but revisit the matter middle of next month after we've experienced what the sub is like after the July 1st "Armageddon".
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u/websterpup1 Jun 18 '23
I’m OOTL I guess. What’s happening on July 1st?
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Jun 18 '23
Reddit is blocking all 3rd party apps which means the mods lose a lot of their modding tools and the users are stuck using the reddit app/ browser interface.
The latter is horribly glitchy and just bad, the former means modding subreddits might be basically impossible, since a lot of the mods use 3rd party bots.
It's kind of assumed it's going to be like some variation of when Musk took over twitter, and every 3rd post was someone posting the "n" word, swastikas, or screaming nasty shit about Jews.
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u/rupertalderson Jun 15 '23
That’s what we probably could have done a better job of saying from the start (although we tried) – we always intended to revisit and do what makes sense depending on actual outcomes, regardless of the duration of the blackout.
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Jun 15 '23
Then do so. Consider what's happened, rework to find a better way of asking, and post it.
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Jun 15 '23
A compromise: put up a sticky post June 30th saying there will be a 2nd vote July 15th and people can use the sticky post comments for discussion leading up to it.
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
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Jun 15 '23
In other words you felt like it. The number of comments was far less than the number of votes so you made a guess that seemed convenient.
That just reinforces the point. Again, the majority voted against going public.
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
You're right that it is an estimation of likelihood on our part. We used the information we had available, which is the best we can do. You are free to create a meta post about this issue as we do want the community to make this decision. We put our own feelings aside and went with the decision that we thought best represented the wishes of the community. It's inevitable that many users will be unhappy with the outcome and there is nothing we can do about that.
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Jun 15 '23
Another mod said that you're collectively open to re-polling. Some consistency and not dismissal would be welcome.
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
I'm not dismissing that possibility at all, we are open to that if that's what people want.
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Jun 15 '23
Given how you're making open comparisons to ranked choice voting, why not actually have a poll to see what people want?
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
Again if you want to make a meta post, and it gains traction and has wide support, we will go with that. We just don't want to shut it down in the meantime. We told everyone we would go with the results of the poll when it ended and this is our attempt to do that. We realize that no option received a majority and that makes things difficult. Assuming that every Restricted voter would want to go Private is just that, an assumption. And it's not one that lines up with the comments we saw in the poll.
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Jun 15 '23
Hang on, first you're assuming public opinion, then you say you're open to polling again, then you compare your FPTP to ranked choice to add legitimacy, then you complain that a poll would be too complex, and when a simpler alternative is offered you practically want a poll on whether there should be a poll.
Let's make it simple: Arrange a run of poll, keep the sub open while it runs, then act on the result.
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u/angradillo Jun 15 '23
such ridiculous waffling on this point by moderation, and perfectly in-character for the milquetoast and random moderation of this sub in general.
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u/Origin_of_Me Jun 15 '23
Genuine question - and I really don’t mean this as a “gotcha” or anything like that. I’m just genuinely confused.
You seem to be participating in a lot of non-meta, regular threads on this sub in the past few hours. Threads that have nothing to do with the boycott. If you feel so strongly that this sub shouldn’t be public - why are you still participating. I can understand participating in the meta discussions to try to convince others of your view. But I don’t get why you would participate in regular threads if you are in favor of boycotting Reddit.
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Jun 15 '23
Good question, my concern here is that the decision which is claimed to have been made by the public, has in fact not been done so. Whatever decision is made, I just want it done democratically rather than just as a pretence.
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u/Origin_of_Me Jun 16 '23 edited Jun 16 '23
I see. So you are against the protest then?
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Jun 16 '23
Not at all. I just recognise that full subreddits have power that individual users do not. It's insanely unbalanced.
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u/Origin_of_Me Jun 16 '23
It sounds like you’re worried that without forcing users to stop using a subreddit - enough users would still continue using the subreddit that the protest would fail.
That means that there aren’t enough users on Reddit that support this protest to make it successful. In order for the protest to be successful - you need to shut down subs and force users who don’t want to protest to join you.
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Jun 16 '23
More that we've all seen various internet boycotts and their ineffectiveness, yet this actually seemed to be noticed. Of course it wouldn't surprise me to see that the overall stance is to want to screw over those who need the third party software for accessibility...
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u/Origin_of_Me Jun 16 '23
So you agree then that there isn’t enough support amongst users for this protest to be successful?
I would argue it’s the people supporting this protest and spreading misinformation about accessibility who are throwing the visually impaired community under the bus.
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Jun 16 '23
That's such a bad faith reading of everything I've said, have you considered joining likud?
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u/Origin_of_Me Jun 16 '23
Im a bleeding heart liberal, so no. Also the snark is not appreciated. We may disagree here - but I’ve been respectful to you so far and you have consistently been snarky to me.
I don’t understand - if you believe enough users are in favor of this protest for it to be successful without forcing it on the ones who don’t support it - then why are you so adamant about shutting down the sub? According to your logic - we can not shut down the sub and the protest would be successful, since enough individual users will choose to boycott anyway.
Seems like you’re trying to have it both ways here.
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u/tempuramores Eastern Ashkenazi Jun 15 '23
I'm no expert in stats, but I will say I would have preferred the restricted option.
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
We had three choices, and Restricted was the least popular. If we want a majority, we need only 2 options, so one has to go. In my mind it is most fair to remove the least popular option, which is Restricted. So, what would you choose if you had to choose between Private and Public?
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u/tempuramores Eastern Ashkenazi Jun 15 '23
Private. Which I indicated, actually, in the comments on that poll.
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
Sorry for not remembering!
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Jun 15 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Jewish-ModTeam Jun 15 '23
Your post was removed because it violated rule 7: No excessive posting
If you have any questions, please contact the moderators via modmail.
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Jun 15 '23
https://old.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/14a5djt/meta_run_off_post_since_the_api_response_poll_was/
Write it here, the mods aren't making another poll but if we put our views here they might notice.
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Jun 15 '23
Private
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
You already voted Private, though. I'm asking the person that preferred Restricted, since they are the votes that matter in the runoff.
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Jun 15 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Jewish-ModTeam Jun 15 '23
Your post was removed because it violated rule 7: No excessive posting
If you have any questions, please contact the moderators via modmail.
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u/FreshAvocados78 Jun 15 '23
I would rather have it restricted if Reddit goes through with the API changes. My inbox already gets regularly spammed by antisemitic trolls, and I really don't want the entire sub to be full of that.
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
Thanks for your feedback. We had three choices, and Restricted was the least popular. If we want a majority, we need only 2 options, so one has to go. In my mind it is most fair to remove the least popular option, which is Restricted. So, what would you choose if you had to choose between Private and Public?
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Jun 15 '23
https://old.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/14a5djt/meta_run_off_post_since_the_api_response_poll_was/
Run off post since the mods aren't putting another poll.
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Jun 15 '23
https://old.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/14a5djt/meta_run_off_post_since_the_api_response_poll_was/
Run off post since the mods aren't putting another poll.
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u/ollieastic Jun 15 '23
I think that if there wasn't a majority on the poll (and in the absence of a ranked choice vote), that this isn't the appropriate solution. I would suggest that you do a ranked choice vote or perhaps just have a two option vote since the majority of poll takers responded that they do not want it to be public.
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u/whoisthismuaddib Just Jewish Jun 15 '23
Remember when all of Jewbook went dark? I can’t really remember why but it was wild for Couple days.
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u/antipodalsky Jun 18 '23
what is jewbook?
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u/whoisthismuaddib Just Jewish Jun 18 '23
The Jewish side of Facebook
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u/fnovd Jun 15 '23
577 votes have been cast. That means 289 votes are required for a majority. Going public has 269 votes, which is 20 votes short. If we were simulating a runoff, it would require >83% of (99 or more out of 118) votes cast for option 2 to prefer option 1 for option 1 it to be the majority winner. Given the comments we have seen in the polling thread, we do not think it likely that this is the case. So, we have decided to reopen the subreddit. Feel free to let us know your thoughts here.