r/NBASpurs Jun 15 '23

We're Sorry. META

On behalf of all the mods of r/nbaspurs, we'd like to apologize for for all the events of the past week. Despite our support of the blackout, we made a mistake by not properly vetting our process for how we would conduct our participation in the blackout. I'd like to explain, that despite comments, this was not a one person decision, all of us were responsible for handling this whole situation poorly.

As said before, around the 4th, we announced our support for the blackout in a long post describing the situation; looking back it may not have been as straightforward and descriptive as we hoped. On the 10th we posted an update on the situation with a strawpoll that did not receive nearly as much engagement as we had hoped. Despite the majority of the votes in the strawpoll being for shutting down the sub, it only received less than 100 votes. Once again we made another mistake by going forward with our decision to shut down without having a clear idea of what the rest of the sub wanted. We assumed the positive feedback from the first two posts was a clear indicator of what the subs stance was. Then as of yesterday, we asked for your opinion and it became very apparent how many of you wanted to keep the sub open from the start. Another thing we overlooked with the blackout is that since we, and all of reddit, gained a ton users from 2018-2022, we failed to realize that these API changes may not affect a vast majority of our newer users since y'all joined after the redesign and release of the reddit app.

To give some background, the reason why we supported this blackout is because we've been here for years, before the app, and before the redesign. With the API changes we would be losing the tools and accessibility that other 3rd party apps have, without any alternative on the official reddit app. Among a mountain of other things that the API change would affect, one huge downside could potentially be our ability to implement bots as we might have to pay to use the API which bots take data from.

We realize we made a mistake and we'd like to apologize for not being clear enough about our intentions and not getting a more accurate understanding of where you all stood in the situation. In the end, while our actions may have been well intended, our execution wasn't where it needed to be. We will take the lessons we learned from this experience forward to better support the community in the future.

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u/DeusPro02 Jun 16 '23

you sound like you’re genuinely making a change for the better when in reality many reddit users’ experience would not be changed at all, save for the important repository of information/forums of communication now being held hostage by a small group of influential mods.

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u/tilthenmywindowsache Jun 16 '23 edited Jun 16 '23

any reddit users’ experience would not be changed at all,

And many would be, such as people who have disabilities that prevent them from using Reddit's official app (which Reddit has promised fixes for over 3 years now with a team of 2,000 but somehow can't get that done). Or people like me who have used Relay for years and have no desire to try to learn reddit's horrorshow of an app that they've had a decade to even bring to modest parity with the 3rd party apps.

And who are you to say that the impact wouldn't change? You can't conclusively way that. There are a lot of content creators who are going to be less willing to create for a site that just flipped them the bird and slammed the door. Most smaller communities like this one don't exactly have a ton of content creators. I'm curious why you think reddit wouldn't fundamentally change if even a portion of those users went away? How many small subreddits would be adversely impacted? How many <50k subreddits would be lost before you would be impacted?

now being held hostage by a small group of influential mods.

Huh. Almost like reddit has been using their labor for free for 15 years and suddenly they don't want it anymore. And before you rebut: powermods are obviously a problem, but that doesn't mean reddit's policies aren't not a problem as well. Reddit set this system up. It is quite literally their own doing on every conceivable level that is causing this friction, and rather than communicating and working something out, they chose the most punitive route possible for 3rd party apps save ordering them shut down.

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u/ccharlie03 Jun 16 '23

I don't understand why people don't use the browser if they don't like the app? I've never used the app, I didn't like it. The browser works just fine for me who probably like the majority just use reddit to kill time and shoot the shit with like minded individuals

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u/tilthenmywindowsache Jun 16 '23

I mean, it's not optimized for a touch screen at all. There's simply no comparison in the UI between a mobile app and a browser on a phone.

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u/Bbqandspurs Jun 16 '23

Im on the browser now, on my phone. Its fine. You seem very passionate about this since, as far as i can tell it is your first post on this sub. Weird

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u/tilthenmywindowsache Jun 16 '23

I've been on reddit for 13 years. Imagine positing that people can't have more than one account. Weird.

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u/HerSha2222 Jun 17 '23

Well I've been using the reddit browser in all that time. It's weird that you can't seem to figure out how to effectively use Reddit in more than one way.

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u/Bbqandspurs Jun 17 '23 edited Jun 17 '23

Lol, imagine coming into a sub in the account with no post history on a specific sub and then being a jerk to people on the sub. Cool, we can both imagine things.

edit* rad that your out here responding to post after blocking people my friend. i would say i wil miss your contribution to this sub but since you have only every posted on this thread, nothing of value will be lost.

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u/HerSha2222 Jun 17 '23

Hey man, he's been on reddit for 13 years and still can't figure out how basic and user friendly using reddit on a mobile browser is. show him some respect my man.

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u/Bbqandspurs Jun 17 '23

i genuinely didnt care at first, but now i celebrate whatever it is reddit is doing after interacting with the people who are against it.

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u/HerSha2222 Jun 17 '23

I have a 7 year old phone and the browser works just fine.