Concerns of Redditor safety, jeopardized research amid new mods and API rules.
Did you know that improper food canning can lead to death? Botulism—the result of bacteria growing inside improperly treated canned goods—is rare, but people can die from it. In any case, they’ll certainly get very ill.
The dangers of food canning were explained to me clearly, succinctly, and with cited sources by Brad Barclay and someone going by Dromio05 on Reddit (who asked to withhold their real name for privacy reasons). Both were recently moderators on the r/canning subreddit and hold science-related master’s degrees.
Yet Reddit removed both moderators from their positions this summer because Reddit said they violated its Moderator Code of Conduct. Mods had refused to end r/canning’s protest against Reddit and its new API fees; the protest had made the entire subreddit “read only.” Now, the ousted mods fear that r/canning could become subject to unsafe advice that goes unnoticed by new moderators. “My biggest fear with all this is that someone will follow an unsafe recipe posted on the sub and get badly sick or killed by it,” Dromio05 told me.
Reddit’s infamous API changes have ushered in a new era for the site, and there are still questions about what this next chapter will look like. Ars Technica spoke with several former mods that Reddit booted—and one who was recently appointed by Reddit—about concerns that relying on replacement mods with limited subject matter expertise could result in the spread of dangerous misinformation.
Absolutely. I am not really one of those, although I tried to do my part, and yet there needs to be a minimum amount to really be self-sustaining.
Also, the software is REALLY buggy. I am on Kbin, and 100% of the time when you want to upvote or boost some comment or thread, it asks you to re-login if you do that after spending a minute reading and/or typing - i.e. it only remembers who you are for a few seconds. Also my Notifications have been busted for WEEKS now, b/c anytime you comment on a post that is later removed by a mod from elsewhere on the Federiverse, the notification will be poisoned and can literally never go away, nor even be visited, nor can you visit any other notifications (update that I just found out yesterday: that are on the same page), so basically you will forever receive continually-new notifications that you cannot visit, i.e. it is the entire Notifications system that becomes unusable, not just that single one. Oh yeah, and afaik, moderation tools are literally non-existent on Kbin.
Lemmy is much more advanced, even having several mobile apps (which iirc Kbin has none yet nor will it ever in the future until it opens up its API publicly) but either way I can really empathize why people, especially non-technically minded ones, would (even should?) STRONGLY hesitate to come here. Like for one thing, I already would like to move my account from Kbin to Lemmy, but account migration isn’t a thing. I am not going to go around and ask every person that DMs me to now shift over to use a new account, after having just done that for Reddit. And then do it again, if I don’t like the new instance? And again, and again, and again, and again?
Fuck spez yes but… now what? This place isn’t ready for the masses just yet. Especially Kbin. Though people are starting to work on it, and that will change, soon(-ish).
Right now, Lemmy/Kbin is good to replace doom-scrolling with meme-scrolling. And for communities where enough people were willing to migrate, it may even be a full replacement for a niche sub-Reddit, but I understand why 99% of people are remaining behind. Can we really blame them? I mean yes, obviously, but also, can we, really? It is ultimately their choice what to do with their lives.