Got the infamous nsfw form letter today. Did my usual long winded rant in response, and signed off with a hearty “fuck spez” lol.
I dunno, I’ve been trying to make it a slow retreat, setting things up to be as annoying as possible. But gods damn, the shitty little form letter just got under my skin.
Told the u/modcodeofconduct account that if they were going to take the sub over, to do it and stfu because my ass doesn’t get paid for this, so their orders and threats have no meaning
Still had to offer the person behind the account the usual willing ear if they needed to vent or whatever.
I mean, can you imagine having that job? Having to spam those form letters, catch blasts of shit in return, and all for a boss as deplorable as huffpig? I mean, yeah, you can quit, but the employees didn’t get much more warning about this crap than the 3rd party devs did. Takes time to find new employment. And it isn’t like reddit is HQd somewhere cheap to live, so unless they work remotely from a much lower cost of living place, it’s extra difficult to make that decision.
Anyway, I just needed a vent tbh. It isn’t like this kind of thing is new lol.
+1 for not agreeing with but at least understanding their position. Its always good to see the nuance in any situation, and think a little deeper than “pure good/pure bad”
Reposting a comment I made somewhere else on the site cause people are finding it useful.
Im not a mod, but on a smaller scale on my own profile, I grabbed all my most upvoted comments (started from the really upvoted ones until I reached 20 upvotes or so) and edited them out to only leave the first few phrases or words. Then inserted a message that read:“This used to be a full comment, you can find more resources in the link bellow since I have moved to kbin and reddit doesn’t deserve my content! Bye reddit, you won’t be missed!
For more [subject] advice, find me on https://kbin.social/m/[subject]”Bonus points if I could cut the comment out at the exact time it was about to become useful “Whats actually going on here is that…”
Did that sorting by most upvoted and also my fresh, since it wass manual I only managed to do so much, But I liked the approach better than just deleting it all or editing with “fuckspez” so that they could get back and revert it.
May not be the solution for everyone, but if you made and posted some important self-made content on reddit (say a guide of some sort, a compendium of usefull resources, etc), editing it out like that could work to keep it gone and redirect trafic to the fediverse.
Since its manual you can’t do it for all content, but you could do it to anything important you built in that community.
as someone who often has to deliver bad news to customers, I appreciate your stance on recognising the human behind the account name.
Same here, I didn’t even bother responding. There’s not much point IMO the end game is still the same regardless of whether I rant at them or not. Figured that the Reddit employees behind that account will get some extra work dealing with force re-opening each closed subreddit & deciding future moderation themselves.
But yeah the Reddit employees behind that account must get all sorts of vitriol thrown their way LOL. I know the feeling, once had a telephone survey job (calling people to try to do surveys) you can imagine people’s reactions receiving cold calls for that stuff, the nicest ones were the people that simply hung up on me.
Not really related, but when I did tele survey for advertising purposes, you got assigned to a market. Be it automobiles, food, or whatever. When you got assigned to call people to ask them about pharmaceutical advertisements, the supervisor would tell you “employee, you are on drugs today” lol
In any case I’m glad you are here instead of there and I’m sure what you do will be appreciated by this community.
Can somebody explain to me why you don’t want to push the employee to push his boss? Like, I know it won’t go anywhere because hoff has his head hup his hass, but so often it becomes a proxy war anyway and people down below refuse to push back because they wanna lick the boot that the enemy hides behind. We’re not mad at anybody but spez, but if we can get people to quit supporting him, that’s just an unfortunate place to be in for that employee to be in, but they’re still representing and serving and acting on direction from that fucking wreck of a human hoffman.
I see both sides of it. It’s like the guards that protect and serve the tyrant king. You let them hurt you or you motivate people to never serve the bastard again.
The guard may not be an evil person like the tyrant king, BUT THEY’RE STILL DOING HIS BIDDING. Give the guard the option to step aside, and if they choose not to, then they, too, are a bad cop nazi, and need to be taken out. I hate it, and normally things aren’t actual dichotomies, but in this case, it’s 100% “us vs them”.
Nobody does what spez does without help and compliance. Force the workers out and you starve the company.
Am I wrong here? Am I off the mark? Is this just really old/conservative thinking? Has nobody read the art of war? I have sympathy for those without choice, but these admins are people too, and have brains and freedom of choice and they’re choosing to continue. Stop making excuses for people to be shitty in society.
I’m sick and tired of people living in fear and cowardly going along with shit we all know is wrong. I’m absolutely sick of it.
Can somebody explain to me why you don’t want to push the employee to push his boss?
Because even if you side with the customer (or rather, the merchandise), at most the boss will fire you and replace you with another drone. Reddit is still laying off people, and you need a paycheck to live. That’s how the economic system forces you into compliance.
Yeah, but one option perpetuates the problem by living on your knees and you acting out of complacent consent of the actions that LITERALLY YOU ARE DOING
[Please, note: what I’m going to say are my personal views, that should not be confused with the community views.]
Let’s say that u/ModCodeOfConduct is a paid employee. And you are said employee. And that people have been pushing you to push your shitty pigboy boss.
Keep in mind the following issues:
- you likely live off your work in Reddit Inc.;
- if you’re fired, you’ll likely need to find another job;
- odds are that your newer boss will be as shitty and immoral as spez;
- if your boss is actually a decent person, odds are that your new company will be crushed by one with a shitty and immoral boss, so here you go again, look for another job;
- if you somehow have the conditions to start a new business yourself, then you’re the boss, and the points above now apply to you.
What would you do? For most people the only viable choice is to comply. Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
The problem is only a problem because the vast majority of normal people believe it’s helpless.
If all workers, say, organized, grew a pair, became French suddenly, or just decided ‘fuck it’ and immediately started fighting for any little thing, workers would suddenly be in power, much like how tech was a couple years ago when there was a huge quitting spree.
Scarcity, wether it be artificial or real, is the reason we’re all scared. And the reason we have artificial scarcity (in tech) right now is because there’s no coordination and scared or hungry people are willing to do that bidding for less and less.
It’s the classic test of social cooperation. I think one of the Green brothers just talked about it in the past week or so somewhere? I can’t remember how it goes, so I’ll try to make it make sense:
You have four people playing a game together. They have a sheet of paper and a pencil, the paper is not see through and until they reveal the paper, nobody can see what anybody else has written.
The players can all write “trust” or “take” on their papers.
After they decide what to write, all papers are revealed.
Everybody starts at 0 points.
If everybody writes trust, everybody gets 2 points.
If two people write take, they each get 2 points and the two people that wrote trust get 0.
If only one person writes take, they get 4 points and everybody else gets 0.
If three people write take and one writes trust, the three people each get 1 point and the trust gets 0.So that’s really not at all how that goes i think, but you get the gist: if everybody stands up and doesn’t coward out and chooses to trust everybody, the net take home is literally double. But if the more people that greed, the less available.
The gist is just that the system is only shitty because of selfish greed and fear and cowardice.
I looked it up, i guess there’s a bunch of variants but the core game is called the dictator game?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator_gameWhich is a derivative of the “ultimatum game”?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_gameThey’re all interesting and slightly different versions of the same game to see how shitty or good people are and what causes it. It’s all psychology and economics. Highly suggest reading the dictator game’s “variants” section, as it’s pretty fascinating.
“Betrayal aversion” is a neat new term.
That’s the main reasoning behind Marxism. I don’t disagree with it (far from that!), but it works on a macro- scale, where a social class changes the socio-economic structure. Specific, individual cases - like a single paid employee - are better handled by Tragedy of the Commons*, where each individual agent (in this case, the employee) is looking for the best outcome for himself alone, and expect others to do the same.
Even then, your point makes me rethink a bit on the morality of the person behind u/ModCodeOfConduct, as well as the idea of pressing that person to press their boss. You’ve made me change my mind - perhaps it would be indeed better to “encourage” the person to tell spez to fuck off.
*since you like those economics “games”, you’ll probably aware of the Tragedy of the Commons, and the closely related Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Highly suggest reading the dictator game’s “variants” section, as it’s pretty fascinating.
I’m a sucker for this sort of stuff, so thanks for the rec!
Yeah, absolutely!
Yeah you gotta at least give them an out. Always.
I AM :) actually aware of the tragedy of the Commons, and I think the prisoners dilemma is a lot closer to what I was thinking of initially than the dictator game.
Total sidenote, I actually just went to Reddit again for the first time in several days to check on the status of baconreader, the app I used for a very long time, since the app devs only post info there, on their subreddit for some reason. They’re shuttering on the 30th, removing the app from all the stores, and not currently planning a lemmy/kbin app, which is super sad because I love their ux design. It’s so strange seeing all the posts saying goodbye and thanks with all the champagne emojis and tears.
It would be nice if employees would revolt as well. But I’m not ever going to push someone to risk their ability to support themselves when what’s going on is legal. This isn’t a government entity. It absolutely, 100% is not the same as nazis. That’s so hyperbolic as to be absurdist. The scale just isn’t remotely the same.
Besides, ranting at whatever admin desk jockey gets the shitty task of processing these copy/paste memos and dealing with the responses isn’t going to convince them of anything. Neither will rational arguments. They’re doing a shitty job, and either agree with him (meaning nothing we say has a point to begin with), or disagree and are having to face dissonance while trying to make a living.
The ones that disagree, if they’re handling this stuff, they feel like shit. I’ve been there, doing a job that I know isn’t right because of the way the company insists it be done (I worked in nursing homes at one point). That shit eats you up inside. They need, and deserve, a bit of kindness.
That’s what people forget online. That’s the ugly side of the internet in general, and reddit in particular. It it so hard to remember the human. Huffpig has decided to stop pretending he ever did, but that doesn’t mean we have to act like him.
I’m not even a nice person tbh. I’m old, I’m grumpy, and I have very little tolerance for stupidity. But I try to be better. And if we don’t all at least try, we are collectively fucked. Empathy is the key to doing better. Compassion is part of empathy.
Besides, if that admin was to ever, ever consider their role in this, don’t you think it would be kindness that would make them practice empathy and compassion? Kindness is just as contagious as cruelty.
It would be nice if employees would revolt as well. But I’m not ever going to push someone to risk their ability to support themselves when what’s going on is legal. This isn’t a government entity. It absolutely, 100% is not the same as nazis. That’s so hyperbolic as to be absurdist. The scale just isn’t remotely the same.
Besides, ranting at whatever admin desk jockey gets the shitty task of processing these copy/paste memos and dealing with the responses isn’t going to convince them of anything. Neither will rational arguments. They’re doing a shitty job, and either agree with him (meaning nothing we say has a point to begin with), or disagree and are having to face dissonance while trying to make a living.
The ones that disagree, if they’re handling this stuff, they feel like shit. I’ve been there, doing a job that I know isn’t right because of the way the company insists it be done (I worked in nursing homes at one point). That shit eats you up inside. They need, and deserve, a bit of kindness.
That’s what people forget online. That’s the ugly side of the internet in general, and reddit in particular. It it so hard to remember the human. Huffpig has decided to stop pretending he ever did, but that doesn’t mean we have to act like him.
I’m not even a nice person tbh. I’m old, I’m grumpy, and I have very little tolerance for stupidity. But I try to be better. And if we don’t all at least try, we are collectively fucked. Empathy is the key to doing better. Compassion is part of empathy.
Besides, if that admin was to ever, ever consider their role in this, don’t you think it would be kindness that would make them practice empathy and compassion? Kindness is just as contagious as cruelty.
You radiate wisdom and I cannot overstate how greatly I respect and admire you for that. It’s rare to speak with somebody online that so clearly speaks from well deliberated experience.
I agree with much of what you say. However, while you got through your nursing home employment, how many more head-down nurses must suffer through and also perpetuate the broken system? You must let it break sometimes.
I feel you’re older than me, and dare I say, wiser. But, you have clearly chosen yourself in these situations over solutions. Solutions that this world dearly needs.
I cannot fairly blame you in your situation or the admins, but if we as citizens in this great shitty machine are but cogs along for the ride, why must we serve the very people who will hurt us and many others like us?
I cannot, in good conscience say I would for sure act any different; I absolutely do have sympathy for those in these awful positions. I also cannot say that what they did was cut and dry wrong, it’s not simple at all.
But, I will say that, eventually, when people are pushed too far, somebody or something must give. And currently, the pure volume of people willingly being used by, and doing the destructive bidding of billionaires and tyrants in the world helps nobody but themselves on this road to shit.
I applaud those capable and willing to do the right things for the good of all of our futures, but I also dually weep that we must abhor, and am sorry for those who are horribly stuck as a cog to serve the shit machine: you, the bound admins of Reddit, and myself, as nothing about what must be done is easy or safe for those who risk protest while closest to true tyranny.
These are my hard words. But in truth, I am overwhelming glad I’ve found this place and don’t envy anybody still fighting on Reddit, as I, too, am obviously a coward in my own detrimental ways; I simply wish Reddit unwell and swift failure.
I am still very unsure and in flux on much of the morality of this topic, and I really do want to express utmost respect in response to yours; I do apologize if this comes off as shaming you, my intent is not so - as I believe that collective negligence, rather than any specific individual, is to blame. My instincts say “fight”, and my shitty knowledge of the world, too, but the successful and safe people in my life who advise me unanimously disagree every time, and every damned time I listen for some reason. It’s strange that I always seek outside pressure to sway me. Maybe someday we can all have nice things and be happy, if I may so cursedly paraphrase John Lennon.
Thanks for all the moderating you did on Reddit. I’ve deleted my account and transferred my moderation to someone else, with a tear in my eye. My baby. But fuck Spez
Anyhow new chances have arrived, leave Reddit for what it is and enjoy here. I don’t regret coming here.
If I worked at reddit they would have to fire me because I would be dragging my ass so hard on everythina.
I get the need to vent. Like, a subreddit might be a collective project, but the ones doing most work there are still the moderators; we grow attached to our communities, it’s only natural.
the shitty little form letter just got under my skin.
No surprise - if they were even remotely honest, the letter would be “we’re going to pretend that you guys don’t want to mod, when actually you just outlived your usefulness. Also let us threat you while pretending that this is totally not a threat!”. But odds are that the grunt behind u/ModCodeOfConduct is just doing the dirty work as ordered.
I hope that grunt wakes up and realizes that “just following orders” isn’t an excuse
“Just following orders” is not an excuse, but “just following orders because I need money to eat”, sadly, is.
But odds are that the grunt behind u/ModCodeOfConduct is just doing the dirty work as ordered.
The odds are that the “grunt” behind u/ModCodeOfConduct is u/spez. It’s the shitty tone and shitty attitude of everything he sends to everyone that gives it away.
The tone is similar, but the wording is different. And even then, the grunt might be simply copypasting what Pigboy told him to.
