I’ve been off Reddit totally since 2023, so part of my understanding may be out of date, but before that I was on for many years and watched how powermods became powermods.

Thus this situation is very unusual. Reddit never did anything about the powermod situation before, but now, suddenly, it’s a big deal. For years (over a decade, at least) users have been screaming about the worst abuses on the site being from powermods, and time after time Reddit bent over backwards to not only avoid doing anything about it, but seemed to grasp every opportunity to enhance the problem any way they could, shutting down complaints rather than the power trippin’ bastards that were regularly creating the problems.

Note that powermods very frequently mod the largest subs, which is how they became powermods to start with: modding a sub that got big and then being invited to help mod new subs that then also grew in popularity.

For myself, I don’t think anyone would give two shits if “powermods” only had an aggregate total of 500 users each, but very frequently they have millions, even tens of millions. Looking at the largest subs on the site and the powermods on those subs, and how many of those powemods are crossovers on equally dominant subs, you see the same core group of powermods across all the top sites, give or take a few individually here and there.

Strangely, this is the group Reddit is now disbanding.

Another thing to consider is how many powermods went on to become admins over the years. At least a handful: I don’t know the exact number anymore but it’s non-zero. Powermods who are admins are especially useful to Reddit, because they ensure that the c-suite has direct control over some of the largest subs without ever appearing to do so.

All this is to say that the powermod situation has been mutually beneficial to Reddit admin for ages, which is why they never changed it or even really acknowledged it.

But now, for the first time since 2005, Reddit powermods are suddenly a problem. So what’s changed? Cui bono?

My guess is that Reddit admin is about to a) yank the entire site to the hard right by removing pretty much all effective human moderation and thus preventing powermods from being able to stand in their way across the largest subs (some of which we’ve already seen and the article addresses), and/or b) introduce some other vile change or policy that is certain to piss off EVERYONE, including every non-bot mod on the site, to the point that admin expects a general revolt even among the powermods and need to dilute the individual power of mods in advance.

One very hypothetical change that could do the trick is Reddit forcing mods, including powermods, to quietly engage in collecting evidence of and reporting users and content that admin would like to sell to the current US admin, for example: intel which Reddit is well situated to provide and for which the current administration has already been calling in the wake of a certain recent death. What if Reddit decides to go all in with the present political trajectory, looking for political power as well as the payout they’re usually in it for, and in so doing force mods to comply or lose their subs? It’s not like Reddit hasn’t already done it for less.

Again, these are just my own musings. But whatever the reason, Reddit admin calling it quits with the powermods suggests something much larger than just another light rehabbing of Reddit power structures.

After I didn’t see the mentioned content I looked around Zdnet, and I think you might have meant to link this article instead:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/rebooting-your-phone-daily-is-your-best-defense-against-zero-click-attacks-heres-why/

Bad click, it happens. Good article, though. Thanks!

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Admin approval with some text that needs a little bit of thought to fill out is surprisingly effective and definitely slows down spammers a lot.

I had to do that on dbzer0 and I think beehaw, they were both a fun exercise and took no time at all. Hell, I ended up submitting a wall of text about Sacco and Vanzetti on dbzer0 if I remember correctly, lol. But if nothing else they knew that it was 1) a human, and 2) I really believe what I was saying.

If the point is to get regular users who are thoughtful participants in online communities, requiring an email address and the typing of a few coherent words on their own behalf is NOT a barrier to entry, or even a much of a bar. After all, these people are applying to join a forum in which they are presumably going to spend unlimited time typing statements of their own creation in the future. Instance owners are just requiring a bit of that up front, and it’s not a huge ask.

It is, however, a very frustrating requirement for people who want to open multiple accounts for spamming and trolling purposes, and for that reason alone is a great filter for applicants.

Yes, and that’s just the start. He preaches against bankruptcy, but he himself declared bankruptcy in 1988. He claims Christianity but has been sued by female ex-employees (one was fired for being pregnant by a guy she was not married to, another was fired for coming out as gay) and is a fully batshit insane covid denier.

And while he preaches this “nObOdY wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE” shit, Wikipedia lists his personal value at $55 million as of 2018, which, presumably, he would never have been able to get near if he’d repaid his own debts back in 1988 instead of declaring bankruptcy like the hypocritical fuck he is.

Right. Like AMC marketing execs have never heard the words vagina dentata.

Yeah. I’m just gonna leave that there. Like AMC did with the Dune popcorn bucket, lol.

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The only thing I really want to know about Google’s Protected Audience “alternative information dimension” container is how I can stuff it full of noisy bullshit, fuck around with it, poison it as thoroughly as I can, and then cheerfully send it away back to Google as a trojan horse as often as possible – all while maintaining the appearance of operating organically within the parameters of normal function as expected by the Google mothership, so they will gladly hoover up my toxic shit and not stop me from seeing what I want to see outside the interference of their New and Improved intrusive hellscape of data collection and ad serving.

And all this preferably as an automated function via uBlock Origin. Thanks!

I am really sorry for your loss. I wish peace and healing to you and all who loved your mother.

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He’s only 39 with a 40 year old image

Lol, great catch! I totally missed that.

EDITED TO ADD: It was the lady who was 39, not the guy suing her. My bad. I should probably just go ahead and revisit Hooked on Phonics now because I can’t fucking read, lol.

And in today’s episode of Totally Un-self-aware,

The company’s founder, Eric Umeofia, refused to budge, however, saying in a recent documentary on the local Arise Television channel that he won’t drop the lawsuit against Okoli and that he would “rather die than allow someone to tarnish my image I worked 40 years to grow.”

So this asshole is the person churning up that poor woman’s isolated bad review into ALL the Streisand effect he can possibly get, as hard as he can, to the point that it is now international news how abysmally shitty his product really is, AND he’s also the person announcing dramatically that he’d rather die than allow anyone to do that.

Hmmm. Will he ever connect the dots?

Nah. He’ll just keep blaming and harassing that poor woman for the rest of his days while people stop buying his product in droves because both it and he leave such a bad taste in the mouth.

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