- August 3, 2023
- Posted by: legaleseblogger
- Category: Related News
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Hello /r/LegalAdviceUK. Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
As you may have noticed, the mod team of LAUK has participated in the Reddit blackout over the past week. This blackout was organized in response to concerns about Reddit’s recent changes and their response to user feedback.
The reasons behind LAUK’s participation in the blackout extend beyond just solidarity with other subreddits. We believe that these Reddit changes have made moderating more challenging, thereby increasing the risk of users being exposed to harmful advice or being influenced by individuals more interested in personal gain rather than genuine assistance.
It is worth mentioning that the mod team of LAUK consists mainly of professionals who are either directly working in law, such as solicitors and police officers, or in related fields like HR and finance. To effectively carry out our moderating responsibilities, we heavily depend on well-developed mobile apps. Unfortunately, the official Reddit app has never been particularly efficient in this regard.
Over the last month, the mod team manually removed over 5,500 unique comments that violated the subreddit rules. This is because LAUK is a different type of subreddit, and we strive to create a regulatory environment that allows for legal advice specific to the UK while considering the limitations of the Reddit platform. It is crucial to note that we do our best to help those in need. However, this task would be impossible without the assistance of third-party tools and applications.
Recently, like many other subreddits, LAUK received a vaguely threatening message from the Reddit administrators. The intention seemed to be to divide and conquer mod teams by reinterpreting long-standing rules and leveraging them against volunteer moderators who invest their own time managing and curating the website. This message was perceived as both sinister and desperate.
Interestingly, Reddit has been giving contradictory statements about the effectiveness of the protests. They claim that the protests have minimal impact, yet they are offering free ad space to retain advertisers and employing various tactics to pressure subreddits into reopening. Depending on the argument, Reddit portrays the protestors as weak or strong.
In response to these threats from Reddit, the LAUK mods have reopened the subreddit, but not without reservations. We are currently discussing certain changes, including:
1. Encouraging users to explore safer and more regulated advice alternatives apart from Reddit.
2. Supporting users in minimizing their financial support to Reddit, such as by using ad-blockers.
3. Relocating our FAQ and wiki to a platform outside of Reddit’s control.
4. Discontinuing cooperative efforts with Reddit admins, such as AMAs, betas, surveys, and mod council discussions.
In addition to these changes, there is also a possibility that we may move to another Reddit alternative or even transition to a different platform like Discord. Such a decision, if made, would be implemented gradually over the coming months.
It is important to note that some of our moderators might choose to step down from their moderating duties on Reddit in order to devote more time to the alternative platforms mentioned above.
Initially, our gut reaction to the threats from Reddit was to provide a humorous yet resolute response, much like the famous reply in the Arkell and Pressdram case. However, our primary motivation as moderators, apart from the occasional power-hungry tendencies, is to help people by utilizing our professional skills and knowledge. Unfortunately, Reddit’s actions are actively undermining this objective. Despite this, the majority of moderators believe that morally, we should continue to use the community we have built to assist people to the best of our abilities.
To any Reddit administrators reading this, we urge you to seek employment at organizations that will not require you to actively harm the community you are meant to support. We hope you find a workplace environment that treats you with respect and dignity, rather than mimicking how Elon Musk treated 6,500 Twitter employees.
Thank you for your attention.
For and on behalf of the LAUK mod team,
Fuck /u/Spez and long live John Oliver.
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****** just grabbed a
Wherever you’d like to move to, please **not Discord**.
The pro of a place like /r/LegalAdviceUK is that anyone can find it and easily search through it (with a mix of Google and Reddit search).
With Discord, everything is gatekeeped. Extremely poor discoverability for users not already familiar with the sub, and even for those who are, Discord UI is everything but user friendly. And anyway, it would keep all of the wealth of historical content that made /r/LegalAdviceUK what it is, closed behind Discord’s “private” community.
In my opinion, especially for a community like LegalAdviceUK, Discord is literally the worst place.
That aside – I fully support your protests and anything that can keep this community open *and efficient* (that, I’m afraid, does exclude a move to Discord). And I would like to thank the mods for all the free work they’ve done just out of their hearts. Your support has been **invaluable** for us (I am sorry for Reddit HQ not feeling the same way).
Fuck u/Spez .
Definitely support the moving of the Wiki to elsewhere. Reddit is a nice resource for Reddit users but Reddit Wikis are often great collections of resources that the subject communities outside of Reddit could benefit a lot from.
UKPersonalFinance moved theirs away a while ago https://ukpersonal.finance/
Some subs are low traffic and low impact, so are easy enough to recreate -I nearly did that for one earlier until I discovered someone had beaten me to it.
This is not one of those and without very careful moderation and the experience of the moderators I could see it going spinning out of control with very real consequences on people’s lives. So, I support your efforts in doing whatever it takes to make this work.
Have you thought about something like Lemmy? I joined [Feddit.uk](https://feddit.uk/) and it seems like a decent alternative, although getting critical mass would be tricky.
Discord is a closed platform, please if you do move do so to another forum or something publicly searchable. I’m really sad it’s come to this, Reddit is really shooting itself in the foot here.
This is easily the most insightful and logical explanation for a subreddit’s participation in the blackout made public so far.
Just to clarify, is ÔÇ£Fuck u/Spez ÔÇ£ a legal term?
Question: could a significant portion of the day-to-day moderation be offloaded to the Reddit admins?
It seems to me that rules 8 (asking for / advising criminality) and 10 (immigration advice) of the sub are already covered by rule 7 (keep it legal) of RedditÔÇÖs content policy.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how their hard-on for monolithic, gargantuan subreddits, and complete lack of enthusiasm and effort for supporting small subreddits to grow to compete with those behemoths, is now hurting them.
I’ve been using Kbin and Lemmy for the last few days as an experimental alternative to Reddit, and I have to say I’m very impressed. The software is a little trough around the edges, but being improved daily. The idea of multiple, federated servers can cause some confusion, but honestly kbin is a very nice piece of software that provides a reddit-esque experience.
I would recommend the mods try setting up shop on kbin.social (the largest kbin instance) and create a ‘magazine’ (subreddit equivalent) on there, to see what you make of it. There are lots of subreddit equivalents already up and running.
Hope to see you in the future – and mods – thank you for all your sterling work over the years. I’ve effectively quit Reddit now – I just pop in to my favourite subs occasionally to see where people are moving to.
I support this feeling for this sub.
Other subs I’m.aprt of I think it’s just a case of, don’t mod it anymore as it’s just about a game, or a TV show. Let someone who is happy to moderate in line with the reddit changes moderate it.
This sub however needs the mods it has due to the nature of the posts. Too many posts are seen with advice given as fact but it’s not it’s what a person believes to be true and it’s then confirmed as incorrect.
If its not for the people who actually know who mod and can take that time to make sure advice is on point then you will get a lot of people who take wrong advice, run with it and find themselves in a situation that hasn’t helped them at all.
This sub needs the mods it has and if they can’t mod effectively then I support moving it to another platform that works.
Just let me know where you go, because unlike the song, this weasel probably wonÔÇÖt pop.
Come to a kbin instance! We would love to have you!
Reddit becoming the architects of their own downfall, what are they on.
IÔÇÖm still amazed itÔÇÖs come to this. Reddit is its users. How can Reddit management not see how unhappy a lot of us are.
I would like to thank the moderator team for their hard work. You give your free time willingly.
Fuck /u/spez
Some subs I’ve been side-eyeing at joining the blackout, but this explanation makes the most sense and I can see how losing the mod team here would significantly affect the quality.
Whatever move you all make next, thanks for building a good community here.
I don’t have anything particularly constructive to add, except that (as someone who has been on both the reported and reporting sides), I appreciate that this sub in particular, where firm, active moderation is important, has provided the best explanation of their position so far. Thank you for that.
Fuck /u/spez .
*you guys.* this is such a lovely response, I respect you so much for this!
All I can say is bravo! Congratulations one and all. When the owners start sending messages like these you know theyÔÇÖre on the ropes.
Where are people going to go if they leave Reddit?
Certainly got your backs. The issue is not in making changes to how Reddit works, it’s in how those changes are implemented. The stupid thing about this whole situation is that Reddit have said they were going to introduce a lot of the functionality that 3rd party apps have had to fill the gap on…but haven’t.
Changes should be positive for a community and make the running of that community easier. Those changes should not make it harder to do the same.
You have my full support, IÔÇÖve run online communities in the past. Nothing that covers such a specialty topic as law and can completely understand why these tools are so important to you.
Reddit had 3 options as far as I can see:
1) they leave it as it is.
2) they integrate the required mods into Reddit and pay the creators/ teams of that mod for effectively that ability.
3) they charge for backend use as a way to make money (and severe backlash)
By choosing 3 they have basically put profit over users and that will cause competition to be born.
So, mods are just stewards of their communities? what if you both started a community and are the head mod? What if the creator gave the community to the current mods? Are reddit admins trying to say that they will take your subreddit away from you if it has a high enough userbase? Imagine youtube saying they would take over popular youtube channels if the creator stopped posting or ebay saying they would take over any storefronts that sellers chose to shutter and then give them to another user to sell from. I don’t know the legal implications of this but it cannot be good.
Some subs have continued to protest by opening under duress, but restricting posts to a single pinned thread, and blocking new submissions.
Perhaps something like that would keep more in the spirit of *Arkell v Pressdram*?
Viva LAUKƒ½í
> Our initial reaction was – as we suspect it would have been for many of our users if threatened in that way – to refer the admins to the reply famously given in Arkell and Pressdram.
I would also suggest [James N Bailey’s response to a letter the Cleveland Browns received](https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/very-truly-yours).
Basically Reddit corp is winning this war. All the participating subreddits should stay dark for now if they want to achieve change. That’s the only way.
Good idea to move the wiki. But we need a good external alternative which doesn’t seem to have arrived – yet.
i wholeheartedly support you – the mods, who do their best, for free, to have a tame place where considered discussions take place.
i would like to ram a large object up the rear orifice of those in reddit mgmt who feel that offering Mafia Terms, are a polite and accomplished way to do business.
There should be a rule where you can only post if the question mentions John Oliver
Long term, Reddit really needs to adopt a revenue-sharing model with the mods of the most popular subreddits (like YouTube does with its creators).
I fully support these protests because it will lead to reddit adding voting our mods and it’s going to be fucking amazing memes coming out of attempts to brigade and hostile take over subs.
FuckƒæŃÅ╗shitƒæŃÅ╗upƒæŃÅ╗
Maybe it’s a mistake to pitch this as a issue solely on moderation tools. The argument is far more nuanced than that, and for the average lurker/consumer it’s just annoying because they don’t understand the full picture.
Either way you have my support.
thank you for the transparency and insight. a lot of subs going dark is confusing to communities who look to places like this sub for information and help, and a lot of the indexed help just disappeared.
i understood the initial point of the protest, but i am less clear now that reddit has offered to continue to allow moderation bots free access. why does moderation rely on other tools so much and is there not some room for moderators to adapt some?
this might not be a popular opinion but reading the “threat” from reddit’s admins, i’m not sure i agree it was a threat. they must be getting so many complaints from ordinary users that subs are gone, and they have a duty to help maintain those communities even as mods do, so it doesn’t feel like a completely unwarranted stance.
in any case i do greatly appreciate the transparency. you guys do a great job!
Thanks!
At least now I have some links/ideas where to go if things get even worse..
In my view a lot have been achieved.. If people (traffic) are leaving, ad revenues are leaving too.. This ship started sinking slowly.. let’s see how much brain the captain left..
I’m sure the mods are aware of this already but for anyone not in the loop, there’s other ways the discontent about Reddits decision making can be highlighted to the public
https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14cr2is/alternative_forms_of_protest_in_light_of_admin
You should make a rule that has to say fuck u/spez in every post or it gets removed ( or mods should add it)
IÔÇÖm looking at discord for moving away from Reddit.
I just want to say, from r/bestoflegaladvice and r/legaladviceofftopic, welcome back. We look forward to all posts being instantly locked with the advice being deportation to r/AusLegal.
Do we need a new BOLA rule that all LAUK posts must have a John Oliver themed title?
i’m 50/50 because i like you i won’t say anything bad, but in general mods are assholes.
Perhaps a new sub will emerge offering similar advice from NAL posters
Good. If you donÔÇÖt want to run the sub then quit. DonÔÇÖt close it and prohibit those who want and need to use it. r/askuk has seen an uptake in desperate users needing help during stressful times and your actions are harming them.
I say this for all subs who have participated in the blackout: whilst your work is appreciated, you don’t own the sub and it’s not fair that you restrict it for your own personal cause. A bit like a strike where workers are forbidden from crossing the picket line or “Just Stop Oil” protestors lying in the road.
You can always leave, and hand over the reins to another set of moderators.
I know all these subs going dark have done so in protest, but they have accomplished nothing other than confusing their subscribers. You have accomplished nothing. Reddit hasnÔÇÖt changed their stance on the API, and all you did was confuse redditors who had no part in the API decision making process.
What exactly did you plan to accomplish? Where you expecting reddit to change their stance on how much they charge to use their API? Because they havenÔÇÖt changed anything. Why did you open the sub back up? They havenÔÇÖt changed their stance, and you reopened the sub, which tells me that this was all an act. You donÔÇÖt actually care about the API issue, and that you were only participating in the protest to make yourselves look like you are doing something. ItÔÇÖs cowardly and pathetic.
Every sub that went blackout in protest, shouldnÔÇÖt have reopened. You shouldÔÇÖve shut the subs down for good. You have proven that you donÔÇÖt give a shit about fellow redditors, and by reopening the sub when reddit didnÔÇÖt change its stance on the API, you have proven that you donÔÇÖt give a shit about the protest either. This was all about your image and what people think of you. This goes for all subs who reopened after participating in the protest. You accomplished nothing, so what was the point? Just close the subs down for good. You clearly donÔÇÖt care.
Pathetic. Moderation tools are literally exempt from the API price hike. Mods dont even know what theyÔÇÖre protesting anymore. The sooner Reddit admins remove these mods the better this site will be.
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