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Ms. Penny Oaken

@PennyOaken@mastodon.social

mastodon 4.7.0-beta.1

Descriptivist; Prescriptivisn’t.
Chronicling the fall of Reddit, in spite of all efforts to the contrary
Die Himmel in dir, wie kann ich sie wissen, kann sie seh'n? Wir tanzen im Fluge, wie Sterne, die ihrer Wege zieh'n. #nobot

0 Followers

0 Following

15 Posts

Joined September 06, 2018

Pronouns:

She / Her / Hers

Sexual Orientation:

32 flavours, and then some. Bodily Autonomy is Non-Negotiable.

Reddit:

https://reddit.com/u/bardfinn

Posts

Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @PennyOaken@mastodon.social

@kepler@cubhub.social Reddit admins appear to be pinning their business to engagement in the app, but didn’t appear to have ensured the app was roadworthy.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @kepler@cubhub.social

@kepler@cubhub.social The “may not … derive revenues from the use … of the API” is a clause that existed at the time to prevent people from using the API to “steal” Reddit content to their own website. Some 3rd party apps did just that, only with their own app. Reddit is to blame for not managing people’s use and abuse of the API for years, & for not managing the site for a decade, acutely so from 2015-2020, & for trying to move the audience to their not-ready-for-prime-time app.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @kepler@cubhub.social

@kepler@cubhub.social @Mimesatwork@wandering.shop it’s true that they could potentially enter into partnership agreements with third party app developers in order to have those apps run their advertisements, and thereby get paid. This presumes good faith and an attitude of partnership from the third party developer. Third parties that make $$$$$ at your expense for years - rather than behave as a partner - prejudice that. Reddit is not without fault there, but.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @PennyOaken@mastodon.social

@Mimesatwork@wandering.shop @kepler@cubhub.social there are other terms in there about how they’re not allowed to allow their end users to break the main Reddit User Agreement / TOS, harass Reddit users, etc etc etc Most Reddit users & Reddit moderators aren’t really aware of these and d probably don’t care; they want their functional and elegant mobile app back, not the incomplete, buggy and bloated official app. They also want to stick it to capitalists.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @PennyOaken@mastodon.social

@Mimesatwork@wandering.shop @kepler@cubhub.social Section 3 b, subsection vi Specifically says API users may not "sell, lease or sublicense the Reddit APIs or access thereto or derive revenues from the use or provision of the Reddit APIs," And every single third party app that used the API and that ran their own adverts, or collected any kind of user payments for provision of the API, was in violation of that.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @PennyOaken@mastodon.social

@Mimesatwork@wandering.shop @kepler@cubhub.social I am the kind of wonk who reads Terms of Service; In 2018 or thereabouts I registered a Reddit App and signed up for the API. I read the Reddit API TOS. A here is that TOS as captured in 2021; it was put in effect in 2016 https://web.archive.org/web/20210405190518/https://docs.google.com/a/reddit.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezNdDNK1-P8mspSbmtC2r86Ee9ZRbC66u929cG2GX0T9UMyw/viewform

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @Mimesatwork@wandering.shop

@Mimesatwork@wandering.shop @kepler@cubhub.social Reddit’s business model at the current time involves a heavy investment in revenue from advertising. The third party apps which were acting as site interfaces, as alternative mobile apps for Reddit — some of them defeated the advertising Reddit ran. In short: Reddit bore a cost in allowing those apps to operate as site interfaces and saw no ROI on that cost, as well as some liabilities.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @kepler@cubhub.social

@kepler@cubhub.social I know what their end-game is, but that is a discussion for after certain things happen. The basic policy position is that moderators are stewards of communities, that sudden changes in mod policy which have the effect of Breaking Reddit are violations of [litanous list of rules/user agreement clauses], and that a lie can circle the globe before the truth can get its shoes on.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @PennyOaken@mastodon.social

Obscure trivia about Reddit: About a decade ago, a private subreddit named r/CenturyClub — for users that had collected 100,000 post or comment karma — made plans to flood subreddits and thus the front page of Reddit with posts about *owls*, just to be able to say they did it. The Reddit admins told them “Don’t do that; we’ll suspend you if you do that.” This “parable” passed into obscurity and was forgotten as r/the_donald was allowed, a few years later, to flood the front page of Reddit.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 21, 2023

Replying to @PennyOaken@mastodon.social

Several moderators are receiving 7 day suspensions. Some moderators are being permanently suspended from the site, notably if they were involved with setting previously SFW subreddits to NSFW; Reddit does not run advertisements on NSFW subreddits.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 20, 2023

Reddit administration has begun removing entire moderation teams from subreddits. r/mildlyinteresting and r/interestingasfuck are the first two down. The subreddits are being set to “archived”.

It has been dubbed “The Reddit Wedding”

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Jun 11, 2023

Replying to @burkettlabs@mastodon.social

@burkettlabs @caseynewton @zoeschiffer while that would be *hilarious*, it would be a crisis in network infrastructure that Musk does not deserve to be able to instigate

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Nov 26, 2022

Replying to @PennyOaken@mastodon.social

@alexhammy209@newsie.social @t@mastodon.nz @dansinker@omfg.town or they go along with their boss or coworkers ignoring safety regs, and the incentives for that kind of go-along behaviour.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Nov 26, 2022

Replying to @alexhammy209@newsie.social

@alexhammy209@newsie.social @t@mastodon.nz @dansinker@omfg.town that’s an important aspect, yes. Another aspect is that they do care, they just are not well-educated about the red flags. For example, people circumvent work safety regs because “they don’t make sense” or “it’s not that big a deal”, and never learned to caution themselves around that kind of thinking.

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Ms. Penny Oaken @PennyOaken@mastodon.social · Nov 26, 2022

Replying to @alexhammy209@newsie.social

@alexhammy209@newsie.social @t@mastodon.nz @dansinker@omfg.town “most people” have built their lives on the ability to trust that they can delegate the task of regulation and moderation to specialists. That falls apart when there’s no ability to claw back regulation and moderation from specialists in subverting proper regulation and moderation — or even an awareness that they’re being subverted, or that reform is necessary.

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