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Reddit /r/piracy in turmoil as a mod caught taking bribes to promote posts (www.reddit.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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All the principled pirates have jumped ship to lemmy so it was bound to happen sooner than later.

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[-] Mothra@mander.xyz 132 points 3 months ago

I'm concerned about this comment in the linked Reddit post.

What does it mean, "same mods"? What about "safety"? Can someone clarify?

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 288 points 3 months ago

I used to be top mod of piracy until the reddit blackouts last year, where I was demoted by the admins in a secret coup. I was reinstated by other mods, but have been idle since.

sunbothersco is also the top mod in /r/piracy and it mostly maintaining the megathread but is not very active in lemmy.

We absolutely will never boost posts for money here.

[-] Mothra@mander.xyz 77 points 3 months ago

Thanks. That's interesting, I didn't know the mods here were mods there too. I believe people here wouldn't be letting things fall apart (there is a reason people moved away from Reddit and the quality of content here is proof).

I was surprised to see those comments implying the megathread was no longer reliable though, I figured it was a stretch but had no idea why would they be thinking that.

[-] recursive_recursion@programming.dev 26 points 3 months ago

That's interesting, I didn't know the mods here were mods there too.

tbh I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case cause after reddit's self-made implosion with the API access debacle, the majority of us migrated to (fediverse instances such as) mastodon and here

[-] sadbehr@lemmy.nz 17 points 3 months ago

Just wanted to say thank you for your service over the two platforms.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

To be quite honest, I wouldn't mind sponsored posts as a way to support a community or instance, as long as they were completely disclosed as so and if the sponsor had no control over the moderation.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 65 points 3 months ago

If we get instance sponsors it will probably in the instance sidebar, but for now we don't quite need them

[-] TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 35 points 3 months ago

Fuck ads, they're everywhere at every level. I want to see less of them, not more.

[+] rglullis@communick.news -11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

No one is forcing you to see them, especially given that this is an open source system with open source clients.

Also, how much are you paying/contributing to the developers, admins and moderators in order to avoid the need of alternative methods of funding?

[-] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 months ago

I've been saying this for over a year. The era of free stuff on the internet is coming to a close. Be prepared to pay or self host things you're used to getting for free. It's what got me into self hosting.

[-] bizarroland@fedia.io 8 points 3 months ago

I mean, you're definitely not wrong. All of these mbin sites are typically pretty small but once they cross the point where you're looking at getting a second server to keep the site running then prices start to escalate.

Modern servers are pretty good but I believe depending on how well the software is written that should be somewhere around 10,000 concurrent users.

If they are using cloud hosting their prices will escalate alongside their user counts but if they are using co-location or something like that they have to go out and buy additional boxes at the cost of several thousand dollars a piece and pay for extra space in the colocation center.

They should definitely make it easy for us to contribute to running the site or at the very least do regular planned donation drives kind of like Wikipedia.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 4 points 3 months ago

I agree so much with you, I am running a commercial provider for Fediverse services for almost five years. The problem is that we are still a very tiny minority relative to the amount of internet users.

[-] Yglorba@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Most likely this incident is an indirect result of that coup. After that, they had to rapidly replenish the mod team and didn't have time to vet people, so they ended up with someone like this.

FWIW my recollection from looking over sunbothersco at the time was that they were a clout-seeker with no meaningful history on /r/piracy - they were repeatedly and aggressively asking to be made top mod of a wide variety of subs at the time, with no real connection between them. It sucks that reddit was forcing out top mods, but I wish they'd at least followed through on their threat to make it democracy, since there's no way we would have ended up with someone like that if the system had been anything but "randomly hand the sub to whoever asks first and loudest."

[-] fin@sh.itjust.works 51 points 3 months ago

It seems that all posts/comments advocating migration to Lemmy are downvoted there. It’s truly sad that they still don’t realize Reddit is not a safe place anymore to talk about piracy and stuff

[-] the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 31 points 3 months ago

It may be selfish but i don't want a reddit migration. I don't hate redditors cuz i was one (ok i do hate em but only the regular hate redditors have for each other) but if this place became as popular as that one, it would bring with it the things i deliberately left behind.

Lemmy is great the way it is

[-] Anon518@sh.itjust.works 22 points 3 months ago

I don't think so. I think Lemmy already & inherently has many of the same problems. People are people, no matter where you go.

Lemmy is only better because it's not centrally controlled.

[-] Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The problems would only get exacerbated if more of them migrate over here, that's the issue. I don't think decentralization would solve the issues that'd come with people mass redditposting and shitting all over the place, especially considering the vast majority of users are in lemmy.world, so what good would that do when the majority of the userbase are centralized in a single instance?

[-] Anon518@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

The problems would only get exacerbated if more of them migrate over here, that’s the issue.

I doubt that it would make Lemmy significantly worse. I've already had to block nearly a hundred lemmy communities for containing the "mindless trash" that is abundant on reddit. The reality is that most people aren't smart and don't want to browse and participate in intellectual content. They want to mindlessly scroll through endless memes. I have not observed that people on lemmy are overall more intelligent than people on reddit.

[-] Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 months ago

I have not observed that people on lemmy are overall more intelligent than people on reddit.

Because it's literally the same userbase, 99% of people here came from Reddit for one reason or another. It's a fact that any community that grows too mainstream starts to decline in quality, so if you think Lemmy already has too much garbage you really don't want it to become mainstream. Proportionally we have way less spam, astroturfing and just idiotic bullshit being posted outside of meme subs here, attracting more users would make all of these things more prevalent and no amount of decentralization would solve that unless people started to mass defederate, but at that point why even bother with activitypub in the first place. It's kind of like the people in Beehaw that not only chose this platform but also want to federate with other instances but they're constantly crying and complaining about other instances, threatening to leave the platform... Like, why even bother with activitypub?

[-] Blxter@lemmy.zip 18 points 3 months ago

I'm of the belief that more people more opinions wether you agree or not with them is always better. Reddit and here on Lemmy is both an "echo chamber" of there own making.

[-] the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 months ago

I’m of the belief that more people more opinions wether you agree or not with them is always better

Right on brother.

As to the second part, I guess i see what you're saying. Reddit had its own hidey-holes and echo chambers where you could hear different opinions, not so different from here. Federation and defederation between instances act in much the same way (perhaps due to lemmys small size) as the effect as staying in a few niche subreddits. Traversing between instances is familiar, not too different than leaving your sub and scrolling /all.

Hmmm. Hmmm. I guess you're right, at least the way i use(d) them.

Perhaps the only difference between them is reddit's success and enshittified corporate rent-seeking. Those guys all sound the same and end up making a place same-y and sterilized

[-] fin@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago

I believe that federation is the solution to toxic community.

[-] the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 12 points 3 months ago

In my single year here I've seen what i consider some of federation's limits. It's still too easy to fed and defed their way to an echo chamber, which to me is it's own type of toxicity.

But you're right because the answer to that is multiple accounts, whereas in a centralized server there are fewer players dictating and therefore fewer options.

[-] GluWu@lemm.ee 5 points 3 months ago

Same, there's still plenty of room for growth but I don't want it to ever pass like 2012 reddit level of activity, which was still a lot. But federation tech is also a solution if I ever feel that's a problem so meh, come on over.