1 yr. ago • 98%

The Coup of /r/AssholeDesign

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like PitchforkAssistant.

Over on Reddit, /r/AssholeDesign was taken over by a moderator that had been radio silent for over two years. The linked Imgur album contains modmail screenshots and our entire conversation after calling them out for this betrayal.

66 comments

This is gonna happen to every subreddit eventually. What remains to be seen is how long things last before subreddits start imploding.

17
- Yup, every sub that participated or said anything against reddit's choices is going to have their mods removed. Even if you went public when reddit asked you to.
  
  They will not risk this again closer to the IPO
  
  4
  
  Yeah, they obviously won’t take a risk with ‘uncooperative mods’.
  
  1
Oh boy, some 14-year old finally got his first power-trip boner! Congratulations to him for bending over.

I hope the rest of you guys step back and let him enjoy the joys of modding alone or with other incompetent shills.

14
I always thought a subreddit was created and if the creator stepped down, they could decide to hand it over or nuke it, similar to a discord server or something. Never realized the "I made this" meme was reddit in a nutshell. I'd be pissed if some of the communities I've spent years building got handed off to someone else without my say.

9
- "You'll own nothing, and you'll like it."
  
  7
- I once made a sub, and no one joined it. I then found out that you can't shut one down. Every. You can abandon it, and reddit will hand it over to the first person who asks for it, but once a sub is open it can never, ever be closed.
  
  You can hand it over though. Or at least, that is how things used to go.
  
  3
  
  There's a hack for this: remove all mods including yourself, subreddit is now unmoderated, report the unmoderated sub to admins, they nuke it. However the name won't be available again.
  
  4
  
  Still true!
  
  My one gift to humanity was r/dndcats and it’ll last as long as reddit does.
  
  😂🤣😂
  
  1
I just posted a link to this on the sub for shits and giggles expecting it to either not work or get banned within minutes. Nope, it’s there and people are pissed. Guess he’s not even nodding his newly stolen sub

7
- It's already gathering up a storm of people angry about the change
  
  2
- Is it still there? I couldn't find it. In the meantime, I posted this :D https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/14l8bj4/ads_that_look_like_tweets_with_minimal_sponspored/
  
  2
  
  It's really flying under the radar.
  
  1
So are you telling me UGMadness was an asshole, by design...?

7
Honestly, chances are Reddit didn't even ask them either. They could have been dead in a ditch for years for all Reddit gives a shit, they just need the content public again asap. And I would not put it past them to "access" a dead mod account to achieve those ends

4
What a massive piece of shit.

4
- You might even say he was an asshole
  
  3
This is INFURIATING!!!

What is the discord server? What an AH

4
!iamatotalpieceofshit

4
That last message to /u/ModCodeOfDoWhatWeSay is a bit heartbreaking, like there's somehow still a chance that this is all one big silly misunderstanding and if only Reddit knew all the facts, they would absolutely revert that decision.

4
- Reddit doesn’t give a shit they are just happy that they can lay themselves on the back that they got a subreddit to “cooperate” without removing an entire mod team. They just had someone else do it for them :))
  
  4
Wow what a power trip for what exactly? If he's not even actively involved what does he want it for?

3
- Let’s be honest, everyone here is on a power trip if we’re using the word “coup”
  
  -1
  
  What word do you think would better describe the situation?
  
  4
Thank god we have a new community here.

2
Well welcome to lemmy, sorry that happened. Such a dick move.

2
Welcome to lemmy. Sorry for the circumstances that drove your community here. We won't repeat the mistakes of /r/

2
I just deleted my account, and thereby ending all my moderation activities rather than taking part of the drama.

1
To be fair based on the quality of this community it's not much of an improvement on that front.

There's more posts that have nothing to do with design and are just people venting than there are actual posts of asshole design here.

1
- There's still very few posts here so we haven't been strict with the definition yet.
  
  2
How many subreddits has this happened to now? What a clusterfuck. The whole site has gotten so bad.

1
Great read thanks for sharing, and sorry for it happening.

1
Thanks a lot for sharing. What a shame.

1
What a piece of garbage.

1
So the real assholes are mods we meet along the way... What an asshole.

0
Not trying to be rude, but were you going to reopen the sub and be business as usual?

-1
- Sounds like they were gonna put it to a community vote
  
  2
hi, this was entertaining to read really happy to see loud disobedient mods being replaced and removed you have no sympathy from me. when it comes to reddit, decide for yourself if you want to continue using it or not. don't hold the community hostage. you don't own it. grow up

-2
- The entire point of a protest is to cause inconvenience and annoyance. It’s how you get people to pay attention. Otherwise you’re just the crazy man yelling at clouds.
  
  3
- "disobedient".
  
  1
- Oh sorry I guess you own it then right? Poor baby lost his community so sad. You literally only think as far as "I don't like it so it's bad". Besides the fact the post shows they were still giving people access to the community the whole fucking time you ass-clown.
  
  I know for a fact you read the first part of this and said "I know exactly what this is about" and show down to the comment section to post a bunch of bullshit.
  
  So why do you think you are owed reddit communities again?
  
  0
  
  are random mods owed control over reddit communities? I'm very happy for the protests, but also happy that the power tripping mods are losing that power. It's a win-win.
  
  -1
Honestly i get that you are angry/disappointed on a personal level. But its pretty normal reaction from reddits side. You were not cooperative to their request to open up the sub so they searched for someone who would do it.

I dont want to defend them, i allready cleared my account over there but from a business perspective its a normal reaction. If your employees (even if they work without payment) dont follow your instructions you search for someone who does follow them.

And the new mod might be a prick for backstabbing your protest but thats just a opinion. If there are enough users who want to keep using the sub, regardless of reddits shitty behaviour, its ok to reopen it and none of the old mods has a right to hold it "hostage" for their protest.

-4
- If your employees (even if they work without payment) dont follow your instructions you search for someone who does follow them.
  
  If they work without payment, they're not your employees. And reddit isn't a registered charity either.
  
  It is their site so they can technically do what they want, but it makes them assholes and is not "ok" as you put it.
  
  2
  
  Thats your opinion…as long as the company pays the servers its their right to manage them as they want. And its the right of everyone of their customers to leave the platform if they dont like it (thats what i did).
  Maybe volunteer would have been a better word than employee but that doesnt change the essential part that its reddit whos paying the bills for the servers and the technical staff so in the end they have the last word.
  But thx for replying instead of just stupid downvoting.
  
  -1
  
  It's a privately owned site, they can do whatever the fuck they want. Power tripping mods have been a problem this whole time anyway. I'm glad reddit is dying and i'm glad the mods are too.
  
  -3
You should have redirected your community somewhere else to begin with. It’s not your site. They make their own rules up. You played chicken with the Hoover dam.

-5
- They took a principled stance it's no surprise they wouldn't break it without good reason.
  
  And they did redirect people to Lemmy as best they could. I'm actually shocked reddit let them send those DMs with the Lemmy community in it.
  
  5
lol who gives a shit man. reddit is dead. You've lost your power. get over it. go get a real job

-8
- I didn't think a lot of arseholes came over from Reddit however you've proven me wrong.
  
  7
  
  this is my design page buddy
  
  -5
"coup"? wow, you're all really pathetic about a social media site, get over yourselves

-9
- Shut the duck up UG, go back where you came from
  
  1
You're the same group of mods who all teamed up and went dark to silence subreddits you disagreed with.

You also regularly remove posts that have thousands of upvotes because of vague rules like

"No low effort content"

"no recent reposts over 6 months"

"all posts must abide by Hanlon's Razor."

Locking threads because you didn't like the jokes in them

Welcome to lemmy, but I hope you don't bring this kind of powermodding into the fediverse. It's a growing place, so it doesn't need such a high level of moderation. Also users have a lot of power over the mods. They can see every action you make and make their own community with the same name and rules, but on a more open instance.
-13
- It sounds like you're against subs going dark in protest, but you're on Lemmy. I'm kind of confused.
  
  5
  
  Oh, I'm not against subs going dark.
  
  When it's against the admins. :v
  
  -7
- So you got a crappy post removed once and you're still salty about it. Cry some more.
  
  3
  
  wat
  
  -3

You've viewed 66 comments.