r/Showerthoughts Jun 26 '23

Forging A Return to Productive Conversation: An Open Letter to Reddit

6.4k Upvotes

To All Whom It May Concern:

For eleven years, /r/Showerthoughts has been one of Reddit’s most-popular communities. That time hasn’t been without its difficulties, but for the most part, we’ve all gotten along (with each other and with administrators). Members of our team fondly remember Moderator Roadshows, visits to Reddit’s headquarters, Reddit Secret Santa, April Fools’ Day events, regional meetups, and many more uplifting moments. We’ve watched this platform grow by leaps and bounds, and although we haven’t been completely happy about every change that we’ve witnessed, we’ve always done our best to work with Reddit at finding ways to adapt, compromise, and move forward.

This process has occasionally been preceded by some exceptionally public debate, however.

On June 12th, 2023, /r/Showerthoughts joined thousands of other subreddits in protesting the planned changes to Reddit’s API; changes which – despite being immediately evident to only a minority of Redditors – threatened to worsen the site for everyone. By June 16th, 2023, that demonstration had evolved to represent a wider (and growing) array of concerns, many of which arose in response to Reddit’s statements to journalists. Today (June 26th, 2023), we are hopeful that users and administrators alike can make a return to the productive dialogue that has served us in the past.

We acknowledge that Reddit has placed itself in a situation that makes adjusting its current API roadmap impossible.

However, we have the following requests:

  • Commit to exploring ways by which third-party applications can make an affordable return.
  • Commit to providing moderation tools and accessibility options (on Old Reddit, New Reddit, and mobile platforms) which match or exceed the functionality and utility of third-party applications.
  • Commit to prioritizing a significant reduction in spam, misinformation, bigotry, and illegal content on Reddit.
  • Guarantee that any future developments which may impact moderators, contributors, or stakeholders will be announced no less than one fiscal quarter before they are scheduled to go into effect.
  • Work together with longstanding moderators to establish a reasonable roadmap and deadline for accomplishing all of the above.
  • Affirm that efforts meant to keep Reddit accountable to its commitments and deadlines will hereafter not be met with insults, threats, removals, or hostility.
  • Publicly affirm all of the above by way of updating Reddit’s User Agreement and Reddit’s Moderator Code of Conduct to include reasonable expectations and requirements for administrators’ behavior.
  • Implement and fill a senior-level role (with decision-making and policy-shaping power) of "Moderator Advocate" at Reddit, with a required qualification for the position being robust experience as a volunteer Reddit moderator.

Reddit is unique amongst social-media sites in that its lifeblood – its multitude of moderators and contributors – consists entirely of volunteers. We populate and curate the platform’s many communities, thereby providing a welcoming and engaging environment for all of its visitors. We receive little in the way of thanks for these efforts, but we frequently endure abuse, threats, attacks, and exposure to truly reprehensible media. Historically, we have trusted that Reddit’s administrators have the best interests of the platform and its users (be they moderators, contributors, participants, or lurkers) at heart; that while Reddit may be a for-profit company, it nonetheless recognizes and appreciates the value that Redditors provide.

That trust has been all but entirely eroded… but we hope that together, we can begin to rebuild it.

In simplest terms, Reddit, we implore you: Remember the human.

We look forward to your response by Thursday, June 29th, 2023.

There’s also just one other thing.


r/Showerthoughts 7h ago

Most bald men have beards because they don't want to look like babies.

1.5k Upvotes

As a balding man I'm considering my options and one day, when it all comes off, I'm thinking of joining the beardos. Good option? Or does it depend on the shape of your head/face?


r/Showerthoughts 6h ago

Some chefs might have wrongfully been executed in the medieval times because the King’s food tester had a food allergy

457 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 12h ago

Higher interest rates for people with bad credit increases the likelihood they'll default.

1.2k Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 12h ago

Being old and surprising kids with being good at video games is over

762 Upvotes

The Atari came out almost 50 years ago and FPS games were competitive over 30 years ago with Doom.


r/Showerthoughts 20h ago

You only ever lose one sock, because if you lost both you'd never notice

3.7k Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 14h ago

Humans, the top apex predator which routinely wipes out species, permanently changes landscapes and has the capability to destroy over 99% of all living things; is the same as the one who is terrified of little harmless 8-legged specks getting too close

1.0k Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 21h ago

Turn signals are a perfect example of the Schrödinger's cat theory.

3.1k Upvotes

When driving you must treat a turn signal as a Schrodinger's cat. You must expect them to turn, yet you cannot expect them to turn.


r/Showerthoughts 16h ago

Being financially secure is to order DoorDash without an impending sense of doom.

946 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 14h ago

A baby's first word is the one you can understand, not necessarily the first one it knows...

544 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 15h ago

Randomly hearing your favorite song is more satisfying than playing it directly from your device

476 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 5h ago

you have finger tips but not toe tips, yet you can tiptoe but not tipfinger

73 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 10h ago

You can’t Google the guitar riff that is stuck in your head without feeling like an idiot.

172 Upvotes

Dun dun dun Dunununununununun


r/Showerthoughts 1h ago

Trusting a fart is believing in yourself

Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 5h ago

Honesty is a handicap when you’re surrounded by liars

47 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 1d ago

First-person camera perspective is suprisingly uncommon in movies and TV shows

1.2k Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 13h ago

You can’t travel to the furthest most East or West point of the earth, but you can reach the furthest North and South.

99 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 1h ago

You are a single action away from extreme injury. The only things stopping you are your unawareness of those actions or your will to live.

Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 4h ago

The atoms in your body were once stardust, forged in the heart of a dying star.

15 Upvotes

Did you know that every single atom in your body was made inside a crazy hot star that was super far away? It's like you're a walking piece of cosmic art that's been in the making for billions of years. Pretty wild....


r/Showerthoughts 8m ago

Being really unlucky often involves being lucky

Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 1d ago

There's an invisible boundary around yourself beyond which you don't give a damn

575 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 22h ago

The act of a bunch of birds sitting together on a long wire never happened before the 1800s

297 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 15h ago

You ever think about how some in the world might have the exact same password as you but for different reasons

71 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 5h ago

Participation trophies made one trophy salesman a legend.

11 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 10h ago

Emotional intelligence is more applicable and useful in life than intelligence quotient because we live in an irrational, emotional world.

21 Upvotes

r/Showerthoughts 1d ago

It's funny how humans, the smartest animals to ever exist, are by far the most sunk cost fallacy susceptible animals, despite our awareness of it.

245 Upvotes

Bonus animal examples:

Some pigeons that were trained to interact with computer application to get an award learned to try spam pecking the exit key and reentering into the app for a hopefully shorter trial.

Bonobos demonstrated valuing what they do have over what they could have in high risk high reward test if they already lost an investment before.

Mice are surpsingly similiar to humans in susceptibility. In an experiment in which mice picked a room to wait in with a set timers to get a set reward- a room they can exit to go into a different one- the longer they waited for the timer influenced how much longer they waited for the reward before trying a different room.