Think this case in particular is pretty interesting. Former default subreddit and one of the largest on the site (Top 20 at least).
I think /r/videos is where we’ll see how things actually play out with the reddit admins. I’m guessing at some point the admins will step in and replace the mods.
See this is the problem with reddit. On a site like Twitter, pissing off your power users doesn’t matter much. If anything you lighten the server load some if they leave. You have plenty of users to replace them.
On reddit, pissing off the power users means losing the unpaid volunteers keeping your site running. Sure, reddit can just reopen the sub, and probably will. But who’s going to moderate it? A sub that big needs a serious mod team. What happens if several other large subs follow them? How is reddit planning to staff all these subs? Will whoever they grab know what they’re doing? If enough mod teams resigned in one go reddit would have no way to keep the site working. Even if they find new volunteers it doesn’t mean they’ll know how to moderate a huge community.
Preaching to the choir here, but indefinite blackout is only thing worth doing
I don’t think Reddit cares if for 2 days their users drop
People might find this link handy. It shows a list of the subs that have committed to the blackout and shows when they have gone private
I’m guessing at some point the admins will step in and replace the mods.
100%.
I’d be surprised if /r/videos stays dark past the cutoff date of the original blackout.
The pretense of Reddit being open, fair, and ran by the users is long dead. Reddit is now closer to something like Facebook than it is to the site I joined in 2010. The only different is that Facebook pays their moderation staff.
So what you’re saying is it’s now worse than Facebook. Yikers!
I’m enjoying the drama just a bit too much I think. There’s something quite satisfying when the ‘product’ bites back.
The apathy spez has for the users is on show every time he does anything.
omg, kbin and Lemmy are about to get hit with waves of new users. the poor servers
Their very first point in the Q&A section is an interesting point that I think many of the old-guard Redditors may take, especially those in moderator positions. It is well known that Reddit sub moderation is all done on a volunteer basis. If a substantial number of moderators across some of the larger subs also feel this way, Reddit could see a big decline in the quality of posts and also, possibly, a rise in rule-breaking/hateful content that would severely degrade the quality of the site. I remember seeing a handful of r/SubredditDrama posts about rogue moderators doing something akin to a ‘power trip’. I think some large sections of Reddit are in for a wild ride in the coming weeks/months.
Even if Reddit kicks these mods out and brings in their own, a lot of this moderation has been a labor of love and the replacements won’t be 1:1.
I mean the same thing is happening at Twitter, but most users are staying there because there’s nowhere to go. Bluesky is invite only and mastodon doesn’t have whatever celebs and influencers they follow (and no shade on these folks, I originally joined Twitter for a single person’s tweets).
This place is cool, but people will stay on Reddit as long as their communities do. And frankly I think most people are going to go to discord if Reddit does actually die, because most subreddits already have an associated discord channel
Twitter just needs warm bodies. Reddit relies on users to run the communities. That’s the difference. Reddit is the only big site right now where a small number of users leaving angrily can cause serious structural issues for them.
