It became a problem because it meant they were forced to bow down to advertisers instead of leaning into user funding. Discord has leaned into user funding very heavily, but I don’t know of any other social media that is more funded by its users than it is by ads and is regularly used/promoted, at least in the US.

and reddit has it in their TOS that no one who is a mod is an employee of reddit.

yeah, but you need one to win.

they don’t have a contract, they’re screwed.