One thing that's surprised me about the Reddit shitshow
Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 117 points – Is how easily mods have caved in once the admins threatened to remove them. I had thought we'd see quite a few cases where Reddit would have to step in an replace entire mod teams (effectively killing the community). But it seems like that hasn't happened at all - the closest we've got is mods being reordered.
I guess I didn't appreciate how much moderating means to some people, especially people who are marginalised or otherwise have shitty lives... (which makes Reddit's behaviour even more abhorrent! Exploiting the most vulnerable in society to provide free labour they are making huge profits off).
That said, it seems like Reddit has crossed the Rubicon now. They have now forced mods to run their subreddits in a certain way. Mods now know they are operating in some tight boundaries, and the admins can - on a whim - change the rules and force them to comply. i.e. any illusion of the power they had is now massively reduced. I'm sure a lot of them will be in denial, but this more than likely won't be the last time we see this happen.
Part of the problem as we've seen with a few subreddits is all it takes is one mod who is swayed to reddits side to end the blackouts and probably will happen with these protests that have been happening as well. One mod that either doesn't support the blackouts or says they don't but really is just using it to gain full control of the subreddit is all it takes.
Yeah, which in the long run is a recipe for disaster.... putting the most power hungry mods in charge
Yes, it's inevitable but stretching out the pain to draw more people to the fediverse is useful. The more news it makes, the more people will want to check it out, and a wee bit of viral, newsworthy drama could make a significant impact on the adoption trajectory. Plus, for petty people like me, it's a great source of entertainment.
Prisoners dilemma, do all the mods trust all the mods to not defect? Because it only takes one.