It's a demonstration of power; a sampler. This is a common strategy. You want to show them that you have the power so that serious negotiations can begin anew without disrupting the service you want to provide.
And do they want to put in the same effort to curating those communities as the moderators there've just overruled?
Communities can thrive or fail depending on who is in charge.
(What happened with regard to the mod banning an artist because they thought their art looked like it came from an AI? Last I heard the artist was able to show their workflow but the mod was unwilling to back down…)
Didn't both KotukuInAction and TheDonald get shut down by the sub's original creators due to them going off the rails and then forcibly re-opened by the admins and handed over to new moderators who were happy with the massive growth in a direction the original owner never intended and actively did not want?
TD was quarantined under false pretenses (ironic ones too, since a very pro police sub was accused of being anti police) and then basically killed while pretending it was alive.
KIA is alive but heavily muzzled by admins on some topics such as a prohibition to mention trans in any shape or form. The mod takeover was because the original founder who didn't use the site took over it once and destroyed it something.
There's been other cases where founders wreck havoc after years of not being active and were removed.
Why get upset about reddit? There are places where you can say whatever you can be as toxic as you want, spread misinformation and defend putin, like voat.
Are you serious? Twitter is in shambles right now. Ads were pulled (59% revenue lost) and musk is throwing a hissy fit he does not want to pay the GCP bill and rent on the office space. Twitter is the walking dead
Yeeeas, it really wasn't clear and still kinda looks you were suggesting the board would be fine with a 2/3rds reduction in their estimated value right before an IPO.
They just have to keep the communities viable until the IPO; I'm sure they can find new moderators who are unsympathetic to the strike to keep the lights on that long.
Yes but unless they’re well moderated they’ll turn to crap.
There’s a lot of moderators out there moderating by hand and using bots to run some of the bigger subreddits, much like IRC. Without those bots having access to the APIs, that job gets harder and it’s less likely to be done well.
Personally I think Steve Huffman is the fall guy here and this is coming from the money people who have zero interest in where Reddit is beyond 6 months after the IPO. Reddit also has a history putting people in place to make controversial decisions only to fire them months later as appeasement to their community. Ellen Pao was the most recent example.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to IPO but if Reddit shows a 25% increase in ad impressions and minimal loss of users this might end up being better.
Personally, if I were in charge with Reddit I'd go for an approach that required 3rd party clients to show ads that come back from Reddit's APIs and allow users to opt-out of adds for a small monthly fee directly from the user or even from the app developers who choose to incorporate it into their fee structure. Apps who don't comply get banned.
The approach Reddit is going for is stupid and is burning goodwill earned over more than a decade.
The power of an organize and commit to a strike obviously. Reddit is nothing without mods. Going private is, as I said, just a sampler. The endgame would be for the mods to just leave if Reddit doesn't change course. This signals that that is a definite possibility since they've shown a. their unanimity of objection b. their ability to organize and c. their commitment to action.
I think you overestimate the number of people willing to take on that job. The vast majority of people lurk. Of those who are active, most just comment. Of the remainder, most just post. It's a vanishingly small group who actually want to moderate given the time commitment and all the headaches involved.
