[thybag]

I don't really see what the risk is. So far as I follow the ultimate threat from the mods is that if reddit makes the proposed changes to the API, they'll stop modding. Given the changes will take a way a lot of the tools larger subs rely on to mod effectively its an unsurprising move.

If reddit wants to step up and moderate the site itself, it's free to, but if it wants volunteers to keep working for free it'll need to play ball with em in some way or another. That or play chicken and see if it wins.

[mattbrewsbytes]

As much as us HNers like to talk about technology, moderation of content is the key to any social media platform being successful. Moderation goes away or drastically changes and the users leave when the site fills with garbage.

Occasionally mods will duck out for a day, on purpose, to let members go nuts with content. That is what would happen without moderators and after a while, all those un-moderated subreddits would become cess pools of bot content and spam with members leaving and traffic will take a giant nose dive.