[stale2002]

Hey, reddit mod of a top subreddit here. I can give some insight into what mods are thinking.

This current 'movement' is extremely organic and decentralized. A couple power mods started rallying the troops, and the movement went viral among mods over the course of about 2 weeks. There is very little direct coordination between subreddit mods, and it is mostly people deciding on the fly to make big decisions.

TLDR, nobody is really thinking much about the concerns that you are pointing out.

Its certainly something that people have thought about, very minimally, but the current counterargument to the idea of reddit just replacing mods is twofold.

argument 1: "They can't replace all of us!"

IE, subs are all run by an army of volunteer mods and mods think that they have a lot of bargaining power here.

argument 2: "I don't care. Let all of reddit burn to the ground!"

Quite frankly, a lot of people on reddit have gotten very worked up about this situation, and do not care about the consequences. If they get replaced, or reddit drops the hammer, they are fine with the consequences and will just leave.

But, the most important thing to note is absence of the following argument.

Argument 3 that doesn't exist: "We have a coordinated plan, back plan, and backup backup plans as for what to do about this, in communication with all the other mods"

That would be the smart way to do this, but unfortunately for the mods involved in it, this isn't what is happening. For better or for worse this is a viral outrage movement with nobody in charge.

[davidgerard]

I was surprised and pleased that our users were wholeheartedly supportive of the shutdown. Still not sure if we're back in two days or will leave it closed longer.

(small sub, 18.5k, but needs active moderation not to go to shit - our topic is in the news a lot lately. thankfully the reddit tools are up to the task at our scale, but bigger would be bad)

the disconcerting thing is that Twitter and Discord are simultaneously going to shit, because enshittification is what happens when suddenly borrowing carries an interest rate and VCs get squeezed.

[jeltz]

I think this is because many people, including me, was already very tired of Reddit's shitty changes. If Reddit had had a good track record and this was their first misguided change I doubt most users would have supported this.

[Balgair]

From the outside, this seems very much like a classic labor dispute. Management (reddit) and labor (mods) are at odds over what they see as the future of the corporation. As such, some form of mediation needs to occur between both sides for work to continue.

Again, as an outsider, I see a few problems here:

1) You're not being paid at all, so you're not really 'labor' per se.

2) You're not unionized, so you don't have a spokesperson and can't coordinate your desires.

3) Reddit can't pay you to begin with, as they have basically no money for each mod, and isn't willing to negotiate before the IPO

4) Reddit seems perfectly fine and able to just get new mods and turn the subreddits back on, spam be damned.

5) Reddit also seems like they will just let the wildfire of outrage pass (really spitballing here) and most users will likely not even remember this by the 4th of July.

I think someone with actual union experience could really help you all. If you managed to get something of a 'standard' going, with payment in stocks or some other token monetary amount, then I'd say that would be a huge boon to the internet in general and a great roadmap for other companies. A real big opportunity is hiding in this and I wish you all the best in grabbing it.