[colonwqbang]

Reddit can't afford to pay the employees they already have out of the revenue they make. That's ostensibly the reason why they raised prices on the API in the first place. Losing all that free labour is absolutely the last thing they want at this juncture.

But even ignoring that, suppose all >15M subreddit suddenly get salaried mods. Don't you think the mods of e.g. a 13M subreddit would want a piece of the cake too, and would strike to get it? Or would they just wait around and keep working until their subreddit is also "siezed" by Reddit inc.

Is there any example of a community which successfully runs on mixed salaried/volunteer moderator labour in such a way?

[thewataccount]

> Reddit can't afford to pay the employees they already have out of the revenue they make, that's ostensibly the reason why they raised prices on the API in the first place.

I'm sure there'd be plenty of volunteers who already manage several of the big 20M+ subs that didn't go dark. We're only talking about 6 subs, and they aren't that complex.

> Don't you think the mods of e.g. a 13M subreddit would want a piece of the cake too, and would strike to get it?

They don't matter nearly as much. The top few are what make up the home page with a few others just sprinkled in. And again I highly doubt reddit would need to pay mods.

Again we're only talking about 6 subs. Not even double digits. There's already groups of subs that mod many, many large subreddits.

[colonwqbang]

You're assuming that if Reddit decides to "fire" all mods of the top subreddits, there would be dozens of (suitable) people happily waiting to take their place. I don't think that's remotely the case.

> The top few are what make up the home page with a few others just sprinkled in. And again I highly doubt reddit would need to pay mods.

Reddit wouldn't exactly be Reddit if you reduce it to only /r/aww and five of the other most mainstream subreddits. If that's what you think will happen... Well I don't exactly disagree with you, but Reddit would be a very different product at that point.