This is going to result in one hell of a Streisand effect of they keep it up. Reddit PR team needs to wake up and do damage control at this rate
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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They've nuked the modlist for r/tumblr too and opened it back up. Whomever they handed it to took it private again.
Did they have a "reason" this time or did they just take over it? And congrats to the mod who made it private again. This is the way.
I don't think protesting or creating backlash could change the behaviour of the mods (spez has been caught editing users comments before, for example). But I do think that angering redditors could ultimately be good, because they will start looking for other alternatives to Reddit. The only real way to hurt the company is a mass exhile by the users that generate the content.
A reason? Of course not.
They gave AdviceAnimals over to a lower level mod who is now over in the SubredditDrama thread arguing with people so...
I was doing so good not logging in then I see your comment and I've very tempted.
HOOOOOLD!
This sort of thing is why it bothers me when people mention staying and fighting on centralized platforms. You are fighting code, your existence on these places is not tangible and you can be stripped of it without physical force. Online dictatorships are not like offline ones, they can only fall when they run out of money, which happens when they run out of all of you.
This makes me want to use Mastodon and Lemmy more.
Somehow, I don't think trying to silence all of reddit about this topic is going to work out like they're planning. A complete hostile takeover is not something redditors will forget, even if they stay on reddit. Other reddit moderators are also watching this behavior towards their peers and it's likely turning the ones that were on the fence against reddit admins. PR-wise, this is a really really bad move, and it's also a lot of extra fuel for the fire to go against the 48-hr "peaceful protest" aspect of the blackout.
That was their fault though. Head mod can rank trusted members so that they can't be overridden and stabbed in the back by one of their own. I did that on a sub I moderated just to make sure that there wouldn't be a hostile takeover attempt.
Still shitry, regardless.
It's not like another mod from the same subreddit made a hostile takeover. Reddit itself removed the head mod. It's not like they can stop the owner of the platform from removing them.
Hopefully the users of these subs provide enough backlash for this that it doesn't work out in Reddit's favor. If not, they're just incentivized to keep doing it. Only way to prevent it is if we as users make it less profitable for them to do this than it is to let the protest continue or reverse the API decision.
Or we just leave and take our content elsewhere. In the end reddit itself doesn't generate any content. It's all user created. We just have to leave.