Is how easily mods have caved in once the admins threatened to remove them. I had thought we’d see quite a few cases where Reddit would have to step in an replace entire mod teams (effectively killing the community). But it seems like that hasn’t happened at all - the closest we’ve got is mods being reordered.
I guess I didn’t appreciate how much moderating means to some people, especially people who are marginalised or otherwise have shitty lives… (which makes Reddit’s behaviour even more abhorrent! Exploiting the most vulnerable in society to provide free labour they are making huge profits off).
That said, it seems like Reddit has crossed the Rubicon now. They have now forced mods to run their subreddits in a certain way. Mods now know they are operating in some tight boundaries, and the admins can - on a whim - change the rules and force them to comply. i.e. any illusion of the power they had is now massively reduced. I’m sure a lot of them will be in denial, but this more than likely won’t be the last time we see this happen.
I get where they’re coming from, kind of. If they’re going to make another move in the future, they need to still be moderators of the subreddit or no one will pay attention.
But they need to realize that 99.9% of people will only hear about their actions, not their reasons. And their action has been to surrender to the admins’ demands and return to normal operations. They’ve contributed to the growing narrative that the protest has failed, which puts more pressure on the remaining holdouts to fold.
A couple news stories of moderators of prominent subreddits being forcibly removed by reddit would have been a thousand times more effective than these vague promises of future actions that might never happen.