A standoff between the site and some of its most devoted users exposes an existential dilemma.
One thing that spez notes is that the communities are supposed to be democratic and he’s pushing towards having moderators and admins of the subreddits being left to a vote… While at the same time increasing the amount of draconian measures by implementing his own moderators of the communities.
I feel like the ability to vote on mods and admins of communities should’ve been implemented ages ago on Reddit to decentralize the power trip, but now with spez doing businessman things instead of harboring a passion for people/ease of use/whatever Reddit’s initial purpose was, this change has come far too late.
He seems to misunderstand that the people who use and contribute to Reddit use it like other social media platforms, but it’s simply not the case. People use Reddit to stay on topic about their hobbies and passions, and ease of use is a huge part of that. Reddit has been constantly trying to inject more invasive shit into user’s feeds: chats, video ads, obnoxiously colored ads (in the app), those dumbass live streams that they pushed for a hot minute that sucked - when the whole purpose of the site is to get your information about a specific topic or check in on a specific topic.
Eventually, users do scroll out of the topic and that’s when people’s purpose for staying on reddit changes: they move more towards the entertainment side of things with memes, circlejerking, and simply discussing and hanging out with like-minded individuals (or starting an argument with them over something fringe in regards to the topic at large). And keep in mind this is only 10% of the user base doing this form of contribution - the banter that’s needed to sustain the quality of Reddit. The other 90% of users will realize something is off when things like this go missing, simply because it’s entertaining to not just engage in, but also to read and watch from a lurker standpoint.
The theme here is that he doesn’t even care enough to create the illusion of caring. The community was never given “democratic” solutions to dysfunctional mod situations until this business reason arose. There’s no community liaison trying to do damage control or make the users feel heard right now – just the CEO himself telling everyone in the plainest terms that nothing they say has any impact because he does not care. People should take all of this at face value.
His inability, or unwillingness, to even put on a show of trying to finesse the community is one of the strangest things about the situation. Handling things in the most ridiculously hamfisted way he could and picking a huge fight with the people that provide him with free content and moderation, and right before the IPO… it’s just so bizarre and dumb.
Exactly, he did not give an inch, instead he kept throwing fuel to the fire. That alone was going to push me away once RiF was gone, but once certain individuals (recent redditors that are just there to consume media) also started pushing against mods, I just felt that place was no longer the same community and nuked my accounts.