For funzies, and because the only *other* place I go on reddit is still closed

[conuly]

I popped by the mod sub to see what they were saying. Unsurprisingly, they have rather a lot of corporate shills. I say shills, I don't know if they're getting paid or if they're just that enthused about reddit corporate policies, but I sure hope it's the former because they're putting forth what has to be the most ridiculous argument I've seen in a while, namely, that reddit moderators have no moral right to go on strike or to engage in any other form of protest against reddit corporate decisions other than leaving the site, because they're not even paid employees.

Yeah, the site only operates because they give hours of their time and labor - many hours in the more active subs - but if they're not getting paid they shouldn't even have any opinions.

Those priorities are seriously screwed up. Like, whatever you think about this strike or third party APIs or whatever, labor is labor. (Note: I wouldn't be surprised to hear that unpaid volunteers cannot legally "go on strike" in the USA, however, the argument being put forth isn't a legal one but a moral one, therefore, that point is not valid.)

Comments

[swingandswirl]

It is so very baffling to me why the corporate overlords at Reddit thought that pissing off the people who do the free labour that keeps their site running would end well.

[siderea]

I'm not at all baffled. Unfortunately, Reddit has the upper hand here. They literally have the servers hostage. They have the communities themselves hostage.

Sure, the mods can shut them down in protest. But that doesn't work forever. Shutdown online spaces lose value as bargaining chips. The longer a sub is shut down, the less currency and importance it has.

Like, how long do you think r/aww can be shut down before its users wander off to get their cute kitten pix somewhere else?

What will inevitably happen is that users who want to exchange cute kitten pix will found some other forum. It might even just be a new sub on Reddit. And then nobody much will care if r/aww is up and running.

And I feel pretty mortally sure of this because the psychotherapists of Reddit went around this block a year ago: r/psychotherapists was taken closed by its mods substantially over the objections of its membership, so ~everybody just migrated r/therapists, which already existed but which was almost entirely unused. (BOY was the r/therapists mod surprised.) Then nobody much missed r/psychotherapists.

Reddit absolutely has reason to think they can outlast this, and then everything will be back to normal, even if the names of a bunch of subs will have changed. Honestly, the most hopeful thing is that they feel the need to force subs to reopen, which suggests the strike is causing them more pain than is obvious. So maybe for some non-obvious reason, they can't endure a strike, and have to move to end it. In which case maybe the strikers will prevail. I hope they do.

[conuly]

Honestly, the most hopeful thing is that they feel the need to force subs to reopen, which suggests the strike is causing them more pain than is obvious.

Yeah. The only thing I can figure is they're genuinely worried that they're not going to be able to replace the mods at the same cost and quality. But they can always find crap mods, and continue to not pay them.