I don't think this is true. Reddit is a corporation. If they decide they want to replace the mods in any sub with new mods they can do just that. There is no property ownership in the reddit domain. They just avoid doing so, but they can, just like how they shut down subs they don't want to see around. They do have control of the platform. The reddit mods are unpaid de-facto employees as they perform work on behalf of the corporation. I also suspect that some of them are actual employees of reddit.
Reddit does have access to capital, one of their owners is Tencent.
This article goes above and beyond to make it look like Reddit owes stuff to the moderators who are not their employees and there is no contractual relationship between the two parties.
The moderators aren't forced to be moderators, they can stop being mods or just move to a different online community.
What's happening here is that the moderators are seeking more control over the platform.
For any one sub, sure. But there is no way reddit can replace the majority of mods.
Most companies have to pay for moderators, reddit has gotten them for free for a long time. If they piss off all those free mods, it’s gonna cost them an unimaginable amount of money.
Can you explain why you believe the mods are toxic? Reddit allowing autonomy created an entire army of unpaid mods in order to create communities that pay 100% of managements salaries despite current reddit management being basically bad at every aspect of their jobs. They absolutely can crush them if they want to but if they do they stand to crush those communities and end up owning the shell of what they wanted to control.
Ownership of reddit/r/$name isn't a valuable quantity if the people who contribute react badly to replacing the people running the joint being replaced by management stooges. For a case study consider freenode and look how that turned out.
The same is true for the mods. Mods don't own subreddits, the community does. If they want to close down communities that aren't theirs, why not just quit Reddit? They are free to stop moderating.
Reddit is built on free labor from mods. Without the mods they would have to pay people to moderate thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of communities. Most mods use old reddit on desktop or third party apps on mobile because their app and new site suck for modding. Alienating the mods means their subreddits go to shit, and reddit exists for content. Doesn't sounds like a 'win' to me.
Or they could hire the mods, like some other sides do? The mods here are regular users, which also means (by Reddits own terms and rules) that they can do whatever they want with their subs. That also means shutting or locking them down. If they were on the payroll, that would not be an option.
What are you talking about? The mods are the only thing letting Reddit get away without employing or contracting content teams of their own. Reddit would lose so much more money than it already does if it had no mods
Most of the reason Reddit works at all is because of the huge number of volunteers doing moderation because they're passionate about their sub. If Reddit had to pay for moderators they would be bankrupt in a very short time. And even if it did replace mods with its own people (whether paid or not) the quality of the sub will drop.
Reddit (the company) controls the platform. They can just install new mods if the current mods arent doing their job. I doubt most users would even notice that the mod names have changed.
I would agree with that, especially for their biggest and most influential subs like /r/news and /r/politics. Reddit's owners have shown they're not above selling out some of these subs to firms like ShareBlue. It would make sense as part of their contract, they'd ensure that the mods were 'suited' to their customers' goals.
They absolutely will, but I wouldn't expect those mods to actually be good mods. I've been in multiple subreddits where a new mod would be assigned because the current ones stopped being active and they'd wreck the subreddit. All posts require approval, sub topic changed, any criticism of the changes met with a permanent ban, etc.
For a company wanting to go public, having users banned from some of the most popular subs, the same subs that rely on said users to publish content, Reddit may as well have shot itself in the foot.
When the corp has relied on the good graces of users and mods to effectively run the site, both by providing the content AND moderating the content, any change to that status quo is going to be met with open hostility from the top 1% contributors.
I think you underestimate the value of that free labor.
Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers.
Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrutiny for the kinds of content they allow on their platform. I doubt they'd want to go there.
That's just not true. This is not how reddit works. There are other rules in place that make it clear that mods don't own the subreddits that they mod. They are stewards of that community, but when they try to sabotage that community they can and should be removed.
How do they plan to handle moderation? The strong majority of subreddit mods still use old Reddit because modding on new is suffering. Many will give up modding and some will abandon using Reddit entirely. Do they have a plan to replace the thousands of free employees that currently keep Reddit habitable?
Reddit does have access to capital, one of their owners is Tencent.
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