Yes and no. They can force the the subs to go public again, but then the mods might quit. Losing a lot of mods is a bigger deal than losing the same number of users.
Trying to find a bunch of new mods will probably be an issue. Right now there isn't _too much_ complaining about mods. It's a very fine balance and replacing a bunch of existing ones with new ones might cause mayhem.
Looking at /r/all today, it seems like there's still enough big front-page subs with mods to at least temporarily reallocate responsibilities. Most of the big subs are controlled by "power mods" already who administrate many subs. I think there would absolutely be a significant longer term loss of quality, but my guess is that in the shorter term Reddit could just give the keys to those subs to the 'power mods' who have remained.
I was thinking about this too... this seems to be the most likely end game. The best way for the company to 'handle trouble makers'. They will definitely lose some users but enough should come back to hold the popular subs up. I mean, really, if you asked me who the mods of the subs I frequent were, well... I do not know.
Yes, however once they demod everyone, they will find other mods willing to do the work. There are a lot of people on reddit, something like 500 million monthly active users, at least some of them would be able to mod subreddits.
Reddit has replaced mods before, they'll do it again. If they can't do it for hundreds of subs at once, that's fine - they'll start with the largest ones and go from there. Once it becomes clear that top mods will be removed if the subs don't reopen, the protest will largely crumble, if it doesn't do so before this becomes necessary.
I don't think the problem with ditching the existing mods for new ones has much to do with how users would perceive the shift. You have to ask how the hell Reddit would vet that number of replacements in any way, how they'd find the required number of able replacements, and not just people who would (through incompetence or malice) run things into the ground. That's doubly true for the mega-subs which genuinely require a LOT of constant moderation, specialized automated tools, and so on.
That doesn't seem like a feasible path to me, and I think if it was remotely possible it would have already happened. The only way it COULD work is to get rid of the volunteer mod system and replace it with paid mods... and I don't think Reddit has the funds for that.
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.
Right. If the users of the sub want to continue the boycott, they certainly can. If the removed mods are beloved by the community, it's easy for them to open a new subreddit.
But I think most people realize that most of the users, who actually create the content, don't want the boycott to continue, and don't have any particular love for the current mods.
I suspect if Reddit starts replacing those mods outright you could see other mods leaving, it might work out for Reddit but it's a dangerous game. Also, which mods get removed, and would they be banned completely? The big subreddits have lots of mods, many who just help with small stuff and from my understanding do so over a lot of the large subreddits, so the actual details here of who stays, who's leaving what subreddits, etc. probably get murky pretty fast. (And that's besides the fact that the new mods would have little idea how things were currently run, unless some of the existing mods help them).
They will probably have no problem replacing them either. You might have to take a quality dip, at least in theory; In reality it's hard to imagine the mods getting worse. They have a really terrible attitude. It's not just about community relations either, they really, really suck at enforcing rules, so it's not like we're gonna lose quality there.
The only reason reddit continues to play nice is to prevent a mass exudus from disgruntled users. They don't WANT the mods to leave, and I do think it's a problem to embitter, and anger community, even just the mods.
It seems unlikely that they'll have to make it work for thousands of subs, and quite frankly if they do then they'll likely have a new cooperative group of powermods that they can delegate most of the work to.
I think the real thing that Reddit has to worry about is that upset activists could directly start spamming the site in order to justify their warnings about what will happen without mods. "Nice subreddits you have here, would hate to see anything happen to them if you don't accede to our demands."
Yep - They can replace the mods and reopen the subs any time they want. Since the majority of the site is working again this morning there doesn't seem to be much point.
Reddit's diehards are a weird bunch, this kind of drama usually passes within a week or so.
Yeah, I do honestly think that that would be the only way this works. If the majority of mods were just like "yup, we'll shut it down and leave", forcing reddit to replace _large_ swaths of moderation, things could get ugly for them. As it is, as far as I have seen, very few subs are committing to being permanently closed, and Reddit will only boot mods from a _very_ small number of subs over a 2 day closure, so they don't have to find much replacement talent.
Right now, admins will probably replace a few dozens of mods, and then the rest of the site will be back in 2 days, and nothing will change.
I don't see how they'd have difficulties replacing the mods. Even if it's hard to find replacements within the Reddit community there are lots of blue checks on Twitter who'd probably be thrilled to take over Reddit moderation and might even pay Reddit for the privilege.
If "the community" is upset at the moderators, they can take solace in the fact that the communities are almost certainly coming back - it's just a matter of if it's under new management or not.
The real question will be if that new management is up to the task, and somehow, I feel like trying to scrape together a new mod team for thousands of subreddits on short notice is not going to work out like they had hoped.
If they do, whatever thrown together group of reddit appointed substitutes get the task of trying to moderate all of reddit at once is likely going to be drowning very badly
And you can expect people engaged with the protest to take full advantage of this if it happens, making the problem that much worse
If you simply reopen without any of the current mods, the site will be overrun
Trying to find a bunch of new mods will probably be an issue. Right now there isn't _too much_ complaining about mods. It's a very fine balance and replacing a bunch of existing ones with new ones might cause mayhem.
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