>>is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website
I have a story about this - and its worse than just mods -- Admins intervene and set narrative on for whom is allowed to mod and make mod decisions...
I wont reveal the details - but I have seen Admins literally come in and fuck up Mod orders because (my suspicion) is that the Admins have MANY accounts that /appear/ as mods - but are actually Admin shill accounts...
I had this happen to me first hand and I was appalled.
Reddit's ethics are absolute garbage in this regard.
I've also thought that. The reddit shutdown made the frontpage of (reputable) news sources, I can't imagine that investors aren't going to be asking the admins how much control they really have over the user experience on any given day.
Last valuation was at 10b$ which is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website.
It happened before and the admins yielded to them so I don't see why it wouldn't happen again, especially since it's not like they can run the website without that weird cabal of (mostly delusional/psychotic) power mods doing their work for free.