Moderator is most certainly a noun, and can be an adjective when placed in front of a "candidate". What are you even on, man.
I'm not the OP but that context makes it pretty obvious the OP is being figurative.
The rest of the comment describes things that did, in fact, happen. So what's the problem?
For a platform hosting user generated content and with volunteer moderation having third party clients is usually a net positive despite the small loss in advertising revenue, purely because they have a very positive impact on content creation and curation. That keeps passive users coming to the site so they can be advertised to.
At some point after a platform matures there needs to be some additional monetisation of third party clients, especially as they begin to capture a larger share of users. It doesn’t have to result in the clients being killed off entirely.
Reddit is nothing without people voluntarily adding content to the site and good moderators voluntarily running subreddits. That’s especially true for special interest and high quality subs like AskHistorians.
Except reddit is mostly just a link aggregator and host of other stolen content.
I suspect at first they didn't really care about the 3P clients in coming up with pricing, they were looking at the bulk of API usage which is elsewhere (not sure where, but based on numbers provided by Reddit Apollo would be at most 1.4% of API usage and likely much less; other clients likely significantly lower given how Apollo was singled out) and looking at preparing to get paid for user content by VC-backed AI startups.
Once the pricing was announced and the 3P app developers started complaining, there was probably a Cartman moment in the executive offices and things just went downstairs from there.
Because of their hamfisted handling of this they're going to lose a significant number of long-term users, a fair amount of content as a noticeable chunk of those users delete their content on the way out the door, an absurd amount of community and unpaid volunteer moderator goodwill, etc.
Reddit is likely to keep most of the users for now, but the reaction is also driving a lot of people to suddenly explore alternatives that would have been completely ignored before - and at some point it's quite possible that those popular clients that don't even have Reddit in the name will shift to providing mature and familiar interfaces to those alternatives and that may be enough to push growth. Remember that no social platform started out big.
If Reddit actually wanted to make money from the third party app users it would have been almost trivial to do - require a paid account for API usage, introduce new paid account tiers ($18-24/year, $3-4/mo, the current Premium, a couple of more expensive 'family'/multiuser tiers). Have them variable in how much monthly API usage was allowed and other perks (e.g. multiple IDs with either split or pooled API usage). Run it through the payment system Reddit already uses which means they get almost all the money instead of 30% off the top for app store fees plus a chunk going to the app developers so they're safe from getting screwed by mis-estimating usage. Edit: heck, just converting a chunk of users to paid accounts would likely have been huge for them because it gives potential for converting even more in the future, plus the chances of upsells.
But no, 'You have 30 days to change your business model, prepare to handle $millions/year in cash flow, and rewrite chunks of your software to be subscription-based.' Hell, the only 2 that I know of that even used subscriptions are Apollo and Sync, they might have had a chance. Instead, Reddit went for plausible deniability, 'we didn't kill the apps, they had a path to work with us but they all just gave up!'
Feh.
Why?
Many reasons:
Reddit was a party, now it is a business. As Spez said in the AMA, it is not (yet) profitable, and as is apparent, there are no more rounds of capital raising happening. They filed for an IPO two years ago. Will they have that IPO? I say, at this point, No. The mere fact that Spez said that it’s not profitable tells me that they’re no longer going for an IPO. Now, they’re just aiming at making Reddit into a real business, for the long term.
Third Party Apps using the API to serve Reddit content with subscription models or by running their own adverts alongside the content, and raking in cash — bottom line, they were stealing revenues from Reddit. Even though Reddit didn’t enforce any API TOS or AUP or user agreement, etc — the terms were still there in the main user agreement that use of the site and use of the API was personal, and not “scrape the contents of the site, slap your own brand on it, and pull in profit from that”. Not even if it had a better UI and better mod tools. It’s still theft, even if the aesthetics were clean. Even if it was “anti censorship”, even if it was “accountability and transparency”, even if it was for research and even if it supported, tangentially, moderator efforts. Even if Reddit mismanaged their API for a decade.
Reddit admins already prepared for this eventuality. They started preparing for it in 2015 when a bunch of “free speech” bigotry-oriented ecosystem subreddits blacked out “in protest” of Reddit shutting down a half dozen subreddits — subreddits dedicated to white supremacist hatred and violent misogyny, and which, we would later find out were run by a now-convicted White Identity Terrorist, European88.
They later prepared for it in 2018 and then when the founder of KotakuInAction figured out that the people who had been running KiA were the same people who helped u/European88 run thousands of White Identity Extremism terrorist subreddits and misogynist subreddits, and were in a conspiracy to burn the site down by drowning it in terrorist hate speech and making it into 4chan’s /pol/. He closed KiA. The Reddit admins reopened it and gave it back to the people who had been running it to drive misogynist hatred and recruit for White Identity Extremism groups.
Moderator is a Verb, not a Noun. The new moderator code of conduct and modsupportbot “moderator candidate” function makes it clear that moderators are supposed to be the people who actually take actions to steward a community, not people who claim a title and never take action, not people who abuse the privileges to push an agenda, not people who do things that aren’t in the interest of the communities they serve. Not absentee founders.
Moderator teams tend to be cliques of 80% people with strong opinions about how the subreddit should be run but who take very few actions and 20% people who take a lot of actions to enforce clear violations of the Sitewide rules and subreddit rules. The 80% don’t recruit new moderators. The 20% can’t recruit new moderators. The 20% get burned out, they leave, the 80% still don’t recruit new moderators, and eventually can’t recruit moderators at all, moderation doesn’t happen, the community fails.
That shouldn’t happen. But it does.
Reddit is a forest; Subreddits are plants in that forest. Some are huge trees, and some are tiny shrubs. Anyone can plant one and grow it. But guess what happens when a huge tree is cut down? Suddenly, fifteen trees spring up to fill the air and sunlight and soil and ecosystem niche the fallen tree once had.
You cut down your own tree, Reddit doesn’t care. You clearcut a field, Reddit doesn’t care. You take down one of the core and oldest trees … ok Reddit might care, but they will deal with it.
You and a bunch of Reddit moderators who don’t want to recruit and manage and train and mentor dozens and hundreds of new moderators to replace the mod teams you’re burning out, to replace you, eventually — because, hey, we’re all mortal — are choosing to leave the site? Close your subreddits? OK, Buddy. A dozen of you, and the toxic, static, insular mindset and cliqueishness you brought to running communities, you’re gone — and in your place, 500 fresh faces. People with a passion for community, who don’t know you, don’t want to know you, and who will build communities in the forest.
Sometimes, forest fires happen, and can be good for the ecosystem.
Two day protests don’t change corporate behaviour. There has been one protest that successfully coincided with Reddit changing its behaviour, and that protest built over nine months in the contemporaneous instance, and began 5 years earlier. It succeeded largely because it was protesting terrorist hatred and violence, and Reddit could either come to terms with it, or lose advertisers & audience.
There’s no such thing as bad publicity, only bad managers. Reddit’s in the headlines! People will come check it out. Free publicity.
In summary:
The two-day and/or “indefinite” blackouts are a good holiday, and a solidarity speech act with our co-moderators & communities.
I doubt they’re going to change the behaviour of Reddit, Inc.
Because at this point, it’s profits or bankruptcy.