The problem is that reddit's entire system depends on unpaid labor from volunteer moderators. And they just pissed a lot of those moderators off.

Yeah, reddit can reopen those subreddits if they want to and kick the mods. But who are they going to get to moderate it? They can't afford to hire staff to moderate themselves, reddit is already unprofitable. Are they going to do an application process for scab mods? That will be an extremely unpopular fiasco.

The end result is either reddit capitulating, or becoming an absolute shell of its former self. Most likely they will compromise, charging third party apps for API access but an amount that is feasible. That is capitulation, because the entire point was to kill the third party apps entirely.

Moderation is the worst part of Reddit. If this succeeds in running off these folks, I’d consider that the best outcome.

Moderation is also the best part of Reddit. You just don't notice the moderation that's good—almost by definition.

I used to hang out on a forum where people regularly said they liked it because there was no moderation. Conveniently forgetting that if you woke up at 3am the boards had posts from Thailand, or India, or Russia and in the morning they were cleaned up.

That board never had no moderation, it just managed it in a way where most people either didn't realize, or appreciated it. Then if someone crossed one of the few lines they would start screeching about how for X years there's been no moderation and the boar has gone to shit.

I personally woudn't mind not having moderators, as the ones we have at the moment are really bad and have pushed their political views in apparently impartial subs (like /r/politics).

I mean, why not create your own subreddit then? All you have to do is create it with a small group of people to see it, post good articles, and keep a 24/7 watch to kill the comment and post spam going to viagra and obvious trash.

I'm not interested in unpaid labour, I barely have time to do the paid one.

So to be clear: you're fine with all the moderators leaving, but you don't want to moderate, but you also don't want there to be no moderation. You would like an arbitrarily "good" moderation you agree with completely, from someone else. Fantastic. Online community in a nutshell.

I just want reddit to moderate the moderators (there are very few that push an agenda), to me it doesn't seem an archaic idea.

It feels like there is a bit of contradiction inherent in your position here, no?

Why would it be?

Because any good ones get banned by reddit?

Is this an actual question?

Any examples?

I frequented /r/cfb and /r/collegebasketball, which are terrific and very on-topic. Very little drama there. I can easily imagine those going to the dumpster without their mod teams.

I think the general reddit community underestimates how important moderation is. Yes, you have some moderators who go overboard, push a personal agenda on something that's supposed to be a neutral subreddit, etc. But subreddits without active moderation very quickly (in order of increasing tragedy) lose their focus, get overtaken by spam, or become hangouts for Nazis. reddit closes unmoderated subs for a reason.

Also a large chunk of the people who complain about moderators are actually upset that moderators stop their subreddits from being overtaken by Nazis. If you want completely unmoderated anonymous public discourse, go to 4Chan and see how it goes there. Though even that is moderated.

I don't want zero moderation, I just want good moderation, which is not the case when you have a few mods that push their agenda over many enormous subs.

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.

Reopening is one thing but moderating an internet forum for no pay is not universally appealing.

Losing the most motivated mods may be a big loss, or extremely active users who post and/or make content. Hard to know right now but I think we'll get an early glimpse when some reopen.

Who will they give the job to, and what will they pay them?

They can just disable the private subreddit feature without changing absolutely anything else.

the unmotivated mods will tank the subreddits and Reddit doesn't seem to be in a position to pay the mods

Even worse if the mods just walked away. Reddit is completely beholden to them, but the mods aren't beholden to Reddit at all (except for imaginary internet points). The likes of Voat are a good example of what happens with lax moderation.

I am surprised people haven't just made new reddits. I am subscribed to a lot of alternate subs because the mods acted overpowering so there is no reason to think that new subs cannot be created until reddit decides to just remove the mods.