They could re-open it. But the last time we had a popular unmoderated subreddit, it became a mixture of porn, onlyfan models and Donald Trump / Jeffrey Epstein posts. Good OOTL if you want to give Reddit a click in these times: https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/gfo102/what_i...

In the end Reddit and Mods are co-dependent on each other. Mods use the platform provided by Reddit, but Reddit uses the voluntary work of mods to have a usable platform. Reddit could exchange all voluntary workers with paid mods, but I doubt something capital-intensive like that is what they planned for their pre-IPO strategy.

Imagine the return of /r/creepshots and /r/jailbait, but on defaults.

Some users think "this platform is so good, it doesn't need moderation."

Somehow it never occurs to them that unmoderated platforms end up at best like 4chan and at worst like a site that gets shut down by the FBI.

It's sad that 4chan is the best case outcome.

Finally an answer to the question why /r/anime_titties exists as one of those weird topic seems completely unrelated to the name subs.

The king can always order the protestors killed, but he prefers not to because of the potentially destabilizing second-order effects. Similar with reddit -they can, and maybe they will at some point, but... will the new mods be similarly difficult, embarrassing them and compounding the problem? Will the new mods be less competent or have new and different ideological vendettas, causing other problems? etc. Easier to just wait for them to back down for now, particularly since reddit basically holds all the cards.

Taking an authoritarian approach might just cause even more noise for even longer. I think Huffman would like a war of attrition instead. Eventually mods will feel powerless because the execs won’t budge, and denying the community access to the subreddit will cause more problems than it appears to solve.

>Eventually mods will feel powerless because the execs won’t budge

I am sure they'll be terribly disappointed to be deprived of their... opportunity to work for free...

> Eventually mods will feel powerless because the execs won’t budge, and denying the community access to the subreddit will cause more problems than it appears to solve.

Frankly, the mods can just quit permanently. It’s an Internet forum, not life and death for them. There are so many other things that they could be doing with their time. Heck, I reckon it would be better for their mental and physical health in the long run if they quit doing internet janitor work and drop the perpetually online lifestyle - at least I believe that’s a requirement to effective moderate a fairly active subreddit.

Are you saying replace the volunteer moderators with Reddit staffers? Or empower a large group of new, untested, volunteer moderators?

Neither sounds like it would help achieve their profit goals.

They can, they just don't think it'll be necessary.

Lots of comments like yours, and 2 days later it's clear they won't age well.

you are confusing an assertion on the status quo with a prediction about the future.

I also have a prediction somewhere else in the thread tho, so I can still be wrong :)

They can be forcefully re-opened at any time. Based on the internal memo, they don't appear to be taking this seriously enough to warrant that kind of action.

Isn't there also a worry of harming their brand / reputation irreparably?

Harm to the brand is hard to quantify. We can only assume they've done the calculus and decided freezing out 3rd party apps is worth the benefit. Knowing exactly what that benefit is, is conjecture. Best guess is that this is regarding the IPO which is expected in 2nd half of this year.

This is Reddit we're talking about, right?

There are tens of alternative subreddits for every subject on reddit but they are invisible because reddit heavily promotes the popular subs. Reddit should be at least suggest alternatives now that the main ones are closed. It's called competition or divide-and-conquer, it s an age old strategy and it works