Minor nitpick: I agree with the idea, but the deletion of any post that doesn't contain an owl on r/Superbowl isn't a ridiculous rule. The subreddit is dedicated to "superb owls" and not to anything else.
Here's a concrete proposal: Set automod to delete any post/comment longer than 20 characters.
This makes discussion virtually impossible, and starts to impact the quality of Reddit posts. With enough subs cooperating (e.g. the subs that went private over the blackout), it'd already be making a serious impact on the usage experience of Reddit. Furthermore, this policy can be enacted indefinitely without stopping the "regular operation" of Reddit (i.e. mods can sit on this policy for as long as they need to, as opposed to the blackout which even from the start was planned with a time limit.)
Sounds like Reddit has ran out of patience.
Let through offensive porn, copyright infringement, spyware, trojans.
There are hyper active pervert/malware communities out there who will eagerly assist.
This path opens Reddit the Corp up to lawsuits and regulatory oversight and does far more lasting damage.
You can whitelist a set of accounts that can message you.
You can also turn off notifications for username mentions.
All knowledge is rotting in there unfortunately.
Presumably the mods are protesting because they want a good Reddit/subreddit experience, and the new policies are hurting that. How is handing power over to someone who is supportive of Reddit's new policies helping that?
I was a former lead mod a year ago of a large subreddit. I saw the writing on the wall THEN, and took the sub private, and booted the other mods I brought in. I then started purging content.
Not a few hours later, the other 2 mods I invited in messaged the admins, and removed my moderatorship and then banned my account.
Those subreddits, no matter how many "mod kudos" you have, were never yours, are never yours, and will always be digital sharecropping.
Burn it to the ground. Power is the ONLY message the admins and C levels understand.
Otherwise, you're just burning digital books.
I'm curious to see what happens when people start following this advice (it's really the only reasonable path forward), and then what happens with the inevitable lawsuits about how reddit "owns" the content that the authors are "pirating".
Reddit mods who do not want to be exploited further are best walking away now and trying to reform - if they decide, this must be exhausting - on the Fediverse.
Might I recommend requiring all posts to your sub to tag u/spez, or having an even number of characters, etc. All of which can easily be done with Automod.
This lets you to moderate your subreddit and enforce the rules while allowing it to wither on the vine.