What tipped me over to Reddit's side regarding the API change is the possibility that it will end the practice of mods sharing automated block lists (if you post in a wrongthink subreddit, many other subreddits will preemptively ban you regardless of your actual activity in them, if any). If so, and if there are fewer handfuls of powermods that control dozens/hundreds/thousands of subreddits, I'm all for the change.

This is not to say that I condone what /u/spez did regarding editing /r/The_Donald comments, or misrepresenting what happened on the call with Apollo's owner. Paid staff can and do unduly push their own ideological bents. But when there is a name and a face attached to a company employee, there is some hope of holding people to account. The Challenor mess should never have happened, but at least the person was fired by Reddit. I have never, ever seen any evidence in more than a decade on Reddit of any level of accountability from faceless, nameless mods when they misbehave.

The most bizarre thing is how any mods could ever have thought that an indefinite blackout would possibly result in a win for them. Reddit, the company, had and has 100% of the power. At least workers on strike can march with signs around the factory and try to block replacements from entering. Mods have zero, zilch, zip power to prevent Reddit from doing whatever it wants with subreddits and mods' accounts.

Is it bloated egos from having had "infinite" authority (as long as they obeyed Redditwide rules) over hundreds of thousands or millions of other people during their visits to the mods' fiefdom of a subreddit? Or mental illness? My answer: `whynotboth.gif` Remember, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People" <https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_...>.

I hope that the removed mods are banned at both account and IP levels, so that as mods desperately log into alts each one get flagged and banned too.

Worse, there were/are powermods who "moderate" hundreds of subreddits. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds. At least one has/had thousands.

When questioned, they invariably say that they "just watch the incoming queue" or something, and the other mods "do all the work". While likely true in the literal sense (again, hundreds), such answers of course completely evade the question.

The "Insane People" point above applies bigtime to powermods, assuming they're not being paid on the side to push some ideology. Basically, losers who crave ruling a petty fiefdom because it's the only thing they can exercise agency over in their lives. And/or are mentally ill.

Most mods know that there are dozens/hundreds of other similar volunteers ready to take their place, which is why so many surrendered and reopened their subreddits the moment admins told them that otherwise they would be replaced. /r/formula1's mods forthrightly said as much; those of /r/nba claimed that negotiations had progressed far enough to justify reopening, which the thousands of replies show that the userbase 100% disbelieves.

(/r/nba's users hate their mods because a) /r/nba's top mod made more than 150 comments to six other NBA teams' subreddits during the blackout. and b) /r/nba mods posted secret threads—including the Game 5 discussion that they denied from their own users—and made comments during the blackout. When users discovered the threads the mods of course scrubbed the comments, but there is no way for mods to actually delete (as opposed to hiding) posts, so evidence of their hypocritical behavior will live on forever.)

Bonus: Speaking of getting what they deserve, the classic post in which a mod thinks what he does is worth $175K a year <https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_peo...>. Be sure to read to the end, where he explains how he "saves lives".