The key thing will be what the moderators do, they’re the ones with actual leverage. Reddit depends on them doing unpaid labor for the site to function, and while the average user probably just uses the official app and site, the moderators are much more like the third-party app users and often depend on the same or similar tools to do their job. If they take mass action, they could really disrupt things much more than just a temporary blackout. Mass replacement of them would be a lot of hassle, and either lots of money to hire staff to do it or lots of time for fresh new mods to make people angry as they learn the ropes.
But, then again, mods do tend to like the control they get over their little fiefdoms, so I’m not all that optimistic that enough will choose to throw their rings into Mount Doom. We’ll see though.
The key thing will be what the moderators do, they’re the ones with actual leverage. Reddit depends on them doing unpaid labor for the site to function, and while the average user probably just uses the official app and site, the moderators are much more like the third-party app users and often depend on the same or similar tools to do their job. If they take mass action, they could really disrupt things much more than just a temporary blackout. Mass replacement of them would be a lot of hassle, and either lots of money to hire staff to do it or lots of time for fresh new mods to make people angry as they learn the ropes.
But, then again, mods do tend to like the control they get over their little fiefdoms, so I’m not all that optimistic that enough will choose to throw their rings into Mount Doom. We’ll see though.
The mods can be replaced by new ones. I’m sure there’s some that would jump at the chance to take over some of the big ones.