In March, WordPress.com owner Automattic made a commitment to the fediverse -- the decentralized social networks that include the Twitter rival Mastodon
Imagine starting [a subreddit], hyping it up, patiently providing four-fifths of the content until people show up, moderating spam, moderating jerks, growing it gradually over time. Setting rules, establishing tone, running the weekly topical threads. Would you feel like that /r/whateverItWas existed because of Reddit the company? Would you feel like it fundamentally belonged to his Royal Highness Steve, and Steve was just delegating it to you to run? No! You started it! You shaped it! You collaborated with the people it attracted to make it what it is! Even those users – they could switch tomorrow to /r/whateverItWasTwo and you couldn’t do a thing about it – if they decided they didn’t like your vision for /r/whateverItWas, they would, so the fact that they’re still here is a kind of voting with your feet, it validates what you’re doing… To the extent that /r/whateverItWas exists as a thing within Reddit as a whole, to be run or misrun, managed or mismanaged? It feels like yours.
But at the same time, to an external observer – you can see how they would feel that this is pretty silly, right? The thing that’s “yours” is nothing but rows and columns in Reddit’s databases13, a series of flags giving you the power to moderate. The only thing you have is set in Reddit’s systems, a permission to edit stuff under a certain scope a bit differently than other users, wowee aren’t you important. It’s not you who has a license to the user posts, it’s not you who controls anything but a tiny little square of grass Reddit let you mow. You’re gonna protest over that? The world at large already doesn’t understand why you might volunteer for this work, why you might care enough to do it unpaid – you seem like a schmuck to them, a victim.
or a power tripper.
I’ll admit that some mods probably are on a power trip. A clear example of “probably not, they have an actual reason to want to stay in power” is r/askhistorians, where you probably don’t want random people replacing people with lots of historical knowledge on a subreddit specifically about history that only allows informative replies complete with a works cited. They care about the online space they’ve built, not that they have a ban hammer and can wield it with prejudice. I’d imagine a lot of other mods are pretty similar. Knowledge about their niche community, though probably not as much as the people on r/askhistorians, a certain subreddit culture that they don’t want to collapse and fall apart… they’d rather preserve the online space they and many other people enjoy. Even if it just looks like free labor and power tripping to outsiders whenever they don’t want to just up and abandon Reddit.
I would think stepping down has some risks at the moment because you don’t know who’s replacing you. Someone who also cares about the niche topic just like you, or someone on r/redditrequest who just wants to collect the subreddit as their 483th moderated sub and won’t do anything? Less of a big deal if you have several mods, but if you’re the only one…
Would also like to add that even if they did step down, it might cause issues.
For a good deal of subs, I imagine a mod team opening and promoting a Fediverse equivalent, and totally dropping the Reddit community would be fine. Move to the Fediverse, or deal with spamming and random trolls from potentially inactive new mods or the community being led in a strange (possibly hateful) direction from active new mods. Or just stop looking at the Reddit community entirely. Although it’s still possible these mods stay because they want to prevent people from having their day ruined by inactive new mods allowing some surprise NSFL gore on a very SFW sub.
For other ones, like r/lgbtq, this suddenly doesn’t seem like such a great choice to force on people. I acknowledge targeted harassment might still happen outside of r/lgbtq, but if I wanted to be homophobic, I’d seek out people on the subreddit for gay people. It probably gets more of it than the average sub. And there’s an expectation of that sub being safe from harassment in a world where many of its users expect harassment in most other spaces. Do you want to leave these users out in the cold if you pack it up for good and abandon Reddit modding? It’s possible your new replacements might also remove harassment and homophobia and transphobia, but I think it’s more likely they’ll do nothing. It’s also possible some homophobe signs up to mod it and starts posting homophobic trash. Do you want to subject people to this if they don’t move accounts? Most people would probably choose leaving at least one person from the current mod team to prevent just that.
Also, the potential of getting less activity on the Fediverse might actually matter. Say 1% of people browsing a support sub will give needed help. If 100 people would see the post on Reddit, but then you migrated to the Fediverse and now only 30 people see each post, posters have a smaller chance of getting the help they need.
Maybe mods of stuff like r/aww won’t cause too much damage to their users by jumping ship and leaving Reddit, having to quit looking at cute pictures because now it’s being spammed isn’t really the end of the world. Mods of support communities could do more damage if they quit. Not getting the money for your insulin could be the end of your world. Popping into r/lgbtq after receiving hate in real life from loved ones, expecting to find community support for your struggles only to get hate speech on your feed and your post, could help push you along to ending your world a lot faster.
Fully aware that a similar situation could happen on r/aww too. Could be the one bright spot in someone’s day, they go there after receiving hate from loved ones, now there’s NSFL gore of a guy killed for being gay with the title “[insert slur here] gets what’s coming to them,” could help push them along to ending their world a lot faster. I think this kind of case is probably closer to “edge case” than “would probably happen frequently if mods left,” but it’s probably still present in the minds of some mod teams who didn’t totally step down yet.
WordPress blogs can now be followed in the fediverse, including Mastodon ( techcrunch.com ) Japanese
In March, WordPress.com owner Automattic made a commitment to the fediverse -- the decentralized social networks that include the Twitter rival Mastodon
Reddit demands moderators remove NSFW labels, or else ( www.theverge.com )
Article by The Verge, providing details about various subreddits and their mods getting threatened because they are labeled as NSFW