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Notes -
I think reddit is much more decentralized than you are implying; the super mods are vastly outnumbered by regular mods who care about these changes a lot and have the ability to pin whatever they want to the top of their subreddit. While a typical user spends a lot of time in big subs, they are also probably subbed to several small subs for their niche interests, and unlike the big subs they actually care about and interact with the mods in the smaller subs so they’re more likely to listen to what they say. If all the mods of smaller subs quit it would potentially change the reddit user experience a lot. I don’t think many of them will actually quit over this, in the end they will mostly cave and accept the worse experience, but it’s not surprising that they’re able to effectively get their message out and inspire a short-term boycott.
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