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If Reddit's userbase actually for the most part supported the protests then I think Spez would probably have to fold. But I think that the userbase does not. Most Redditors either do not care about the protests or they hate the mods more than they hate Reddit the company. The protesting mods tried to launch a revolution in a community where most people do not support them and so they got crushed. This does not necessarily mean that there is no democracy there, it just means that the people do not want the blackouts.
The new /r/nba and /r/nfl threads about the re-openings are mostly made up of people who are expressing not just disagreement with the mods, but who are actively mocking and deriding the mods. Given what mods are usually like, this is not surprising. Some would argue that the people who support the mods are just not participating in those threads, but I doubt that this is a significant factor. Many of the mods themselves could not stop themselves from participating in Reddit during the blackouts. I doubt that their supporters are much different.
I would've really supported the mods ten years ago. But having gotten the ire of a powermod and seeing how unfair I was treated; Now I'm just laughing at their tantrums.
Why would I go to bat for someone who smugly shut me down for a small disagreement?
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It might have made more sense for the mods to switch to work-to-rule instead of the 48 hour lock out. One of their main objections was that without API access via third party apps their work would be made harder, so show what the effects would be by modding using only the Reddit app. Submissions take longer to get approved, spam slips through, reports go unmodded, trolls go unchecked, duplicate posts proliferate, custom scripts stop posting whatever special features the subs use them for, admins get more tickets from mods asking for support and missing features, and the invisible janitor work begins to become more visible in its absence. If mod work is valuable and the Reddit app makes mod work less effective the result ought to be that Reddit gets worse. What's Reddit going to do, complain that they got what they wanted?
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