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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> All the major subs are either temporarily or permanently shutting down in protest.

But I'd just add there is a pretty major difference between "temporarily" and "permanently". Major kudos to r/ProgrammerHumor and other subs that are doing it right - saying they will be shutting down indefinitely unless Reddit changes their stance.

Just saying you're only going to shut down for a couple days is essentially theater - Reddit can certainly wait out some popular subs being down for a few days. More generally, that's really the only way protests have a way of achieving their goals, by saying you'll engage in some behavior (or boycott) until your demands are met, or at least met with some change. Anything that's time limited is pretty much doomed to fail. For example, I'm not sure what the organizers of the recent Amazon "walkout" hoped to accomplish. That wasn't a walkout, it was lunch.

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> But I'd just add there is a pretty major difference between "temporarily" and "permanently". Major kudos to r/ProgrammerHumor and other subs that are doing it right - saying they will be shutting down indefinitely unless Reddit changes their stance.

A permanent closure of a popular sub is 100% going to lead to Reddit declaring the sub abandoned, replacing the mod team, and reopening. Has happened many times before. Not sure if programminghumor in particular meets that popularity threshold though.

> replacing the mod team,

That's like immigrant jobs: You can take them away but there aren't hoards of passionate volunteers chomping at the bit to replace them.

I mean, there's plenty of people lining up to have the "authority" of an internet mod, but not so many that can be trusted not to set up their own petty dictatorship or get bored when they realise what mods actually mostly do.

Can confirm as a subreddit mod.

The day to day is mostly deciding whether borderline comments should be removed and whether a post contains too much self-promotion.

Why do you do it?

Not the same person, but one perk is you can influence a chunk of people just by abusing things like stickies.

People are so cynical on HN lol- see my sibling comment.

I like Internet communities and am willing to volunteer some time to help some be more successful.

Yes there are. Lots of money can be made as mods of popular subreddits.

How do they do that? Asking for a friend.

You let some selfpromoting astroturfed stuff slip > product/service has an unbeliveable sales increase

Reddit can pay mods, just like every other social network does. Not rocket science, and if they did it just for the top ones, wouldn't cost that much.

Reddit can largely automate moderation. It's not hard, but... there are a lot of not hard things that Reddit screws up.

If this was even 1 year ago, things would be different. But it's not.

(I moderate a major subreddit)

Why work for free?

If not paid in dollars, mods get paid in power and authority. Interacting with mods who accept power and authority as payment goes about how you’d expect.

Because I'm an idiot.

There is something wrong with me that in the 90-9-1 rule, I need to be the 1%. I see a forum, and I can't stop myself from commenting or posting. Getting invited to moderate happens naturally after that.

I wish I was the 90%.

> Has happened many times before.

Do you have examples, specifically when a subreddit went dark in protest and Reddit replaced the mods?

I recall one popular but controversial subreddit's founder (think it was KotakuInAction) shut down the subreddit because he didn't like what it had become, and the admins demodded him and gave the sub to its other mods.

That's a pretty different case, and exactly why I asked the question.

I have heard of cases where essentially a mod went on a power trip/tantrum and wanted to shut down a subreddit, but that behavior specifically angered the vast majority of subscribers to that subreddit. I think the optics and reality of that are very different from a subreddit shutting down to protest the API changes (in some cases, subreddits held polls).

Didn't the satire version of r/onlyfans have a similar story?

Well, I'll be deleting my account and am texting / uploading stories on my other social media accounts to ask my friends and connections to do the same. Reddit has taken the content and hard work of 1000s of users, monetized it, and now wants to shut the gates.

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