That's a hell of a way to treat the volunteers who make the existence of that site possible.
On the other hand, if it's what they're going to do, then that's how it is. You can't really expect them to just leave a namespace like, say, /r/politics in the hands of someone who openly says they aren't going to use it. So of course they're going to remove mods who stick to a blackout, what else could they do? At the end of the day it's their site and everyone's free to leave if they don't like how it's run. This was always the problem with making a home on Reddit, some of us have been saying so all along.
(PS: Please understand that Discord is going to have a moment like this. Maybe in two years, maybe in five, but it'll happen. It is inevitable.)
Closing it IS using it, in a very public and visible way. They just don't like HOW it is used by the people who built it.
Clearly the internet has continued to grow more mainstream which brings a larger, alternate audience. I'm just speaking to the idea of why Digg failed and why Reddit won't (in this pass at least).
"Too big to fail" perhaps?
I assure you, there is a line around the block of people clamoring to become mods. There's a reason its nigh impossible to become a mod of a big sub, the people that are doing it really like doing it and dont want more people joining to dilute their share of the power.
The subreddit model seems to me to work as a combination of moderators setting and enforcing some rules, users submitting content (hopefully good) and users upvoting and commenting on content.
If the mods are wrong on all of this, then the users who voted to blackout either weren't contributing much or will back down and things will go back to business as usual. But it's also possible that replacing the mods will just lead to many of the users who voted to blackout taking further action. A subreddit without content or with protesting users posting spam isn't fixed by adding more mods.
If moderators were inconsequential Reddit wouldn't be trying to hire and fire them.
>I assure you, there is a line around the block of people clamoring to become mods.
The willingness of others to do the same work doesn't make what someone does inconsequential. Would you say an NBA player is inconsequential because you could find a million people who would like to play in the NBA? Obviously being a Redditor moderator and being an NBA player are two different things but by how you are valuing based on willingness to replace, an NBA player would be more inconsequential than a Reddit moderator.
So I'm saying that the moderators consolidating their whole sub's voices into the voice of the moderator is analogous to how reddit is telling everyone how the site as a whole must be used.
Ah yes, this is in contrast to the benevolent employers who deeply care about each and every employee and would never lay them off just to buy another ivory backscratcher for the CEO.