Technology

the mods that arnt playing ball with reddit that is. the power mods, or the mods that have the admins ear wont be affected.

Break it hahaha! Fuck that place!

I've been off Reddit totally since 2023, so part of my understanding may be out of date, but before that I was on for many years and watched how powermods became powermods.

Thus this situation is very unusual. Reddit never did anything about the powermod situation before, but now, suddenly, it's a big deal. For years (over a decade, at least) users have been screaming about the worst abuses on the site being from powermods, and time after time Reddit bent over backwards to not only avoid doing anything about it, but seemed to grasp every opportunity to enhance the problem any way they could, shutting down complaints rather than the power trippin' bastards that were regularly creating the problems.

Note that powermods very frequently mod the largest subs, which is how they became powermods to start with: modding a sub that got big and then being invited to help mod new subs that then also grew in popularity.

For myself, I don't think anyone would give two shits if "powermods" only had an aggregate total of 500 users each, but very frequently they have millions, even tens of millions. Looking at the largest subs on the site and the powermods on those subs, and how many of those powemods are crossovers on equally dominant subs, you see the same core group of powermods across all the top sites, give or take a few individually here and there.

Strangely, this is the group Reddit is now disbanding.

Another thing to consider is how many powermods went on to become admins over the years. At least a handful: I don't know the exact number anymore but it's non-zero. Powermods who are admins are especially useful to Reddit, because they ensure that the c-suite has direct control over some of the largest subs without ever appearing to do so.

All this is to say that the powermod situation has been mutually beneficial to Reddit admin for ages, which is why they never changed it or even really acknowledged it.

But now, for the first time since 2005, Reddit powermods are suddenly a problem. So what's changed? Cui bono?

My guess is that Reddit admin is about to a) yank the entire site to the hard right by removing pretty much all effective human moderation and thus preventing powermods from being able to stand in their way across the largest subs (some of which we've already seen and the article addresses), and/or b) introduce some other vile change or policy that is certain to piss off EVERYONE, including every non-bot mod on the site, to the point that admin expects a general revolt even among the powermods and need to dilute the individual power of mods in advance.

One very hypothetical change that could do the trick is Reddit forcing mods, including powermods, to quietly engage in collecting evidence of and reporting users and content that admin would like to sell to the current US admin, for example: intel which Reddit is well situated to provide and for which the current administration has already been calling in the wake of a certain recent death. What if Reddit decides to go all in with the present political trajectory, looking for political power as well as the payout they're usually in it for, and in so doing force mods to comply or lose their subs? It's not like Reddit hasn't already done it for less.

Again, these are just my own musings. But whatever the reason, Reddit admin calling it quits with the powermods suggests something much larger than just another light rehabbing of Reddit power structures.

Limiting the power mod reach is a good thing, but still, this will break Reddit. Ordinary users will not be lining up to step in as small time moderators. Especially if Reddit Inc is going to remove them if they do anything they don't like.

Reddit Inc will just go "what the hell, we'll throw more AI shit in the Automoderator. It's not like it'll do worse than the current arbitrary quagmire of moderation rules - or maybe it will be, who can tell the difference anyway".

Good. We already saw the abuses of certain mods who were basically running a reddit mafia, with power over multiple subs and abused the every living fuck out of that power. Reddits mods, I cant think of anyone more deserving of having their power striped away. Ideally, it would be 1 sub, as 5 is still too many.

Piefed/Lemmy/Fediverse: freedom from capitalist tyranny. True organic, human communities.

Reddit is cyberpunk. It's a world governed by a corporation that acts as its government and only cares about its shareholders, not its citizens.

Hope one of them is the fuckwad that banned me years ago

putting limits on the number of subs a user can moderate is like putting limits on the number of articles a wikipedia editor can edit.

typically moderation is an opt in job and you want people who actually want to do it to keep things going smoothly. all this will do is make the pool even smaller which will lead to subs becoming more toxic.

Reddit is basically state controlled.

Holy shit, they are finally doing something about karmawhores! Not in a particular effective way, they can just alt themselves to kingdom come, but they are doing it.

It was sometimes very telling where those mods were participating in, and given that they've also recently implemented features to make that more difficult (anonymized moderator replies, hidden mod lists, hidden user histories) but haven't really addressed the alt issue, it may have to do more with those embarrassments. Bye bye to the last vestiges of self-incrimination Reddit provided for.