this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Only if you define mods winning as 'things go back to what they were'.
The CEO is only 'winning' in the sense that things will never return to what they are. He will undermine the protest at every turn, and then he will release his changes as intended.
His contributing users however, are leaving in droves. His 'victory' will be pyrrhic at beast.
Users were working for free in mutual trust; now they are expected to produce and moderate for free, and then buy back their own product. Moderators are booted because they're locking subs as private, and then subs stay private anyway because nobody wants to moderate for free. Even those who would see moderating as a grab for power (the expected scabs) are less inclined to moderate while admins are proving they actually have little power at all (just unpaid labour).
We are his livestock. We thought we were meeting in a community hall to socialise, and then Huffman revealed we were congregated in his barn. The content we produced is to be sold off for his gain; it's not ours. The space isn't in any way ours, it merely shelters us while we produce his product: content.
Well, what's happening right now is that the people who produce the content are leaving. Reddit will still have a ton of users, but they'll mostly be the 90% lurkers and low-effort users that went there to consume that content contributing users aggregated for them.
Contributors are readily welcomed in almost any community; they don't need to stay. It is the consuming users that are addicted, that Huffman (correctly) predicts will accept it.
Huffman will still have most of Reddit's chickens, and that's why he thinks it's worth it. But the hens are leaving the barn, and Huffman will be left with the confused roosters who'll produce nothing for him other than noise.
Mods are losing... but so is he.