Reddit has informed moderators of communities that are still private in protest that they will lose their mod status by the end of the week. Thousands of communities went dark earlier this month to push back on the company’s planned API pricing changes.
Just removing all mods isn’t really the answer. Mods have a purpose, removing them all will lead to chaos in some subs. The John Oliver pictures aren’t just malicious compliance, they are also a taste of things to come without mods. Maybe Automod can remove some of the worst stuff, but excessively posting flowers in a sub for cars is just as detrimental and is totally at the whim of the mods to follow up on this. Since this is all about money, I cannot see a professional moderation team in the books. Additionally professionalized content moderation is much more complicated for Reddit than it is for other companies like Facebook. They just have to check against their “community guidelines”, but Reddit has a lot of cases, where something useful in one sub can be despised in another. I’d like to know what the endgame is.
Once people realize what they can get away with, the REAL trolls, not the John Oliver sexy pics groups, but the joker types with a “watch the world burn” mentality will start making their home there.
Without community moderation or bot tools, it will be like trying to fight a tsunami with a tennis racket.