>Whether or not you believe that the moderators are what makes reddit or that the users do so is only a subtle shift but it makes all the difference. Moderator

>Whether or not you believe that the moderators are what makes reddit or that the users do so is only a subtle shift but it makes all the difference. Moderators ARE users of Reddit. Drawing a line between "moderator" and "user" isn't the line that matters. The line that matters is "lurker/regular user" and "power user" Moderators are power users. They're part of the small percentage of users that contribute a way outsized amount to Reddit by curating portions of it. If the rule of thumb of online communities that 90% only lurk, and only 10% contribute, they're part of the 10%. That 10% is what makes Reddit work, period. Moderators use third party apps to aid in moderation, but a lot of power users just use third party apps because they are a lot less shitty. This ban ultimately targets all power users - the entire 10%. >This is why this is such a dumb play. I think the "play" you are referring to here is the idea of temporarily or permanently shuttering a subreddit. But it's actually the opposite - if Reddit exercises their power resurrect subreddits (I think they could get away with the biggest ones like r/videos, but anything medium size and smaller no way) they lose, BIG TIME. And so many of these subreddits are participating they'd have to do it for hundreds of subreddits just to juke KPIs for their fail to launch IPO. The idea that the users will just blame the mods is silly, as I said most of these blackouts were discussed at the subreddit level and the overall community sentiment is positive. And some of these people have been moderating these communities for years. You can't just replace them with randoms and expect the experience not to deteriorate. Here is an example on a subreddit with 50k subscribers: Initial thread discussing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/13zou5n/we_should_participate_in_this_it_would_ruin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/13zou5n... Mod thread announcing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/142hhy3/rprogressionfantasy_will_be_shutting_down_on_june/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/142hhy3...