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Here it comes - Reddit admins taking over subs (lemmy.intai.tech)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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lemmy.world IS NOT a general discussion area. find another community.

my bad....

-manitcor

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[-] roboticide@lemmy.world 43 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Here is some additional context from an actual Mod of AdviceAnimals:

[Deleted]

I've inquired if they're the one that phoned the Admins, but no reply yet. Having a top mod removed due to them unilaterally taking a sub private is not unprecedented, but it is an incredibly rare action.

EDIT: That user has confirmed they did not contact the Admins, and don't know who did, but that is still consistent with actions taken by Admins in the past to remove an absentee top moderator that made a unilateral move more active mods disagreed with.

[-] Favor@beehaw.org 20 points 2 years ago

Additional additional context: The absentee head mod (legweed) returned a week before the protests and made a thread for all the mods of the sub to discuss whether to do a blackout. Basically nobody else meaningfully interacted except for the a single mod who was vehemently against it (CedarWolf), the same mod that was promoted by the admins.

The users of the sub overwhelmingly supported the blackout, but CedarWolf was involved in mass comment/post removals and bannings of pro-blackout content in the leadup. This included mod convo posts literally saying the community can't make the decision for themselves and that they (CedarWolf) know what's best for the community. At the same time legweed was trying to get other mods opinions but nobody actually responded until legweed make a stickied post to engage the community. This upset CedarWolf as he'd been spending most of his time suppressing those same conversations from happening.

I'm not saying an absentee mod should be able to show up an unilaterally private a sub, but in this case they were showing up to engage the community and the community was the one who asked to have it privated. None of the other mods really cared enough to argue, the one anti-blackout person was basically alone in their opinion and is equally responsible for a unilateral decision, except that one went against the community wishes.

Sure legweed was an absentee head mod, but CedarWolf wasn't just active, he's terminally online and has a really nasty superiority complex. I don't think either is really head mod material but one sided with the admins and now they have the unilateral control they had already tried to exercise prior.

Source/Context:

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/147eaw3/rsubredditdrama_is_in_restricted_mode_for_the/jo0eoqw/

https://imgur.com/ChkGJG3

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

Unsurprising that some power tripping mods aren't willing to give up their little fiefdom

[-] GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago

I'm not going to miss all this mod drama. Imagine being so wrapped up in your own bullshit, that you lose sight of the fact that you are a volunteer for a multi billion dollar capitalized organization, that has just a few guys literally about to cash out with billions here shortly. And it's all on your back. Like what kind of muppet loser gets this drawn into dramatical bullshit like this?

The whole reddit thing was always going to disolve into an inevitable death spiral of horseshit, it's only due to the honest to goodness mods trying to be good souls, that they were able to stave it off this long. The world's just become too fucked up of a place when we are all connected like this, especially with the events of the last few years. Then you throw a few capitalists into the room, hoo boy.

The only way this Lemmy thing works out, is if it's well moderated (ie keep the spam and the actual bullshit off, otherwise fuck off with all the weird incel angsty drama), and if we can somehow keep the fat cats away from it. The whole federated thing is pretty genius, and is probably the best solution we are going to be able to manage to come up with at this time, as a firewall for that sorta stuff. I'm really excited to see where it goes from here.

[-] average650@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

This is certainly a different story, but still, admin taking action here is not super common.

Perhaps we should start a new post with this new information to discuss?

[-] roboticide@lemmy.world 20 points 2 years ago

I don't really know it's worth a new post, because I don't think this information really changes what we will see happen, which is realistically three things:

Subs that didn't commit to an indefinite protest are already coming back online, like /r/technology. Admins will be happy with that and do nothing.
Subs that did commit to an indefinite protest but didn't do so unanimously will have lower mods reach out to Admins to get higher mods removed, and open the subs back up. This is what happened with Advice Animals.
Subs that did commit to an indefinite protest and did do so unanimously will have old mod teams removed and new mod teams put in. If they do this, they will probably do it later, and while there may be some uproar, anybody who really cares about this by then will probably have already left reddit.

The fact that it was not super common previously doesn't mean it won't become more common, especially as precedent was set year ago.

[-] average650@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Well, I say that because each of those three situations is different. 1 does not add to the scumminess. 2 is borderline, but if mods are fighting over this, it does make sense for admins to step in. They are the only one with the power to settle that. But 3.... that's just absolute scum.

The added info moved the advice animals case from 3 to 2 for me, and changes the situation. Have we seen 3 happen yet? I do expect it will happen, but has it happened?