this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
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At the risk of agreeing with Reddit:
That sounds perfectly reasonable. Reddit has a massive powermod problem.
This was desperately needed.
But I'm not convinced they aren't just going to make alts.
Given Reddit's past unreasonableness, I wouldn't be surprised if this otherwise reasonable explanation has an alternative motive.
*ulterior
While ulterior is probably a better way to say that alternative motive also makes sense given the context.
Thanks, I wanted to say that but I couldn't figure out how to spell it.
That's what I guessed. Alternative is a fine alternative word though.
*exterior
*widdershins
The motive is these mods hold a decent amount of power on the platform that they wish to reduce. They don’t want a repeat of the API protests.
Now /u/spez will have all the power
Yeah that is exactly it. They didn't want mods to be able to disrupt the site again, so they're looking to make that more difficult.
God, I am so glad I left that place.
Gotta boost user numbers.
Or obscure them considering not letting people see sub count only daily/weekly activities
The user numbers were bogus anyway since Reddit didn't automatically decrement the user number after banning a member. The banned member had to manually unjoin the subreddit. So the membership count was inflated with banned members.
That's it. It's the illusion of fairness and it takes away reddit jannies' ability to show off their powermod status, and that's the only incentive they have not to use sockpuppets for every sub they mod.
This is actually another of Reddit's decisions that I'm in agreement with. Subscriber count isn't a very useful number, it largely just measures how old a subreddit is. You can already see how old the subreddit is much more accurately by looking at its founding date.
If they'd added, yes. But removing it completely is just a way to hide how many are on the platform.
Or left in a protest
True, but Reddit let this problem fester for a long time.
What's interesting to me here regarding this, is Reddits current preparation timescale. This isn't going to be enforced until March 31st, 2026. This tells me that Reddit would have been unprepared for a complete mass-walkout of community moderators during the 2023 Reddit API strikes. A large chunk of Reddit during that period was genuinely inaccessible. But after a few token gestures and a few examples made of some especially rebellious mod-teams, most of the striking moderators returned.
A huge opportunity was missed by people running major communities to functionally degrade Reddit in at least the medium-term as a website. You can't just hastily promote random people to replace moderators Reddit is either forced to remove or who leave voluntarily. The average person is likely too lazy, too arbitrary and too corrupt to effectively oversee communities of notable sizes.
I was on one of those “especially rebellious mod-teams”. We were even interviewed by Ars Technica about it all at the time.
On advice of a majority of our users, we took our sub offline and kept it that way until Reddit booted us as mods. Honestly, this was the outcome I was expecting — hell, I was pretty open about goading them into it. What was the alternative — to cave to the platform that was abusing us so I could keep working for them for free?
That’s the part I didn’t understand about my fellow mods from other subs. Many of them caved pretty quickly. Their identities seemed to be so tied up in being a Reddit mod that they couldn’t let it go, even though the relationship was obviously very unequal. Too many other people stood up after witnessing the mod abuse to take over from those who got the boot, just asking for the Reddit boot to be applied to their necks instead.
Well, I wish all the mods the kind of treatment they forgave/ignored the last time around.
at least you wernt like that anti-work mod that went ON FOX, that actually drew negative attention to the site.
I have way too much self-respect to ever show my face on FOX 🤣.
The quality of reddit took a massive hit after the strike and never recovered.
it took another one from the series of purges this year too. i think the purges did alot more damage than reddit is letting on. since they were doing it for months on end, i was seeing a real decrease in users posting, and mostly it was replaced by bot posting.
actually, thier purges since the election was too effective, and removed so much users and mods by banning them. plus the shadowbans have dramatically increased, because they made the filters to sensitive to "potential bots/spammers). 50/50 irl users/bots. at least right now, its reddit is filled with charlie kirk propaganda(negative and positive), with a little hint of luigi.
That was my reaction too. I don’t feel like digging in to see if it’s actually bad though. Not gonna affect my life.
Its probably related to the whole paying users thing.
We all presume that being the mod of several large reddit communities doesn't include the possibility of sidehustle financial benefits.
Yet, humans are innovators of corruption! And I can only assume that any multi-mega-subreddit moderator has worked out something to make what is obviously a full time job worth their time.
I heard mods of big subreddits can get basically sponsored by big companies and go to events. Half the pc gaming subreddits have what are basically ad posts pinned by the mods.
It could be viewed as reasonable if viewed alone. I think that its fine and could make a lot of sense for control over their platform.
The history of reddit sheds a different context in my mind though. Mods are volunteers. Subreddits were established to moderate themselves, implementing nuanced rules for their specific topics that might differ from other subs that need completely different rules and approaches. Its part of what made reddit unique compared to alternate sites.
Then they made moderating much more difficult by eliminating third party apps. Then they started implementing their plans to take the platform where they wanted it, which is fine because its their platform, but they wanted all their mods to do a bunch of work and in a certain manner to make it so. Very demanding on free labor.
So there's mods still around and they want to restrict them more? Who knows, maybe that's a great idea but they made the mess they're in. This decision isn't a single on on its own, its part of a stack of them.
Yeah. I mean, I remembered seeing someone named awkwardturtle on there and they moderated like some 30+ subreddits? That's ridiculous.
Users like that should not have that much power.
The problem with powermod isn't that they exist, though. Moderation of a large sub is still done by volunteers that have had to hack solutions together because they don't get a lot of support from Reddit. It helps Reddit to have experienced mods overseeing several subs because they bring with them experience on how to handle high profile and large scale moderation efforts. They are a technical talent pool that Reddit relies upon a lot.
The problem is that Reddit has shitty mod governance. It still uses rank by add date and offers no ability for users to kick a mod out except for TOS faults. Reddit doesn't want to fix mod governance issues because it creates a legitimate mod power structure and Reddit doesn't want to give that much power to users, including mods.
That said, Reddit's shitty mod governance was copied directly to Lemmy.
Not really. The powermods arent bringing anything unique moderation except a network that allows them to control content for a specific audience. This is not about enforcing subreddit rules its about subreddit mods pushing an agenda across their subs and pushing sponsored posts outsides reddits ad program.
Its overall a good thing but the powermods will be replaced with reddit admins doing the ame
It depends who. There are some that build tools and procedures for handling large forums. They may also share best practices across different subs.
As for controlling content, it isn't like a corporation or political group can't create 20 accounts and take over subs. That's already happened on Reddit.
Or sock puppet accounts. Banning the current set of mods without a plan on who replaces them doesn't fix the problem.
They can still share tools and best practices but now they cant be involved in the post to post moderation.
You cant do this if the mods are already doing this because the mods will remove the posts. Giving them a huge block of control over a majority of the content on the platform.
it allows them to institute changes ordered by the admins more effectively, complicitly. hard to do it if 500+ subs had thier own mod team, instead of just 92.
reddit might want AI to control some of the subs, dont you think?
Yes, but they are also doing this to deleverage their mods and consolidate censorship power with corporate
admins actually are the one that hold all the power on the site, mods are the plebs that have to play ball. admins are only 2nd in power to spez. they are the ones behind the aggressive somewhat indiscriminate shadowbans and purges. its only a matter of time before they drop the mask and increasing more right leaning content.
Mods get to control the political narrative of their subreddits by banning those with opposing views. That makes them more powerful than admins. As an example, Reddit has been so flooded with pro-trans mods that it's almost impossible to make an anti-trans agenda post in most subreddits without being banned.
except it ultimately falls to the admins which institute all these changes, and filters to the site. mods are just patsies, yea there are problematic mods, and this at the behest of spez too.
You may or may not be right, but that example is apocalyptically bad (and probably betrays that you're not worth talking to, if it reflects your "opinion"), because, ya know, most people with even a slither of empathy within them realize that "making an anti-trans agenda post" is just being a despicable piece of shit. Which would make the mods banning that behavior kinda based.
It would have made sense if done years ago. Doing it now is suspicious.