You're making all kinds of assumptions about the people discussing this. Some of us have actual experience running large communities and this informs some of the statements you see people making here.
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. If moderators flex their power they will stop being moderators because clearly the no longer seem to have the ordinary users interests at heart. This is why this is such a dumb play. You either have a 'batna' or you don't. Reddit holds the cards, and this is pretty much begging for them to show that they do so. Worse has happened and it never made a difference, as long as ordinary users aren't impacted to a degree that makes a difference to them things will stay as they are.
And a 'look at what you made me do' defense won't hold water, the users will blame the moderators because they can't get their fix, not reddit.
Reddit will die like every other community: through attrition, not because the moderators throw a fit over something that they may well see as important but which does not offend others.
>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:
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. If moderators flex their power they will stop being moderators because clearly the no longer seem to have the ordinary users interests at heart. This is why this is such a dumb play. You either have a 'batna' or you don't. Reddit holds the cards, and this is pretty much begging for them to show that they do so. Worse has happened and it never made a difference, as long as ordinary users aren't impacted to a degree that makes a difference to them things will stay as they are.
And a 'look at what you made me do' defense won't hold water, the users will blame the moderators because they can't get their fix, not reddit.
Reddit will die like every other community: through attrition, not because the moderators throw a fit over something that they may well see as important but which does not offend others.