<story><title>Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14aeq5j/new_admin_post_if_a_moderator_team_unanimously/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rjvir</author><text>Spez is CEO because the board and investors deem him to be the best person for the job. Of course, he founded Reddit, so he has a strong case on merit for why he is the #1 person on the planet to run the company.&lt;p&gt;The process for selecting moderators is way less meritocratic or democratic than this. They merely got there first, finders keepers. The analogy for landed gentry is accurate.</text></item><item><author>mlyle</author><text>The richest part here is where spez refers to moderators as a &amp;quot;landed gentry&amp;quot;:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;tech-news&amp;#x2F;reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;tech-news&amp;#x2F;reddit-protest-blacko...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”&lt;p&gt;What does that make spez relative to the constituents in his community?</text></item><item><author>janalsncm</author><text>Reddit could have avoided all of this years ago by building out the tools that moderators claim to need. Instead, they relied on third parties to create them. Doing this would have nullified mods’ strongest justification for protesting. While removing 3rd party apps is certainly annoying for users, mods are what keep the site functioning.&lt;p&gt;The fact that Reddit chose to take this course of action tells me that they don’t actually know that much about their own website. That might also explain why they never built out the tooling to begin with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cragfar</author><text>&amp;gt;They merely got there first, finders keepers.&lt;p&gt;That hasn&amp;#x27;t really been the case for a while. Especially for the larger subs like r&amp;#x2F;videos. R&amp;#x2F;news for example was created 15 years ago and it&amp;#x27;s oldest mod was modded two years ago. Also the admins come in and remove top mods of problematic subs (generally alt right&amp;#x2F;brigading subs) all the time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reddit is removing moderators that protest by taking their communities private</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14aeq5j/new_admin_post_if_a_moderator_team_unanimously/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rjvir</author><text>Spez is CEO because the board and investors deem him to be the best person for the job. Of course, he founded Reddit, so he has a strong case on merit for why he is the #1 person on the planet to run the company.&lt;p&gt;The process for selecting moderators is way less meritocratic or democratic than this. They merely got there first, finders keepers. The analogy for landed gentry is accurate.</text></item><item><author>mlyle</author><text>The richest part here is where spez refers to moderators as a &amp;quot;landed gentry&amp;quot;:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;tech-news&amp;#x2F;reddit-protest-blackout-ceo-steve-huffman-moderators-rcna89544&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&amp;#x2F;tech&amp;#x2F;tech-news&amp;#x2F;reddit-protest-blacko...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;“And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”&lt;p&gt;What does that make spez relative to the constituents in his community?</text></item><item><author>janalsncm</author><text>Reddit could have avoided all of this years ago by building out the tools that moderators claim to need. Instead, they relied on third parties to create them. Doing this would have nullified mods’ strongest justification for protesting. While removing 3rd party apps is certainly annoying for users, mods are what keep the site functioning.&lt;p&gt;The fact that Reddit chose to take this course of action tells me that they don’t actually know that much about their own website. That might also explain why they never built out the tooling to begin with.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JohnBooty</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    The analogy for landed gentry is accurate. 
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Land is finite and subreddits are not. You can fork off and make your own subreddit whenever you like&lt;p&gt;If subreddit mods are landed gentry, then so are open source maintainers.</text></comment>