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Because Reddit is in the unique position where a small amount of users can affect a vast swathe of their platform - moderators.

Most mods don’t care, by volume. The ones that do are often also the ones that are more active, more engaged, and more entwined with communities outside Reddit.

During the protest last year, polls come back favorably pretty much everywhere to shut down - but after the shutdown actually happened, a tidal wave of lurkers who never vote and never comment came out of the woodwork to complain and call it all stupid. Public opinion of all users is likely against practically any protest that could happen.

I don’t like it, but that’s how it is. The best realistic outcome is that a large contingent of content creators and more informed users leave the site - but how many of those are left that haven’t already vamoosed and are still willing to leave under some unknown worse circumstance?

Not in any way the average user cares much about.

The causal social media user cares for two things:

1. A constant uninterrupted stream of content

2. Dopamine in the form of upvotes/likes/what have you

If these two things aren’t interupted, 90% of users won’t care.

Let’s be honest with ourselves - no, it won’t be wildly unpopular. This change affects very few people and the people still using Reddit at this point likely won’t care much, and I have doubt any future change would cause much outrage either.

Because think about this - who is actively complaining and gnashing their teeth about the continued downward spiral and still scrolling, posting, moderating there at this point? I’d love to believe more people would jump ship - but if it ever happened it would take a far larger-scope fuckup than anything we’ve seen so far.

There is a point where more users may bring more downsides than upsides - but we haven’t reached that point yet. There are still many many niche communities that have no equivalent here and starting them would never take off with the current number of people.

this hit me like a mental flashbang. your wisdom is beyond all of us

People that don’t check what community a post came from on their home feed and just upvote it if they like it.

Full disclosure: that was me just now until I opened the comments, realized, then took it back. It’s very easy to miss sometimes

Isn’t the way it works now also a debate winner? The blocked user can reply to you and you won’t even know, so you can’t refute whatever they’ve said (and if you’ve blocked them there’s decent odds it isn’t good).

This is what happens when you step on the wrong bug a couple million years ago

In my DnD group, my goblin wizard still holds the honor of being the only party member the DM has used Power Word Kill on.

I’m honored.