What all this seems like is a bad psy-op campaign to force people to do the settings the admins want, and make it "feel" its the moderators doing it. Similar how Twitter forces you to remove bad content rather than just auto-do it
There's a 3-way social contract between the platform (Reddit/npm), the nominal person in charge (mods/module authors) and the users. If the person in charge does something that is sufficiently disruptive to users', or platforms interests, the platform will step in. We can argue about where the line is, but beyond that point, platform intervention is inevitable.
Edit: Thought experiment: would it have been acceptable had the author of leftpad put up a poll for downloaders to vote before taking the module down in protest?
I can understand the sentiment, however users of Reddit employ private subreddits for a variety of reasons. Top of the list is in order to facilitate safe discussions, secure from prying eyes. For Reddit Inc it is a benefit, since it encourages moderator groups and communities to remain within the platform. e.g.
> r/ArmyofScience
> A private community for the comment moderators of /r/science to organize and discussion moderation of the subreddit.
If such private communities were forced open, it would require moderator groups, or those other private communities, to join the exodus to other platforms.
There are also some more personal collections on the site, without a doubt. Switching those to public would constitute a huge violation the trust which users have placed in Reddit and only further erode the company's image within communities that make their home on the site as well as with the public at large.
Lastly, there are over 3 million subreddits in existence [0], so even changing this manually would be a sizeable task.
[0] https://www.businessdit.com/how-many-subreddits-are-there/
If a cop shoots an unarmed suspect, they will get punished too. Would you defend the cop by saying “why give a cop a gun if you punish him for using it”? The cop is given a gun with the understanding that they only use it to shoot dangerous suspects; a cop that violates that expectation will have their gun taken away.
> If they don't want private subs, then convert them to public and turn that feature off.
The more reasonable solution would be to disallow moderators from changing the protection level after creating a sub (but allowing it by petitioning the admins). Would that make you happy?
For a decade, reddit's message to mods was that this was our community. And we could institute rules as we see fit. If the system allowed it, we could do it.
That was obviously just propaganda and a blatant lie.
> If a cop shoots an unarmed suspect, they will get punished too. Would you defend the cop by saying “why give a cop a gun if you punish him for using it”? The cop is given a gun with the understanding that they only use it to shoot dangerous suspects; a cop that violates that expectation will have their gun taken away.
The fuck? Are you seriously comparing state sanctioned violence to a online glorified bulletin board? Just wow.
I think that era died with Aaron Swartz, which is more than a decade past. In the past decade Reddit admins have been banning thriving communities for not toeing the party line.
Where were you when Reddit banned /r/the_donald and all the lesbian subs? Probably cheering them on for enforcing a political agenda you agree with? Then what made you think you would be spared from the admin's wrath when you turned against them?
It sounds like a typical case of “I can't believe the leopards would eat my face!”
> The fuck? [..] Just wow.
Stop it with the rhetorical pearl clutching. If you have something intelligent to say, make a rational, coherent, dispassionate argument. Nobody benefits from this type of emotional outburst. Imagine I would respond in kind, saying: “Omg! Wow! Wow! Wow! I canNOT belIEVE you would SAY something like this! What the fuck??? Wow! Geez! Golly!" This is just meaningless word vomit.
> Are you seriously comparing state sanctioned violence to a online glorified bulletin board?
Do you seriously not understand what an analogy is?
... Also, one of the least diverse group (racially, religiously, culturally, politically and pretty much everything else) of people you could think of having such a control over """the front page of the internet"" (lol) lead to it turning into an insanely boring and one of the cringiest places on the internet. Twitter is downright refreshing compared to the average subreddit, which is saying a lot
The sad part is that I won't see the results of that rebalance of power, since I've only ever used Reddit on third party apps lol.
historically speaking, some subs have gone private short term simply to control some crazy amounts of spam or harassment. And there's many more instances where subs went restricted for a while. So this isn't the only feature of privating communities.
>not to shut down thriving public communities as a form of protest.
No tools are ever designed for use in protest, so this is a circular argument. That's part of what a protest is.
No, it was always to "create your own community". Right down to the asinine mechanic where the Head mod is simply first come first serve. If Mod A makes a community, assigns Mod B to moderate it, and leaves for 5 years, B cannot override A when he comes back without intervention from Admins. On the contrary, A can kick out B despite doing nothing for 5 years.
They very much designed it for "petty tyrants" and the site should/would have built a much better system to kick out inactive mods if they cared about "being part of a community". But I think we both know that Reddit just cared about free labor (until news sites force their hand).
Hence, the "law".
A more noble alternative is that the level of internet discourse has become so much more refined these days that if you simplify a new position to an old analogy you're just retreading old "solved" ground rather than discussing the nuances that make this particular topic business as usual/the end of society. To be fair most people are anti shooting babies and pro killing harmful parasites but neither of those analogies are particuarly novel or useful in an abortion discussion unless it's the first time you've considered the topic.