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comment by Super_Cyan
Super_Cyan  ·  3432 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 2015 Reddit drama part Dooks: Default subreddits going private for some reason

I don't think it's going to cause a mass migration on the level of Digg at the moment, but it has definitely caused a divide between moderators, admins, and regular users.

The past little bit has been really trying to a lot of people on Reddit. There's been changes in administration, with many notable people leaving and a lot of new people coming in, that have been accused of being out-of-touch with the community. There's been the introduction of a new CEO, which many hate, because her husband is accused of being a con-artist and she's going through a sexual harassment lawsuit with her previous employer. There's been the banning of a couple subreddits due to a new policy that aimed to remove harassment inciting content from Reddit under a "safe spaces" movement- which was seen as a directly contradictory to Aaron Schwartz's, Reddit's former co-founder, idea of free speech.

Not only are they upsetting regular users; many mods are upset with the recent banning of Victoria, because of her crucial role in the conduction of AMAs, as well as a reluctance to give them more tools to work with. Victoria was critical in many AMAs, because she was the sole liaison between the interviewees and the rest of Reddit. When she left, mods were left with absolutely no way to contact people for upcoming AMAs and made getting other people a lot harder. On top of that, Reddit's been ignoring mods' desire for better moderation tools. They want a better Modmail, which has been promised for a while. They want more control over their subreddits, so that they can shape them the way they want them to be without CSS hacks.

This action alone isn't going to completely break Reddit, but further action definitely will. At this point, the Admins have upset both the regular users as well as mods and power-mods, who have a large part of Reddit under their control. Everything's tense right now and a few people are upset and leaving, but overall, everyone's staying. However, what the admins decide to do in the coming days and weeks will really decide the fate of Reddit.

Will they make changes and make amends with their users?

Will they go all-out with moderation and make people leave Reddit for good?

We'll just have to wait and see.