(part 2 of 2)

This kind of direct community intervention is completely unprecedented in Reddit’s 18 years of operation. Reddit has historically had a very laissez-faire approach to their communities, letting their communities themselves - represented by their community moderators - dictate what they want the content of their communities to be, and how they want their communities to be run. They’ve held this laissez-faire attitude even to a fault, letting the top mod of each subreddit unilaterally dictate subreddit rules and unilaterally add and remove other moderators, even at the protest of their community. A great example of this was when the /r/bitcoin community wanted to remove theymos as a top moderator due to his wildly unpopular community policies - Reddit Inc did nothing. Of course, that’s all flipped on its head now. Reddit is no longer a host for independent communities run by individuals - it’s a host for one big community run under the discretion of Reddit Inc, where ownership of “your community” is a privilege that can be taken away unilaterally at the whims of Reddit Inc without recourse.

I foresee a time before too long, perhaps within the next few years, where the /r/ethfinance moderators will have to face a similar choice - whether to side with the desires of Reddit corporate, or whether to stand by the desires of the community, be permanently banned from Reddit, and be replaced with Reddit’s own hand-selected moderators.

With ethfinance, of course, the divide between the community and Reddit Inc will not be a divide of SFW/NSFW, because that’s not this community’s style. It will be a divide over the heart of what ethfinance means to us. Perhaps it will be the inability for communities to opt out of Reddit community points, causing ethfinance to drop in quality due to points-chasing in the same way ethtrader did. Perhaps it will be the discontinuation of old.reddit.com along with the incessant enshittification of new.reddit.com and the official app. Maybe it will be site-wide automod deletion of external links (in the style of YouTube comment automoderation), removing a crucial information-sharing tool from this community.

Whatever the divide is between ethfinance and Reddit Inc, it will stem from this community’s desire to just be left alone to do our own thing, in conflict with Reddit’s desire to step in to make changes to the community to increase their own ad profits (because shortly, they’ll have public shareholders to answer to!) And Reddit Inc is the one with the keys to the server rack, so ultimately, whatever they want to do, they will do. Just one of the perks of running permissioned forum software on top of a permissioned database.

I share this because I truly believe that at some critical mass of platform enshittification, the “magic” of this community will leave /r/ethfinance and go somewhere else, just as it left /r/ethtrader to go to /r/ethfinance all those years ago. And it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open, because wherever the magic goes, so will follow the alpha, the good friends, the counterculture that makes ethfinance such a fulfilling and worthwhile place to visit.

Finally, a parting meme to make light of Reddit admin logic:

https://i.imgflip.com/7sz8kv.jpg