The subreddit r/steam, about the digital game storefront, received as many other subreddits a notice to open the community again, or else the mods would be replaced by those who abide.
The mods followed suit posting the following automod message under every new post:
As ya’ll likely know, we’ve been dark to support the blackout against reddit’s antagonistic behavior towards its own userbase. The admins sent us a message today saying we must open or get removed, so here we are.
For those of you browsing this subreddit on non-official apps (Reddit is Fun, Apollo, Sync, Boost, etc), they will break on July 1st due to reddit’s new policies. We’re opening back up but will leave permanent stickies in the subreddit and threads to keep folks in the know.
Our Discord [contains link to https://discord.gg/steam] server is active, don’t forget to check it out.
Good luck and god speed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
On visit, you quickly notice there is a community wide effort to focus on the literal topic of the given name and post about vapors, steam trains, and kitchen appliances. While posts about the gaming platform get downvoted.
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The rationale is: profit. Ultimately reddit relies on users for content, and they’re hoping if the remove the organisers of the strike (the mods) and replace them with scabs, that the users will stop striking.
It seems more like they just want to give mods the illusion that they can make executive decisions about the subs they run so that they’ll work for free to Reddit’s benefit.
A few days ago, Reddit said that they “supported communities’ decision to go private” (or something like that). Now that communities actually did it, they’re backtracking.
Subreddits being controlled by the mods and community is just reddit’s public face. Behind closed doors, the reddit admins see themselves as the masters.
There will be scabs eager to volunteer their time as moderators - at least for now - solely for the perceived power.
At least until the spambot onslaught begins and they start to find it incredibly difficult if not impossible to keep up with the endless flow of spam due to their lack of assistance tools and beneficial third party apps.