Reddit is losing famous AMA moderators, and it’s more serious than you think

we were with Reddit in the spotlight, and not for the best reasons. The protests over the false accusations of using a third-party API have become a real PR nightmare for the platform. But it is undeniable that the company itself fell into this quagmire, and things could get even worse.

Weekend Moderators R/Yama, one of the most popular subreddits, has abandoned the various activities that made it unique. This community has become famous all over the world thanks to LOVESor ask about anything (Ask me anything) which featured famous personalities. From tycoons like Elon Musk and Bill Gates to politicians like Barack Obama and all kinds of celebrities.

The subreddit will not disappear or stop being moderated.. However, it was decided to abandon many of the coordinating tasks, which will certainly affect, and for the worse, the quality of the community. These include past screening of celebrities for AMAs – a task that was done with their press teams – maintaining a dedicated website for scheduling and promoting events, and updating the calendar to accommodate the next AMAs. and reminders to users, just to name a few.

All this is motivated by the blindness of Reddit in search of increasing their economic income. This situation has not only led the company to earn the disapproval of users, but also kill the moderators. And the last is not a minor detail, given that the vast majority – if not all – are volunteers. That is, they do their job without getting paid in return.

Reddit goes from scandal to scandal in search of new revenue

Reddit is a company with big ambitions and there is no point in trying to make more money. To do this, their leaders can try to get the most out of existing ways to monetize or try new methods. Does that make them greedy or miserly? Of course not. The most important part of a company, which persists over time as it grows, becomes profitable.

The problem with Reddit was the ways. Regarding their third party payment API, not only did they implement improper fees, but they were unable to contact them. Many developers have found that they will have to incur multi-million dollar expenses in just 30 days or even sooner. Something completely unfeasible, and it led to the closure of very popular applications such as Apollo.

But that wasn’t the worst. When thousands of subreddits decided to go offline in protest, the platform received no message. Steve Huffmann, the CEO of Reddit, not only denounced the work of third-party client developers, but downplayed the user boycott. And with that, he only managed to make the snowball bigger and bigger.

This is how very popular communities have decided to fight back by opening their doors to porn; therefore Reddit cannot monetize them. And the reaction of the company was very bad.. Not only did he remove the moderators from those subreddits, but he began contacting the lower level moderators of those communities that remained closed to inform their bosses and allow them to reopen them.

However, the icing on the cake was a recent ultimatum to those responsible for the protesting communities. Reddit threatened them remove their moderator status if they didn’t open the subreddits before the weekend.

Why can losing an AMA be fatal?

The changes that have been decided to be made to r/IAmA are not accidental. As we mentioned, this is one of the most important Reddit communities with over 22 million members. and its moderators are volunteers. As they explained, many of those who covered this work decided to step aside after seeing that, despite the passing years, the platform does not change its attitude towards them.

Celebrity AMA moderation took more than just time and effort. Over the past 10 years, IT and security infrastructure was created it was supported without financial intervention from Reddit. However, it has now been withdrawn. What does it mean? Here’s how the moderation team explained it:

“In the future, we will continue to allow most AMA topics, but we will leave requests for testing and review at the discretion of the community and limit ourselves to removing only material that violates the rules. This doesn’t mean we explicitly allow fake AMAs, but it means you need to pay more attention.”

Without the moderators in charge of verifying the identities of the celebrities who hold AMAs on Reddit, How long will it take until “Elon Musk” appears promoting cryptocurrency scams? The danger of r/IAmA being flooded with spam and all sorts of unsolicited messages is now more hidden than ever.

The moderators know that this resignation will surely destroy the subreddit, but they have clearly stated their position on this issue:

“Will this undermine much of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit management has the means to hire people to do the extra tasks we previously did as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to work with them if they’re willing to do so.”

Basically what they’re saying is that Reddit got lost looking for new revenue. and turned its back on its most important asset: communities. And that moderators no longer want to work for free when the company seems to be willing to do anything to make money.

So there’s a chance that if Reddit had to deal with the cost of rebuilding r/IAmA’s review and coordination infrastructure to keep up with big names, it would be more expensive than if it helped the original moderators maintain what was already in place. And if businessmen, politicians, artists, influencers and other celebrities they decide not to return to the AMAs, things are not going well for Huffman and his parties. We will closely follow the news.