What boggles the mind in this whole thing is that moderation is the product. These fools are gambling with the only thing they can’t afford to lose.

Here is Reddit inc’s dirty secret. The value they produces as a company is mod labor they don’t control and couldn’t afford to control if they wanted to.

Attempting to gain revenue from AI bots ingesting the site’s content wasn’t the worst idea. Letting that turn into a fight with the moderators was crazy dumb. Nobody needed to know reddits dirty secret until after an ipo if it had been played right. That would have required a CEO who actually knew the secret though.