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Comment by Y-bar | Hacker News Reader

I do care about the third party apps because they assist moderators in doing their job (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit). And more personally, they provide accessibility support lacking both in the Reddit website and app. I am not a mod, and will literally no longer be able to use Reddit as well as I have had over the last years. The third-party developers have provided Reddit with tremendous value which is now lost.

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Even as a non-mod the third party apps are simply a substantially better user experience than the official app. The CEO's statements and actions have made it clear that the user, nor the mods are anything other than a metric to be exploited in their business plan. I'm no longer interested in participating in their cattle drive.

> (which has been done for free as a service to Reddit).

Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power.

I couldn't care less about the API or the will of capricious mods - I hope Reddit will hand the subs over to other people

If they would only moderate for feeling power, they wouldn’t risk their mod position by going against the only party who can kick them.

Honestly, I also think that public forums such as reddit shouldn’t build up a walled garden like this and the information should be free to anyone, regardless whether they use it commercially or for research.

And those new mods are suddenly not going to need better modding tools? They'll just be happy with whatever Reddit has? It's just the current mods who get off on their power, the new ones won't?

Stop for a second and consider: why do these problems exist, and why should they stop?

You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too

> You can't change human nature but you can get mods that don't care about this particular issue

Okay, and how will that help you to not get "capricious mods"?

> and when the next ones cause problems you get rid of them too

And when those ones make problems you get rid of them again? And then again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again? And again?

Are you starting to see the problem?

There is always going to be people that want to be mods

And you think for those people this doesn't hold true?

> Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power.

Are you willfully ignoring this point, or do you really think that magically it will work out?

You can't do anything about that. Most of them will will be in it for themselves but when they start getting ideas that they own the place (like the current ones think) you cull them

Well, we could always not do your bad idea, then we wouldn't have to go into this loop of getting in new power-hungry mods just to throw them out and replace them with the next ones.

> Most of them are doing it because they get off on having a tiny bit of power.

[citation needed]

I am a regular user on Reddit and not a mod. But I have managed a very low traffic mailing list before. I cannot imagine doing it for free no matter how much ego boost I get.

So my question is, if Reddit kicks off all the mods from a sub you frequent often, and ask you to be the new mod, would you do it? And, if it is a busy enough subreddit, would you spend the time those people have been spending, to moderation?

For me, that would be no.

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