Reddit's Decline Is Intentional

As many of you have already heard, Reddit has announced that they are interpreting their Mod Code of Conduct to mean that moderators can be removed from their communities for 'vandalism' if they continue to participate in the protest against their policy on 3rd party apps.

This is ultimately Reddit's Web site to run: they are free to make any rules change they want, at any time they want. We can't stop them. They are also free to interpret their existing rules to mean whatever they say they mean.

But- for now, at least- I am free to say that it is utterly false to claim that participating in a protest against Reddit is 'vandalism'. Breaking windows is vandalism. Egging a house is vandalism. Scrawling 'KILROY WUZ HERE' on a bathroom stall is vandalism. Vandalism is destruction or defacement of another's property- not disagreeing with them while happening to be on their property.

This stretch of the definition of 'vandalism' beyond all believable bounds implicitly endangers a huge variety of speech on the site by users, not just moderators. If a politely-worded protest which goes against the corporate interests of Reddit is 'vandalism', the term can be distorted to include any speech damaging to someone with a sizable ownership stake in Reddit- including:

Criticism of Citadel, Citadel LLC, Kenneth Griffin, Elon Musk, or Tesla

Criticism of the DTCC, the FED, or Cede & Co

Criticism of any Warner Bros. property, due to Reddit parent company Advance Publications' sizable stake in WB

Criticism of Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple, (Reddit investor, Fidelity Investments', first, second, and third-largest holdings)

Criticism of United Healthcare (Fidelity's fourth-largest holding)

Criticism of Fortnite, Gears of War, League of Legends, or any one of a huge number of other games made by Reddit investor Tencent and its subsidiaries

Criticism of the Chinese government's genocide of the Uighur Muslims, repression of Hong Kong and the Tianmen massacre, due to their hooks in Tencent's leadership

News stories critical of prominent Reddit investor and Republican megadonor Peter Thiel.

Are you skeptical of the power that moderators hold over discourse and discussion on Reddit? Good. Such skepticism is healthy- and applying it to the motivations and interests of Reddit's moderators and its admins shows why this change is a threat to the whole platform, not any one group.

If you had the opportunity to take money under the table (well above the reddit 10B valuation) to intentioanlly sabotage your own platform, would you do it?