Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.
Honestly? Good. The protests were incredibly weak. Going dark for a couple days, or even a week or more, was NEVER going to do anything. Of course Reddit was going to force you to do the bare minimum. That’s where the protest is. The bare minimum. Yet everytime I suggested it in the early days of the protest I was downvoted to hell. When r/Pics went with the John Oliver I said the same thing and it got a bit more of a reaction. It’s taking WEEKS to get to this point.
Reddit relies entirely on free moderation. Facebook and other companies pay their mods but reddits whole thing was “Your community, your rules! You just gotta follow some basics.” If you haul out the moderation from under their damn feet then reddit will end up with a non-existent valuation. Yet I suspect the reason this is taking pathetically long to get to this point is because most of the mods are terrified of the idea of giving up the power they’ve had for ages.