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Reddit is no place for workers
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Hello everyone,

u/squirrelrampage here. I have been mostly modding this place in the last few years.

As you probably noticed r/DevUnion has participated in the blackout in protest against Reddit's API changes. Things have escalated since that one began...

Unfortunately the protests have collapsed at this point, mostly due to threats by Reddit and Reddit actively removing mods who did not obey their orders. They are also actively undermining protests by their community by removing user polls that aim to find a way forward. Neither mods nor users are henceforth allowed to make any decision about the content or direction of a subreddit.

Reddit's message is very clear: Either you pretend nothing ever happened and return to the status-quo-ante or else!

This is the content of the letter Reddit sends out to all communities who still dare to voice any kind of resistance. Today it has been the turn of r/DevUnion to receive this message from Spez' personal messenger, the already infamous ModCodeOfConduct account.

I have come to think a lot about this, as the end has been foreseeable for a few days now and I have no intention to obey their orders. Their demands do not only go against my own personal principles, but also against the principles of a subreddit dedicated to worker's rights.

Please allow me to explain.

The workers are - in this case - mostly the mods, with subscribers and users acting as costumers of the business. The analogy may not fit perfectly, but it is close enough.

The bosses of Reddit consider themselves to be the owners of (content) production and will retaliate against any workers who speak up for themselves and fight for their rights. That they largely get the mods' work for free adds a layer of hubris to their current actions which speaks of their arrogance and disdain for workers: Workers solely exist as cogs in a machine which has to produce profit for the owners.

Thus Reddit employs tactics from the toolbox of union-busting in order to get their workers in line. Reddit assumes that the attachment and sense of responsibilty of mods to not abandon the communities they have built up will be as strong as the threat of getting fired from a job.

Unfortunately, many mods do not recognize that the chains that bind them are the sunk cost fallacy and a sense of loyalty towards people they have shitposted with. Besides that, they can always walk away and rebuilt what they had in a different place. They possess the skills, the knowledge and most often also the trust of many Reddit users, whereas Reddit will soon discover that trust is something that is much harder to gain, than it is to lose it

As much as it pains me, I will not do the same mistake and fool myself that there is a future of a workers' rights subreddit on this platform. There are alternatives to Reddit and it makes no sense to maintain a presence on a platform that is openly hostile towards its workers and its users.

Insofar, I encourage everyone to leave Reddit for alternatives such as Raddle, KBin or sites running Lemmy such as Beehaw.
I also encourage everyone to join Code-CWA, Tech Workers Coalition, Game Workers Coalition and other such orgs in order to keep up-to-date with union-related topics.

But I urge everyone to leave r/DevUnion now, because sooner or later I will be removed as a mod and there is no way of knowing what intentions my replacement may have. After all you can alway rejoin if r/DevUnion remains decent.

In this spirt: Solidarity, comrades!
Keep on fighting the good fight!

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1 year ago