[bondolo]

I'm a reddit moderator of subs both enormous and tiny. I've been frustrated for years by the core subs being taken over by various cabals of power users. Some like the power, some do it to push a particular agenda, and I am pretty sure some are doing it for financial gain.

Reddit has been hands off (which is why /r/trees is not about trees) and made things worse (which is why mods of top subs is so concentrated among a small group).

This is a turn for the much, much worse. I imagine that this will result in even tighter consolidation of moderation of the big subs in an even smaller set of people with a stronger devil's bargain between them. It is going to devolve in to reddit and "pro"-moderators simultaneously loathing, sabotaging and undermining each other and depending on each other at the same time.