In my case, the biggest sub I help moderate has one mod who made the whole thing. From the ground-up, a great community of people, very few fights and a ton of people subscribed. It really is like a 'model' example of how the communities should work.

They jusy can't understand how we'd be willing to throw it all away over a company's stupid move. I guess in this instance, it is well over a decade of making a great place. And I can see why he feels awful.

But to me that is the only power we have...having people who will burn it down to make a stand.

I won't be there after this month ends and my 3rd party apps go.

You are assuming that this moderator criticism applies universally; there are dozens of subs with fantastic, fair mods, which are the only ones I sub to. I actively avoid subs that have mods who I see lock or delete stuff too often for my taste. Reddit also has major pastimes like /r/FreeGameFindings that people are not willing to give up; that place is one of my favorite hobbies and I can only hope a Telegram bot gets generated to notify me of its Lemmy counterpart's posts, as one does of the subreddit's. (Someone, help!)

Mods' CSS work may also serve as a real-life portfolio for actual jobs; who knows? The bots could also be, depending on the content, helping them make real money or otherwise find irl opportunities for preferred alternative fitness (/r/AppLab) or lifestyle preferences.

/r/MealPrepSunday is still going. /r/legaladvice is going. People get real-world help here and they aren't willing to give that up. /r/BeerMoney is going absolutely strong and it literally helps people make money.

What these mods should be doing is staying open and making a pinned post saying "Consider joining our equivalent on Lemmy." But within Reddit's scope, they can shut that down, too. Reddit is a for-profit entity just like Facebook and Twitter, which have every right to clamp down on encouragement away to Mastodon, etc. Even if it makes them look bad.

So, as I asked someone else here who was criticizing the continuation of the API shutdown or why people are not being as vehemently opposed to it as some Lemmy migrants: what subs were you frequenting?

Lastly, I am a mod of dozens of smaller subs. What matters to me most is making sure everyone has a home to discuss their favorite topics. They're generally niche enough to not actually need moderation, but I'm seeing I also don't have enough time to figure out how to generate (or just plain generate) Lemmy counterparts for everything, though I used to have sufficient time in the past. People's lives change but they depend on things that are important to them.

To all programmers, I am serious about all the extensive integrations into subs being a factor for why people still go there. I would love to see a Telegram bot for a counterpart to /r/GooglePlayDeals, like https://t.me/r_googleplaydeals and /r/FreeGameFindings, like https://t.me/r_FreeGameFindings, which would help people leave more easily.

Because there will be some mods that have been doing it, but think they can run things better.