this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
382 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22058 readers
59 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"Huffman said in an interview that he plans to institute rules changes that would allow Reddit users to vote out moderators who have overseen the protest, comparing them to a “landed gentry.”"
I had to google Landed Gentry, it still don't make sense; "The landed gentry, or the gentry, is a largely historical British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate." That's a weird way to describe an unpaid moderator. Either way, there's no reddit to return to if they're going scorched earth on the moderators anyways. This is home now.
I saw somewhere that the analogy was supposed to be "whoever got there first owned the land." The idea I guess is that the landed gentry settled down on the land (subreddits) first, and now the subreddit is a dictatorship because the users could never vote on who their "landlords" are.
Yes, that analogy is also terrible, and it also goes to show that spez has no idea why people hate landlords.
Edit: everyone that's replied to me has provided more reasons why it's a stupid analogy, and that makes me happy :)
But that analogy would make Spez the king who rules over all the lands of Reddit-tania, doling favors out to people who support him and punishment out to those who oppose him no matter what the people of Reddit-tania want.
Wait, maybe the analogy has some merit to it after all.
It's also just not how landed gentry work, strictly speaking. So it's a terrible analogy on multiple fronts.
in practically all cases, the "landed gentry" were not there first - they mostly obtained title to their estates via political manipulation and legal skullduggery or, if they could get away with it, outright slaughter of the previous occupants.
Thank you, your explanation made some sense of this metaphor. I'm not familiar with this period of British history, so this metaphor shot right over me. Either way, I'm interested to see how the voting goes.
It only makes sense if Huffman considers himself King; the moderators are a threat to his land!
The moderators are unpaid workers farming the content. They're serfs.
And the commenters and posters are the crops being farmed? (Some would be weeds, I guess.)
Only on /r/trees
Sure sounds like an apt description of reddit admins. I wonder how the users would vote against Spez and these changes if he's so interested in democracy all the sudden.