It is an issue of trust precisely because a third party controls the platform. If mods actually owned the infrastructure for their spaces, there would be no trust involved, they'd just own it.

In this case, mods trusted the company making a promise about the platform, breaking that promise breaks the trust in the company, and makes the platform risk plain to see for all.

I don’t think any mod could possibly have thought Reddit was making such a strong promise. The moderator community has repeatedly asked Reddit to take an active stance in moderation disputes; the most recent blackout protest before this one was asking Reddit to prohibit Covid denialism.

One should never trust a corporation, who only acts in the interest of money, is my point. That they even trusted them in the first place is a gross misjudgment. It's not about what words a corporation utters, it's about what actions it takes that determines its value.

Maybe they shouldn't have extended that much trust to Reddit as the company grew and changed, but that doesn't change the fact that Reddit admins are now lying. I don't really like this carte blanche idea that everyone is going to do bad things, so when you trusted them in the past it was your fault ideology.

> I don't really like this carte blanche idea that everyone is going to do bad things

It's not about doing good or bad things, it's about following the incentives (cui bono?). Corporations are amoral entities that seek to maximize profits, just as living organisms are entities that seek to maximize reproductive success. There's nothing wrong with either incentive, but it's crucial to recognize that those are the incentives present instead of thinking that entities will instead act against their incentives for the sake of others (indeed, even cooperation and sometimes self-sacrifice, as in the case of ants, can lead to greater genetic dispersion of the individual).

Therefore, in this case, there was no reason to trust Reddit admins on what they say, since at the end of the day, they will simply say whatever they want in order to pursue profit, which they are currently doing.

> Corporations are amoral entities that seek to maximize profits

The steps they take to obtain that goal matter a lot. If they went around literally stealing money from peoples wallets, we wouldn't just hand-wave it away and say "oh, they're amoral entities"

> just as living organisms are entities that seek to maximize reproductive success

We still consider it unethical to obtain that goal by any means necessary.

> There's nothing wrong with either incentive

I have nothing wrong with either incentive. Making a profit and reproducing are both great things. Doing either of them (or anything!) in unethical ways is the problem.

> Therefore, in this case, there was no reason to trust Reddit admins on what they say

What they have said in the past and what they have done WRT treating subreddits are "your space" is pretty consistent. We didn't just take their word for it. Their actions over the last 10 years in almost every circumstance has led us to believe this is the policy.

> they will simply say whatever they want in order to pursue profit

The public NEED to combat these kinds of problems by holding companies accountable. I would much rather live in a world where a company has to worry about lying to consumers because they will be held accountable than live in a world where anything a company says is ignored because we threw our hands up and said nobody can be trusted to any degree.

Just as a lion eating a gazelle has no moral qualms, a corporation does not either, so long as it's legal. Expecting ethical behavior in a corporation when such behavior is not encoded in its fitness function is misguided. You may not like this answer but it's true. If you want corporations to act ethically, encode it in their fitness function; make there be legal or monetary consequences to acting unethically because until then, they will simply do what they want to do.

In other words, even if you may feel that corporations are acting unethically, without any consequences for their actions, they'll just continue to do so, that's just the reality of it. You can try to change it, as you mention in your last paragraph, but that will be exceedingly difficult.

So maybe it's naive to think reddit wouldn't just seize control regardless of the "rules" (although I've seen plenty of posts from mods that mention this possibility). But that's not relevant to the question which is whether or not the moderators are moderating - as reddit is still using the rules as a pretense. I say to the mods, make it an easy answer, re-open the subs and remove every post that isn't a copy-paste of a stickied statement, something like that. Make them admit the rules were a convenient excuse for something they'd do anyway.