The [email protected] community on this instance thrived for a while and reached almost 19k subscribers very rapidly and it was very active.

Recently the Reddit mods of r/Android created another community with a few hundred members on another different instance where they are mods and that one was then astroturfed on c/android by a person seemingly unrelated to that community’s mods.

Apparently some discussions then took place between owners of both communities and the mods of [email protected] community then unilaterally closed the community, thus, according to their own sticky notice, succumbing to the flawed reasoning that the Reddit mods are “more experienced” and therefore the rightful representatives of an Android community.

I find this behavior sad and it just shouldn’t be allowed here for two reasons:

  • this sets the precedent for more Reddit mods to just come and claim “ownership” of communities by bullying existing ones into closing;
  • does not respect the almost 19k subscribers who didn’t even have a say in this, and especially those who had already expressed that they joined [email protected] because they did NOT want to be moderated by the old Reddit mods.

[email protected] needs to be reopened now and the mods removed since they expressed that they no longer want to moderate a community on lemmy.world.

  • Sean
    8•1 year ago

    Unless I’m mistaken, I believe even Reddit has/had a policy that allowed users to take over abandoned/locked/banned subs as long as the new owners took it in a productive direction.

    • Lvxferre
      12•1 year ago

      Not only Reddit has it, but it has been using and abusing that policy, in order to shut up protesters, by pretending that they “don’t want to mod”.

      Even then, it’s that sort of policy that all instances need.

      • Sean
        4•1 year ago

        It’s not the worst idea for instance admins to consider, maybe just with better execution.

        • Lvxferre
          2•1 year ago

          Yup, it does need a better execution. However there are three things on our favour in the Fediverse:

          • each instance is considerably smaller than Reddit → each comm matters more → admins are more likely to intervene if a comm suddenly shuts itself down
          • smaller size → case-by-case analysis is more viable → it’s easier to take the right decision
          • no corporate interests → one less thing to distract the admins from “think on the users!” → admins are more likely to intervene for the well being of their overall community