I remember being really disappointed that the mods there refused to leave reddit during the protests last June. Today I happened to check reddit and I see the engagement appears to have plummeted.
So it seems the peeps decided to vote with their feet, which is great! However I know there hasn't been a lot of influx in alternative places like this community, !anarchism@slrpnk.net or even raddle.me.
So where have all the online anarchists gone? What do you think :D
It's been in decline since the coup, I think.
It used to be structured so that moderator nominations and community management discussions took place in /r/metanarchism - and any participant of /r/@ in good standing could be nominated to become a mod in weekly? monthly? mod nom threads, and if they weren't blocked, got a quorum of votes, and got enough "support" votes in reply to their nomination comment, they would become a mod. @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com was one of the more cautious and responsible people who was made an /r/@ moderator through this process.
I think this situation lasted a couple of years, which was impressive. I forget the exact details, but since order of addition in the software gave ability to de-mod anyone added after you were added, one of the older mods removed all of the mods who had been selected by the community, set their own people as mods, and closed /r/met@ to public participation. ~~Of course~~ @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ~~was one of the purged mods~~ had de-modded himself for unrelated reasons before the event occurred.
r/@ still had a bunch of good anarchist content, but became a lot less interesting after that.
No that's not what happened. I stepped down from the top mod position voluntarily (for the second time, lol) after they asked me to for not being as active as another mod. Eventually they removed me as a mod for being "inactive" :-/ . There was no purge.
My memory of it isn't great and it was a while ago. When did /r/metanarchism go private?
a long tine. It was a good decision because reddit doesn't prevent people who are not approved from voting or commenting and it added a ton of drama
I get why it happened, and why after the coup fizzled, /r/met@ remained closed. The exhaustion of the mods was palpable. I miss the transparency though. Being able to see other anarchists navigating the management of a space designed for hierarchy was kind of inspiring, the subversion of the comment system to vote over issues was clever, and participating in debate and politics as a non-mod was empowering.
Not that I'm advocating a return to that experience. Volunteer moderators don't deserve the kind of harassment they typically received modding on Reddit's anarchism subs. But it was one of those moments in history where idealism overwhelmed caution, and something beautiful but ephemeral was called into brief existence.
Eh it's pretty trivial for any anarchist to join metanarchism. The problem isn't that we tried to exclude people, it's that nobody cared to help with governance unless there was drama to be had