I very much agree with the general sentiment here about Microsoft’s substantial hypocrisy and what a bad look it is, but isn’t it likely to the benefit of consumers if these large companies are helping fuel legitimate antitrust lawsuits at each other?
I just don’t know how I feel about the whole reddit mod situation in the context of this article.
On one hand, it does seem like the removal of moderators from some subs contributed to the deterioration of quality content. Reddit making that decision against the will of certain subs felt disrespectful to the autonomy of those communities.
On the other hand, I was personally never under the impression that moderators were at all subject matter experts. Their primary role is to enforce the rules of the platform and the sub. Any sort of vetting process exists almost solely on the current mods and the feedback they decide to consider from the community.
Yeah, I understand that hearing the same simple explanation of “you don’t own it…” gets to be annoying. Especially in places like this where most people are pretty well aware of the situation.
The primary issue seems to be that enough people support this type of service willingly for the sake of convenience and are generally ignorant to the potential long-term issues. It feels pretty exploitative as a consumer.
But I don’t see how making the distinction between ownership of the content vs the license is providing legwork for those services. In my mind, that distinction is key for understanding that the service is not for me. And I may just be looking at this too optimistically, but I would hope the same would be true for users who don’t read the fine print, or happen to have not understood the issue until something like this post is presented.