After weeks of burning through users’ goodwill, Reddit is facing a moderator strike and an exodus of its most important users. It’s the latest example of a social media site making a critical mistake: users aren’t there for the services, they’re there for the community. Building barriers to access...

After weeks of burning through users’ goodwill, Reddit is facing a moderator strike and an exodus of its most important users. It’s the latest example of a social media site making a critical mistake: users aren’t there for the services, they’re there for the community. Building barriers to access is a war of attrition.

Reddit has an admirable record when it comes to defending an open and free internet. While not always perfect, the success of the site is owed to its model of empowering moderators and users to engage with the site in a way that makes sense for them. This freedom for communities to experiment with and extend the platform let it continue to thrive while similar sites, like Fark and Digg, lost major chunks of their user base after making controversial and restrictive design choices to raise profitability.