That drama is most likely the catalyst of the current drama. (i.e. StabilityAI getting control of the subreddit to control the NAI leak/discourage use of the AUTOMATIC1111 UI)
Which violates a number of Reddit's conflict of interest rules for moderators.
> Which violates a number of Reddit's conflict of interest rules for moderators.
Those don't exist. There is something called the "Reddiquette" which is by the community and completely informal.
Subreddits owned by companies is the new normal and if you look at games, most reddit users these days even prefer it to community-run ones. Not uncommon to have two subreddits at a launch of a game and the unofficial one will always "lose".
Besides that, Reddit itself reaches out to brands & product owners and influencers to make official subs for them, managed by those entities then.
Subreddits are the new Facebook Groups and Reddit is completely "mainstream". I wonder what's next in a couple of years. Maybe we can go back to forums :)
> most reddit users these days even prefer it to community-run ones. Not uncommon to have two subreddits at a launch of a game and the unofficial one will always "lose".
Games often link to the "official" reddit community from inside the game, so no surprise that traffic will be driven there
Sure, they also share them on their socials and are vocal about it.
But even besides that, if you look at any time this situation happened in the last ~3 years, you'll always see more users being vocal about the preferring the official sub than the community one in comparison.
Reddit's demographics changed, and it just exploded over the last couple of years with "casual users", "went mainstream" or what ever one wants to call it.
Most users these days don't even know that "official subreddits" were something that was super unpopular and uncommon on Reddit.
Which violates a number of Reddit's conflict of interest rules for moderators.