I'm a mod of /r/Disneyland, and we recreated our sub over here on Kbin ( @Disneyland, https://kbin.social/m/Disneyland).

The issue is that we had 500k subs on Reddit. That sounds like a lot, but in reality it equates to about a dozen posts a day, maybe less.

Over here on Kbin, we almost have 100 subs - and I'm really proud of that! - but 100 subs is basically nothing. A fraction of a percent of people are actually content contributors, and the whole community rests on them. Then combine that with the fact that we're a niche subject (not some general thing like "video games") and that impacts what can be contributed.

On top of that, the magazine is fairly empty. Not barren - we have a few posts - but it certainly looks and feels empty. And because it's empty, nobody wants to post, which means it stays empty.

Compare that to Reddit, which has a very dedicated community for us. Not a massive community, but certainly a passionate one. We care about our community; we've stewarded it for years. All of us mods started out as members of that community (the subreddit founder is long gone), and we're all unpaid volunteers that want to keep that community healthy.

Reddit threatened to take it from us and give it to another mod team for a related Disney subreddit that played along with the admins. The issue is that multiple Disney subreddits have, uh, issues with those mods (which has been the case for years to the point where explaining the history is part of onboarding for a lot of Disney mods).

So the issue was reframed - either we reopen our sub on our terms... or we stick to our guns, force Reddit to remove us, and get replaced by a different mod team. This other team is known to be harsh about banning users for any kind of dissent, they abuse their mod powers to spread anti-vax nonsense all over their "non-political" subreddit, they have multiple subreddit drama threads talking about their actions, they've been gunning for all of the Disney subs for years... and they'd immediately jump at the chance to reopen the subreddit we've worked hard on so they could run it their way.

When you look at it like that... there's only one real choice. I hate Reddit, but our community doesn't deserve that.

I realize saying "we choose to keep our powers for your own good" makes me sound like, oh, I dunno, "landed gentry"... but users don't see that side of moderation or Reddit drama, and frankly they shouldn't have to.

So we opened and are taking the abuse. Users are torn between "you caved, scabs" and "told you this was a useless gesture, how dare you take my sub away". Neither one is great.

But there's more to it than what appears on the surface, and frankly that's true across a lot of subs.