Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we’d be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.
That is an understatement. I’m a former mod of r/iama (u/Brownboy13) and I was signing on to handle a high profile ama when Victoria messaged that she wouldn’t be able to help us as she was let go without notice. Admin didn’t even bother informing the guest that the employee handholding them through the process would no longer be available. We were caught entirely off guard and I don’t think /r/iama has ever been the same. There was a level of trust the /u/chooter would be in the same room as a guest or at least on a call and make sure it was them answering and not pr teams. It’s been like fucking pr junket since then.
This was the start of my disillusionment with reddit, and it seems to have been finalized with this last shitshow of a decision.
Wow, hard to grasp that was 8 years ago?!
I was never a user of IAMA, but I clearly remember how shitty reddit behaved in that situation.
I did delete my account later, and only lurked through links to my favorite subs for a few years. Now I have deleted my links too.
Reddit has devolved steadily for to many years, time to cut the cord completely.
Would you be interested in running a new version of iAMA on Lemmy?
No, thank you. I’m done with putting in volunteer effort for these kinds of things. I transitioned to mostly lurking on reddit, and I’m likely to remain that way here as well. Modding requires too much of a time and effort commitment for something that I’ll have nothing to show for depending on the whim of others.