this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
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Given Reddit's past unreasonableness, I wouldn't be surprised if this otherwise reasonable explanation has an alternative motive.
*ulterior
While ulterior is probably a better way to say that alternative motive also makes sense given the context.
Thanks, I wanted to say that but I couldn't figure out how to spell it.
That's what I guessed. Alternative is a fine alternative word though.
The motive is these mods hold a decent amount of power on the platform that they wish to reduce. They don’t want a repeat of the API protests.
Gotta boost user numbers.
Or obscure them considering not letting people see sub count only daily/weekly activities
That's it. It's the illusion of fairness and it takes away reddit jannies' ability to show off their powermod status, and that's the only incentive they have not to use sockpuppets for every sub they mod.
This is actually another of Reddit's decisions that I'm in agreement with. Subscriber count isn't a very useful number, it largely just measures how old a subreddit is. You can already see how old the subreddit is much more accurately by looking at its founding date.
If they'd added, yes. But removing it completely is just a way to hide how many are on the platform.
Or left in a protest
The user numbers were bogus anyway since Reddit didn't automatically decrement the user number after banning a member. The banned member had to manually unjoin the subreddit. So the membership count was inflated with banned members.