Sure, online polls have obvious flaws (non-response bias, how many people actually saw the poll, who was motivated to actually respond to the poll, did voters actually understand the protest would last more than 1 day, should logged out lurkers have any representation, etc)
But beyond that, shutting down a subreddit for multiple days is such a drastic action, it should require more than just a simple majority in a quick online poll.
For instance, to amend the Constitution, you typically need a supermajority (2/3 or 3/4 of different parts of the government). To convict someone guilty in a trial, you typically need evidence beyond reasonable doubt and a unanimous jury verdict.
The burden of proof that users want to shut down the subreddit should be overwhelming.
> Next, they'll hand over fan-built communities to the entities that own the IPs they're dedicated to. Eg. r/starwars to Disney, r/startrek to Viacom/Paramount, etc.
This isn't an accurate extrapolation. In fact it's extrapolating in the opposite direction.
The moderators are taking a moral stand against an API policy. But the the actual users of the subreddits never consented to this moral stand. By removing these moderators that are working against the users, reddit is giving the subreddits back to the users.
Spez is CEO because the board and investors deem him to be the best person for the job. Of course, he founded Reddit, so he has a strong case on merit for why he is the #1 person on the planet to run the company.
The process for selecting moderators is way less meritocratic or democratic than this. They merely got there first, finders keepers. The analogy for landed gentry is accurate.
It's merely an informative blog post on a topic many people are interested in. I see nothing wrong with Cloudflare just explaining what happened, even though they had nothing to do with it.
I think it's plausible that they'd offer E2EE for all of iCloud.
They already do it for iMessage, and it makes it easier to turn down subpoenas if they can credibly claim that they can't even access the data themselves.
Likewise, offering an explicit choice also seems plausible. The full E2EE flow might have UX downsides (for example, the user might need to write down a recovery seed phrase on paper), so they might not force all users into that flow.
But beyond that, shutting down a subreddit for multiple days is such a drastic action, it should require more than just a simple majority in a quick online poll.
For instance, to amend the Constitution, you typically need a supermajority (2/3 or 3/4 of different parts of the government). To convict someone guilty in a trial, you typically need evidence beyond reasonable doubt and a unanimous jury verdict.
The burden of proof that users want to shut down the subreddit should be overwhelming.