Reddit was already consolidated prior to this, the moderators in question and the subs that are shut down are run by the same handful of moderators that run the entire site. Something like 20 people are the top mods of 80+% of the subreddits.
It's naive to believe they are just volunteers either given how many of them are active for 20+ hours a day, and how moderation on some of the big subs are done in such a way that is effectively consensus making. Almost certainly some, if not most of the biggest power moderators on the site are run by multiple people, potentially other corporations or government agencies.
The old/wild internet is dead and buried, and it was before this blackout too. The API changes certainly aren't good, but let's not kid ourselves that Reddit's main moderators organizing the blackout are anything like volunteer mods of old.
It's naive to believe they are just volunteers either given how many of them are active for 20+ hours a day, and how moderation on some of the big subs are done in such a way that is effectively consensus making. Almost certainly some, if not most of the biggest power moderators on the site are run by multiple people, potentially other corporations or government agencies.
The old/wild internet is dead and buried, and it was before this blackout too. The API changes certainly aren't good, but let's not kid ourselves that Reddit's main moderators organizing the blackout are anything like volunteer mods of old.