To some degree it's hard to be sympathetic, because the people complaining about this are seriously lacking in sympathy themselves. They just wanted to see the content that those users produced for them, they didn't care about the difficulties or preferences of the users themselves. So when those Spez-opposed users took their ball and went home the Spez-friendly people got angry at them for taking their comments away with them rather than at Spez for having driven them to that in the first place.
I don't think the Fediverse has enough users for you to break EA's "sense of pride and accomplishment" downvote record just yet, but kudos for making an early attempt.
And I'm pointing out how this "most plausible scenario" ends in ruin for Reddit. If Reddit's most popular subs are being run by people whose literally only qualification for the role is that they are power hungry, what kind of subreddit will those end up being? The mods won't be doing anything to cultivate the quality of the place, they likely won't even know what "quality" is. They'll just come up with a bunch of rules to enforce, throwing their weight around pointlessly and alienating anyone who sticks around long enough to interact with them. They probably won't even be good "janitor" moderators because proper janitoring is a lot of hard work that doesn't necessarily result in you receiving the sort of adulation that a power-hungry person would actually crave. Why spend hours dealing with meaningless spam that only bots will see you blocking when you get more of a thrill from bossing around people who slipped up on some technicality or rule that you implemented primarily so that people would slip up on them?
And if the admins try ordering you to do the spam-patrol grunt work with the threat of kicking you out, well, you don't actually care. They're not paying you and you have no interest in the community itself. Rinse and repeat.
Actually, that sounds like exactly what I would be advising them to do in a situation like this. Reddit has been bloating itself with new features that nobody has been asking for because it keeps trying to turn itself into Facebook or Discord or whatever. If Reddit needs to become profitable I'd suggest cutting those and focusing entirely on what Reddit already does better than its competitors. Link aggregation and threaded discussion. Do just that, but do it better. That would allow them to shed some massive expenses both in technology and in staffing without impacting the income from its core business.
They didn't do that and it's probably too late now. I don't know how Reddit would be able to shed its Imgur-like image and video hosting at this point, for example.
The whole reason /r/saltierthancrait exists is because the folks at /r/starwars largely refused to make that distinction. It could be that "misogynist" was simply a convenient weapon to bludgeon the people who disagreed with their taste in movies and they didn't genuinely believe that everyone who disliked those movies were misogynist, but the weapon was deployed nonetheless and resulted in a schism.
Lots of good suggestions in this thread already, but long ago I used to work at a company that sold second-hand stuff where we often had to deal with stubborn labels and I haven't seen our "nuclear option" mentioned yet. Brake cleaner, which is basically an organic solvent in a spray can, should be great on glass. Be careful with it, though, it melts some kinds of plastics. And ensure it's used in a well-ventilated area.
Try that if the usual GooGone type stuff doesn't work.
We also used WD40, it tended to be gentler on plastics. Though it left a greasy residue that we'd need to clean off afterward and it was pretty slow.
A clear-cut and uncontroversial rule that will see little to no opposition, yes.
And in many cases it's also clear-cut and uncontroversial whether someone is a fascist or a bigot.
But in other cases, you're going to run into trouble. A particular case in point; I don't like the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy. I have, in the past, been immediately called a sexist when I've mentioned that fact. But I personally don't care one whit about the gender of the trilogy's protagonist, I just think they're bad movies. Maybe there are other people who actually do care and that's the reason they don't like those movies. Maybe there are people who don't believe me when I say I personally don't care about the gender of the trilogy's protagonist. So, is https://reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/ a bigoted community? If there was a Fediverse equivalent, should it be blocked? Different people will argue different ways.
I can think of lots of other scenarios, I won't make a big rambling list because I'm sure I'll step on a landmine eventually. I'm just arguing that seemingly simple straightforward "rules" that are easy to agree with can still end up mired in complexity when people try to implement them in the real world.
They've launched a total of two Starship test flights so far, so I'm not sure how you're drawing a meaningful trend line on them becoming "less transparent." We know a lot about IFT-3 already, they've been doing static test fires and the Starship slated for it has a cargo bay capable of launching Starlink V2s.
SpaceX has never been shy about their failures. They've released humorous supercuts of their Falcon 9 landing failures before, and have allowed those Youtubers to place cameras around Starship launches to get views from close enough to be fried by the rocket exhaust. So I'm not sure where you're getting this sense of secrecy from. What other launch companies are so open about their development process?
The most recent test launch was just a few seconds of engine firing short of reaching orbital velocity, it would have made it if not for an apparent oxygen leak. The next test rocket has been doing static fire tests already, and it has a cargo door and rack capable of launching Starlink V2 satellites so I wouldn't be at all surprised if they send up a few on it.
AI is already well underway, so that's probably the most plausible soonest.
A fully reusable rocket in the form of Starship is also well underway and should be successfully orbiting for the first time soon. Just a matter of a year or two before it's doing workhorse cargo launches probably.
The new round of superconductor possibility might pan out, which would be another one. But that's more of a yes/no outcome that hasn't quite been settled yet, rather than something with a "completion bar."
Just so everyone knows, since upvotes are public on the Fediverse anyway, I only upvoted this because it was the first response I saw when I opened the thread and it caused me to physically crack up laughing.
For shame on your immature and uninformative comment, otherwise. For shaaaaaame.
Ironically enough, Elon Musk - posterboy of "rich fuckheads" - actually does live in proximity to his workers. I read a while back that he'd sold off all his houses and lived in the same rental properties that his on-site engineers used.