It's super annoying when players who are not even mod anymore can still view your PMs and potentially unfair. For example a newish player to prison revealing his base co ordinates to his friend not knowing that an ex-mod who is perfectly within is right is able to come along and raid him.
What are you talking about? I 100% think mods should have social spy, and I know most mods won't abuse this for gathering co ordinates. I can't say the same about demotes/resigns so there is a huge difference.
I think socialspy really does help mods and generally make catching rule breakers, while online, much easier.
I don't think the permission is the issue. Ex-mods don't (this is my guess) have access to /socialspy, but if they had it enabled before... it just stays on. Cyp would have to manually turn their social spy off through console or something. Again, this is my guess. This was how the problem was resolved on a server I played on in the past.
I don't think Social Spy should be removed Mods should get Social Spy so they are able to catch people doing wrong things... but people that were mods, then got demoted, should not. If these "Ex-Mods" use social-spy to use coordinates to find bases, then I understand why they were demoted. Support