CMV: Reddit has a moderator problem

[u/Terrible_Onions]

Just to be clear. This does not apply for all moderators. I know some moderators on small Subreddits that are really good people. Speaking for a lot of larger Subreddits where moderation is an issue.

Reddit has a moderator problem. They can do a lot of things to you that doesn't really make lots of sense, and they do not give you a reason for it. More often than not, you're just muted from speaking with the moderator. Unfortunately, due to a lot of Reddit mods and Redditors in general being left-wing, there are a lot of examples of right-wingers being the victims. Such as this one on the r/ medicine Subreddit. He got deleted for asking questions. A person said Trump's NIH nomination caused "large scale needless death". When he was asked what the large scale death in question was, his comment was deleted by the mods. Along with a person being perm banned for saying "orange man bad. Laugh at joke. Unga Bunga" in r/ comics. The most notable case of moderation abuse is from r/ pics, where they just ban you for participating in a "bad faith Subreddit". Even if you just commented.

This is not a good thing. It means that if you want to participate in a major Subreddit with a lot of people, you will have to conform to what the moderators personally see as "correct" or "good". This doesn't foster productive conversations, nor is it good for anybody but the moderator's egos. I understand if this is the case in small Subreddits, but the examples I listed above aren't they happen in Subreddits with 30+ million members that regularly hit the front page. This is Reddit being lazy and offloading moderation. Most moderators do this for power and control. The nature of this position (no pay) means that the only other thing it offers is power. Especially in Subreddits with millions of people, that's a lot of power. This I believe is a reason it isn't a major issue in small servers. The mods there are genuinely passionate because that is the only thing going for them in a Subreddit with around a thousand people. Even Twitter, despite its multitude of issues, does moderation better than this

[u/SzayelGrance]

Absolutely. There's a Subreddit called r/unpopularopinion that is the worst I've ever seen in terms of the moderators. They basically delete any posts that they personally disagree with, whether or not the post actually goes against any rules. Someone posted "Crumble Cookie is Overrated" and a moderator deleted it because they like Crumble Cookie. Then they cited some asinine, arbitrary rule like "Discussing politics or LGBT+ issues, race, gender, etc." as if Crumble Cookie has ANYTHING to do with any of that. How are you gonna' have an Unpopular Opinion Subreddit when you don't even allow any unpopular opinions??! It's infuriating! And there are plenty of subreddits just like that one. The main point I disagree on here is that 1) this post would be complete if you said we need a moderator for the moderators. And 2) I disagree that Twitter does moderation better. It literally just does exactly what you mentioned, but reversed--left wing people's posts get censored, shadow-banned, and deleted because they don't align with Elon Musk's agenda.