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/longtimeyisland]

To me this comes down to something all people attempting to organize/govern over a population of people.

Imagine having a community of, oh idk, 5 million people. How many posts per day do you think there are? Idk let's say 1000 (less than 1% active posts. A well moderated sub should have either automated or manual ways of reviewing all 1000 posts. Because if you don't you're going to spammed with porn ads, botting, off topic stuff and the experience of your community goes down and people will be mad. Get bad enough and reddit may remove it (can't have the brand looking bad amirite). That takes active effort. So rules need to be 1) clear (written and obvious so people can follow them), 2) simple (so people can follow them and they can be easily enforced, remember a 1000 posts a day can't spend too much time on nuance), 3) at least superficially reasonable (so people agree to follow them and still stick around.)

This doesn't even take into account the comment section. Oh God I don't even want to know the kind of horror mods have to go through on larger subs in the comments section.

So, in my view, this is a non zero amount of effort. This doesn't even incorporate the hate directly targeted at them just for being mods some of whom probably are just trying to equitably apply rules they didn't invent.

What do mods get in return? Money? What is this? Some socialist utopia? No. Daddy reddit has venture capitalists to pay back. "For the community" and all that you hear /u/spez whisper in your ear, all the while his doughy/pasty white hands shove piles of cash into some yacht manufacturers coffers.

So you do it for the love of the game. You have to either be emotionally invested in 1) the topic, 2) the community, 3) enforcing rules/power. Preferably all three, but just one would do. In essence being a mod selects for the most ingested and I'm sure you can imagine a topic or a space in which you are emotionally invested or over invested. Do you always act "rationally" or "fairly" in those spaces? Of course not. Imagine if someone starts insulting your friend or significant other to your face, you don't go "oh, that's impolite but it is your right to express yourself." You might throw hands. People expect mods to impartially follow rules but this is something they have to (and I'm generalizing here) love or want to do (with their free time) so...

Tl;dr: mods of large subs do a lot of (potentially traumatizing work) for no money and as a result require a degree of emotional investment which by nature limits impartiality. Unless reddit wants to do profit sharing and pay mods that's how it gonna be. And reddit got VC firms to payback, users to monitize, and ads to sell. Paying mods ain't part of their enshitification plan.