A lot of well run subs would never exist in the first place without good mods. A very good example of that is /r/askhistorians, without a heavy enforcement of their guidelines the quality of that sub would be absolute trash.
There are definitely a lot of bad mods, even more in popular subs, and even more in popular subs that are not centered around a community of hobbyist and/or fans. The value of reddit is not this trash though, it's the subs that are well moderated and curated to avoid the spamming, low effort/low quality content and so on. Because the torrent of low quality meme-like content can be found in any number of platforms: 9gag, imgur, etc. but very few places have a /r/askhistorians or a 30k active users community for a niche hobby.
/u/mrgrimm founder of IMGUR should be charging Reddit for their API/'infra' (as spez was on NPR saying they pay "10s of millions per year for infra" to support third party apps - but they are "still talking to several apps"...
IMGUR should pull a protest and charge reddit (although I assume they are already deep in bed together... you can type in any /r/ into IMGR.com/r/pics for example and get all the pics posted to /r/pics -- or any other sub....
The point being that IMGUR should be charging reddit for all the "infra" costs their traffic has on their "infra"
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EDIT :
Can I sell my reddit accounts to some EU citizen for $1 (eu) such that you then own my account and can use GDPR laws to demand reddit delete my account/comments/history? (I have 17 years worth of comments on there) GDP-[REDDIT-COMMENT-DELETION-AS-A-SERVICE] GPT-GDPRCDAAS
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EDIT2 :
/u/spez was again on NPR, where NPR stated that still "50% of the largest subs are still in protest" -- and then Spez stated that the business hasn't been impacted.
So riddle me thus ;;
If you can shutter 50% of your top subreddits without "significant impact to the business" , then how can you claim that you're paying "10s of millions" to "support" 3rd party API call apps, in 'infra' -- and this is 'unsustainable' yet killing '50% of top subs' has no impact on the business?
/u/spez might want to consider subscribing to /r/theyDidTheMath
Has Reddit paid mods for un-blocking? Has Reddit paid ANY MODS EVER? Shouldnt this be in an SEC filing, if they are hedging for an IPO payout so /u/spez can go off into the tech sunset?
Shouldnt Reddit be required to report which mods they paid off in the past? Should reddit be required to announce which MOD accounts are held as alts by actual employees (admins) of reddit?
This is the thing I don't think people understand. Just because you don't like the rules doesn't mean the mods are bad. Some communities have no-meme rules, this often elevates the conversation. And no "people will upvote and downvote what they want" doesn't work because you are now playing to the lower common denominator. If you don't like the rules, create your own sub with it's own rules. This has happened countless times in the history of Reddit. And before "But how will people know about the other sub? How will it get traction?" - That's a failing on Reddit's part, their discoverability is trash (as is their search).
probably why you were down voted, I think the mods provide a decent service preventing it from degenerating into an echo chamber like truth-social
>Just pay someone to do their job
This I agree with, if the mods were paid well, maybe things would be better. Maybe a rule change like "If your group gets xxx many unique users posting content per day, you get paid X". But that can be abused too.
> preventing it from degenerating into an echo chamber like truth-social
I can’t compare to truth-social as Ive never used it. But big subs like /r/politics are definitely echo chambers and I think they are that way because the mods like it that way.
It's even less likely that paid mods would change that though, they'd only make it worse because they'd only want to stick to a very narrow set of "safe" advertiser friendly opinions, just like most other social media.
Definitely. I think communities are more effective when the “elders” volunteer out of love to run. I don’t think you can pay people enough to make up for passion.
This is based on experiences with community centers, game meetups, marathon planners, and dev communities. You usually have to have someone on the payroll, but having a high ratio of volunteers usually means higher quality community.
My most clear example is the difference between hiking meetups that are just some people planning stuff vs the ones planned by REI. The REI ones are pretty fun, but the meetups are more thought out and better, I think.
Communities are echo chambers with a range of allowable discourse. Moderators serve the important function of keeping that range anchored so the community stays cohesive over time.
>preventing it from degenerating into an echo chamber
Reddit mods are notorious for creating echo chambers through 3rd party mod tools. You know, those tools autobanning about any account who happens to post on a sub they consider no-no, often regardless the context. If those tools weren't on the line, they wouldn't care to join the blackout.
In addition to the issues everyone else has pointed out, unpaid volunteer mods give Reddit a lot of deniability.
If they switched to paid mods, they'd become much more strict on what content and opinions they allow, because to advertisers, things would switch from "reddit allows communities to moderate themselves and can't be expected to catch everything we don't like", where reddit can still get away with some amount of unfriendly content as long as it doesn't get too prominent, to "it's reddit's job to make sure that all content is advertiser friendly".
Similarly, if you have paid mods, what does that mean for subreddits which have the same topic, but were split over moderation disagreements? With volunteer mods that doesn't really matter to reddit, but if the mods cost reddit money, they'll want subs on the same topic to be consolidated, creating further friction and destroying communities.
I like how you think Reddit has the spare capital to hire mods. VCs are running for the door (that’s why it’s an IPO) and index fund retail investors will be left holding the bag.
I mean, they're better than branded subs being moderated by the brand. Imagine Disney just being given the ability to moderate all of the starwars or marvel subs.
Most of them are absolute losers. Almost every single powermod that is open about their real life identity turns out to fit exactly into the "usual suspect" mold (middle aged, usually white, usually nerdy and terminally online). There are screenshots of mods that moderate the most on Reddit begging and crying to not lose their moderator position. Here's a direct quote from one of the most powerful mod on Reddit on hearing they lost mod powers on a single sub:
"I have no job, I dont meet people,
have no money.I only have reddit. Please dont take reddit from me"
Sure sound like a qualified, well adjusted moderating staff overall.
