Requiring moderators to pay for the right to moderate would backfire. The groups which would pay the most are political parties, foreign governments, PR firms, and corporate surrogates. All, would pretend they are “neutral” but in fact would slant things in their favor. For example, a cars sub-reddit would talk about how Brand X is “awesome” while Brand Y is “terrible”.

While the market valuation isn’t what it used to be, let’s not be too quick to brush off the fact that Reddit has a market cap of 6 billion dollars.

I’m not sure you’re going to convince many stakeholders that completely uprooting the golden-goose of free moderation for the site is a worthwhile venture.