People assume "mod powertripping" too quickly. The reality is that most of the moderation is accomplished via automation, primarily Automoderator rules on Reddi

People assume "mod powertripping" too quickly. The reality is that most of the moderation is accomplished via automation, primarily Automoderator rules on Reddit. The volume is far to high to manage by hand -- it varies by community and month but it's around 75%+ automated for us. Automation makes mistakes. A LOT. Sometimes a person catches them and overrides the bot, often they don't. There are some communities that abuse the automation to enforce bias, of course. For example, /r/news appears to be auto-censoring things about coronavirus or that might be perceived as negative for Trump (ex: the Russian bounties scandal). But this is much rarer than people think -- with the exception of bans, most of the "mod abuse" is simply bots screwing up.