5 ms·

On the face of it seems strange why anyone would want to moderate popular subreddits, just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. Younger me

On the face of it seems strange why anyone would want to moderate popular subreddits, just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. Younger me might of been excited to do it from the perceived status perhaps. I do wonder how many off-site deals are done with moderators and third parties. There’s a lot of traffic these people are able to steward and influence I imagine.

retSava 5y ago
Some see "internet points" as "payment". But are you sure they aren't paid, ie employed by Reddit? Would totally make sense to either hide an army of moderating "grunts" behind a single user, or moderating bots. Reddit is large, lots to moderate.
- PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  Internet points are a form of validation, also the notifications and responses play on our dopamine circuits, namely, on our desire for novelty.
fnord77 5y ago
I'm convinced the political subs are run by people employed by the two large US political groups
- josephwegner 5y ago
  Just as an anecdote, I used to moderate one of the more popular political subreddits. It was a difficult task and burnout on the team was common. I can say that the mod team was not just shills for a particular party (unless they were undercover even to me). The entire mod team, even to this day, is there for altruistic reasons - we felt we were doing a service to our fellow Americans by fostering healthy political discussion. I moderated that sub through election season and then stepped down in January. At the end of the day the death threats and constant insults aren't what drove me away, but the organizational chaos. No one could figure out how to lead that team, and leaning on practiced organizational structures was apparently too hard for a group of redditors.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    > unless they were undercover even to me Yes I would expect undercovers to be undercover to other mods. Like imgaine some random guy starts some subreddit adds a few friends as moderators right. Then it blows up, so some influence group decides they need to get in on it. They would certainly not be open about their strategy of gradual take over.
    - foodjinn 5y ago
      This literally has happened to multiple subreddits too, it's not like this tactic hasn't been effective in the past. /r/punchablefaces comes to mind.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  A more pychonesque* idea would be that the political subs of whatever colour are run by only one US government agency to give the illusion of freedom and dissention. "The party is over". *E.g. Inherent Vice. A more believable idea as it's based on fact is that Reddit is the playground of paid PR and marketing firms. Makes sense for a PR firm to have moderation powers too. (I suppose this might also be later Pychonesque or more like William Gibson?)
  - teddyh 5y ago
    *Pynchon
  - djhn 5y ago
    Having been on the PR and PA agency side of things, comments like yours are vastly overestimating the agencies' capabilities and incentives. Are you, as a senior consultant, going to sell your team's time to a client at £750 an hour per person to astroturf on reddit? How do you plan on quantifying the benefits, vs the same budget going to the same team to influence traditional media and lobbying? Heck I'd love to know any half-decent agencies that offer these services.
- zibzab 5y ago
  I am convinced that r/conspiracy is also run by the same folks...
  - user764743 5y ago
    Although not officially proven, it was ran by either trump's team or people very close to them for a while: https://thisinterestsme.com/r-conspiracy-reddit/ https://thisinterestsme.com/r-conspiracy-reddit/
tsjq 5y ago
Absolutely well said about the stewarding traffic and influence. For eg mods of country level subs like eg r/India are known to be super overtly biased towards one side and the mods known to be siding with India's archenemy Pakistan. Same collusion is seen on India-relates news in r/Worldnews sub . It is insane levels of so called moderation.
- intended 5y ago
  Oh story time. You should know, India meta verse drama on reddit is the most infantile stuff around, if it weren’t for the death threats and harassment. And the rabid islamophobia. And the misogyny. And the multiple essentially hate subs which want to have this content on the main subreddit. I’ve been on that forum for many years, and I’ve seen it all evolve. Here’s one example of the dumbest things that go around - a troll account called crimsondot, came up with a copy-pasta Where he claims all sorts of things, including that one of hte mods was of Bangladeshi descent. For years this claim went around, and it morphed into the general claim that one of the mods was Bangladeshi. Then in the past few years, since Bangladeshi was insufficient, it became changed to Pakistani. All of this, set up by a troll account, and now a claim repeated on HN. Frankly people have forgotten the fanatical support you found on r/india for then CM Modi. I take it as healthy that the sub has been able to constantly find itself at odds with the ruling party. IT suggests that opinion is driven by grumbling users, not by any cabal.
  - chakkepolja 5y ago
    Meta drama started here too.. seriously both sides in Indian politics are so infantile.
    - intended 5y ago
      Tell me about it. I feel bad for even sharing this forum drama here. If you hadn't responded, I would have just deleted my comment.
      - chakkepolja 5y ago
WesleyHale 5y ago
r/apple mods have been known to remove all duplicate stories and always manage to land on one specific pundit as the official thread for that story. It doesn't matter which user posted first.
pzumk 5y ago
Reddit launched an International Ambassador Program a few months ago[1] and they are paying German power users 20 EUR per hour to create German niche subreddits + 250 EUR bonus for each launched subreddit[2] [1] https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060476592-International-Ambassador-Program https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060476592-Intern... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/n8g2om/reddit_is_paying_german_power_users_20_eur_per/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/n8g2om/redd...
- aixi 5y ago
  so that's why I've been getting notifications about joining German niche subreddits such as theSimsDE. I'm not proficient in the language yet, but I assume it's because of my location
- slightwinder 5y ago
  Fascinating. Not sure whether this is good or bad. German subreddits are usually either trashy or dead. The german community already did something similar some years ago, and created a dozen localized subs of english topsubs and some localized cultural subs. Most of those did not grew very well IMHO. I think a major problem for this was the limitations of german community. It's seems most are very young with very specific interessts and culture, so naturally they end up with content that caters to just those people, while the rest just hangs out in the better international subs.
  - pzumk 5y ago
    There are a more than a handful good and active German subreddits. Especially finance-related one like r/finanzen (113,151 readers) and r/mauerstrassenwetten (109,592), or subreddits like r/de (480,614), r/600eur (33,871), and r/germanrap (22,459 readers). But I agree with you and personally spend most of my time on reddit on international subs. But it doesn't make sense for a German to spend much time on r/personalfinance for example because it's too US-centric. That's where r/finanzen (and r/mauerstrassenwetten (like r/wallstreetbets)) is the better place.
Tenoke 5y ago
Does anyone pay you to post here or elsewhere on the internet? I assume no but you still do it. At the end of the day moderation is similar to frequent commenting except it comes with more prestige and power.
SevenSigs 5y ago
> just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. Some subs like /r/politics and /r/news appear to be ran by the Democratic Party... Would it public be public data if they used party funds to moderate them?
LanceH 5y ago
> On the face of it seems strange why anyone would want to moderate popular subreddits, just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. The kind answer is that some people like to host parties, not just attend them. A real answer for many subs is they enjoy the power of getting to decide who gets to say what.
kevinmchugh 5y ago
I'm a mod on a moderately big sub, just one. We've got one of the power mods in the mod group. He's extremely effective as a mod, doesn't mind doing it, cares and is knowledgeable about the topic. It's a little like picking up litter while out for a walk. Not exactly fun, but can be fulfilling in a way.
- nicbou 5y ago
  That wasn't my experience. The janitorial duties were nice, but some users made our life hell. They would hound some of us around over perceived slights and even spread false rumours about us. Throwaway accounts made rules unenforceable. There are frequent calls for a change of mods, and a long list of grievances about the current moderators. However, nobody ever volunteers their own efforts to fix anything. I still see such drama spring up here and there. I'm just glad I'm not the target of it anymore. "Moderation wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fucking users"
  - dangisanazi 5y ago
    You quote the movie clerks to your own needs without realizing you are just like losers in that film in that you that chose that existence in the first place.
aeternum 5y ago
>unpaid You might be surprised how easy it is for mods of even somewhat popular subreddits to monetize their position. Of course not all do, but there are absolutely subtle ways to profit.
jlokier 5y ago
It's certainly not just status and influence. Sometimes you watch a group descend into being a cesspool of awfulness. The light stuff is death by boring memes, insults galore, "just an opinion" that are high-emotion crazy rants. But the heavy stuff is worse. Watching individuals be egregiously insulted and threatened. Watching people delete their informative and well-meaning posts and never come back, because the first comment was some evil asshole having another content-free belittling attack because that's just what they do, no reason. Watching people be told they are incompetent, useless, should die, are the wrong gender, that sort of thing. It is perhaps worse on locality-specific forums. Because then you are in view of people you know in your area, or are likely to interact with in future. Assholes don't care, and seem to enjoy the "status" that comes from putting down other people in the local area. It does not help that such interactions seem to act like magnets in local forums, where putting people down through petty and unjustified insults attracts more of the same, and substantive interactions are lost. I guess that's because easy putdowns are low effort entertainment for some people. But people finding themselves on the "unwinnable debate" receiving end of that sort of thing, end up leaving forums to get away from it, or are highly stressed whenever they have something to say, and may spend hours trying to carefully word everything just to avoid petty flamage from assholes and get substantive replies instead. So some people are motivated to try to keep community areas a little gentler and cleaner. To protect and welcome others who appear to be joining in good faith, from the occasional blast of shitty replies. Like another commenter said, it's like clearing up litter when you go for a walk. Would be nice if it wasn't necessary, but because some people litter, others want to clear it up. That's enough of a motivation for some. I've seen people spend hours moderating out of nothing more than a sense of civic duty and a desire to protect other people and encourage them to stay and feel welcomed and defended, to grow the community in a more friendly directionm, and to try to make the forum a less stressful place for new participants who have doing nothing wrong. Like any volunteer working for something they feel is a good cause.

retSava 5y ago

Some see "internet points" as "payment". But are you sure they aren't paid, ie employed by Reddit? Would totally make sense to either hide an army of moderating "grunts" behind a single user, or moderating bots. Reddit is large, lots to moderate.

PartiallyTyped 5y ago
Internet points are a form of validation, also the notifications and responses play on our dopamine circuits, namely, on our desire for novelty.

fnord77 5y ago

I'm convinced the political subs are run by people employed by the two large US political groups

josephwegner 5y ago
Just as an anecdote, I used to moderate one of the more popular political subreddits. It was a difficult task and burnout on the team was common. I can say that the mod team was not just shills for a particular party (unless they were undercover even to me). The entire mod team, even to this day, is there for altruistic reasons - we felt we were doing a service to our fellow Americans by fostering healthy political discussion. I moderated that sub through election season and then stepped down in January. At the end of the day the death threats and constant insults aren't what drove me away, but the organizational chaos. No one could figure out how to lead that team, and leaning on practiced organizational structures was apparently too hard for a group of redditors.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  > unless they were undercover even to me Yes I would expect undercovers to be undercover to other mods. Like imgaine some random guy starts some subreddit adds a few friends as moderators right. Then it blows up, so some influence group decides they need to get in on it. They would certainly not be open about their strategy of gradual take over.
  - foodjinn 5y ago
    This literally has happened to multiple subreddits too, it's not like this tactic hasn't been effective in the past. /r/punchablefaces comes to mind.
thinkingemote 5y ago
A more pychonesque* idea would be that the political subs of whatever colour are run by only one US government agency to give the illusion of freedom and dissention. "The party is over". *E.g. Inherent Vice. A more believable idea as it's based on fact is that Reddit is the playground of paid PR and marketing firms. Makes sense for a PR firm to have moderation powers too. (I suppose this might also be later Pychonesque or more like William Gibson?)
- teddyh 5y ago
  *Pynchon
- djhn 5y ago
  Having been on the PR and PA agency side of things, comments like yours are vastly overestimating the agencies' capabilities and incentives. Are you, as a senior consultant, going to sell your team's time to a client at £750 an hour per person to astroturf on reddit? How do you plan on quantifying the benefits, vs the same budget going to the same team to influence traditional media and lobbying? Heck I'd love to know any half-decent agencies that offer these services.
zibzab 5y ago
I am convinced that r/conspiracy is also run by the same folks...
- user764743 5y ago
  Although not officially proven, it was ran by either trump's team or people very close to them for a while: https://thisinterestsme.com/r-conspiracy-reddit/ https://thisinterestsme.com/r-conspiracy-reddit/

tsjq 5y ago

Absolutely well said about the stewarding traffic and influence. For eg mods of country level subs like eg r/India are known to be super overtly biased towards one side and the mods known to be siding with India's archenemy Pakistan. Same collusion is seen on India-relates news in r/Worldnews sub . It is insane levels of so called moderation.

intended 5y ago
Oh story time. You should know, India meta verse drama on reddit is the most infantile stuff around, if it weren’t for the death threats and harassment. And the rabid islamophobia. And the misogyny. And the multiple essentially hate subs which want to have this content on the main subreddit. I’ve been on that forum for many years, and I’ve seen it all evolve. Here’s one example of the dumbest things that go around - a troll account called crimsondot, came up with a copy-pasta Where he claims all sorts of things, including that one of hte mods was of Bangladeshi descent. For years this claim went around, and it morphed into the general claim that one of the mods was Bangladeshi. Then in the past few years, since Bangladeshi was insufficient, it became changed to Pakistani. All of this, set up by a troll account, and now a claim repeated on HN. Frankly people have forgotten the fanatical support you found on r/india for then CM Modi. I take it as healthy that the sub has been able to constantly find itself at odds with the ruling party. IT suggests that opinion is driven by grumbling users, not by any cabal.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  Meta drama started here too.. seriously both sides in Indian politics are so infantile.
  - intended 5y ago
    Tell me about it. I feel bad for even sharing this forum drama here. If you hadn't responded, I would have just deleted my comment.
    - chakkepolja 5y ago

WesleyHale 5y ago

r/apple mods have been known to remove all duplicate stories and always manage to land on one specific pundit as the official thread for that story. It doesn't matter which user posted first.

pzumk 5y ago

Reddit launched an International Ambassador Program a few months ago[1] and they are paying German power users 20 EUR per hour to create German niche subreddits + 250 EUR bonus for each launched subreddit[2] [1] https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060476592-International-Ambassador-Program https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060476592-Intern... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/n8g2om/reddit_is_paying_german_power_users_20_eur_per/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/n8g2om/redd...

aixi 5y ago
so that's why I've been getting notifications about joining German niche subreddits such as theSimsDE. I'm not proficient in the language yet, but I assume it's because of my location
slightwinder 5y ago
Fascinating. Not sure whether this is good or bad. German subreddits are usually either trashy or dead. The german community already did something similar some years ago, and created a dozen localized subs of english topsubs and some localized cultural subs. Most of those did not grew very well IMHO. I think a major problem for this was the limitations of german community. It's seems most are very young with very specific interessts and culture, so naturally they end up with content that caters to just those people, while the rest just hangs out in the better international subs.
- pzumk 5y ago
  There are a more than a handful good and active German subreddits. Especially finance-related one like r/finanzen (113,151 readers) and r/mauerstrassenwetten (109,592), or subreddits like r/de (480,614), r/600eur (33,871), and r/germanrap (22,459 readers). But I agree with you and personally spend most of my time on reddit on international subs. But it doesn't make sense for a German to spend much time on r/personalfinance for example because it's too US-centric. That's where r/finanzen (and r/mauerstrassenwetten (like r/wallstreetbets)) is the better place.

Tenoke 5y ago

Does anyone pay you to post here or elsewhere on the internet? I assume no but you still do it. At the end of the day moderation is similar to frequent commenting except it comes with more prestige and power.

SevenSigs 5y ago

> just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. Some subs like /r/politics and /r/news appear to be ran by the Democratic Party... Would it public be public data if they used party funds to moderate them?

LanceH 5y ago

> On the face of it seems strange why anyone would want to moderate popular subreddits, just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. The kind answer is that some people like to host parties, not just attend them. A real answer for many subs is they enjoy the power of getting to decide who gets to say what.

kevinmchugh 5y ago

I'm a mod on a moderately big sub, just one. We've got one of the power mods in the mod group. He's extremely effective as a mod, doesn't mind doing it, cares and is knowledgeable about the topic. It's a little like picking up litter while out for a walk. Not exactly fun, but can be fulfilling in a way.

nicbou 5y ago
That wasn't my experience. The janitorial duties were nice, but some users made our life hell. They would hound some of us around over perceived slights and even spread false rumours about us. Throwaway accounts made rules unenforceable. There are frequent calls for a change of mods, and a long list of grievances about the current moderators. However, nobody ever volunteers their own efforts to fix anything. I still see such drama spring up here and there. I'm just glad I'm not the target of it anymore. "Moderation wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fucking users"
- dangisanazi 5y ago
  You quote the movie clerks to your own needs without realizing you are just like losers in that film in that you that chose that existence in the first place.

aeternum 5y ago

>unpaid You might be surprised how easy it is for mods of even somewhat popular subreddits to monetize their position. Of course not all do, but there are absolutely subtle ways to profit.

jlokier 5y ago

It's certainly not just status and influence. Sometimes you watch a group descend into being a cesspool of awfulness. The light stuff is death by boring memes, insults galore, "just an opinion" that are high-emotion crazy rants. But the heavy stuff is worse. Watching individuals be egregiously insulted and threatened. Watching people delete their informative and well-meaning posts and never come back, because the first comment was some evil asshole having another content-free belittling attack because that's just what they do, no reason. Watching people be told they are incompetent, useless, should die, are the wrong gender, that sort of thing. It is perhaps worse on locality-specific forums. Because then you are in view of people you know in your area, or are likely to interact with in future. Assholes don't care, and seem to enjoy the "status" that comes from putting down other people in the local area. It does not help that such interactions seem to act like magnets in local forums, where putting people down through petty and unjustified insults attracts more of the same, and substantive interactions are lost. I guess that's because easy putdowns are low effort entertainment for some people. But people finding themselves on the "unwinnable debate" receiving end of that sort of thing, end up leaving forums to get away from it, or are highly stressed whenever they have something to say, and may spend hours trying to carefully word everything just to avoid petty flamage from assholes and get substantive replies instead. So some people are motivated to try to keep community areas a little gentler and cleaner. To protect and welcome others who appear to be joining in good faith, from the occasional blast of shitty replies. Like another commenter said, it's like clearing up litter when you go for a walk. Would be nice if it wasn't necessary, but because some people litter, others want to clear it up. That's enough of a motivation for some. I've seen people spend hours moderating out of nothing more than a sense of civic duty and a desire to protect other people and encourage them to stay and feel welcomed and defended, to grow the community in a more friendly directionm, and to try to make the forum a less stressful place for new participants who have doing nothing wrong. Like any volunteer working for something they feel is a good cause.