I guess you mean a traditional Reddit clone could also pay the mods? I'm not sure. 1: It is quite a lot of bureaucratic work to set up a business that can pay

I guess you mean a traditional Reddit clone could also pay the mods? I'm not sure. 1: It is quite a lot of bureaucratic work to set up a business that can pay small amounts to many people around the world. 2: Signing up as a mod would be way more complicated. There would be a KYC processes. A different one for each country. There would be VAT and invoice processes that are different for each country. Some countries could simply not take part. As there are many pairs of countries A and B where A has a law "Business with people from country B is illegal". 3: As a mod, you would always be living in fear that the company that runs the system kicks you out. And all your hard work (maybe of years!) goes down the drain. 4: Earning small amount of fiat money is also very annoying if you do not already have a business. Suddenly you have figure out all the complexities around how do declare taxes. It would probably usually not worth it for mods who are not already running a business.