5 ms·

A more important point about Reddit specifically is that when Reddit finally goes IPO, all the mods get ZERO. The investors and the engineers and all the worker

A more important point about Reddit specifically is that when Reddit finally goes IPO, all the mods get ZERO. The investors and the engineers and all the workers at Reddit will become rich, but the people who do the most important work, as outlined by the brief, are the anonymous moderators that create the culture of every subreddit. They get NOTHING. I find it amazing that this hasn't been brought up by the moderators themselves, and they're okay getting all the outcome and profits from their hard work literally picked away by Reddit. They don't even share in the profits of the advertising revenue from their subreddits! It's really incredible to me.

cactusplant7374 4y ago
They also get to make arbitrary decisions with no accountability. Essentially, the site is their personal fiefdom. Why would they waste their time unless they are benefiting in some way?
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Probably the same reason people waste their time playing video games or reading science fiction. Scoundrels!!
  - cactusplant7374 4y ago
    In those cases you aren’t exercising control over someone else’s creative expression.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs. The word moderator wasn’t invented for social media, and the role is crucial in any healthy intellectual community. Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will. I think the most important thing is most moderators I know hate the function of moderator. But the community is important enough they do it anyways. So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.
      - ilyt 4y ago
        > You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities > Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will. Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works. > So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love. Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or gargabe man would be better comparison
      - ilyt 4y ago
        > You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities. I definitely seen it, I also seen ones that mostly self-moderated with mod hammer only being used in more excessive cases (basically members telling other members "dude, that's not okay because of x, we dont do that here" and mods only needing to intervene in more severe cases. But near-every bigger one seems to devolve into a clique that pushes their personal playground in direction they want, despise what their users think, but the social forum is big enough and not bad enough yet for most people to leave because of that. > Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will. Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works. But for already mentioned reasons it often gets to be executor of only their own clique's will, despise what the actual users of the forum think > So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love. Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or garbage man would be better comparison, unnoticeable when doing the job well, but the place would quickly fill with garbage if not
- breck 4y ago
  Exactly. As soon as you get subs over 100K you get anon mods out there accepting bribes, kickbacks, and/or on weird power trips. Bravo to the mods on the tiny subs, but in my experience (both as a mod of a top sub and as a contributor) the anon mod behavior becomes 20% toxic when a sub gets popular.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    And don't forget the obligatory rules that are so vague nobody can actually adhere to them and still have conversation yet got invoked only when mod wants to have excuse to ban something
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Why is there always, "but they're getting rich!" Who cares? I'm sure the mods are aware. They do it anyway because it's beneficial having a healthy community that they are also users of.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  Like one proeminent example some years ago (gallowb...) and I'm sure there are more modern ones as well
secondcoming 4y ago
You'll either see subreddits add lots of mods, or culling them. For example, /r/ukpolitics has 22 probably-human mods [0] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/about/moderators https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/about/moderators
mongodooby 4y ago
What these moderators seem to crave the most is power. The majority of them are unemployed loners with lots of time to kill, who are unappreciated in real life and don't have much power over their own lives. So they enjoy the small sliver of power that Reddit gives them. There are also the agenda-pushers, who obtain moderator positions in order to control the narrative on Reddit. Just look at how certain ideological views are essentially uncriticizable on that site. If you can get access to the Discords (or the leaks thereof) where these moderators think they are discussing things in private, it's a fascinating insight into their culture. Some of them occasionally acknowledge that they're doing all this work for Reddit for free, though it's a somewhat taboo topic too.
- SanjayMehta 4y ago
  > The majority of them are unemployed loners with lots of time to kill, who are unappreciated in real life and don't have much power over their own lives. So they enjoy the small sliver of power that Reddit gives them. Nailed it. Reddit went completely off the rails during the Pao reign. Never figured out what they get out of it apart from a power trip.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  It's apparent from my limited experience there that you are right: some subreddits are dominated by a certain demographic group, and they Report anything they don't like as "offensive." Then the mods dutifully remove it, since they're only interested in pleasing their group to keep their power, such as it is. something, something, "power" which Lincoln apparently didn't say: [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-character-power/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-character-power/
Aloha 4y ago
There is more to life than just money. Reddit is the vehicle - a mere tool - people use to help build community around an interest - before Reddit, it was yahoo groups, or you had to go host your own forum somewhere. So while yes, Reddit benefits from their work and content, keeping reddit sustainably funded also keeps alive all of those communities.
- jmyeet 4y ago
  This cuts both ways. If there's more to life than money, why not spread it around to those who create the value of the thing you're selling? "There's more to life than money" is used by capital owners to justify the exploitation of labor.
  - montagg 4y ago
    I imagine you're going to get a very different type of person moderating if they have a monetary incentive to do so. I don't disagree with your argument in the broad sense—the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else, and they shouldn't—but adding money to a relationship that doesn't have it always fundamentally changes the relationship, and the incentive structure, and it doesn't guarantee better outcomes.
    - Aloha 4y ago
      I moderate communities on telegram, I already have people who treat me and my mod team like we are being paid, and this is our full-time job, and we should be more responsive to their concerns. I wouldnt want to be actually paid and have an expectation of quality of service.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      I have an application to the LinkedIn group of ex-Oracle employees. It was ignored for months and months. Finally, I wrote to one of the admins. He apologized and said he had a lot of groups he was admin for, and asked, now which group was I talking about, again? Does LinkedIn pay their admins? Don't know.
- 4y ago
no_wizard 4y ago
Reddit has a complex ownership history. At one point Condé Nast actually owned Reddit as a subsidiary (majority ownership) and now their parent company does. I am sure it may IPO eventually but I’m not entirely sure the employees will make out like bandits
ghufran_syed 4y ago
The same is true of parents: they “do the most important work” of creating and raising their children, but after they become adults, the parents have NO legal rights to any income from their children. “They get NOTHING” Is that really true in the case of parents? If not, might the same reasons (e.g. intrinsic motivation, non-financial rewards such as inter-personal bonds) possibly apply here too? I think it would be interesting though to think about what sort of monetization structure might encourage the development of more healthy communities [Warning: all analogies are “wrong”, but some are useful…]
- h2odragon 4y ago
  > parents have NO legal rights to any income from their children not all parents believe that. Some people raise their kids to be their slaves. The results get ugly.
wnevets 4y ago
> A more important point about Reddit specifically is that when Reddit finally goes IPO, all the mods get ZERO. Some mods have definitely been making money controlling the content that appear on the popular subs, e.g. [1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/trees/comments/oh5o4/rtrees_nonprofit_trees_tour_2012_and_moving/ https://www.reddit.com/r/trees/comments/oh5o4/rtrees_nonprof...
googlryas 4y ago
They get to moderate the discussion of the message board, which is what they want to do. It isn't a job - the admins actually get paid. Why would the moderators get anything for creating a message board using a free message board service? If phpBB IPOed 15 years ago, would everyone who downloaded and hosted an instance deserve a cut of the IPO?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
this_user 4y ago
It hasn't been brought up, because it is ridiculous. Reddit is a platform to create communities, and people operating subs are reddit's customers. With the same logic you could argue that everyone posting on Twitter should have participated in their IPO, the same goes for Facebook, TikTok and whatever platform you can imagine. Why isn't Discord paying the server admins? HN would be nothing without people posting links. Should OP be paid by YCombinator for this thread?
- blindriver 4y ago
  The mods are NOT the commenters. There's a difference. Twitter moderates its own content via algorithms. Reddit still has comments in the same way Twitter does. But moderators literally moderate the content to make sure it's good and engaging and THAT'S what drives reddit.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pjot 4y ago
    The mods are also moderating voluntarily.
    - bluescrn 4y ago
      They are 'paid' with the power to promote certain opinions/ideas/products while suppressing others. The most active+powerful mods are doing it as a form of activism, not as 'unpaid community builders'.
- World177 4y ago
  Discord does have a revenue share. [1] Elon Musk also recently stated that he planned to add creator monetization to Twitter. [2] From Discord > Good news: It's a 90/10 split! This means you, the creator, get to keep 90% of each monthly Server Subscription you sell, minus some small processing fees for legal’s sake. From Elon Musk > Followed by creator monetization for all forms of content [1] https://discord.com/creators/server-subs-101-earning-money-on-discord https://discord.com/creators/server-subs-101-earning-money-o... [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589010272341340160 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589010272341340160
dmix 4y ago
> but the people who do the most important work, Strange, I thought that was the people contributing and curating the content, ie the posts and comments. They also do it for free. Should they be paid too?
blindriver 4y ago
And to reply in a single comment: Reddit is nothing without its moderators. The moderators create engagement through their hard work. You can take a great topic, and it will die in the hands of bad mods. Reddit owes its entire existence to its mods. The equivalent is Twitter or TikTok's algorithm. Reddit has tricked thousands upon thousands of people to do the hard work for free. They SHOULD get paid by reddit. Or, maybe reddit should adopt and non-profit structure and never IPO. But the idea that all these reddit employees will eventually become millionaires on the backs of free labor is disgusting. It's funny how HN loves to shit on Lyft/Doordash/Uber for exploiting drivers, meanwhile if reddit mods get paid it's somehow dishonorable. For the record, Uber gave shares to some of its best drivers upon IPO.
- ncr100 4y ago
  Shows the need for digital signatures of any creative output of any individual. People matter too.
robswc 4y ago
Reddit mods, for the most part, don't need money. I imagine there's tons that would even pay money to "remain" as a mod if they could. Many reddit mods are motivated by nothing more than some semblance of power over other people. Just look at the way one of the big subreddits operates: https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/931803-reddit-art-subreddit-shuts-down-ai-artist-mod-ban https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/931803-reddit-art-subred... I've personally been banned from a handful of subs all at once (due to the mod being a mod on all of them) because I argued with a moderator that humidity is worse than dry heat. No, they don't get "zero" - they get their purpose. Otherwise, they would get a job. Coincidentally, you almost have to be job-less or have next to no other obligations to be a mod on reddit. I personally created and "mod" a community that's not very big at all but still requires cleaning up... but I could never see myself justifying more than 15 minutes a day to that "job."
spritefs 4y ago
> The investors and the engineers and all the workers at Reddit will become rich, but the people who do the most important work, as outlined by the brief, are the anonymous moderators that create the culture of every subreddit. That's assuming the IPO goes well

cactusplant7374 4y ago

They also get to make arbitrary decisions with no accountability. Essentially, the site is their personal fiefdom. Why would they waste their time unless they are benefiting in some way?

fnordpiglet 4y ago
Probably the same reason people waste their time playing video games or reading science fiction. Scoundrels!!
- cactusplant7374 4y ago
  In those cases you aren’t exercising control over someone else’s creative expression.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs. The word moderator wasn’t invented for social media, and the role is crucial in any healthy intellectual community. Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will. I think the most important thing is most moderators I know hate the function of moderator. But the community is important enough they do it anyways. So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      > You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities > Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will. Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works. > So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love. Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or gargabe man would be better comparison
    - ilyt 4y ago
      > You’re ascribing a negative motive by establishing one could exist. Surely there are petty tyrants on Reddit. But the much simpler, most generous, and most likely explanation is they enjoy a hobby and enjoy fostering a healthy community around their hobby, and that this itself is a hobby of theirs That seems to be near exclusive to smaller communities. I definitely seen it, I also seen ones that mostly self-moderated with mod hammer only being used in more excessive cases (basically members telling other members "dude, that's not okay because of x, we dont do that here" and mods only needing to intervene in more severe cases. But near-every bigger one seems to devolve into a clique that pushes their personal playground in direction they want, despise what their users think, but the social forum is big enough and not bad enough yet for most people to leave because of that. > Because your creative expression may very well be disruptive to everyone else’s, and while you’re free to be creative in your expressions in general, others are free to exclude you from their community. The moderator gets the unpleasant job of being the executor of that will. Well, if you get good moderators, sure, that works. But for already mentioned reasons it often gets to be executor of only their own clique's will, despise what the actual users of the forum think > So, I guess I take it back. It’s more like producing a video game or editing science fiction. It’s work we do to be sure everyone can enjoy a hobby we love. Nope, it's creating zero value of its own. Janitor or garbage man would be better comparison, unnoticeable when doing the job well, but the place would quickly fill with garbage if not
breck 4y ago
Exactly. As soon as you get subs over 100K you get anon mods out there accepting bribes, kickbacks, and/or on weird power trips. Bravo to the mods on the tiny subs, but in my experience (both as a mod of a top sub and as a contributor) the anon mod behavior becomes 20% toxic when a sub gets popular.
- ilyt 4y ago
  And don't forget the obligatory rules that are so vague nobody can actually adhere to them and still have conversation yet got invoked only when mod wants to have excuse to ban something
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Why is there always, "but they're getting rich!" Who cares? I'm sure the mods are aware. They do it anyway because it's beneficial having a healthy community that they are also users of.
raverbashing 4y ago
Like one proeminent example some years ago (gallowb...) and I'm sure there are more modern ones as well

secondcoming 4y ago

You'll either see subreddits add lots of mods, or culling them. For example, /r/ukpolitics has 22 probably-human mods [0] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/about/moderators https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/about/moderators

mongodooby 4y ago

What these moderators seem to crave the most is power. The majority of them are unemployed loners with lots of time to kill, who are unappreciated in real life and don't have much power over their own lives. So they enjoy the small sliver of power that Reddit gives them. There are also the agenda-pushers, who obtain moderator positions in order to control the narrative on Reddit. Just look at how certain ideological views are essentially uncriticizable on that site. If you can get access to the Discords (or the leaks thereof) where these moderators think they are discussing things in private, it's a fascinating insight into their culture. Some of them occasionally acknowledge that they're doing all this work for Reddit for free, though it's a somewhat taboo topic too.

SanjayMehta 4y ago
> The majority of them are unemployed loners with lots of time to kill, who are unappreciated in real life and don't have much power over their own lives. So they enjoy the small sliver of power that Reddit gives them. Nailed it. Reddit went completely off the rails during the Pao reign. Never figured out what they get out of it apart from a power trip.
AlbertCory 4y ago
It's apparent from my limited experience there that you are right: some subreddits are dominated by a certain demographic group, and they Report anything they don't like as "offensive." Then the mods dutifully remove it, since they're only interested in pleasing their group to keep their power, such as it is. something, something, "power" which Lincoln apparently didn't say: [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-character-power/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lincoln-character-power/

Aloha 4y ago

There is more to life than just money. Reddit is the vehicle - a mere tool - people use to help build community around an interest - before Reddit, it was yahoo groups, or you had to go host your own forum somewhere. So while yes, Reddit benefits from their work and content, keeping reddit sustainably funded also keeps alive all of those communities.

jmyeet 4y ago
This cuts both ways. If there's more to life than money, why not spread it around to those who create the value of the thing you're selling? "There's more to life than money" is used by capital owners to justify the exploitation of labor.
- montagg 4y ago
  I imagine you're going to get a very different type of person moderating if they have a monetary incentive to do so. I don't disagree with your argument in the broad sense—the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else, and they shouldn't—but adding money to a relationship that doesn't have it always fundamentally changes the relationship, and the incentive structure, and it doesn't guarantee better outcomes.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    I moderate communities on telegram, I already have people who treat me and my mod team like we are being paid, and this is our full-time job, and we should be more responsive to their concerns. I wouldnt want to be actually paid and have an expectation of quality of service.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    I have an application to the LinkedIn group of ex-Oracle employees. It was ignored for months and months. Finally, I wrote to one of the admins. He apologized and said he had a lot of groups he was admin for, and asked, now which group was I talking about, again? Does LinkedIn pay their admins? Don't know.
4y ago

no_wizard 4y ago

Reddit has a complex ownership history. At one point Condé Nast actually owned Reddit as a subsidiary (majority ownership) and now their parent company does. I am sure it may IPO eventually but I’m not entirely sure the employees will make out like bandits

ghufran_syed 4y ago

The same is true of parents: they “do the most important work” of creating and raising their children, but after they become adults, the parents have NO legal rights to any income from their children. “They get NOTHING” Is that really true in the case of parents? If not, might the same reasons (e.g. intrinsic motivation, non-financial rewards such as inter-personal bonds) possibly apply here too? I think it would be interesting though to think about what sort of monetization structure might encourage the development of more healthy communities [Warning: all analogies are “wrong”, but some are useful…]

h2odragon 4y ago
> parents have NO legal rights to any income from their children not all parents believe that. Some people raise their kids to be their slaves. The results get ugly.

wnevets 4y ago

> A more important point about Reddit specifically is that when Reddit finally goes IPO, all the mods get ZERO. Some mods have definitely been making money controlling the content that appear on the popular subs, e.g. [1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/trees/comments/oh5o4/rtrees_nonprofit_trees_tour_2012_and_moving/ https://www.reddit.com/r/trees/comments/oh5o4/rtrees_nonprof...

googlryas 4y ago

They get to moderate the discussion of the message board, which is what they want to do. It isn't a job - the admins actually get paid. Why would the moderators get anything for creating a message board using a free message board service? If phpBB IPOed 15 years ago, would everyone who downloaded and hosted an instance deserve a cut of the IPO?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

this_user 4y ago

It hasn't been brought up, because it is ridiculous. Reddit is a platform to create communities, and people operating subs are reddit's customers. With the same logic you could argue that everyone posting on Twitter should have participated in their IPO, the same goes for Facebook, TikTok and whatever platform you can imagine. Why isn't Discord paying the server admins? HN would be nothing without people posting links. Should OP be paid by YCombinator for this thread?

blindriver 4y ago
The mods are NOT the commenters. There's a difference. Twitter moderates its own content via algorithms. Reddit still has comments in the same way Twitter does. But moderators literally moderate the content to make sure it's good and engaging and THAT'S what drives reddit.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pjot 4y ago
  The mods are also moderating voluntarily.
  - bluescrn 4y ago
    They are 'paid' with the power to promote certain opinions/ideas/products while suppressing others. The most active+powerful mods are doing it as a form of activism, not as 'unpaid community builders'.
World177 4y ago
Discord does have a revenue share. [1] Elon Musk also recently stated that he planned to add creator monetization to Twitter. [2] From Discord > Good news: It's a 90/10 split! This means you, the creator, get to keep 90% of each monthly Server Subscription you sell, minus some small processing fees for legal’s sake. From Elon Musk > Followed by creator monetization for all forms of content [1] https://discord.com/creators/server-subs-101-earning-money-on-discord https://discord.com/creators/server-subs-101-earning-money-o... [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589010272341340160 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589010272341340160

dmix 4y ago

> but the people who do the most important work, Strange, I thought that was the people contributing and curating the content, ie the posts and comments. They also do it for free. Should they be paid too?

blindriver 4y ago

And to reply in a single comment: Reddit is nothing without its moderators. The moderators create engagement through their hard work. You can take a great topic, and it will die in the hands of bad mods. Reddit owes its entire existence to its mods. The equivalent is Twitter or TikTok's algorithm. Reddit has tricked thousands upon thousands of people to do the hard work for free. They SHOULD get paid by reddit. Or, maybe reddit should adopt and non-profit structure and never IPO. But the idea that all these reddit employees will eventually become millionaires on the backs of free labor is disgusting. It's funny how HN loves to shit on Lyft/Doordash/Uber for exploiting drivers, meanwhile if reddit mods get paid it's somehow dishonorable. For the record, Uber gave shares to some of its best drivers upon IPO.

ncr100 4y ago
Shows the need for digital signatures of any creative output of any individual. People matter too.

robswc 4y ago

Reddit mods, for the most part, don't need money. I imagine there's tons that would even pay money to "remain" as a mod if they could. Many reddit mods are motivated by nothing more than some semblance of power over other people. Just look at the way one of the big subreddits operates: https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/931803-reddit-art-subreddit-shuts-down-ai-artist-mod-ban https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/931803-reddit-art-subred... I've personally been banned from a handful of subs all at once (due to the mod being a mod on all of them) because I argued with a moderator that humidity is worse than dry heat. No, they don't get "zero" - they get their purpose. Otherwise, they would get a job. Coincidentally, you almost have to be job-less or have next to no other obligations to be a mod on reddit. I personally created and "mod" a community that's not very big at all but still requires cleaning up... but I could never see myself justifying more than 15 minutes a day to that "job."

spritefs 4y ago

> The investors and the engineers and all the workers at Reddit will become rich, but the people who do the most important work, as outlined by the brief, are the anonymous moderators that create the culture of every subreddit. That's assuming the IPO goes well