7 ms·

... until they just take over the moderation of their largest communities and this whole thing ends. I mean what's so magical about the moderation of something

by ThomW 3y ago

... until they just take over the moderation of their largest communities and this whole thing ends. I mean what's so magical about the moderation of something like r/videos other than the mods being free labor for Reddit?

Eldt 3y ago
Moderation can make or break a subreddit
- paulmd 3y ago
  Moderation of the subreddit matters a lot less than sitting on a common keyword. It’s not like r/real_trueToyotaFans2 is going to see a ton of traffic even if it’s the best moderated sub in the world. Domain-squatting on a couple dozen important keywords and brand names in 2005 is the powermod secret to success, not that they’re just that great at their job that they rose to the top on merit. There are quite a few subs that prove this - really, really badly moderated but sitting on super, super valuable real estate. And Reddit doesn’t really have a mechanism for handling this unless the mod is outright posting gore or something - they got their first in 2005, that’s the end of it.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  Generally I’d say moderators can break a subreddit far more easily than they can make it, but that’s a danger of a big mod cull.
tux3 3y ago
If they do, whatever thrown together group of reddit appointed substitutes get the task of trying to moderate all of reddit at once is likely going to be drowning very badly And you can expect people engaged with the protest to take full advantage of this if it happens, making the problem that much worse If you simply reopen without any of the current mods, the site will be overrun
- civilitty 3y ago
  I’ve got my entire neighborhood teed up to go and spread rumors that spez likes to do weird things to porcupines the second the moderation walls go down.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Mods of anarchychess basically let people have free reign during the first day, no moderation. It went exactly as one would expect.
SonicScrub 3y ago
> other than the mods being free labor for Reddit Is this not the answer to your question? Reddit can't afford to pay people to do this job. They rely on impassioned people to volunteer.
- tomstockmail 3y ago
  And they're not doing it, so they will be replaced. There's always someone willing to step up.
  - SonicScrub 3y ago
    Is that the case? Wouldn't the mods by definition be the most passionate people about reddit, and therefore the sort of people who would most likely be upset about the recent changes? And therefore anyone who would potentially do the job of mod likely to also be upset by the changes? If was working for Reddit I wouldn't take the assumption that these people can be easily replaced for granted.
    - tomstockmail 3y ago
      >And therefore anyone who would potentially do the job of mod likely to also be upset by the changes? Not if they get a chance to be in charge. Also many don't actually care about the changes despite what the mod blackout is asking people. >If was working for Reddit I wouldn't take the assumption that these people can be easily replaced for granted. Well this posts article tone makes it sound like they expect the mods to get bored. Which most will. And like I said, they are replaceable.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  Impassioned people with domain experience, in many cases. /r/videos, sure, that's got its own culture, history, known reposts, moderation style needs, etc. It will take some work to for a group of communications majors to figure out how to moderate it. But /r/PLC, where I hung out frequently? You need reasonably intelligent electrical engineers to discern spammy press releases from interesting news! We don't work cheap, except when we work for free. Elite athletics, weird hobby niches, professional forums, on and on...Reddit's long tail, where much of the value was, relies on domain experts who were also good communicators. Those are hard people to find. Stackexchange, love it or hate it, has the same thing going. Are you going to hire a pilot to mod the aviation stack, or a post-doc to moderate mathematics?
redmerchant2 3y ago
The big subs have figured out an extensive set up of bots and moderation guidelines, while investing their own time, all for free. Reddit’s mod tooling is extremely abysmal, that’s part of the protest. (Only 3P devs have bothered building more advanced tools.) A new mod will not have the expertise or careful set up from the previous mods. Most of the mods are debatably not power hungry, particularly on a sub like Music or Videos. Finding a replacement mod team without specific agendas is going to be hard. Only the most power tripping or ideologically driven will want the position as paying mods seems out of the question given Reddit’s stance. Inexperienced mods will also be unable to handle the torrent of spam and low effort posts and comments the big sub attract. It’s not impossible to punish the dissident mods but having a functional replacement on short notice is impossible.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > Most of the mods are debatably not power hungry Everything made sense except this part. Power goes to everyone's head.
  - katbyte 3y ago
    lol no it doesn't. most sure, but not everyone. imho it affects people who didn't seek/don't want power differently from those who went looking for it.
  - redmerchant2 3y ago
    I have no doubt, my point is the mods of r/music don’t have a specific leaning that they’d try to manipulate. Most of the mods of bigger subs have been doing it for years and it’s just a quirky hobby/obligation. Obviously the super mods are in the pocket of the admins, and political subs are very controlling. But appointing a new round of mods for a sub with millions of subscribers will attract the most bottom barrel power hungry people.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      > attract the most bottom barrel power hungry people Fair
erellsworth 3y ago
I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrutiny for the kinds of content they allow on their platform. I doubt they'd want to go there.
- blibble 3y ago
  if they takeover a few of the higher value subs the majority of moderators will likely fall into line
  - jeltz 3y ago
    Why would they? I would expect them to rebel harder.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  I think you underestimate the ability of AI to literally solve this problem for almost nothing. The large subs can absolutely be automated moderation, if they're not already. Enough flags on a post? Just take it down, there will be 15 million new posts in an hour.
  - 1270018080 3y ago
    We're in the "this is how blockchain can solve this" era of the AI bubble.
    - linuxftw 3y ago
      It seems to me a very trivial problem to classify a post as on topic or not with today's AI capabilities.
  - jfghi 3y ago
    Even if this was feasible, how much would it cost and how long would it take to successfully roll out?
xyst 3y ago
People underestimate how much goes into moderating a community. You can train the bots to remove posts based on age of account, or karma. But to respond and remove racist trash in comments or just spam takes a lot of time. Especially for large communities, the time spent can become a full time job (in terms of hours). And when you have to insert paid moderators, the cost to moderate all of the huge communities will blow up Reddit’s internal budget. It’s easier said than done. Just ask FB or Google (with YouTube), they have difficulty moderating their own platforms and they have billions of dollars at their disposal.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Hmm I wonder if one could just run comments through an LLM and have it classify for things they want to block, then moderate automatically based on that. Probably more accurate and less expensive than hiring people for it.
snuxoll 3y ago
Reddit is already complaining about being unprofitable, having to actually pay moderators to do the work community members are doing for free would make their situation even worse. Trying to milk 3rd-party developers with excessively high API fees while expecting the community to provide all the value for their site free of charge was a very short-sighted move.

by ThomW 3y ago

Eldt 3y ago

Moderation can make or break a subreddit

paulmd 3y ago
Moderation of the subreddit matters a lot less than sitting on a common keyword. It’s not like r/real_trueToyotaFans2 is going to see a ton of traffic even if it’s the best moderated sub in the world. Domain-squatting on a couple dozen important keywords and brand names in 2005 is the powermod secret to success, not that they’re just that great at their job that they rose to the top on merit. There are quite a few subs that prove this - really, really badly moderated but sitting on super, super valuable real estate. And Reddit doesn’t really have a mechanism for handling this unless the mod is outright posting gore or something - they got their first in 2005, that’s the end of it.
faeriechangling 3y ago
Generally I’d say moderators can break a subreddit far more easily than they can make it, but that’s a danger of a big mod cull.

tux3 3y ago

If they do, whatever thrown together group of reddit appointed substitutes get the task of trying to moderate all of reddit at once is likely going to be drowning very badly And you can expect people engaged with the protest to take full advantage of this if it happens, making the problem that much worse If you simply reopen without any of the current mods, the site will be overrun

civilitty 3y ago
I’ve got my entire neighborhood teed up to go and spread rumors that spez likes to do weird things to porcupines the second the moderation walls go down.
moffkalast 3y ago
Mods of anarchychess basically let people have free reign during the first day, no moderation. It went exactly as one would expect.

SonicScrub 3y ago

> other than the mods being free labor for Reddit Is this not the answer to your question? Reddit can't afford to pay people to do this job. They rely on impassioned people to volunteer.

tomstockmail 3y ago
And they're not doing it, so they will be replaced. There's always someone willing to step up.
- SonicScrub 3y ago
  Is that the case? Wouldn't the mods by definition be the most passionate people about reddit, and therefore the sort of people who would most likely be upset about the recent changes? And therefore anyone who would potentially do the job of mod likely to also be upset by the changes? If was working for Reddit I wouldn't take the assumption that these people can be easily replaced for granted.
  - tomstockmail 3y ago
    >And therefore anyone who would potentially do the job of mod likely to also be upset by the changes? Not if they get a chance to be in charge. Also many don't actually care about the changes despite what the mod blackout is asking people. >If was working for Reddit I wouldn't take the assumption that these people can be easily replaced for granted. Well this posts article tone makes it sound like they expect the mods to get bored. Which most will. And like I said, they are replaceable.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Impassioned people with domain experience, in many cases. /r/videos, sure, that's got its own culture, history, known reposts, moderation style needs, etc. It will take some work to for a group of communications majors to figure out how to moderate it. But /r/PLC, where I hung out frequently? You need reasonably intelligent electrical engineers to discern spammy press releases from interesting news! We don't work cheap, except when we work for free. Elite athletics, weird hobby niches, professional forums, on and on...Reddit's long tail, where much of the value was, relies on domain experts who were also good communicators. Those are hard people to find. Stackexchange, love it or hate it, has the same thing going. Are you going to hire a pilot to mod the aviation stack, or a post-doc to moderate mathematics?

redmerchant2 3y ago

The big subs have figured out an extensive set up of bots and moderation guidelines, while investing their own time, all for free. Reddit’s mod tooling is extremely abysmal, that’s part of the protest. (Only 3P devs have bothered building more advanced tools.) A new mod will not have the expertise or careful set up from the previous mods. Most of the mods are debatably not power hungry, particularly on a sub like Music or Videos. Finding a replacement mod team without specific agendas is going to be hard. Only the most power tripping or ideologically driven will want the position as paying mods seems out of the question given Reddit’s stance. Inexperienced mods will also be unable to handle the torrent of spam and low effort posts and comments the big sub attract. It’s not impossible to punish the dissident mods but having a functional replacement on short notice is impossible.

paulddraper 3y ago
> Most of the mods are debatably not power hungry Everything made sense except this part. Power goes to everyone's head.
- katbyte 3y ago
  lol no it doesn't. most sure, but not everyone. imho it affects people who didn't seek/don't want power differently from those who went looking for it.
- redmerchant2 3y ago
  I have no doubt, my point is the mods of r/music don’t have a specific leaning that they’d try to manipulate. Most of the mods of bigger subs have been doing it for years and it’s just a quirky hobby/obligation. Obviously the super mods are in the pocket of the admins, and political subs are very controlling. But appointing a new round of mods for a sub with millions of subscribers will attract the most bottom barrel power hungry people.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > attract the most bottom barrel power hungry people Fair

erellsworth 3y ago

I think you underestimate the value of that free labor. Reddit isn't even profitable. Hiring mods for thousands of subreddits would cost them a ton of money, not only in wages but in the cost of finding and training those workers. Beyond that, the minute the mods are official employees of Reddit, Reddit is fully responsible for all the content on all those subs. Social media companies are already under a lot of scrutiny for the kinds of content they allow on their platform. I doubt they'd want to go there.

blibble 3y ago
if they takeover a few of the higher value subs the majority of moderators will likely fall into line
- jeltz 3y ago
  Why would they? I would expect them to rebel harder.
linuxftw 3y ago
I think you underestimate the ability of AI to literally solve this problem for almost nothing. The large subs can absolutely be automated moderation, if they're not already. Enough flags on a post? Just take it down, there will be 15 million new posts in an hour.
- 1270018080 3y ago
  We're in the "this is how blockchain can solve this" era of the AI bubble.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    It seems to me a very trivial problem to classify a post as on topic or not with today's AI capabilities.
- jfghi 3y ago
  Even if this was feasible, how much would it cost and how long would it take to successfully roll out?

xyst 3y ago

People underestimate how much goes into moderating a community. You can train the bots to remove posts based on age of account, or karma. But to respond and remove racist trash in comments or just spam takes a lot of time. Especially for large communities, the time spent can become a full time job (in terms of hours). And when you have to insert paid moderators, the cost to moderate all of the huge communities will blow up Reddit’s internal budget. It’s easier said than done. Just ask FB or Google (with YouTube), they have difficulty moderating their own platforms and they have billions of dollars at their disposal.

moffkalast 3y ago
Hmm I wonder if one could just run comments through an LLM and have it classify for things they want to block, then moderate automatically based on that. Probably more accurate and less expensive than hiring people for it.

snuxoll 3y ago

Reddit is already complaining about being unprofitable, having to actually pay moderators to do the work community members are doing for free would make their situation even worse. Trying to milk 3rd-party developers with excessively high API fees while expecting the community to provide all the value for their site free of charge was a very short-sighted move.