<story><title>Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-will-change-rules-to-make-mods-less-powerful-2023-6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BlargMcLarg</author><text>&amp;gt;If those moderators leave,&lt;p&gt;Then they will find new ones. As long as Reddit has usecases, as long as the powertrip is worth the lack of ownership and poor tooling, there will be mods willing to moderate subs and feeling powerful and getting drunk off of it. &amp;#x27;Historically&amp;#x27;, this has happened in every social medium with moderation so far.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no anarchy here. Most Redditors don&amp;#x27;t care for the mods in particular. If the underlying reason doesn&amp;#x27;t move them, a new generation of mods will take place and the cycle continues.</text></item><item><author>guardiangod</author><text>The difference between Musk&amp;#x2F;Twitter and spez&amp;#x2F;Reddit is that the value of Reddit lies in its army of unpaid moderators, and Twitter&amp;#x27;s value lies in its brand recognition.&lt;p&gt;When Musk took over and pissed off everyone, the only protest the users can do is to leave the platform. Some did but not enough to hurt Twitter. That&amp;#x27;s because the management (ie modding) is done by Twitter staff already. With a strong brand, Twitter survived.&lt;p&gt;For reddit, the core value is the unpaid moderators. If those moderators leave, you now have a bunch of communities with no management. History shows any communities entering an anarchy (or worse sycophants assigned by Reddit) will not last long, or at least, will stop their organic growth and decline.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>guardiangod</author><text>&amp;gt;Most Redditors don&amp;#x27;t care for the mods in particular.&lt;p&gt;Because the current batch of moderation work well enough.&lt;p&gt;Now imagine the current batch leave, and the new ones take over are worse (and they will be worse since Reddit has shown that Reddit has direct control over the Moderators&amp;#x27; position safety, if the actions are not aligned with Reddit&amp;#x27;s CEO. Some reasonable people will not like that.)&lt;p&gt;Eventually the remaining good ones will be replace again, and after a few generation, only the bad moderators are left.&lt;p&gt;For example, just look at every dictatorship government in the world. No dictator starts out hiring only bad officials. Everyone&amp;#x27;s benevolent with good intention. Eventually, the good officials gradually get push out and sycophants fill the rank.</text></comment>
<story><title>Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-will-change-rules-to-make-mods-less-powerful-2023-6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BlargMcLarg</author><text>&amp;gt;If those moderators leave,&lt;p&gt;Then they will find new ones. As long as Reddit has usecases, as long as the powertrip is worth the lack of ownership and poor tooling, there will be mods willing to moderate subs and feeling powerful and getting drunk off of it. &amp;#x27;Historically&amp;#x27;, this has happened in every social medium with moderation so far.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no anarchy here. Most Redditors don&amp;#x27;t care for the mods in particular. If the underlying reason doesn&amp;#x27;t move them, a new generation of mods will take place and the cycle continues.</text></item><item><author>guardiangod</author><text>The difference between Musk&amp;#x2F;Twitter and spez&amp;#x2F;Reddit is that the value of Reddit lies in its army of unpaid moderators, and Twitter&amp;#x27;s value lies in its brand recognition.&lt;p&gt;When Musk took over and pissed off everyone, the only protest the users can do is to leave the platform. Some did but not enough to hurt Twitter. That&amp;#x27;s because the management (ie modding) is done by Twitter staff already. With a strong brand, Twitter survived.&lt;p&gt;For reddit, the core value is the unpaid moderators. If those moderators leave, you now have a bunch of communities with no management. History shows any communities entering an anarchy (or worse sycophants assigned by Reddit) will not last long, or at least, will stop their organic growth and decline.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cocojumbo123</author><text>&amp;gt; Then they will find new ones.&lt;p&gt;Looks easier than it actually is. Here&amp;#x27;s how a mod routine looks like:&lt;p&gt;check modqueue (that&amp;#x27;s the place where all reports come). Some are fake because one user has some beef with another, some trolls, some spam, some user insulting each-other.&lt;p&gt;you work through the queue, by the time you are done users who were banned are already complaining on modmail, you take your time to read all complaints and try to shrug the threats and the attempted doxing. you get a thank you for each 100 threats.&lt;p&gt;rinse and repeat. whereas it might look glamorous from the outside in practice is boring, repetitive and tedious. in large subs you also have to coordinate with other mods to make sure there is some consistency in modding actions.&lt;p&gt;finding new mods is easy, having them stick around, I&amp;#x27;d say not so much.</text></comment>