I mean, there's plenty of people lining up to have the "authority" of an internet mod, but not so many that can be trusted not to set up their own petty dictatorship or get bored when they realise what mods actually mostly do.

Can confirm as a subreddit mod.

The day to day is mostly deciding whether borderline comments should be removed and whether a post contains too much self-promotion.

Why do you do it?

Not the same person, but one perk is you can influence a chunk of people just by abusing things like stickies.

People are so cynical on HN lol- see my sibling comment.

I like Internet communities and am willing to volunteer some time to help some be more successful.

Yes there are. Lots of money can be made as mods of popular subreddits.

How do they do that? Asking for a friend.

You let some selfpromoting astroturfed stuff slip > product/service has an unbeliveable sales increase

Reddit can pay mods, just like every other social network does. Not rocket science, and if they did it just for the top ones, wouldn't cost that much.

Reddit can largely automate moderation. It's not hard, but... there are a lot of not hard things that Reddit screws up.

If this was even 1 year ago, things would be different. But it's not.

(I moderate a major subreddit)

Why work for free?

If not paid in dollars, mods get paid in power and authority. Interacting with mods who accept power and authority as payment goes about how you’d expect.

Because I'm an idiot.

There is something wrong with me that in the 90-9-1 rule, I need to be the 1%. I see a forum, and I can't stop myself from commenting or posting. Getting invited to moderate happens naturally after that.

I wish I was the 90%.