We also hired a well known Reddit power user to actually post the content. Which is also common. Those people get paid very little by comparison though. Like $50-100 a post. But they post a lot and have a lot of alts.
When you see a post that’s, “My girlfriend just got me this,” and there is a product in the person’s hand and the label is perfectly centered and in focus… there is no girlfriend. Someone paid for that.
And they'll find new people to do it for no compensation, just as they did before the mod tools in question existed.
>The vast majority of reddit users, at least in the subs I've seen, support this - a bunch of the subs even had polls to ask what they should do.
The support is vast but shallow, and this will become clear quickly when extended blackouts cause admin interventions and no one cares except for a vocal minority that will then attack the site in other ways (spam.)
For free? I doubt they could find any for free.
You don't need a vast majority to do it. Lots of people would love to be a mod, just for the power-tripping aspect.
One of my favorite things about Mod self pity that always seems to come up is this insinuation that they did not want the job. The literal opposite of reality. All mods BEG to be mods. They lobby and work hard to get into their jobs and jealously guard them. They deeply resent and fear the idea of the community operating without them.
There have been times where I've thought, I have enough free time to be a help to a community I'm part of and would be willing to mod. But I've never done it because I wouldn't even know where to start. I'm not building a job application and selling myself for this or carefully waiting out position openings in Discord/IRC channels. I don't care that much. Use my labor if you want it or not. The mods that actually ended up mods? Oh they care and worked for it. You're free to quite any time if you don't want the job. Go on.... do it.
Also I question how much work there really is beyond mission creep. Filter out the spam and the occasional super psycho and you're done. Now if you make work for yourself by trying to be a gestapo nanny that deep reads all comments to weed out wrongthink and confers with mod star chambers on what is to be done to shape the community. Then yeah, maybe you can make a lot more work for yourself.
You might have visit a different reddit then. GP's comment is spot on. Oppressive moderation is rampart on reddit.
With that said, maybe Reddit management wants the site to change. In the future, this could be seen as a shortsighted failure or as an MTV-stops-showing-music-videos pivot to a different audience.
1. First, look at the incentive structure for being a mod of a large subreddit: it's a ton of work, with people constantly bitching at you, for no compensation. The vast majority of people with a life are not going to want to do this. So of course it appeals to people who can power trip off it, and I can't see those dynamics really changing. I do think that reddit should change the rules to make it easier for particularly egregious mods to be voted out by the subscribers of a sub, but that's a relatively small change. For example, some of the r/lgbt mods were notorious assholes, which is why some people split off to make r/ainbow. Should be easier for subscribers to essentially "impeach" shitty mods.
2. "If it actually impacts revenue the admins will just ban a few dozen mods and the protest will, effectively, be over" People keep saying this, but I doubt it. The vast majority of reddit users, at least in the subs I've seen, support this - a bunch of the subs even had polls to ask what they should do. It's one thing for the admins to remove mods who are acting against the wishes of most is a subs' subscribers, but I think it would be total chaos if they tried to replace mods specifically to get their way WRT to the API changes.
At the end of the day, reddit is nothing without it's community. Company management can only go so far before it kills the goose that laid the golden egg.