this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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“Reddit cannot survive without its moderators. It cannot.” - The Verge (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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That’s a recent quote from Reddit’s VP of community, Laura Nestler. Here’s more of it: This week, Reddit has been telling protesting moderators that if they keep their communities private, the company will take action against them. Any actions could happen as soon as this afternoon.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One of the comments on the Verge article, that I agree with:

There's nothing wrong with the mods being volunteers. Reddit just needs to respect them (and the other users) more. In fact if the mods were paid employees there'd just be even less standing in the way of these administration deuchebag moves. And I think that if they were paid hires there'd be less assurance that the mods were truly interested in the subject matter of their subs - I'm just hypothesizing there. Anyway I don't think the volunteer model wasn't working. It's the admin layer outside the mods that's broken.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah I was a mod. I didn’t want pay, I wanted appreciation, assistance, and to not be fucked over. I appreciated the free duolingo though. Paying me would’ve made it a job and it’d be a job well below my actual job pay rate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wikipedia is proof that volunteers are very useful. But when you build a site like that, is better to keep your profit obsession low, be glad you are leaving something useful for humanity while living a comfortable life.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, people will do something just for fun, to profit personally, or to spite someone

The moment they realize someone is making money off it, they start getting FOMO - humans are very loss adverse. No one wants to miss out on free money

But what if they had turned around and said, "fine, we'll start hiring you guys. You'll get paid hourly, but you'll have to do the proper paperwork, be given guidelines from corporate, reviewed on your performance regularly, and you might be relocated to undermoderated subs"?

Most of them wouldn't be into it - they don't actually want to work for Reddit, they just don't like feeling like someone else is sitting back and living off their work while they get nothing. The reality is, they're not doing a job, and they generally don't want to be (there's a difference between a job and work, especially work that benefits others vs a job protecting the cash cow)

When someone does a service for you, you act grateful and offer them lemonade and gift cards, you don't try to turn it into a job, and you sure as hell don't break their tools and ask when they'll get back to work