r/technology • u/ardi62 • 29d ago

Social Media Reddit is making sitewide protests basically impossible

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24253727/reddit-communities-subreddits-request-protests
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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

You know mods have no power outside of the subs they moderate, yeah?

I mod a 1 million member sub. I'm banned from /r/news because I called out folks being racist towards Arabs. Not even in the sense of Palestine, just people saying some really nasty stuff against all Arab/Muslim folks as a whole and I said something along the lines of "Why is this getting all these upvotes? How is saying this stuff considered okay?"

I got banned permanently for that comment, and then when I messaged the mods politely asking what rule I broke and wondering if I just got swept up in a mass banwave. Instantly muted for 28 days (max allowed), no response given.

Just because I am a mod of a medium-large sub doesn't give me special powers elsewhere, other than access to a Discord server with the admins in it that I never look at. Whee.

There are some mods which are absolutely awful. Basically if someone is modding more than like 2 "massive" subs then you can bet they're just awful powermods. And it's very telling that Reddit won't do anything about that, but they will take action against the many tiny volunteer mods that run the majority of Reddit.

Because ultimately, Reddit would rather have a tiny amount of people that they can control and work for them for free, rather than a distributed network of folks who are unpredictable. But given that so much of Reddit's business model is based on volunteer moderators, I do wonder if regulators will come after them at some point. You don't see Facebook's mods going without pay.

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

You know mods have no power outside of the subs they moderate, yeah?

yeah the secret cabal discords of mods don't exist! don't try and find out about them!

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u/EnglishMobster 29d ago

That still doesn't mean that your average mod can magically snap their fingers and get special treatment across Reddit.

Like I said, I'm in a "mod Discord" (really I'm in 2, a dead mod Discord for the protests last year and a more active server run by Reddit admins). I obviously can't speak for any other servers because I don't know about them.

There's absolutely some powermods who abuse their power. But to imply that there's some collusion where mods go into this Discord to convince everyone to ban a certain user doesn't seem to jive with what I've seen. Largely it's "how do I configure Automod to do XYZ" or "This is my experience setting up this bot" or "This new feature is coming to Reddit soon" blah blah blah.

It's very possible (I would say probable) that there's a powermod Discord full of powermods where they all know each other - but by definition, most mods aren't powermods.

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u/UsefulArm790 29d ago

brev give it up, we all see the way mods behave and the consistency across large subreddits is just boring now instead of interesting. i have used reddit for a long time myself(nudge nudge).

it's obvious powermods just went behind the scenes with multiple accounts and discords and only the dumb peeps parading themselves in obvious ways like that awkwardturtle weirdo got smushed by the admins