43 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: On Reddit's moderation system creating a reddit-wide echo chamber
The issue is (when you use volunteer moderators) that moderation duties inevitably falls to the people who moderate the most. This may be something of a tautology, that the mods with the most free time will be those who spend the most time moderating, but I think it self-selects for people who are the "most online" ideologically.
Extremely-online ideologies (across the political spectrum) tend to be driven by what gets the most engagement, namely righteous indignation. And righteous indignation rarely wants to hear any dissent, even good-faith discussion. The battle lines get drawn, and if you do not accept the tenets of the ideology whole then you are the enemy and there is a moral imperative to silence you.
It also ends up with extreme echo chambers, as the people who are the most-online are often also the most out of touch with reality on the ground, which is where the vast majority of people actually live. I don't think this is due to the reasons you listed, I think it's just an inherent facet of volunteer moderation.
It gets worse as the size of the subreddit get bigger. I used to moderate a couple subs that grew from nothing to 7-figure user numbers and the reality of what moderation entailed completely changed over that course of that growth. It gets more and more difficult to avoid the siege mentality as the number of people trying to intentionally make your life difficult grows exponentially. So while I don't agree with how mods handle things a lot of the times in big subs, I understand and sympathize.
That said, there's also the issue of powermods (which I used to be one of as well). There is not a way to effectively moderate multiple million+ user subreddits well. It is not something that can be done to a good standard, even if you dedicate your whole life to it (which some powermods apparently do). So I think a concrete step that could be taken would be to limit how many giant subreddits a single user can moderate. I don't know what that limit should be set at, but I think it should exist and I think it would go a long way to improving moderation on the site.
Comment by liquidpele at 02/01/2025 at 23:12 UTC
12 upvotes, 2 direct replies
the people who are the most-online are often also the most out of touch with reality on the ground, which is where the vast majority of people actually live. I don't think this is due to the reasons you listed, I think it's just an inherent facet of volunteer moderation.
I think that’s how so many mods of this nature get into it, but I think my reasons are why they are allowed to get away with it even if the mod team is overall more moderate. I know I was reluctant to question or argue against a fellow mod action because there was little incentive and no guidelines for it beyond arguing in mod chat… and as you said, it devolves into arguing with a zealot which is exhausting. If you happen to be higher then you can do what you want but at the expense of looking draconian yourself and sets a precedent that any higher mod can override whatever they want below them.