Comment by rootusrootus
2 years ago
> this is a problem.
How so? Reddit pays for the infrastructure and software, why would anyone expect they own their own subreddit? Are people really expecting Reddit to operate at a loss? If you want to own it, pay for it.
The kind of unpleasant moderation jobs they expect people to do requires those people to feel some kind of ownership over the space they are creating.
If they want the job done a particular way, they need to pay for it.
To be fair, isn't that a two-way street? The argument of course is that mods are paying by creating content that Reddit can profit from, but the flip side is that those mods are similarly extracting value. (Many subreddits have an income incentive for the mods and/or users, such as the crypto ones or the NSFW ones that point to sites like Only Fans, etc)
I don’t know why people moderate reddits. I don’t think “paying by volunteering” is the right model. It seems more like a really weird F2P game or hobby.
If people are using the site to advertise stuff, they have an incentive to try and make the experience nice. But is that really the main source of mods? I imagine if I was moderating as a sort of work related thing I’d be more focused on just fulfilling the requirements of my employer (rather than maintaining the general community spirit of the site, if that makes sense).
They own the ad network running on those communities. They own the traffic. But why in the world are they interested in owning the community itself?