Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft

If we are talking about "value" as Reddit the company sees it, moderators provide 99.9% of that.

Remember, their value as they see it (now that it's on an IPO trajectory) is in having a sanitized version of the reddit from 12 years ago or so. And it's far too large of a job for the admins (and has some legal landmines buried all over the place if they did attempt it).

Finding new mods who will do the work for free is possible, but substituting in the shills will cause too much bad press (and risks the same problems 1 year from now, 3 years, 5 years as the new mods figure out how they've been swindled).

If we're talking about the value as users see it, mod provide exactly 0.0% of it, and Reddit the company probably provides about -20% or so. It's always been in the discussions and comments, which are the only real content. More to the point it's only those comments that are made by the people who bristle at busybodies trying to herd them along into the worst sort of saccharinely polite discourse.