Don't feel bad for the Moderators of Reddit

The abusive relationship is with Reddit, not the community they moderate. A more accurate analogy is tolerating the abusive person because you don't want to completely lost contact with many other people you care about just because of that one guy who they're still friend with. The answer then become less clear cut than just cut off the toxic person. It becomes a question of when the abusive person becomes toxic enough that even the prospect of keeping in touch with other people you care about isn't worth it any more. That is going to be different for everyone and there's no right answer as it completely depends on the person. It is still possible that someone misjudge and they'd be better off leaving earlier, but what that earlier point is still has to be decided first according to their own circumstances.

To illustrate my point. Some people believe it's the right thing to do to leave Reddit much earlier than this year, such as when they let /r/the_donald operated freely. In this case here because you decided to stay until 1-2 months ago, you are also part of the problem that "stayed and helped Reddit build Reddit".

I think this post simplified the situation in a way that misrepresented the motivation of some moderators.

You want to hear something fucked up? After nearly 10 years in Reddit, one day I suddenly started receiving daily death threats and HEAVY bot spamming on this tiny little sub I was moderating. So naturally I reached out to the mod support sub for help. Then this bot/spammer started flooding my post on their sub which actually felt great—they were getting a taste of what I had been dealing with. The post ended up with well over 500 comments from this piece of shit. So instead of help me out, you know what they did? They banned me from the mod support subreddit.

I had a conversation with one of the admins who basically told me they don't care about death threats. Furthermore, this spammer had also admitted to murdering people. Again the admin didn't care. Till the day I left they were unable to stop this one person from creating hundreds, maybe even thousands of accounts and spamming tons of people including myself. A billion dollar company can't even control their own product. The bots literally own Reddit. Lol. Fuck them, all of them who stayed.

Here some proof: https://imgur.com/Hofqdh8 https://imgur.com/gallery/vJhZlwX

I shut down the my subreddit for old memes on Reddit and moved it to Lemmy. Then it blew up on Lemmy and the old ass memes spread to the other meme subreddits. (Sorry)

This is home now.

!antiquememesroadshow@lemmy.world is better than ever over here. Although it’s still full of stale ass memes.

Same here.

After the infamous AMA, I made a post in my subreddit basically saying "peace out, I'm off to Lemmy. Good luck, everyone." Lucky for them, I'd set up a pretty robust automoderator over the years so that's still taking care of the majority of the moderating tasks I'd imagine.

I visited that post today and saw over 500 comments, each one by a mod and each one of them angry. Why they're still there, I have no idea.

This is just the start. Once Reddit IPOs and we hear how many tens of millions spez made off the backs of mods and power users, more will start to question why they are doing unpaid labor just to make spez rich. There is a fundamental problem with trying to make bank on volunteer labor, and we're just starting to see it begin.

Except for the veteran sub where I got perma banned for literally saying I don't like fascism, I never had many paths cross with mods.

Where I lost respect for them is when Reddit started telling them to open up or get replaced and most of them complied. I'd have some more empathy if it was at work where getting canned meant scrambling to pay bills - but we're talking about Reddit. They claim to stand for something but the second they're asked to give up anything for that belief they cave.

Psuedo interwebs powers just trump morals and values these days.

Communities can be rebuilt, as we've seen. There really is no excuse at this point for those mods to not leave and start rebuilding somewhere like Lemmy.

Reddit will never reverse course. Maybe their goal used to be aligned with ours, but now they're just a massive corporation chasing an ever growing profit.

Honestly I stopped feeling bad for mods as soon as I saw a majority of them fold like a soggy napkin upon the first threat from the admins saying they'd remove mods who keep their subs private.

If I were a mod I would have kept it private until Reddit removed me. If all mods actually did that, Reddit would have been in big trouble since they'd effectively have to find new mods all at once for the entire site. Instead, most mods basically did Reddit a favor and lessened the impact substantially. Thanks mods!

I also don't feel bad for most Reddit users. Way too many of them were too ignorant to even understand what the protests were about. And a majority of them were yelling at mods to reopen and saying the protest was stupid just because they were okay with using the official mobile app

Unbelievable all around honestly. The entire thing was fucking embarrassing. We had one actual chance to win and everyone blew it.

This maybe a controversial opinion here but many of those moderators also suffer from a big problem of powertripping. They just don't want to leave that position.

I haven't felt sorry for mods since the mods of a sub I'll not mention decided to stop the protest after some of them got banned, because "we don't want the sub to fall into the hands of randoms".

Spineless behavior. Just move and rebuild the community elsewhere. It has been more than a month and the ship has sailed. Even if Reddit decides to backpedal for now, they'll try again in the future.

For me it was mostly about accessibility, because reddit essentially told disabled people they aren't welcome. So ... bye

But also the attempt at monetizing FUCKING EVERYTHING is pissing me off. I miss the internet where most things were free. I am not going to pay a subscription to read an aggregation of links. If I have to pay I am going to choose something more fun over social media.

Im so glad I left as soon as I recognised how much they don’t care about mods. I was a mod at several subs and fuck that. I’m happier here. Remember. Spez made it clear that so long it doesn’t hurt their revenue, he will do whatever he cares to do without listening to the clients.

Jumped ship when Spez wasn't caving to the protests. I was mostly a lurker on Reddit and posted a little but now with the state of our social media it's better to get out and have a voice. And this place is nice

I’ve never modded but have been on Reddit 15yrs 11mo as of the Apollo shutdown. At this point I’m in the 16yr club. It’s wild how badly they are acting toward mods.

Frankly I’m not a mod lover or hater, with the exception of AskHistory. It was so clear how the mods there truly made the community. Haters will say they had a heavy hand, but it kept the quality remarkably high.

I’m middle age so I’ve seen a full decade of forum shitposting and flamwars before Reddit even existed. The fact that Reddit can’t see the value of the community that build “their platform” is beyond tonedeaf, it’s just straight up arrogant.

I’m sure Reddit will stay far bigger than lemmy for a long time, but that’s fine. Maybe better. The old forums were microscopic by modern social media standards but in hindsight the conversations with active users were more real and not just some random username that might as well have been anon.

Y'know, I read that entire thread, and it really doesn't come across as you're representing it.

The mods are spitting rage over there. They're outright insulting every aspect of reddit. I feel like focusing on the idea that because they made a post there they must still be active users is a stretch and unfair.

Of course, we know too many people still use the site. But it's hard for me to get on board with a blanket "fuck the mods" based on that thread alone.

I was moderating, this whole thing started, and I moved over to lemmy, I don't get why people are still continuing to do loads of work on a site that hates them with an even more toxic environment than before, not really for me.

I really, really wanted all the mods to quit in protest. I think the site would go up in flames within a day of people finding out it was open season. Like, not able to recover, up in flames.

Every other day, I get over how mad I was about the whole spez thing, and just focus on bettering our community and Lemmy in general.

But then they do something again that immediately remind me how much of an asshole he is. Last week, it was them taking out the coins and awards. Now this week, it's introducing r/Places like nothing happened and we're all friends again. Fuck him.

Your argument is strange, since I definitely feel bad for people in abusive relationships and have understanding for how difficult it might be to leave one.

The thing that is different is that they really CAN leave. Reddit has nothing over them. Reddit doesn't have their important documents, control of their finances. Reddit isn't physically present, so they aren't physically endangered. And yet they are STILL reacting exactly how an abuse victim.

This ought to be a lesson for all of us that ANY of us can fall into that pattern and not judge people who are.

The majority of the "good" mods like yourself have already bailed, I'd wager. Only the bad ones, who use moderation to feel a sense of power and control over others to replace their own lack of power and control, will remain after a couple more months, at which point you'll see Reddit truely begin to falter. Those are the ones clinging to hope and power, even though they lose more of it by the second.

Welcome to Lemmy. It's fun here.

what i dont get are those members that demand opening of subreddit and claimed that some of the moderators are power hungry, forgetting that they are moderating for free, and failed to understand that it will become harder without the APIs.

Truthfully i wish bots will demolish their favorite subreddit

Very true

I moderated a top-15 subreddit for over 5 years. reddit got so corporate so long ago that the 80% of the mods left are just on some kind of power trip. So no, I won't ever feel bad for them.

So many reddit mods were angry power-hungry assholes. I don't feel sorry for them just as much as I don't feel sorry for reddit's hopeventual collapse. I can't count how many times I had BS moderation enacted, then when I was perfectly civil, usually just asking for basic clarification as to why something was removed, was instantly silenced from further communication with the mods with threats of potential removal from participation in the sub or reddit entirely. I am not alone in this experience.

I run a discord server and freely explain to user that they are welcome to disagree with me, openly and freely, as while I run this unofficial community server about an event I don't own/operate,

The same is for a reddit mod, especially for broad topics and localities.

Unfortunately I do see the potential for similar behavior here in the fediverse. I can't say I know how to address it entirely, but I know I can act the way that's fair to the community of which I am only an administrator, not a ruler nor creator.

I sort of understand that they are a necessary evil but I really get tired of seeing stuff like this

Moderators should just stop working for free on platform that doesn't value them.

comment removed by moderator

Im a moderator of subreddits, and i can say i agree.

the moderator of r/onlyfans is a good example, it was repurposed to be about fans, but in order to "protest" he decided to allow porn back in, and despite the users constantly being extreamly angry about this for over a month, he had refused to dissalow porn, while he did tighten the rules on it slightly recently, they appear to go totally uninforced with porn bots slowly taking over the community.

Oh I don't, don't you worry.

The admin are trash over on reddit. The CEO is trash. Lots of the mods in the big subs are trash too though.

Any of the mods that complained and protested but are still on the site are gutless and just don't want to lose their mod power.

One of the gaming subs mods were acting like they couldn't even be part of the strike because they were "providing an important service" and another one pcgaming I think offered what was basically token resistance.

I used to mod about 3 dozen big/medium Subreddits too. It was worth it though, because through it I somehow found my girlfriend of 1 year. Drama was a real headache in those places.

I agree, well said. Shame on Reddit for what it did, but shame on them for putting up with it.

I loved Reddit but it was slowly getting worse, then suddenly way worse. My time with Reddit died with Apollo.

Lemmy isn’t Reddit, but it definitely itches that scratch for me. Like fuck if I ever give Reddit any traffic myself anymore. Bridge burned, I have no problem walking away.

Moderating for free is a mental illness.

Spez's comment on moderators showed the world he's not a tiny bit better than Marck "They trust me, dumbfucks!" Zuckerberg.

Yet so many people willingfully trust him with their most personal sensitive information until it's too late.

https://www.insider.com/nebraska-teen-sentenced-jail-abortion-police-facebook-2023-7

Even with that, you still don't see FB users running away from the private data collection and resell platform.

It will be very hard for some moderators to leave because they put so much work in reddit, and leaving would force them to admit they were used by someone who despised them the whole time, and there is no hope he would ever change.

It's similar to women who can't leave their violent companion: they want to believe in something that does not exist, and will stretch their perception of reality to avoid admitting they're wrong.

I do not despise the moderators who won't leave. I pity them.

With all that said, this remind me I wanted to permanently delete my reddit's account. I won't contribute to a BS "users" numbers...

Eh, so a couple of things:

These moderators are in an abusive relationship with Reddit, Inc.

The sunk-cost fallacy is a real thing. If the Reddit mods understood this, they’d take their talents elsewhere. But as long as they continue to help Reddit build Reddit, one shouldn’t feel sorry for them.

They could leave. I did...

That's not at all how abusive relationships work. I get what you're saying, and the comparison isn't that far off, but your conclusions are wildly off base.

I was a mod of some big subs too, and I have a friend who's staying at one of the very large "Ask(Insert Specific Thing Here)" subs. He genuinely cares about the integrity of the thing people ask about and doesn't want it to devolve into conspiracy theory nonsense. I get it, and yeah we know he is physically capable of leaving, but I admire that about him and I do feel sorry for him. For all of them, for being so disrespected in the first place. And yes, he does understand all of the points you just made - we've discussed it ad nauseam.

It's Reddit's fault, not theirs or ours. Fuck spez.

I was the sole mod of of a decent sized sub (12k users) until spez made it clear how unappreciated my work to combat spam & scams actually is.

I deleted my 12 year old main account, the other coming soon.

Communities can be rebuilt, as we've seen. There really is no excuse at this point for those mods to not leave and start rebuilding somewhere like Lemmy.

Reddit will never reverse course. Maybe their goal used to be aligned with ours, but now they're just a massive corporation chasing an ever growing profit.

Moderators are not a vital part of Reddit, mods are Reddit.

I might understand the argument, “we built this community, we can’t just abandon it”.

Odin: "Asgard Reddit is not a place. It's a people."

Spiss Thanos: "Fine. I'll do it myself."

I think attacking the mods like this is similar to attacking a person in an abusive relationship. It's more complicated than that when they feel so attached to the product of what is in some cases thousands of hours of work put into their communities that they've built for over a decade.

Don't attack the victims. Attack the abuser. I'm glad that it was easy for you to leave the abusive relationship but it's not easy for everyone. The same psychology is at play.

Hey, I'm here now, at least. I vented my frustrations, exposed their shit over here, and signed up for lemmy.

I don't. The ones who weren't assholes usually didn't mind standing behind the ones who did, and they got a heavy taste of their own medicine. Was it a tough job? Sure. Is that enough of a reason to allow those that do it to abuse it? Not really. At least here, it's much easier to evolve past those issues, given the complicity with admins given how they wanted to sneak their own actions as those of moderators in some of the subs.

Which medical subreddit if you dont mind sharing? Would be great to have askdocs type community on lemmy.

The most valuable resources of reddit imo was the ones like askdocs and askalawyer because it gave so many people who cant really afford to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars for quick questions especially if they aren’t sure they need a professionals help.

So many young people also got to use those subreddits for advice they couldn’t otherwise get

Mods on Reddit are power hungry basement dwellers. I'm glad you got out. They do nothing but stifle conversations and turn the cesspool that is reddit into more and more of an echo chamber. I've had so many accounts banned for simply trying to have a conversation that didn't fit the "narrative". It's shocking how much so little power goes to people's heads.

well put, I have also found a home here in the fediverse and I actually enjoy it more than reddit, I wish more mods would have done the same thing

I'm a mod of a small subreddit, which I have attempted to move to Lemmy, but as I'm not the only mod, the sub is still up and far more active.

I never did in the first place.

There's also another option for folks willing to put up with it. We've been doing a bare minimum so we can keep a link up on /r/android and /r/Xiaomi to !android@lemdro.id and !xiaomi@lemdro.id respectively.

I was never sorry for them because a lot of them have a strong habit of abusing their power when they don´t like the opinions of users. What I actually feel when I think of them is a deep and satisfying schadenfreude ...

You'll be amazed how good regular people are at opening their asses.

Thanks for being a good mod

Here here. No sympathy for those who'd rather endure abuse for the sake of retaining their false sense of power. I am still technically a mod in a few subs, for now, and I just laughed to myself reading that post. I couldn't believe the audacity of that exec, acting as if the relationship was just a tad rocky. I likewise couldn't believe the audacity of the mods thinking their comments weren't landing on deaf ears.

The only recourse at this point, in my opinion, is to abandon their posts, let the chaos and anarchy be sowed, so that there is no easy resolution by the time admins step in to fight the fires. Let the subs implode.

We should change what we've been told many times: "Delete Reddit, Lawyer Up, Hit the Gym."

FUCK REDDIT. ✊🏽

I think the reality isn't that they're hoping for a corporate turnaround, but rather that they don't want to lose the power and control they have. I mean Reddit is a huge community and having control of that, I'm sure, can get to ones head. Enough to do it for free

Ive never felt sorry for them. My experience with them, the few times Ive needed to interact with them, is that they're so absorbed into their power that they see themselves as infallible. They judged you as a wrong doer and there's no way it was a mistake or inflexible interpretation of their own made up rules.

This whole affair just confirms what many people already knew, mods are addicted to power. That's the real reason they didn't leave.

I see them as a sad, sorry group

Always has been

Do you know if any mods checked if they could get paid like aol mods did ?

Who would?

FUCK REDDIT. ✊🏽

Which sub you were the moderator of?

This was all of us on the fediverse for the past 15 years.

Yep, they're still overwhelming scumbags on power trips.

Test

You use the analogy of people staying in an abusive relationship and then say "one shouldn’t feel sorry for them." Should we also not feel sorry for people on the receiving end of an abusive relationship? This whole post doesn't make any sense.

These moderators are in an abusive relationship with Reddit, Inc. I might understand the argument, “we built this community, we can’t just abandon it”. But would you give the same advice to someone else in an abusive relationship?

Of course. It's better being a lonely loser than a loser with a cunt.

Wait, people felt bad for the mods??

I never did. Far too many of them were power-hungry douchebags. We all knew they officially worked for free, but you won't convince me that there weren't some kind of backdoor deals which gave them money or other perks from advertisers. Plus there were at least some of them who were there to spread propaganda - when a Bernie Sanders sub is actively trying to promote the idea that a vote for Trump is the best pick for liberals, then you know some crazy shit is going down.

Yeah, so I have no idea why anyone would feel bad for them. They have put themselves in that position, all so SPEZ can take Reddit public and make a few billion dollars over the deal.

Well... I mean... They're gender fluid dog walkers that live in their parent's basements. I'm not sure what you expect from them. Reddit is all they've got.

Oh, trust me, I don't feel bad for them at all.

Never did. You are trash.

I hope it's a matter of time. I'm starting to feel more communities are becoming more and more populated and it's by now just starting to top reddit.

Edit: thinking about it, if people still like it on reddit than, whatever anyone wants. I've got a feeling the quality is better here, so I don't think I'd mind it staying a bit lesss mega-big.

Yet the moderators of Reddit continue to moderate. They stay and help Reddit build Reddit. They continue to work for free; to allow Reddit to make money off of their work despite being abused.

I already had a very low opinion of unpaid internet janitors, but this made me think even less of them lol.