Unionizing internet moderators and my theory on how to do it.

Across the internet on thousands of websites the (mostly) unpaid labor of (mostly) volunteer internet moderators is exploited by social media companies and the consequences of that have been bad for the moderators themselves, as well as social media users and websites as a whole. The internet could not function without moderator labor, it’s vital to ensure the suppression of hate speech and illegal material. The last time moderators tried to organize was with Reddit during the API changes and they were violently suppressed, Reddit had no issue finding scabs in its userbase to replace the mods that had their subs go dark, and Reddit threw in a small amount of compensation for the moderators that is not equal at all to the monetary value of the labor they have provided the site over the years. (Also Ghislaine Maxwell the sex trafficker is still unconfirmed to have been the powermod maxwellhill on several of Reddit’s biggest and influential subreddits, which I’m mentioning because moderator abuse is a symptom of there being no regulation in the system whatsoever.)

Internet moderation is not exclusive to Reddit, we have all heard stories and even personally experienced the tyranny of a moderator before, but we must recognize that the problem lays not with the WORKERS who are the MODERATORS but the ADMINISTRATORS and OWNERS of the social media websites who are the real tyrants for allowing such awful behavior to exist on their own websites, they are lazy to hand out such vital controls to volunteers without vetting them or fairly compensating them. Most social media websites would not be profitable and would not exist without this form of exploitation, this lazy system is not good for the internet or for society, in the past it made sense for websites to hand out these privileges because there was no rules back then, but as the internet grew and became a less American-centric close knit community and more an amalgamation of every single human alive and dead who has ever used it, it’s apparent the old system is bad. We treat websites like property, the whole apparatus was developed for the military, the whole foundation the thing is built upon is a white male centric userbase and all the negatives that come along with it. Reform starts with the internet mods.

How does one do a revolution on the internet? Do we go to the physical servers and seize them? Do we go a step further and go after the power supply? Who’s more important, the telecom companies, or the software companies? Our goal shouldn’t be to destroy the internet, it should be to understand it, and I understand that the moderators are the power brokers of political power on the net, they have interests and collusions and their own internal politics that range from single threads to subfourms to the whole site to multiple websites. Moderators are playing a game of intrigue when that’s not their job, their job is to remove objectionable content, they are censors not political actors, their politics should be decided for them by a union boss, if we can get moderators into a union then the left can use those moderators to exert our political will on the forces of capital like every other union ever.

So what’s my plan to unionize mods? A campaign of elevating internet moderators to absurdly high levels of self importance until they start believing it themselves. We should encourage mods to abuse their power and conspire and seek to exploit their positions, we should make propaganda presenting mods in the soviet realistic style of art as like glorious workers to the point it looks mocking, but we should try to make them take it serious. We should use the power of irony and the existing connotations of moderator power and just roll with it, we should make the Reddit alien mascot the union logo because of its annoying connotations and lack of respect normal people have for it. In order to unionize mods we must lean into the stereotypes that mods are these powerhungry basement dwelling lowlifes who wear leftist causes like a tshirt because union leaders have stereotypes of being sleazy and maybe a little unashamed corruption is the secret in how to make a successful union.

TLDR : accurate observation on how mods work, followed by cynical plan to unionize them by being intentionally an asshole, so people can say why that won’t work. (That’s the point, come up with some ideas ppl!)