I should begin by mentioning that I am (was) a moderator of three subreddits: one large subreddit, one NSFW subreddit and a medical-related subreddit. After u/spez’s calamitous AMA, I joined Lemmy and haven’t looked back. I am really enjoying the Lemmy/KBin vibe. It is very much an alpha (almost beta) product and the ad free, corporate free, decentralized nature of the fediverse has a thrill of its own.
Over the past couple of months, Reddit has done everything it can to show its moderators that they are low-value and easily replaceable. They’ve done this by removing technical tools, killing off third party applications, crippling API changes and jaw-droppingly bad public relations. Heavily used products like /r/toolbox are no longer being actively developed. When Reddit API implements a breaking, non-backwards compatible change, that tool will also die.
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. When I see things like the comment section on this post, I no longer feel sorry for the Reddit moderators still on the site. I see them as a sad, sorry group who cling to the false hope of a corporate turnaround. They could leave Reddit. They should leave Reddit.
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? I get that the analogy between the mods and the corp is an imperfect one, yet it is similar enough to be valid, in my opinion.
Moderating is really hard. It is hard and thankless and never-ending. Finding good moderators who can handle the marathon nature of the gig is incredibly difficult. If Reddit moderators were to delete their moderating bots, downgrade their automod “code” and dial back their modding efforts to 5 min/week or less, it would materially hurt Reddit as a product.
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 and I’ve never been happier.
Well, for what it’s worth I was a mod there – admittedly, of an extremely tiny sub that to the nearest decimal point, no one cares about. I walked away due to all the BS happening at reddit. Not just the API scandal, or throwing the Apollo dev under the bus, but also the general enshittification of the entire experience as well. For instance, I do enjoy a good internet argument now and again, but some of the stuff users in specific subs insisted on arguing with me about just tooth and nail devolved into being absolutely ridiculous. The place is a cesspit of its own making, and not just the administration but also the mods and some cross section of its user base. (I’m not going to speculate on how broad of said cross section. I don’t know; I don’t care.)
At the end of the day, you are correct. It’s just an internet forum that ultimately doesn’t matter. If someone’s only validation in life is wielding a small amount of petty authority over anonymous internet people, well. I don’t know what to tell you. I have no need for such a thing. I was only a mod of my sub because I enjoyed the topic, but I’m not turning it into a job and frankly, I don’t care to be A) lumped in by association with the “power mods” and capitulators/collaborators involved with this whole clusterfuck, and B) if reddit is also implicitly handing me a “fuck you” along with all the rest of the mods, then fuck 'em right back. I’m on the internet to look at cat pictures and talk about motorcycles. On that front, reddit is nowhere special.
Things come and things go. I guess it was nice while it lasted. (And if you want to talk about things going, I used to be a moderator on the Temple of the Screaming Electron forums. Now there’s some nostalgia for you. I’m not even sure that place qualified as The Web 1.0. That turned into a shitshow eventually, too, although for different reasons. It’s almost like history repeats, or something.)
These were the mods that I generally respected.
I think I recall hearing about TOTSE. Wasn’t it BBS?
It was, originally. It then mutated into a site on this newfangled World Wide Web thingamabob, which ultimately became a UBB driven forum. In what is now considered quite an oldschool style. Originally it was an archive of text files of questionable legality (and accuracy). Think along the lines of the old “Anarchist’s Cookbook” that circulated the early internet, and that sort of thing. A large portion of the text file archive was still available even well after the forum was the only reason anyone went there.
It had a facelift circa I want to say 2008? My recollection is a bit hazy. Which tried to make it look more “professional” and “Web 2.0,” but ultimately was the same old thing in a different skin that was less “l33t hack3r” but not much easier on the eyes. (Someone really, really liked the color blue.) That was kind of the beginning of the end, since after that the creator/admin “Jeff Hunter,” had apparently lost interest after presumably pupating into a productive member of society, and now the whole thing is gone.
Towards the end, Totse also had an inner circle of moderators of dubious sanity for its major forums, who pretty much just used their power to squash dissent and turn their subforums into their own private echo chambers. Sounds kind of familiar, once you think back on it. I, uh, won’t reveal which forums I was a moderator of. Such a thing might impact a person’s reputation.