Thread by @reddit_lies

The Cancer of Censorship.
How Reddit set itself up to become one of the most heavily censored social media platforms. (and how it may be destroying itself because of it) 🧵

Moderating is a time-consuming thankless job. Instead of hiring in-house mods or relying on algorithmic moderation, Reddit relies on an army of 70,000+ volunteers to do this heavy lifting.

Volunteers were chosen because algorithmic moderation struggles when each subreddit has its own rules, memes, and political views.

It also (theoretically) ensured moderators were passionate participants in the community.

But there were unforeseen side-effects...

For many moderators, the power associated with being a mod is an afterthought.

But for some that power IS their compensation. They want to moderate BECAUSE it gives them a pathway to a position of authority over others.

Think about it for a moment.

What kind of person would opt to spend 12+ hours a day doing the dirty work of a social media company all for free?

It appeals to people who crave power with a lot of time on their hands.

Enter "Powermods"

These powermods often subscribe to the bleeding edge of progressive rhetoric, and they can be frequently found using their power to ensure users conform to the latest left-leaning talking points.

Powermods are commonly seen pinning their own posts and comments to the top of subreddits and comment sections.

Their goal is simple: Keep the unwashed masses in line and drive the narrative forward by any means necessary.

Often times they will lock down entire threads because the users "couldn't behave" (adhere to approved talking points)

Given that mods (and Reddit as a whole) is so ideologically captured, you will often see them using their power to simultaneously promote misinformation AND suppress the truth.

Worse still, most moderators turn a blind eye to highly inflammatory rhetoric if it happens to align with the narrative.

Often you can find Redditors salivating at the thought of murdering someone (a violation of Reddit's TOS) but the otherwise ban-happy mods turn a blind eye.

Some subreddits have even begun mass banning thousands of users who have ever participated in right-leaning subreddits such as r/Conservative.

Why doesn't Reddit do anything about this?

Because Reddit mods do an estimated $3.4 Million in labor all for free each year. Reddit likely can't afford such a bill, so unpaid mods have festered like a cancer on the platform for years.

arxiv.org/abs/2205.14528

Social media sites THRIVE on free-speech.

When power-hungry censorious moderators actively target people for speaking freely, the result is a cooling of speech sitewide.

This is the inevitable result:

Ultimately, the actions of these mods may be costing Reddit dearly. It's not common to see social media sites stagnate the way Reddit has in recent years.

This is just conjecture, but I suspect the heavy-handedness of the moderators is a major contributor here.

I'm not sure what steps Reddit can take to remedy this issue, or if they even will, but we should all look to Reddit as a cautionary tale of what can happen when control of speech is delegated without any accountability.