Moderator abuse

As a mod I too am incredibly frustrated with the lack of transparency and abuse of power among mods. Start your own subreddit and be the change you want to see in the world (that’s what I did). When people realize that there are subreddits with decent mods and full transparency, they will want to move there. Not all Reddit mods are like this (I don’t like to think of myself as an abusive mod but I can’t speak for my community members). I only have a couple rules on my subreddit and they can be summarized in this sentence:
Be nice, be respectful (to members and mods), try to use topics relevant to the sub, and keep it PG-13.
These are honestly all the rules most mods will ever need to make (the PG-13 one is optional, but good for subs that aren’t about adult topics). Of course there are going to be special situations where more rules may be necessary, but they shouldn’t go too far beyond what these rules encompass. I wish Reddit would do more to keep mods in check but the unfortunate reality is that we have to take things into our own hands. Everyone is capable of making a community so everyone can help pressure mods to be more fair and transparent or they’ll just leave and start their own sub. I’m sorry about that mod, there’s nothing much you can do other than to expose this abuse of power and ask people to leave the sub until the mods can be more transparent and fair.
-- Blender_God | ·1 yr. agoWhy do some reddit mods abuse their power? | reddit.com
Moderators are like most things in this world. They're self-replicating and self-preserving. When a toxic moderation team opens mod applications, they're looking for similar people to themselves. It perpetuates their status quos. It's rare to see a heavily divided mod team on large IRCs, forums, etc, and when it does happen, usually the discordant part is excised. This encourages complacency and homogeneity.
It doesn't have to be this way, but negotiating with other people in what's essentially volunteer work is an extra layer of social work some people don't have in them after the rest of their day is through. While a diverse mod team with various perspectives and styles is best for the user base. It doesn't happen all the time in practice.
Couple this with a sense of ownership. "Our subreddit" I see this phrase tossed around sometimes. It's not the community's... it's the mods' place. They get to run it how they see fit. It doesn't have to reflect their userbase at all, and reddit as a company is OK with this. They even encourage it.. Don't like a sub? Make your own. Good luck growing it though. The bitter truth is that the first big sub for a topic almost never faces serious competition. If it's big enough, maybe it has a 'True' alternative subreddit (i.e. True Off My Chest, True Christianity, and so on) that's smaller but still thriving. But if I wanted to make my own alternative to say r/ClashOfClans (and I don't because they're some of the best mods on the entire site), it'd be a massive battle against the algorithms and the lack of content.
Small subs to niche topics face similar difficulties. See r/BoltTheSuperdog (a subreddit I own). I used to wage war against the inactivity.. fanfic reviews and the like. But content filling is hard. Rare is a person who wants to stick around in a tiny community for a niche movie. I'd have to keep it seemingly active all the time if it were ever to grow. Now imagine if it had a dedicated alternative 10x its size... it's no contest. Nobody would ever visit r/BoltTheSuperdog .
So in short, reddit encourages this by its very structure. Subreddit mods aren't accountable to anyone except each other. New communities rarely take off and the only one watching the watchmen is the watchmen themselves. When they get to pick their own police, well... They rarely get 'busted'. The only way to break this cycle is to be the first to make a subreddit to something you like to safeguard it yourself, for reddit to force transparency and an even hand from mods, or for reddit to give smaller subreddits better ways to compete with larger ones. It probably ain't gonna happen.
-- GenericLoneWolf · 1 yr. ago
----community abuse // abuse of authority
----
Category:Ethics
Category:Power
Category:Human behavior