Younger me might of been excited to do it from the perceived status perhaps.
I do wonder how many off-site deals are done with moderators and third parties. There’s a lot of traffic these people are able to steward and influence I imagine.
I’ve been on that forum for many years, and I’ve seen it all evolve.
Here’s one example of the dumbest things that go around - a troll account called crimsondot, came up with a copy-pasta Where he claims all sorts of things, including that one of hte mods was of Bangladeshi descent.
For years this claim went around, and it morphed into the general claim that one of the mods was Bangladeshi.
Then in the past few years, since Bangladeshi was insufficient, it became changed to Pakistani.
All of this, set up by a troll account, and now a claim repeated on HN.
Frankly people have forgotten the fanatical support you found on r/india for then CM Modi.
I take it as healthy that the sub has been able to constantly find itself at odds with the ruling party. IT suggests that opinion is driven by grumbling users, not by any cabal.
seriously both sides in Indian politics are so infantile.
[1] https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060476592-Intern...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/n8g2om/redd...
I think a major problem for this was the limitations of german community. It's seems most are very young with very specific interessts and culture, so naturally they end up with content that caters to just those people, while the rest just hangs out in the better international subs.
But I agree with you and personally spend most of my time on reddit on international subs. But it doesn't make sense for a German to spend much time on r/personalfinance for example because it's too US-centric. That's where r/finanzen (and r/mauerstrassenwetten (like r/wallstreetbets)) is the better place.
It's a little like picking up litter while out for a walk. Not exactly fun, but can be fulfilling in a way.
There are frequent calls for a change of mods, and a long list of grievances about the current moderators. However, nobody ever volunteers their own efforts to fix anything.
I still see such drama spring up here and there. I'm just glad I'm not the target of it anymore.
"Moderation wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fucking users"
The kind answer is that some people like to host parties, not just attend them.
A real answer for many subs is they enjoy the power of getting to decide who gets to say what.
I moderated that sub through election season and then stepped down in January. At the end of the day the death threats and constant insults aren't what drove me away, but the organizational chaos. No one could figure out how to lead that team, and leaning on practiced organizational structures was apparently too hard for a group of redditors.
Yes I would expect undercovers to be undercover to other mods. Like imgaine some random guy starts some subreddit adds a few friends as moderators right. Then it blows up, so some influence group decides they need to get in on it. They would certainly not be open about their strategy of gradual take over.
*E.g. Inherent Vice.
A more believable idea as it's based on fact is that Reddit is the playground of paid PR and marketing firms. Makes sense for a PR firm to have moderation powers too. (I suppose this might also be later Pychonesque or more like William Gibson?)
Are you, as a senior consultant, going to sell your team's time to a client at £750 an hour per person to astroturf on reddit? How do you plan on quantifying the benefits, vs the same budget going to the same team to influence traditional media and lobbying?
Heck I'd love to know any half-decent agencies that offer these services.
But are you sure they aren't paid, ie employed by Reddit? Would totally make sense to either hide an army of moderating "grunts" behind a single user, or moderating bots. Reddit is large, lots to moderate.
You might be surprised how easy it is for mods of even somewhat popular subreddits to monetize their position. Of course not all do, but there are absolutely subtle ways to profit.
Sometimes you watch a group descend into being a cesspool of awfulness. The light stuff is death by boring memes, insults galore, "just an opinion" that are high-emotion crazy rants.
But the heavy stuff is worse. Watching individuals be egregiously insulted and threatened. Watching people delete their informative and well-meaning posts and never come back, because the first comment was some evil asshole having another content-free belittling attack because that's just what they do, no reason. Watching people be told they are incompetent, useless, should die, are the wrong gender, that sort of thing.
It is perhaps worse on locality-specific forums. Because then you are in view of people you know in your area, or are likely to interact with in future. Assholes don't care, and seem to enjoy the "status" that comes from putting down other people in the local area.
It does not help that such interactions seem to act like magnets in local forums, where putting people down through petty and unjustified insults attracts more of the same, and substantive interactions are lost. I guess that's because easy putdowns are low effort entertainment for some people.
But people finding themselves on the "unwinnable debate" receiving end of that sort of thing, end up leaving forums to get away from it, or are highly stressed whenever they have something to say, and may spend hours trying to carefully word everything just to avoid petty flamage from assholes and get substantive replies instead.
So some people are motivated to try to keep community areas a little gentler and cleaner. To protect and welcome others who appear to be joining in good faith, from the occasional blast of shitty replies. Like another commenter said, it's like clearing up litter when you go for a walk. Would be nice if it wasn't necessary, but because some people litter, others want to clear it up.
That's enough of a motivation for some. I've seen people spend hours moderating out of nothing more than a sense of civic duty and a desire to protect other people and encourage them to stay and feel welcomed and defended, to grow the community in a more friendly directionm, and to try to make the forum a less stressful place for new participants who have doing nothing wrong.
Like any volunteer working for something they feel is a good cause.