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Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

It is worth pointing out that even with a 10/10 sight, moderating reddit is a nightmare. If it wasn't for the mod toolbox plugin, I would have probably resorted to making CLI tools instead(many of which I have since reddit offers an extremely limited options for moderating, nuking comments, threads and so on). That said, this is absolutely nothing compared to the unholy mess that is moderating from android/ios. Most moderators plainly refuse to do it. I moderate a big sub and what we do is we have a discord chat and whenever something needs to be taken care of fast and someone notices it on mobile, they simply alert everyone on discord so someone near a computer can handle it.

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"When we started Apple, Steve Jobs and I talked about how we wanted to make blind people as equal and capable as sighted people, and you'd have to say we succeeded."

- Steve Wozniak referring to the fact that people only stare at their iPhones anymore

To be fair, iOS has some of the best accessibility of any computing platform ever. That Reddit managed to screw it up is a testament to THEIR skill, not apples

I agree that their mod access on mobile leaves a lot to be desired and will add that for some people, use of a mobile device is for accessibility reasons.

To drive the point home, there was a point in my life when I was unable to use anything except a mobile device, because I programmed constantly, day and night, for weeks, trying to build a hair rained business about 3D printed jewelry you could share on social media and fork (I called it "social jewelry", I find it kinda cringe and laugh about it now).

I hurt my wrists very badly (due to abysmal typing posture and a refusal to stop working in the face of "minor" pain) and was unable to use a computer for ten months. I could only use a mobile device (and sparingly at that). One might say I was foolish and reaped what I sowed and shouldn't be accommodated for a problem I brought on myself, but what can I say, I saw young and stupid and I thought I was being gritty.

I'm sure many of you can relate to a story like that.

(Figure out your workspace ergonomics, folks. And don't type through pain, take a break, for days or longer if necessary.)

Also: Even if you are not impaired, a phone can go with you and theoretically let you keep tabs on things while running errands, on your break at work, etc. Your work computer may not be a means for you to login to Reddit and moderate anything, even on your break.

There's a reason a lot of stuff is optimized for mobile first these days.

Moderation on mobile is a nightmare because moderating a single item often involves several distinct actions: approve/remove comment, read/edit user note, ban user, edit ban note, etc. None of these have an unified default interface and most mods only know it from using mod toolbox. Mobile moderation-oriented 3rd party apps are unsatisfactory because they are, well, unofficial and Reddit provides no guidance or resources beyond the API itself whatsoever. It has been improving somewhat over the past two years with many web mod tools being added or revamped, but it's hard to build and maintain trust with the moderator community when Admins constantly make one unpopular move after another.

Reddit successfully offloaded content moderation onto a group of volunteers since the very beginning. This is a massive cost saving factor compared to other major social media platforms. It is only fair for Reddit to invest a small amount of those savings in return to enable volunteers achieve better efficiency.

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