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Comment by breck | Hacker News Reader

I am divided on this.

I definitely side with the users and mods who have given their time and effort on making the site what it is. I like the protest and think it's bringing attention to really just the tip of the iceberg of a big issue in society today around information asymmetry.

But I also sort of like the "aristocracy" term for mods. I've found roughly 50% of time I hit the front-page my posts are taken down by a mod for ulterior reasons. It can be infuriating. So I think some pushback might be warranted. Unfortunately not every mod is dang, patron saint of moderation, who in all my run-ins with him has been strict but fair, instructive, and non-anon (which I wish all mods were).

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> roughly 50% of time I hit the front-page my posts are taken down

An unanchored percentage doesn't give much information. How many posts have you had taken down for dubious reasons? Were they all from the same mod(s)? Were they controversial to neutral(ish) third-parties?

I've never had a front-page post myself, but I've also only had a single interaction with a mod (that I am aware of) in my entire 10+ years on reddit.

Good questions.

> How many posts have you had taken down for dubious reasons?

Just checking my main account, of my top 5 posts of all time, 3 were taken down for dubious reasons.

Sometimes posts get modded fast, but that doesn't bother me much because often the mistake is mine. It's only when something proves popular with the masses and then the mods nix it that it feels wrong.

> Were they all from the same mod(s)?

1 is from /gifs and 2 from /todayILearned. I have not had as much of a problem with smaller subreddits or more narrow technically focused subreddits.

> Were they controversial to neutral(ish) third-parties?

No. All had upvote percentages well above 90%, and were taken down after hitting the front page. If anything I would say they were all inspirational.

Minor grievances in the big scheme of things, but in general was very annoying, as though it's ultimately trivial, it's very fun to hit the front page and feels cruel when you hit that and mods snatch it away from you anonymously. Makes me wonder if social media is just an illusion of meritocracy.

>But I also sort of like the "aristocracy" term for mods. I've found roughly 50% of time I hit the front-page my posts are taken down by a mod for ulterior reasons. It can be infuriating. So I think some pushback might be warranted.

However, wouldn't that be on Reddit too? Reddit made the conscious choice to have unpaid non-employee moderators doing the frontline grunt work. Reddit could for instance have paid, trained employee mods with a standard of conduct where there would be consistency in what to expect on a Reddit sub. If some company cheaps out and looks toward getting free labor notwithstanding they're for-profit, it's not really the free labor's fault if they're not good, there's an inconsistent work product, etc as you get what you pay for, so if some company isn't even paying at all, well that's on the company for doing that...

Good point. I think mods of big subs should be required to be non-anonymous. BUT, they should also be paid because it is a ton of work. At the very least some kind of stipend.

It does surprise me if Reddit was not paying the mods of top subs.

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