Reddit has a serious abusive moderator issue. I suspect they will all be demoted to "VIP community member" soon enough and have that entire layer handled by AI. There's just too much ego involved for a human to do a job like that.
As for whether or not pay makes a difference, I think you probably have a point, but I'm sure there's still wiggle room there.
Eh?
HN falls under centralized moderation for sure.
Reddit not quite so much. That's more of 'middle management moderation'.