Reddit has become highly successful as a political discussion forum for people from pretty much every part of the spectrum, but the moderation is utterly opaque. Even relatively centrist subreddits, such as /r/Canada, have mods who ignore the published moderation rules of their own subreddit and do what they please. If they don't like a thread or post it just disappears, even if it violated no rule. Reddit's moderation system is designed to prevent users from seeing how it works.

The result is a cocktail of factors ripe for exploitation:

1. Some political subreddits have hundreds of thousands of users and are highly influential.

2. Mods have unrestricted power and virtually no accountability. Users have no way to check that moderation is fair and unbiased.

3. Mods are unpaid and anonymous.

If Russia or China specifically set out to design a way to influence foreign politics, Reddit would be a fantastic platform to do just that. If you can get mods in your pocket you can promote or suppress issues to suit whatever agenda you desire.

If Reddit were going to try to reign in the very worst of its mods, /r/The_Donald would probably be a good place to start. Most reddit users view that forum as a cesspool that was quarantined for good reason. However, the methods Reddit is using here are as opaque as that of the moderators themselves. There has been no direct communication to users. All the reporting on this "purge" is sourced from the purged moderators themselves. While I have no sympathy for the mods of /r/The_Donald whatsoever, the way Reddit is operating here is indeed reminiscent of a totalitarian state's propaganda ministry. They permit much, but certain things bring the fist down hard, and it's done in a way that most people are not meant to see.

If you rely on Reddit for political information then you are making yourself vulnerable to unknown influences. While reddit is a fantastic resource in many ways, it's simply not safe to rely upon for certain things.

With most traditional news sources now being owned by a small number of international conglomerates, there is a real need for alternative forums of political discussion. Reddit, as it currently exists, should not be that forum. However, with changes something like Reddit could be made to work. Such a forum would need to make moderation much more transparent. You can't give mods the power to simply disappear that which they don't like. Users need to be able to examine the actions of moderators and question them. Taking away the toy of unchecked, anonymous power would naturally make it harder to find mods, so they might actually have to be paid. How you make money like Reddit does without volunteer moderators is a problem worth solving, as is finding a way to select moderators that can be trusted by the community they serve and not necessarily the company paying them.