But this is, I think, where money comes into place; I fully expect some of the 'volunteers' for some of the more popular communities have found a way to make money off of it. I mean, they run communities with millions of views a day, surely there's money to be made out of that even if you don't work for reddit?
If the sub is popular enough Reddit will take it over and appoint new mods. Has happened before and will happen to some of the subs that choose to go dark as well.
> But this is, I think, where money comes into place; I fully expect some of the 'volunteers' for some of the more popular communities have found a way to make money off of it.
Definitely. Every (lead) moderator of a decently popular community is getting kickbacks one way or another. They do it for "free", but the only ones doing it without some compensation are absolute suckers.
This kills the community.
Or rather, it sets up the possibility of the same thing happening over again on a micro scale: the users (who contribute to the community without being paid) in revolution against the mods.