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Comment by TX81Z | Hacker News Reader

The fact that he isn’t keeping his free labor force happy is the problem. Other companies put hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of staff into moderation. This moron has people doing that FOR FREE and he’s pissing them off.

Seriously, do you have any clue how much just YouTube alone spends on content moderation? Or Facebook? These are absolutely massive investments.

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There's always another power hungry person to step up. The site would probably be better if the entire crop were removed outright. How many social media websites have you used where you can't even comment on a basic news forum for the first two months?

Why don't you mod then? Everyone thinks it is an easy job with all these 'power' perks, then when they get onboard they figure out it is actually a lot of work and mostly just pissing people off because you can never please everyone.

It is like people who say 'those who cannot do, teach'. Hey, maybe teaching is hard work and most people suck at it?

The type of person who thinks mods are all power tripper do-badders who could be easily replaced is usually the type of person who doesn't bother reading the rules of the community before posting, or who resorts instantly to insults in disagreements, or who think it is funny to piss people off.

Do you even use reddit? I'm genuinely curious because your post comes off as someone who doesn't know how it works. To be a mod I would have to cozy up to the current mods and play politics to become one. I was banned from r/news years ago for saying the migrant caravan existed in response to a comment saying there was no evidence that migrant caravans existed and linked one of the multiple videos. The message was simply "get out" followed by a presumptive muting so I couldn't respond to it. I was also blanket banned from ~70 subs because I made one post correcting someone in r/nonewnormal.

“If you think everyone around you is an asshole, chances are…”

That's not even close to what I was saying. Were you just hoping it was with that response?

And that there is why the system of volunteer moderators doesn't work.

You bring up legitimate concerns and you're met with either stony silence, or you get called an asshole.

How do you propose to engage with people who are antagonistic?

Have you ever worked a customer service job?

By thinking that people who deal with the public and their complaints and entitled attitude constantly are the ones who are unreasonable by default, you show a powerful ignorance about how many people act when they want something and can't immediately get it for any reason.

I’ll never figure with an internet this vast, anybody would be unable to take a hint that a particular community doesn’t want them and move on to one that does.

If a community bans you it’s the wrong community for you, it’s not a conspiracy at play, you just don’t belong.

Find the people who do share your views and go play in that sandbox.

I've used reddit regularly for 14 years and have never been banned from any sub. I share Eisenstein's assumptions. Also, having looked up what r/nonewnormal was, I don't fault any mod for noticing a pattern and trying to save themselves some trouble, even if casting a wide net has false positives.

> To be a mod I would have to cozy up to the current mods and play politics to become one.

Anyone can start a subbreddit. And in your subreddit, you can do all the work it takes to create a community, and then you can ban people for whatever reason you want and feel that tasty power that the mods love so much, and see how awesome it is to get cursed at, told how terrible you are and how much your community sucks, and how they are going to dox you and plant meth on you so that you lose custody of your children.

“Yes, but you see the problem is I want to pee in YOUR pool. If I were to build my own pool then I’d have to swim YOUR pee.”

The powers that be have deemed that they don't care what the "free labor force" wants or thinks. They care about the experience of the users, not the experience of the rulers of petty internet fiefdoms.

Reddit has indicated that it wants to pay for content moderation. So be it. Who are you to tell them how they run their company?

Maybe when we move away from "volunteers" then the "volunteers" can get real jobs that pay real money! It'll be good for them.

That’s my point: they benefit from a huge volunteer labor subsidy. They can’t afford to moderate it themselves as they clearly don’t have the financial resources.

They are free to run the biz into the ground, won’t be the first or last to do so. Meanwhile YouTube will keep printing cash.

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