zlacker

Some of the things that volunteer mods defend against is bot spam, repost spam, karma mining, abusive comments, and brigading. Unless Reddit has AI solutions for all of these (not a real suggestion - it's an arms race against similarly-AI-using spammers, and if Reddit had the engineering culture of ByteDance then it would have already built the moderator tools people had been requesting since 2015!) then its niche and generalist subreddits alike will lose their culture and quality faster than one can blink an eye.

>>btown+(OP)
> Some of the things that volunteer mods defend against is traffic, traffic, engagement, traffic, and engagement.

> then its niche and generalist subreddits alike will lose their culture and quality faster than one can blink an eye

reddit chaotically overriding subreddit moderation decisions has had that effect for a while.

>>btown+(OP)
I moderated a subreddit once. It sucked all the joy out of Reddit for me. Every time I visited the site, I got stressed as to what new nonsense happened.

Fun stuff I had to deal with include: The admin's "Anti-Evil Operations" frequently deleting user comments with no explanation. A persistent pedophile who just wouldn't go away. Getting guilt tripped by a severely mentally ill guy whenever we had to ban him (and his many alts) for breaking the rules. Doxx. Gore. Brigading. White supremacists. Racists with their "racial crime statistics". An impossible to moderate Reddit Chat (there were no chat moderation logs at all). And much more.

I completely checked out of moderation when I remembered that I wasn't getting paid to deal with any of the above. And since then, I've had much more appreciation for all the moderators who were willing to put in time and effort into maintaining a community for free.