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I'm a Reddit moderator of a medium-sized sub. We're talking more than 100k, but less than 300k. The amount of bullshit we need to filter out is tremendous. There's constant spam every day, and it's hard to catch all of it. We allow self promotions of original content, but only once per account and per topic, otherwise the whole sub turns into a spammy, boring mess. Automoderator helps, but Reddit does not. All of our content is in a different language and Reddit either ignores most spam or overreacts on a report and bans a user who was using local lingo to perform a joke. There is no in-between. The seniority of anyone's account doesn't mean a thing to Reddit. A simple botched GoogleTranslate-like action on a comment can get you banned fully from the platform, even as a moderator. Do we delete discussions? Yes, yes we do, when the situation calls for it. You don't get to cause a ruckus or ad-hoc insult people. You also don't get to spread rumors, obvious disinformation and pseudo-science. Save it for FB. You also don't get to threaten anyone or claim person X is of lower value due to their nationality, creed or religion. If there is too much content related to one topic, we'll delete your post and ask you to join the already submitted one. If we sense that your tone is causing a flame war, we'll nuke the whole thread. It's called moderation, not free speech. Banning is a last resort. If you feel we've wronged you, you can always send us a polite message explaining what's up. If you feel we suck, there's always the option to create a different subreddit. Why do I do this? I normally wouldn't, but this subreddit is very important to me because it's one of the last few places left to freely discuss about the politics and daily life of a certain geographical region we live in. Homegrown forums are no longer easily visible on Google, cost money to host and have a worse interface. Facebook groups can't fill the void because people's full names are visible. So, in spite of the government crackdown on dissenting opinions, we somehow thrive under anonymity. Do people curse us? Hell yes, some do. In fact, people from HN on here are somehow managing to act holier than thou and paint us as power hungry basement dwellers. Fun. I'll let you know, I would rather not deal with your shit and would rather do something else, but for now it's my moral duty to stick to what I'm doing and put in all the effort I can to ensure a safe, free zone for discussion. But at some point, most moderators will leave. We can get banned just as easily as our users, there is little to no protection awarded to us, people hate us for deleting their content and then they try and dox or attack us. And now you get what you asked for: fully automated moderation. A poorly made translation layer pushing content to an ML trained dataset indicating whether something is hate speech or a threat, overseen by underpaid 3rd world workers who will eject you from the whole platform at their leisure. |