[mach1ne]

That’s not even close to being the main problem in launching a Reddit competitor. Reddit moderators are unpaid. Content moderation not being automated is not a problem. People like to do it for free.

The problem is the user base. Biggest obstacle for any social media site is attaining critical mass. In order to do that, you need to be an order of magnitude better than your competitors on some metric which makes the users choose your platform over their entrenched one.

[phpisthebest]

>> Content moderation not being automated is not a problem. People like to do it for free.

The old classic saying is "Anyone that wants to be a politician is not someone you want as a politician"

Well that is true for reddit mods as well, people that like to moderate subreddits are drawn to the action because they like to have power over the others, this is generally not someone you want in charge of anything

[fooqux]

There are technical solutions to that problem though. I remember a Reddit replacement from a couple years ago called Aether. It made all moderation public, allowed clients to ignore a certain mod's actions (basically, personally removing them as a mod as far as their view is concerned), and allowed votes of no confidence for mods.

No idea if that model would actually work, as the app itself was one of those cool-on-paper-but-not-in-reality P2P types which made everything slow and likely made it rough attracting users.

[jimmygrapes]

I really liked Aether from a design and user interface standpoint, and even accepted it as a valid use of blockchain tech, but it was also the blockchain aspect that hampered it. Took too long to do things, and required a desktop client. Plus, of course, the network effect of no users. I hope those can be (or have been) solved some day.

[pwpw]

Perhaps we need a sort of jury duty for content moderation where you are somehow held accountable for your actions and decisions.

I would be fine occasionally contributing some moderation to a community I am an active member of. I find I already have to do some of that on my workplace Slack when people get aggressive with the @here tag reaching the entire company when they really want one of 5 people.

[l72]

I always thought Slashdot's meta-moderators was an interesting idea. Before you could ever moderate (vote up/down), you first had to get enough points via meta-moderating.

Meta-moderating consisted of being shown a single comment and how an unknown moderator scored it. If enough meta-moderators disagreed with how a moderator was scoring, then that moderator would eventually lose all their moderation points.

Those that meta-moderate would slowly gain points they could use to moderate (no one had unlimited moderation points)

Granted, slashdot was different in that it only applied to comments. Post on the front page were done by slashdot employees. Reddit would still need a different level of moderators to remove inappropriate posts all together.

[0x445442]

Moderation is really not the problem if you just remove comments. I’ve thought for a while that crowd sourced link ranking with a good search mechanism would be more useful than google. For tech related topics I often find HN search to be more useful than google.

[RhodesianHunter]

>Reddit moderators are unpaid.

Moderators won't exist without users.

Users won't join a shit filled platform.

The thing you're claiming as the biggest problem is dependent on the thing I'm claiming is the biggest problem.