A brief glance at /r/technology mods has shown me the following (mods listed from top to bottom):

/u/qgyh2 moderates over 120 subreddits, including default subreddits /r/technology, /r/pics, /r/worldnews and a bunch of subreddits that could be used as content control such as /r/obama and /r/Israel.

/u/Xiphorian is a largely inactive user. As of this post he hasn't posted anything in 27 days and before that, 3 months ago. Why is someone like this even listed as a mod? Either he's a sockpuppet who only uses the account to moderate (and likely to control content) or he's just plain inactive.

/u/kn0thing moderates over 75 subs, but nothing besides /r/technology really stands out to me.

/u/maxwellhill moderates only 15 subs, but those include /r/technology, /r/funny, /r/worldnews, /r/obama and /r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut. It's also of note that he never posts comments. Ever. Everything he posts is a link to another site.

/u/ketralnis moderates over 20 subs, including /r/technology and /r/science. Both of which are known to be big on censorship. Other than that he seems fairly innocent...

/u/DrJulianBashir moderates over 20 as well, including /r/technology and /r/videos. /r/canada may be another big sub to mention... But like the last one, he doesn't seem to be a big problem...

/u/davidreiss666. I think we all know this guy by now. Moderates over 85 subs including /r/technology and /r/bestof, but he also moderates a WHOLE LOT of political subreddits, as well as subs of potentially controversial content. Just look at that freakin' list! This guy is MASSIVELY suspect.

/u/anutensil moderates nearly 100 subs, including /r/technology, /r/worldnews and /r/history. But then you look further down and notice that he moderates a ton of political subs, and tons and tons of other subs that could easily be used to control content. Another hugely suspect user.

/u/TheSkyNet moderates only a few subs, just 11, but that includes, of course, /r/technology, as well as /r/europe (which DavidReiss666 also mods), but overall he doesn't seem too suspect...

/u/Skuld moderates over 150 subs, including a plethora of popular subs. Most of it seems to be nonsense subs and random music subs, but there's also a few political subs hidden in there, plus /r/europe, which makes me wonder...

...As I thought. Most of /r/europe is moderated by a few guys who have very few subs under their mod belt, but then on the other hand you have these huge content controllers like DavidReiss666 and Skuld.

Seems like a very small amount of users have a whole lot of power 'round here...

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/r/risinghtreads is a hint. That's the cabal you want to look at.

As my first comment with this account anywhere on reddit, I would like to invite you to x-post this question to /r/qcic please.

Here is my reasoning.

If you are assembling a puzzle, you dump all the pieces on the table and start sorting the pieces: edges first, then sort the remainder by predominant color, etc.

This is, in my honest opinion, a better approach to the mission of the qcic sub, than to try to take on one mod at a time.

Sort through the pieces of the racket in order to build a whole picture of what's really happening.

How would you allow for sockpuppets and alliances. For example, BritishEnglishPolice oversaw the Obama-shill takeover of /r/politics a few years ago. PHOY was motivating things, but turned out to be Karmanaut and a few other socks.

Reddit started as a gamed site with fake posters, so that's built pretty deep into the system.

I see this question brought up every couple months whenever someone notices it, usually after a mod does something questionable. It just gains a small amount of attention then goes back to business as usual. My guess is the people that bring this subject up just move on from reddit or just give up. New users that have been on the site for a little while then notice it and the cycle continues.

Im new to reddit (I'm from the usenet generation) and I was actually surprised just how shady it turned out to be. Interesting no one has started up an alternative community seeing how the software that runs reddit is open-source.

In many ways reddit echos the same power structures we find in real life. A seemingly user powered community with democratic controls, but dig deeper and you find this to be a farce. A set of faceless power brokers manage opinions from above (planted mods) and below (sock armies). It's quite beautiful when you consider it; it's a perfect system for hiding behind the curtains.

They say say there are mods but it could be only "one person or one team" with an agenda, behind the curtain.