While not required, you are requested to use the NP (No Participation) domain of reddit when crossposting. This helps to protect both your account, and the accounts of other users, from administrative shadowbans. The NP domain can be accessed by replacing the "www" in your reddit link with "np".

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Lol no, its voluntary

Yeah, this has to be satire.

well Reddit could always 1000 retain unpaid interns to mod the forms for "career experience."

Wouldn't that be awesome if m0ds, posters, repliers, and so on each got a cut based on how much they contribute?

Yeah, totally wouldn't see the same names posting the same reposted content for the millionth time in the hopes they can earn a nickel.

Base it on unique upvotes, original content, reputation, participation, and so on. There are a number of ways it can work successfully

Repost should be excluded

I mean they kind of do, most major mods on the big subreddits are owned by SEO marketing companies. Advertisers spend more money than you can imagine assuring something gets marked well. So its common sense for advertisers within certain fields to gain access to moderating what ever field they advertise within.

Elgin AFB could be a good place to look for volunteers

Lol college football

Music industry. I cleaned toilets and made tea under the guise of an internship. I didnt see a penny for the first year.

What’s the problem if they are volunteers? I genuinely don’t understand. There’s no exploitation, because everyone knows the deal and agrees to it.

I think almost every forum that has existed since the birth of the internet, has relied on unpaid moderators.

Yes, but that’s not quite a forum.

do you mean like, the mods of a meme page, or the page for something like say the super smash bros melee shitposting community? As far as I know those mods receive nothing from facebook and shit on the platform constantly.

Group pages on Facebook are run voluntary.
An individual's 'Facebook wall' is their own forum and they determine content without pay.

not to mention any other sort of fan group or social club based on the topic.

Any discord community leader.

Any Facebook group moderator.

Old school computer game mods.

Any of the million mods on any forum ever............

Restaurants that pay waitresses 2.13 per hour are close.

Hmmm... I think there may be more to it than that.

I have a job, it pays me, I do that work voluntarily.

The people that moderate these subs are volunteers, but Reddit isn't a non-profit. Im trying to think of other for profit companies that employ volunteers, but I'm at a loss.

I think it's a valid point, that the moderators are an integral part of Reddit business model and provide a necessary service to the company without compensation.

I think the OP has a valid point, worthy of discussion.

Lol you volunteer to work for money, mods volunteer to work for free.

I think the question is should they be required to pay people to do this job. Yes people are doing it for free. Yes, they signed up for it. However, Reddit benefits greatly from the labor of these volunteers, and may be violating labor law by not hiring moderators.

People enjoy it, that's the surplus value of this commodity, otherwise they wouldn't do it. They're not forced to do anything. We all benefit from this.

I understand your point. The mods volunteer their time because they get a kick out of it. That's true. They wouldn't be doing it if they didn't want to, I can't argue with that either.

My point is that Reddit is a for profit company which employs unpaid volunteer workers and profits from their labor. This may be a violation of labor law. I'm not saying it definitely is illegal, only that it's an interesting point, and I don't think the idea should be easily dismissed.

They are not employees lol this has to be satire

Clearly the mods don’t mind. And if they don’t want to mod for free... they don’t have to.

You're right. People are providing a service to Reddit, for free, and without this service the business would not exist.

I suppose the answer is a moderators union. Allow the moderators to bargain for compensation in return for their labor. Labor which has made Reddit a multimillion dollar corporation.

They could try, but Reddit could simply replace them with people who would be willing to mod for free.

They certainly would. I keep thinking of parallels to any labor movement though. Anytime workers try to organize the company tries to and usually does remove them, but often the workers prevail and win wage gains or different forms of compensation. Im truly curious if the value a good moderator brings to Reddit would be worth compensation. Any company would pay you nothing if you would work for free. Maybe eventually Reddit will have to pay moderators; maybe not.

I'm thinking the admin accounts are sort of already paid moderators and they police the volunteers, so maybe in that way they are already paying for some moderation.

Seriously, I'm not sure that they should be paid, I just find it a very interesting idea. The internet has escaped a lot of legislative oversight and I wonder if this won't be an issue in the future.

I see no benefit to mandating that internet moderators be paid for work they gladly perform for free.

Possibly. What do you think would be harmful or dangerous?

Stifling online communities.

Stifling online communities.

Nobody asked them to Mod..... They are not required to mod. They are not required to keep a sub up and running. They aren't required to do anything, can quit at any time with no repercussions, and don't have to follow many PR rules or guidelines that a company employee would be.

They aren't required to do anything,

Wasn't the rationale behind banning the Q subs that the moderators didn't delete offensive content to the admins liking?

For profit prisons. Most guilty prisoners know the risks and rewards associated with their criminal endeavors. I call that volunteering should you get caught doing breaking the rules. Are all the rules fair? No, but they are the rules.

I have a job, it pays me, I do that work voluntarily.

Not really. In order to sustain that relationship, there is subordination. You receive the money contingent on your subordination and handling obligations.

Mods can come and go as they please. Join, quit, lessen their participation, increase it... There's no obligation, no subordination.

It's voluntary, except that moderation is required in order to keep the large majority of subreddits from being shut down. On top of that, Reddit's popularity and ergo revenue stream is incredibly dependent on the free moderation that the users of the site provide. Can you imagine if the moderators of a large subreddit like /r/pics decided overnight to stop doing their "job"? Reddit would surely co-opt the subreddit and hand it over to someone new, but why is that fair to those who have put so much time in to growing the subreddit to it's current size, which has surely brought in tons more revenue for Reddit?

And then it begs the question how a subreddit with 20 million readers is being successfully moderated by only 28 volunteers? The answer is probably they are corporate plants who are paid full time by their own business entity to help certain marketing posts thrive in the Reddit ecosystem.

the automod deletes half the posts there anyway lol

Reddit can still afford to give out some compensation

moderation is required

Required in terms of being beneficial, but not required in order for Reddit to operate.

Well, in America there was a bad law passed several months ago that basically said websites' owners are responsible for anything their users post; that is that they do have to moderate or get shut down.

Some websites are more enthusiastic about moderating than others though - there have been multiple attempts at a r/piracy discord for example, but Pisscord won't stand for it and shuts them all down.

If reddit has volunteers doing a job, they can't have paid employees doing same job. That's how I read the law.

Accepting a job for a nickel a day would be voluntary as well, yet illegal.

Mods aren’t employees. By your logic something like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk would be illegal.

Well, I don't believe that volunteers are employees, though I guess that I did seem to imply that I did. I was replying more to the dismissiveness of the OP. I just think there's room for a discussion on how most of the social media mega-corps don't create anything, they only exist to extract capital from crowdsourced content.

It reminds me of an always sunny episode where Charlie is asking Frank how his company makes money, what is their product. Frank replies "What do you mean? There is no product, we make money." These companies just make money, they build machines that can suck profit straight from the hive.

Anyways, regarding reddit mods specifically, I think the (alleged) peer-controlled nature of reddit is the reason it even exists as it does.

What do you mean they don’t create anything? They create new tools for communication.

LITERALLY FORCED TO BE A SLAVE BY REDDIT

Are PVP games like Clash Royale using unpaid FTP workers to battle against PTP customers?

It’s actually how they get common people to do their bidding as well as get them drunk on the very little power they have. Think about it. A lot of mods LOVE having the power to ban people. Let’s be real. I think it’s just a way for the powers that be to give certain peons just a little taste of power ,and boy do they get addicted to it and eat it up. One of The things I always find it funny that moderators complain about is that they say how they are tired of censoring or having to ban people or how this or that is becoming too much work. I just tell them to step down then. If you’re not getting paid then you’re willingly doing the service. Don’t bitch about it. And then drag everybody down to try to make your job easier. Don’t like the job? Then leave! But you won’t! because you like to have that power! I’ve seen this bullshit happen on way too many subs and Facebook pages. Mods will bitch on how they don’t wanna have to do any of the work to monitor a sub. Then don’t! Nobody’s asking you to censor anything! but they won’t step down. why? Because they just want to keep that power plain and simple.

Tldr: TPTB know that giving certain peons a little bit of power will go to their head. Therefore they will censor all the other peons because “yayyyy I finally have power over something for once!” It’s really just fucking sad. Moderators destroy free speech and free information. I have never had a brush with any mods on this Sub but I have had a lot on others. It just gets worse if they have lackeys or users that kiss their ass because then it’s like trying to avoid stealth mods.

Does that mean mods see illegal shit before it gets taken away? Is it even likely that mods can get away with storing or hiding certain things they don't want to flag?

Seems very TPtb ish.

And users are generating all the content, largely by stealing it!

Big corps prolly pay Reddit to be mods in certain subs

Nah, you got it backwards, big corps pay users to be mods, or at least log onto mod accounts.

Shady world we live in maaannnn

If it makes you feel any better there are probably very few moderators of large subreddits that aren't getting a paycheck. Not from reddit, necessarily but..yeah.

It’s legal, are they complete weirdos and control freaks for working for free? Yes.

Who the fuck cares

Hopefully most people

I have more important shit to care about than someone getting banned from a subreddit.

That's way the fuck down the list.

I agree, but commenting on it wasn't?

Jesus... Are you stupid?

You asked a stupid question.

Removed. Rule 10

Removed. Rule 10

“Unpaid...” LOL. You think the mega subs are ran by normal janitors?

Volunteers not getting paid is common accepted practice. That's why its called volunteering.

Lmao

You got this from the same person who thinks a majority of subreddits are run by Trump loving people.

HAHAHAHAHAHAH

Mods are 'interns'?

In fact, the unpaid intern should perform little or no productive work. In this regard, employers should know that the DOL views filing, performing other clerical work, or assisting customers as the type of productive work that would create an employment relationship. With this in mind, structure the program so that the intern – rather than the company – benefits most from the relationship.

Yes. Because reddit exercises editorial control.

TIL moderators code and......ah, fuck it. I'll try again.

TIL this is most possibly the #1 dumb arse reaching idea for opening a thread of the week.

A lot of subreddits are "Vanity Press." The mod is able to push an agenda.

if only somebody could prove they were paid by somebody...

Very similar cases like this have already been decided. AOL moderator volunteers got a class lawsuit against AOL for back pay. Similar lawsuits have been done against volunteer tech support boards on hardware manufacture's websites.

Also brings to mind companies abusing unpaid interns to do work otherwise done by a paid employee.

Basically, yes, if you're a for-profit business using volunteers to do work you'd otherwise have to pay someone to do, then legally they count as employees.

Hopefully most people

Well, I don't believe that volunteers are employees, though I guess that I did seem to imply that I did. I was replying more to the dismissiveness of the OP. I just think there's room for a discussion on how most of the social media mega-corps don't create anything, they only exist to extract capital from crowdsourced content.

It reminds me of an always sunny episode where Charlie is asking Frank how his company makes money, what is their product. Frank replies "What do you mean? There is no product, we make money." These companies just make money, they build machines that can suck profit straight from the hive.

Anyways, regarding reddit mods specifically, I think the (alleged) peer-controlled nature of reddit is the reason it even exists as it does.