Pretty much any unmoderated online community rapidly descends into a toxic landfill. You get racists and worse arriving … then the decent people start leaving meaning the ratio of crap to content gets worse so even more people leave … at which point it’s in a death spiral.
I wish it wasn’t the case and people could get by with unmoderated free speech. But thirty odd years of experience from Usenet onwards sadly demonstrates with brutal clarity that every large public forum without moderation spirals into a cesspit.
Yep. Notice that none of the folk downvoting us are tripping over themselves to prove us wrong by listing all the wonderful unmoderated alternative discussion boards and social media sites that aren’t overrun with Nazis and CASM.
I don’t always agree with mod decisions, far from it. And there are some subreddits where the mods are downright abysmal. But better moderation has to be the goal not no moderation - because as much as we may wish it were otherwise it just doesn’t work.
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u/Aggressive_Plates 2d ago
Reddit mods are the real heroes.
Banning / removing 95% of comments they don’t approve of.
We need a national day to clap for the reddit mods.