Why would anyone actually want to be a Reddit moderator?
in Psychology ·
Jeremy Davis7 said:Look, I don't want this to come off as a provocation.
I honestly think it's a valid question, and I’m genuinely curious about what drives someone to become a moderator for a commercial media outlet.
What am I talking about?
Reddit, for instance—it's just one tiny slice of a massive global forum ecosystem under a brand that pulls in millions of users.
It's a massive brand that operates right here in the US market.
It covers a huge range of topics, and for it to work as a product or service provider... to actually create that sense of "added value" for the user, it needs to be curated, managed... moderated.
Okay. That much is crystal clear.
But that's also where the dilemma starts eating at me.
We're talking about a commercial entity here.
The owners of the domain and the brand own everything associated with it, and they exploit that brand commercially.
How? By selling advertising space that plenty of advertisers are itching to buy, because this place clearly gathers a massive amount of potential consumers and interested parties... you know, all those ads and banners popping up on the edges of the page or screen...
The biggest value for the owners is the traffic they sell to advertisers.
And that traffic is fueled by high-quality threads and organized moderation—maintaining order and "hygiene" in discussions, which directly impacts the quality of the site.
To make that happen, they need to hire a small army of people to oversee and moderate all these topics (and I mean globally; America is just a tiny fraction of the whole picture).
The owner's motivation is perfectly obvious to me.
Making money from selling ad space.
What I truly can't wrap my head around is how they managed to recruit thousands (my best guess) of volunteers who diligently, passionately, almost fanatically, do this work for free. They're basically working for nothing.
He's built a fantastic business, he's making serious bank, and his overhead is minimal.
Most importantly: the moderation (watching over all the threads) that ensures his precious traffic costs him absolutely zero dollars.
So, what motivates people to enthusiastically work for free on a commercial platform whose sole purpose is to turn a profit!?
From what I can gather, there's an entire moderation hierarchy; authorities, team structures, departments, recruitment methods, oversight protocols... it's actual fucking management!!?
Literally.
And all of it "for free"!
Nobody sees a single cent, yet they pour in their time, their talent, they carry the responsibility, they have to follow organizational structures, and so on...
What's the draw? What do they get in return?
Is it a game? A sense of mission? Feeling important? A little bit of power? The need to feel "cool," a sense of belonging... whatever it is!?
I'm seriously asking.
PS.
Whoever designed this business model is a genius worthy of a Nobel Prize.
A master psychologist who clearly understands how humans function and knows exactly how to instrumentalize that without blinking.
Basically: "I'm using your labor for my personal... definitely not charitable... purposes, I'm paying you nothing, yet you remain motivated, you work hard, and you're even happy about it."
Top tier stuff!
🙂
I honestly think you're way off base here.
Traffic and posting. High traffic means huge bandwidth costs (the sheer volume of data being moved around because of all the reading and writing). For instance, everything I'm typing right now represents "data" that the owner has to pay for in server space.
Advertisers. There are very few "real" advertisers (maybe some announcements for concerts, local events, or even humanitarian stuff). Most advertisers find a Reddit totally unappealing precisely because of how free people can write. Like, you can't expect someone like Walmart to want to advertise on a site where people might be tearing their business apart in the comments. So, big-name advertisers aren't really a thing here. Just look at Google Ads—you have to actually click the link just for the owner to scrape together a few cents.
Profit. When you crunch the numbers, after paying for servers and admins, the owner isn't walking away with a mountain of cash. In principle, they make way less than you'd think, maybe even just breaking even.
Moderators. I'm pretty sure most of them do it just to help people out. If you started paying them, the whole vibe of the platform would change; it would lose its sense of freedom, and everyone would feel it. And what's next? Paying users to post? 😉