Reddit Admin team asking for volunteer moderators at tons of subreddits

I hope it all burns down.
- I hope they get a slew of new moderators who make every subreddit unbearable by deleting every good post and leaving only bullshit ones.
  
  That has already happened in the last years.
- Let’s rename it to Y first
  
  Huffman does love emulating Musk...

Imagine pissing off your free labour. Spez is a fucking idiot.
- People will line up by the thousands to become a new moderator. Reddit will keep their free labour.
  
  Of course they will, and at least 90% of those will stop moderating within a week bcause they have no idea what it entails and just like the sound of having power.
  Another 9.99% will push personal agendas, post ads, malware, etc. or a dozen other things that will kill the sub.
  In the end they'll probably get decent moderatos for less than a tenth of those they seek.
  
  People are downvoting you because they'd like to see otherwise, but you're right. Hell, I'd like to see otherwise, but it's not gonna happen.
  
  there's a lot of people clammering at the opportunity to shape conservations that fit their agenda. at least the cookers in the past were generally laughed out of the room but I've seen quite a few make concerted efforts to control certain subs
  
  I mean, they all have positive up votes (could be fake) and plenty of comments....
  
  They're usually the last people you'd want moderating. The best mods are ones who are putting the effort in to build up the kind of communities they want to subscribe to. It can be a significant time investment and a matter of responsibility rather than power. Folks who leap at these opportunities are looking for the latter.
  
  I would love to see what happens, its psycologically convieniemt to say its good evidence, its honestly a question of percentages. What percent will moderate the hellsite and what percent will be earnist.
- Like power craving losers won't jump at the opportunity to power trip
  
  Honestly at this point if that happens often enough and drives even more "regular" redditors away from reddit (and hopefully to Lemmy), I'm all for it.

Not to rain on the ‘fuck reddit’ parade, because well, fuck reddit, but the volunteer mod requests in the image are all two to three months old. Wasn’t all the backlash from the API decision only in mid-June?
- Good point, but it looks like it's still ongoing.
  
  Ha, one of them is The Monkey's Paw. How apropos.
  
  What are the replies like? Some have a lot so it doesn't appear they're struggling at all.
  
  I'm guessing a lot of the NSFW subs saw this as the final straw and just went to nsfw lemmy instead. Since they seem to be pravalent in all the "we need mods" posts.
- Great point, but if they were struggling to find mods before the meltdown it does not bode well.
  I follow a sports team sub. On most days we discuss players, teams, etc. But on game day a mob of rowdy people stop by. The game threads get several posts a minute. I cannot image trying to police that while trying to watch the game.
  
  That's the thing. We never did. We were all watching the games, then going through the threads afterwards.
- Can you see the solid red Snoo avatar next to each post?
  Yeah, those are Reddit admins.
  
  He's pointing out the requests are too old to be in response to the APIcalypse, not that they're not admin requests.
  
  Who else would post such stuff? Regular users, other mods? If a sub has no mods the admins have to step in. So this distinction you are making serves no purpose.
  This bot account is actually making recent posts, why the fuck is there a pic of these months old one?
  
  Yes, but they were all posted way before the API changes were announced, and thus the mod backlash
- Yeah, I don't understand why they posted this image. There's much more current posts of the same thing, some in the last two days.
  
  It's a reposting bot.
  Jk, probably.

- No, more fun-
  Apply as a moderator.
  Make subreddit private again.
  Repeat if you don't get banned.
  
  I'd be very surprised if the admins DON'T have a Richard Nixonesque "enemies list" that they check before letting new mods join the team. that level of control-freakishness and pettiness is right up their alley.
  Edit: missed a word.
- This is the best way because minimal risk and effort for you, and you can always say you didn't have access to automated tools to do moderation, which is true.
  
  What risk? They take away the mod position you didn't really want in the first place?

I am so tempted to volunteer.
And then immediately go malicious compliance, turning everything NSFW and creating funky rules for whatever subreddit they give me.
/r/Chrome would be exclusively about chromed-metal-centric DIY projects and car mods, everything else gets deleted and you get banned for repeat offenses.
/r/therapy would just have a single stickied link to a how-to-delete-your-reddit-data-and-profile guide.
Etc, etc.
- Apparently nylonfetish needs a mod. I feel like it's your time to shine.
  
  "This sub is exclusively for posts related to the fetish of people named Lon that live in New York."
- If you get assigned as a mod for one that they force removed the mods. You could just give control back to the old mods.
  
  Perfect!
  "My first action is to reinstate all the old mods. My section action is to resign. Bye!"
- Please do it, so many shit moderators like TheYellowRose on reddit suck up mod privileges then destroy subs with their misery

I find it especially concerning that subreddits dedicated to mental health like r/Anxietyhelp or r/therapy are just thrown into the mix to have some randoms be mods. They could easily come with bad intentions and even well intentioned individuals could inadvertently cause a lot of harm.The job of managing any community dedicated to helping those suffering from mental health issues is by no means an easy task just anyone can do. A lot of knowledge about mental health and certain subtle/not easily recognizable problems (i.e. covert incitement of suicide) is required. This is not something any responsible admin would just give away to just about anyone like this.
- And usually the moderators are people who suffer from said mental illnesses, so they know how to manage the community in a way that would be weird for a person who doesn’t suffer from mental illnesses would.
  Simply put, a neurodivergent mod is more likely to relate to neurodivergent user than a neurotypical mod would relate to a neurodivergent user.
  I agree, a lot of harm could be done if we throw random moderators in these subreddits.
  
  Just like TheYellowRose on reddit. She mods black subs and bans anyone not black lolol
- You have a Reddit doesn't give a fuck, nobody near the top of Reddit actually gives a fuck about us or you or your mental health, or who's giving you advice for it
  
  nobody near the top ~~of Reddit~~ actually gives a fuck about us or you or your mental health, or who’s giving you advice for it

We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn.
- Timmy play your trumpet watch the people go berserk!
- Burn mother fucker burn!
- I'll bring marshmallows
  
  I'll bring the scarecrow depiction of spez. Let's make it a bonfire.

They haven't gotten to mine yet (/r/sandals and /r/flipflops). I still have them set as private. The admins won't be happy with whoever takes over because they will 100% turn them into NSFW fetish subs.
- They IP banned me on all my accts for standing up to their BS. Banned accts that have only 1 post. Its insanity over there, seem like a desperate attempt to change the narrative\reinsert control and its working exactly the opposite.
  
  Lol yeah have a look at moderator TheYellowRose, she has an agenda to push and immediately bans and mutes anybody she disagrees with.
  I've seen post of women asking about hair style advice and she bans them because they are not black enough for that hairstyle lmfao misery needs company, or a subreddit to mod lol
- I fully abandoned /r/skin. It took me years to cut down the skincare spam and scams and quack medicine. Might as well invite the spammers back at this rate. I even turned off automod rules.
- /r/oldbabies... I have some ideas for where I'm taking that sub.

My favorite so far is /r/OpenAI, where the moderators locked and deleted the post call and the replies are mostly promises to enable NSFW pics only. 😂 Good mods!
- All those moderators in r/openAI were appointed as mods 4 days ago; They locked and removed it because reddit already picked new mods for the community.
- I just checked, it is amusing. Did the original moderators lock the thread?

It's so weird, there's no way they're not intentionally trying to kill the site.
- They are taking control of those subreddits where mods do not obey, part of more censorship.
- They're just incompetent, and led by that Hitlerjugend looking motherfucker Spez.
- Its plain hubris, they really think they know better than us plebs. Its going to get them in the end...
- All they're doing is locking the site down so they can make money and bounce when it's sold. When its your last day and you're about to get a fat check if the building is standing you don't care who's in it.
- They only care that the IPO goes well and that their VC investors recoup as much as they can.
  They have no care for anything past that. And if they have to use bots to inflate activity metrics, they will.

I am a mod of a dedicated niche Discord fanclub server. We run the server well enough that the actual creator of the thing we like & owner/admin of the official server pops in occasionally to say hi, interact, and give updates on events & future releases. Hell, even the mod team from the official server joined our server for a more casual experience.
If I wasn't passionate about the subject, there's no way I'd be helping to maintain it out of the "good of my heart". The work of moderating something with an ultra-large fanbase? If you don't truly and passionately care about it, forget it! And even if you did, it can still be too much of am endeavor to put up with for free!
To let just any rando moderate a community will lead to its downfall. I'm especially worried when it comes to things like mental health & recovery subs.
- Yeah, I am really sad to see mental health subs on this list, though I’m glad the mods of those subs left. That kind of sub should not be modded by random volunteers.

3 months ago?
- Looks like OP scrolled down a little too far in the user profile. There are several more from the last week, and they're all downvoted:
  
  r/OpenAI needs a mod. Oh, it's sooo tempting to mess with them.

Did the mods leave on their own or were they thrown out after the blackout?
- I think a bit of both
- Spez called them "landed gentry" so most of them ( with self respect anyway) left.
  
  Left or have made things difficult for the admins.
  Got the "You must reopen within 3 days" crap from the admins. Opened it, but they got the monkey paw as well. Set it such that every comment/post has to have an insanely long line of gibberish in order to get past AutoModerator. No one can comment, post or even edit now. Once the admins go away, I'll re-privatize it.
  
  In other cases, we had great mods step down with others opting to stick around so we can pin a link to the new home in the Fediverse (e.g., /r/android pointing to !android@lemdro.id).
- They IP banned me and my subs were pretty niche and small. This included all my alts that I used for very specific subs (like FO76) to prevent doxing. But I was pretty vocal on their BS and that was that...

Oh man, that's a huge potential for trolling right there!

Just wait until they enact the draft.
- u/ModCodeOfConduct: "Congratulations, soldier! You've been promoted to moderator of r/suicidewatch!"
  Recipient: "...But I'm just a 13 year old with depression and anxiety myself! And my account is only 8 days old!"
  u/ModCodeOfConduct: "Report for duty right now, slacker! The mod queue is filled up, and you have a job to do!"

r/therapy and r/anxietyhelp
I'm sure this will go well.
- Yep, some of these subs require a lot more than just passive moderation. The mods really ought to be qualified to evaluate the advice and support provided by posts and comments. Any joe shmoe is going to have a much harder time understanding when someone is getting bad advice from fake experts. I mean, the two you mentioned are pretty bad, but gods save the souls who are unprepared to moderate r/beardadvice.
  
  Oh wow, I didn’t even think about how bad beard advice could get. It’s easy to forget there’s skin under there, and then… well, good luck with that, lol.
- Because it could literally be life or death, I wouldn't put it past them to take a page from the ED warmline and try using bots. It sure worked for NEDA... /s

It’s only gross because they turn a profit on volunteers.

Sadly, my local laws, consider volunteering for a company as illegal work. So I can't help reddit. Of course there is dome exception, but none applies here.
- Sadly, my local laws, consider volunteering for a company as illegal work.
  Could you elaborate? I didn't think such a law would be allowed to exist.
  
  In the US it is technically illegal to volunteer for a for-profit private company under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Relevant part about it right from the Department of Labor: https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp

What's the pay like?
- $0 per hour, 24 hours, 7 days a week 😏

I checked and there are 14 posts requesting mods in the past 6 days.

no. pay me.

This is how communities go to shit. On average, the people signing up to mod are losers with nothing better going on, then they abuse their new powers they obtained by simply responding to a post
- I was a mod for a community of over 100k. Being a mod sucked. It was dealing with entitled users who wanted you to run the sub to their liking, nuking spammers and trolls, and basically caring for it like it was a digital baby.
  I did most of my moderation in RIF.
  I nuked my account and deleted it when the other moderators voted to reopen the sub. Lemmy life for me now.
  
  That sounds awful. This is one of the average moderators are shit idiots, because normal people don't have the capacity to do all that and their normal lives

No.

I think they misspelled "pawns" when they said volunteers.
These mods will be patsy's for the Reddit exec team to keep up the illusion of community until the stock IPOs.
- They have these people thinking they're actually part of something important, and when they IPO and Spez runs away with millions and gives them nothing, they'll still believe they're important and that Spez values them.

People should become mods and ban people left and right. Eventually users will get annoyed and leave the platform.😂😂
- I wonder how many people you could ban before anyone noticed you were banning everyone?
  
  If you didn't ban everyone, but just started interpreting things people said with the most uncharitable interpretation you can imagine, then banned them for the things you twisted them to say, you could probably continue that forever. Reddit will always give the mod the most charitable interpretation because that requires the least work, everyone who complains against your capricious bans would just be banned by the admins for harassing you.

Power mods about to be consolidating their power
- There's definitely Cheetos and cum on someone's keyboard over there.

Funny!
Is their AutoModerator still tracking all the porn subs?

Wow not even super niche communities either beard advice and whoosh used to be "popping" as they say

I would have accepted the offer so I can allow porn on the sub and remove every rules

“We can’t subsidize other people’s businesses” - Steve "Fuckface" Huffman

Oh dear and it's some of their more vulnerable subreddits too like Anxietyhelp and Therapy.
Oh and need some for Chrome, lol.
- become moderator for /r/Chrome
  Recommend people switch to Firefox

Reddit should have the top mod be an admin, for at least the majors. Kind of crazy that the don't.
- Then they'd have to pay them a salary.
  
  That would be sooo expensive.
- the subreddits do not really work like that. subreddits with same or similar themes pop up all the time but there is an element of randomness and passionate moderation that makes people flock to a particular one, which gains critical mass and become self sustaining.
  starting a subreddit as a paying employee would be a process of repeated trial and error until something sticks.
  promoting a mod to an employee introduces a profit motive that very easily ruin a subreddit.
  taking over a subreddit causes immediate exodus.
  the best content comes from organic discussion and careful moderation that guides the direction of the community. I don't think they can control the narrative of subreddit that have openly rebelled but I guess we'll see.
- Spez has consistently made the choice to not directly control different subs or give subs any institutional power.

That is SAD.
- No, this is an Arby's
  
  (sigh) It's both.
  
  This is a Wendy's, sir
- Seasonal affective disorder hitting early this year.
  
  TBF, some people get it in the summer, or have issues with seasons changing. But I know that wasn’t actually your point, lol.

we all must accept this offer, to accelerate the crash of reddit

Four of those were posted three months ago, well before this whole thing kicked off.
- Only means they were planning in advance.

Curious to know if the comments are more “What’s the time commitment…expectations…etc?” Or “Bahahaha fuk /u/spez and fuk reddit lolz”
- Yeah. Could you offer to do it for 100$/hour And if they pick you send bills to reddit?
- Imagine they're not reading comments and just pick a top level comment at random. And now you're a mod because you commented something like "fuck u/spez - told you so"

Yeah I tried creating a reddit user a month ago, and I was immediately shadow-banned.
I wouldn't be surprised if reddit has a "no fly" list.
- Oh there are subs there that are great. But dealing with reddit's infrastructure and new found task of appeasing venture capitalists and their cronies makes it very unappealing if not outright impossible.
- Honestly, this new community secret hot tub is just perfect.

But those were posted months ago?
- So? Ignore it.
  
  What I meant was, the "looking for moderator" posts were posted before the API thing happened.

Ask how much is the pay because giving away free labor for billion dollar corporations is for suckers.

We haven’t seen the fallout from mod departure and good bots shutting down yet. This is going to get ugly

they've closed r/r4r down 😔

Asking for warm body that does not close or nsfw sub until Spez's ipoh. No other work needed.

Just offer all the jobs to ChatGPT!
- NEDA tried that with their eating disorder hotline: it didn't end well...

More replies than I thought there would be. Are those volunteers?
- From what I've seen a lot of them are trolling the admins in the replies.
  Stuff like:
  As a former mod, I think there is no better choice for a new moderator of r/malefashionadvice than myself. My plan for the subreddit is simple. It's time to put "male" back in malefashionadvice. That means mandatory penis inspections before anyone is allowed to give advice or post in WAYWT. If high school sports teams can do it, why can't we? Thank you for your consideration.
  I would like to moderate this subreddit. I think getting rid of third party apps and removing the mfa mod team were awesome decisions and I want to expand on those ideas as a new and improved mod. First obviously we would institute bans on anyone who has participated in the misguided reddit protests. Second to make sure that reddit is effectively monetizing we will ban direct links to clothing websites and instead link through a new reddit shopping portal. Lastly i would ban the word scab, its distracting people from the content.
  I'd like to be a mod because I think Spez is a dishonest creep, as is everyone involved in the ModCodeofConduct account, and I pledge to do my very best to burn all your efforts to the ground.
  There's obviously going to be some begging for it, but I can't tell which of those are actually wanting it, or pretending to want it just to troll more.
  
  i would ban the word scab
  Pure poetry.
- People that have so little going on in life that moderating a community on reddit is fun
  
  I think it's fine with small communities that very few people visit and interact with. In that case, it's usually someone that likes to share about the niche hobby or fandom they enjoy learning about and spending time on. The bigger problems start happening when you get a bunch of users, or the moderators go on a power trip, or there is infighting, etc. I used to volunteer for a very small subreddit-- I wrote the CSS because I love visual design, basic rules because you don't want the like 5 visitors you get to be assholes, etc. I did it because it was a tiny community on a topic I was autistically interested in and I genuinely love learning and teaching about things I enjoy.
  Life got in the way and I left, coming back a couple years later to see things had snowballed into a moderator team that staged a coup against its other half, wild infighting in the community, and people power tripping just because they could. Thank goodness I could remember the subreddit as it used to be when I built it.
  But I do want to say that I believe this is a problem with any platform, Lemmy included. That's both the ugly and beautiful thing about community moderation... you can have wonderful and friendly experiences, or you can be beholden to the rule of the most abrasive dickheads you've met.
  
  I've always thought they wanted the power like cops or something
  
  I would have loved to be a mod of a reddit community when I was 16 years old
- Some trolling but there are always people who will jump at any opportunity to "take over" a community and it's almost always for the wrong reasons.
  Also just a heads up that your user icon isn't loading from your home instance nor mine.
  
  Luckily those users usually won't put in a decent effort to make the place enjoyable. They'll just contribute to the downfall
  
  Huh. I wonder why. It's loading in all of my clients - but, then, I was subscribed to a community on feddit.de, and it disappeared on me about a week later (I simply can't get to it). I figured there were some defederation shenanigans going on, on one side or the other, but maybe midwest.social is having some issues instead.
  I try to not care about problems with social networking; I find it's easier to maintain my chill that way.
  Thanks for the heads-up!
- Many will be fine with Reddit and the direction it is going in. There will always be new people coming into Reddit who have no idea of how things had been. Some will be more than happy to become mods. Reddit is still going to be active. They're going to refill the empty mod ranks and carry on as normal. The platform will happily carry on, we just jump ship from the shit show. So yeah people may well keep falling over themselves to engage with this new Reddit.
- Some. There seem to be no problem with reforming the mod ranks...

Let me tell you how I nearly downvoted the post reflexively because of the title. My bad on that, and seriously, what the fuck reddit. What utter trash.

Apparently Margot Robbie is a mod on our android (world) community? Isn't that cool? Reddit is old and busted. Maybe we'll see more celeb mods? Go figure.
- I don't think it's really Margot Robbie.
  
  Your name's Michael Bolton?

Wooooosh