this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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As a moderator myself, it's a pretty thankless job. It's a bit like being a politician in that no matter what you do, there are lots of people that are going to hate you.
Thank you for your service o7
I have to ask, then: what motivates people to do it?
If mods are not financially compensated for it, the only rational explanation is that they are either getting some form of benefit (soft power, access to privileged information) or they are getting some pleasure out of it, i.e, power tripping.
I think a lot of people do it because they want to build communities and bring people together. It's easy to underestimate the workload and what kind of problems come up. A big problem is that people start instances, and gradually realize that they're basically stuck running things until they either hand it off to someone else, or shut down.
Funny how some people expose their own sad world views by projecting it onto others 😅
Some people chose to do the right things because they are right, not because they benefit from them.
This is just another way of saying that people do things for moral validation - a.k.a, self-righteouness - and is no at all different from "power tripping".
That is a rather toxic way of looking at the world. I get it, I kind of can rationally understand the idea that you can explain all selfless behavior as being selfish because the least you get out of it is dopamine, so you are wired to feel good doing what you think is right.
Now, can you tell me how this is just not a very shitty and cynical lens to view humans through? I've had my nihilistic phase in my 20's. I hope you also find a way out of the hole of the "arbitrariness" of ethics.
Because each other is all we have, and ethics is ultimately what makes us human. The ability to reprogram our own pleasure circuit and maybe, just maybe, just use it to be not an asshole, just to start with. And then at some point just do something nice for others. Because if everybody did that, the world would not be the shithole it is.
I'm thankful to mods who volunteer their free time to tend to the garden of the communities they care about.
I am not at all talking about the cases of someone who is passionate about some topic and then goes on to cultivate a community around it, and I am not saying "every moderator is doing it for some ulterior motive".
I am talking specifically about the types that put on themselves to become mods of dozens of subreddits. Or instance admins that go months in a row begging for money to be able to pay their own bills, instead of shutting down the instance or make it only for those that contribute back.
IOW, I am talking about the cases where people act beyond what anyone would consider "healthy".
Okay wow, thanks for the clarification. That is indeed weird. Yeah, then I guess I agree, it's really ... Just not very healthy behavior.
Okay I mean for some people maybe this whole Internet thing, becomes too much an end in itself, maybe they are missing something in life and trying to get it that way.
If you are employed, have family and/or friends and a hobby or two, how do you even have the time to mod dozens of subs and stuff like that?
So if they are doing it while being nice, one can actually say they could need some empathy. If they are not being nice, well, for such cases it might explain why the other things in life might be lacking.
Nah I get no dopamine from doing the right thing its neutral, some ppl just help build the place they want to see, obviously no one does anything for no reason at all?
Yeah, right 🤦 Sorry but I must conclude you have some serious intellectual stunting if you truly believe that. ~~Ayn Rand level of delusion.~~
Hey, any comparison to Ayn Rand or their fans should be an immediate ban. No need to go that low.
All I've been arguing with you could be summed up as "if we want the Fediverse to be universal, we will need to grow a lot faster and we need to accept the reality that not everyone values the same things as you do" and you responding "No, I don't to make the Fediverse universal because most people are too morally weak to stand for the things I care about".
(And if you think I am exagerating: don't make me look for the conversation where you said that people should be okay using this crap because the other open source alternatives committed the grave sin of "raising money from investors".)
Fine I didn't need to go as low as Ayn Rand.
But I think you still didn't get my argument last time. Tl;dr: there is no point in doing what you propose as it just results in recreating the same shit we already have. This has nothing to do with moral failings and everything with strategy and not repeating the same mistakes all over again.
And besides that I agree that Siskin isn't great, and most likely suggested this instead. And that "open-source alternative" is now open-core and can't pay their bloated expenses now that VC funding has run dry. I hope you see the irony in what you just wrote, because that is really a clear example of how unsustainable and ill advised that kind of growth is.
This is you passing opinion as undisputed truth. I am not proposing "Let's take on the big corporations by building another big corporation", I am saying "we can get rid of the dominance from big corporations if we help foment an economy of small, independent businesses." and I am saying "if we keep this anti-business culture where we are hostile to even some food truck owner trying to connect to their customers, then don't complain when the food truck owner continues using Facebook/Instagram/Twitter".
Synapse is still AGPLv3. Their closed parts are for Enterprise. No one is being locked out of crucial features. No one is being locked out of reaching out other users of the network. No one is being forced to "upgrade" after reaching a certain size. To call it open-core is just yet-another display of bias.
Monal does not make video calls! Not having video calls was a non-starter in 2015, let alone today.
Is it? Because so far I managed to talk with a lot more people on Matrix than I ever did on XMPP, and that wouldn't change even if Element closed shop tomorrow. And even if it did, the odds would be highly in favor of some other company like Beeper picking up the pieces to serve its customers and it would still be in their interest to keep things open to have the ecosystem around.
So, at the end of the day, yes, I'd rather have this "unsustainable" growth than claiming any moral victory for sticking to the Betamax of chat protocols. This "unsustainable" system gave me and few hundred million people something that is far from perfect, but at least it can make video calls on iOS.
Lets not repeat the entire argument, but you are being extremely naive and literally play lipservice to what Mark Zuckerberg thinks the Fediverse should become.
And, no. Vital parts for running a somewhat decently sized Synapse instance are not AGPLv3 licenced, Element requires a CLA so they can easily alter the deal even further, and their own marketing people go around fearmongering about the AGPL, which is a classic play of open-core companies. If it walks like a duck and all that...
And Matrix had never even close to a few hundred million users. By their own admission during the presentation at the last FOSDEM, their MAU is barely above 300k. That's what IRC had before Matrix started canibalizing them 🙄
Yeah, completely typo'ed here. I wanted to change from "hundred of thousands" to "a few million" and ended up with the worst combination. Too late to edit, now.
If you ask me, I think Zuckerberg wants to commoditize the social graph and position his company to become the AWS of social web applications. It would be the best way to skirt all regulations (because he would claim that he is only providing infrastructure and is not liable for the content) and it would let he profit from the others by providing service and by snooping on the data they get through their servers.
And you know what? I'd be absolutely fine with him trying to do it. I actually would like to see how this would play out. I'd rather have a world where Zuckerberg has the "AWS of social media' than a world where he has "Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram and whatever competition he manages to kill by buying them off".
A world where Zuckerberg owns the AWS of social media implies a world where others like Hetzner, OVH and all the gajillion VPS low-end boxes can exist. As horrible and morally bankrupt Zuckerberg is, letting him make this move would be an improvement over the status quo.
Even if some compromises have to be made, a world where Zuckerberg controls 30-40% of the social web leaves us all some room to work and maintain a healthier alternative to our friends and family. And this is a better world than the one where we pretend to pass ideological purity test but inevitably need to install and use WhatsApp to talk with a friend or to send a picture to my parents.
Define "vital" and define "decently sized". What point does AGPL Synapse becomes impossible to use? Are we talking about an instance for an university with a few thousand students and faculty? A company with a few hundred employees?
Couldn't that issue be solved by simply breaking a larger instance into smaller subgroups? Couldn't this "soft-ceiling" on instance size be actually a positive thing, as it would encourage better distribution of the user base among different service providers?
But more importantly, why should I care so much about theoretical, technical limitations that affect virtually no one and give preference to an alternative ecosystem that does not even have an decent client that people can use to make video calls?
Fine, if you want to be the useful fool for Mark Zuckerberg you can do that, but I rather be not. The improvement in that setup is mainly on the side of Mark Zuckerberg as you write yourself. The rest would be some maganged opposition only existing because Mark lets them. But we had that argument before.
You are finding excuses for shitty business practises of Element. Synapse is already bad enough software as is, even for smaller instances, and this adds direct monetary incentives for Element to keep it bad, so that people are forced to upgrade to Synapse Pro or pay an even higher amount of money to upgrade the hardware to run this extremely inefficient shit software. This is all typical of open-core software vendors and you are having Stockholm syndrome if you think otherwise.
And please don't be silly. XMPP had video calls long before Matrix. It works perfectly fine and there are many clients that support it. Just on one very small and developer hostile platform that outside of the US and Japan hardly anyone uses, it is work in progress and only partially supported.
I am not picking a favorite. I'd like XMPP to succeed. I still have my accounts. I still occasionally check if the apps improve to the point where I can install on my parents' phones and having them using it, and every time I failed.
Element is far from great, but I did manage to set it up for my parents, for my wife and then at least we can share pictures, we can have video calls so that they can see and talk with their grandkids, and we can have a family group, and we can have reaction emojis when someone says something funny.
Can you at least consider not being so condescending, and maybe see that other people have different priorities and values than you?
Oh, come on!
XMPP does not work perfectly fine. You can cover your eyes and ears all you want, but stop gaslighting people.
Yeah, right. You'd rather deny the existence of literally over 1 billion people just to keep your belief that your solution is better for the people. Excuse me if I don't buy your "argument*.
It works perfectly fine on Android 🤷 In fact much better than any Matrix client does. That's 70-80% or so of the global smart-phone market. Just because you made the mistake buying into a shitty walled garden like iOS doesn't mean it doesn't work for other people. But I see a pattern here of you ignoring reality and having Stockholm syndrome.
Again, there is no point in moving "1 billion people" from Facebook to a "Facebook run AWS for social media". There is just no benefit other than for Facebook to avoid accountability. You are wasting your time if you think otherwise.
So much misfires in one single sentence. Impressive.
You want to keep believing that your solution is superior and that the problem is with everyone else that keeps choosing the wrong things? Fine, I will not be able to convince you otherwise. But to keep being presented with actual experience from other people and respond by saying that "they are ignoring reality"? This is just silly.
Well, keep repeating the same mistakes and find excuses for it all you want. I am not into "superior" solutions at all, but I don't think there is much point in perpetuating the same clearly failed approaches.
Let’s please not forget that some people donate time and money because it gives them personal satisfaction to help out with something that is meaningful to them.
Yes, which is exactly why it's particularly devastating when they receive animosity and hate in exchange.
What about the cases where "what is meaningful to them" conflicts with "what is meaningful to the others"?
I said on a sibling comment but it bears repeating: I am not talking about someone who enjoys a hobby and goes on to create/mod a community about it. I am thinking about the cases where someone finds themselves as part of a large community and realizes that the majority of the members keep pushing you to things you either don't want to or disagree with.
Then we are talking about two different things. The post that I responded to did not make that clear. You should be more careful about using generalizations.
I'd say that they are the same thing, just in different contexts. But okay, if I wasn't clear it's on me to fix it.
You sound like you’re referencing something specific but you’re speaking as if this is some broader issue
It is a broader issue, namely: there is no such thing as doing a "thankless" job for purely altrustic reasons. This is not an issue on a small scale, but once it reaches it some critical mass we should wonder what motivates those who keep a position of authority.
(And before I get another barrage of people saying "I do it because I care about it/ I want to help / someone needs to do it"... yeah, sure, but if you are cultivating something because you happen to like the thing at hand , then you are doing for your own personal interest and it is not entirely altruistic. And that is totally fine.)
I moderated a 2mill person sub on the shithole site until I left over the API fiasco. I was never paid, I was never interviewed, I received nothing. I banned maybe 10 people over 3 years. Only a few friends know I even did it and it’s because it organically came up during the api shit.
I legitimately did it because I had been a member of the community for years and really felt passionate about keeping its standards and making sure it remained safe for the community. I am not amazing, I am not unusual. Most mods on some level do it because they want to see a community thrive. The terrible ones exist, there are even a lot of them. But as you can imagine, people don’t notice the quiet ones who just do their thing and tend to it the same way they tend to a garden.
Your idea of “thankless” is part of the issue as well as your parenthetical which arbitrarily decides “you can answer it but I don’t accept your answer.” The satisfying part was watching it grow and people just have a good time. Again, like seeing a nice garden. If you boil anything down enough nothing is ever truly altruistic, not even donating to your favorite charity, because you can say “well you did it so you would feel good.” It sounds to me that you just have an axe to grind with the concept of mods in general
Would you do it for a community you didn't care about?
Do you think that doing something because you "really felt passionate about it" is "selfless"?
I’m not sure if you responded before I added my last paragraph. I did it quickly but there was probably a 90s gap. Have you read it?
I think you’re also projecting this idea that all mods claim this is some holy selfless totally altruistic and pure act. No one talks about it like that.
No, I missed it before.
My "axe to grind" is not against mods. My "axe to grind" is against Small Fedi. I can elaborate more later if you want, but now I need to get back to work...
I think ultimately you’re arguing against something I’m not really arguing for. Again, any mod who thinks that this is some 100% purely altruistic endeavor is sniffing their own farts and is definitely an incredibly thin sliver of the modding population.
If you want to keep boiling things down then you can ultimately reduce any act of charity or good deed to some degree of selfishness and say that there is no truly altruistic action. So in the end your final conclusion is “mods are ultimately selfish and putting up altruistic window dressing,” which as long as you can say “it’s never 100% selfless” means you can’t ever be wrong rhetorically. That’s a philosophy discussion, not a practical discussion of what motivates people to become moderators.
I think there is a spectrum between what you did (you were mod until you no longer thought that the pain of dealing with Reddit was worth it or morally justified) and someone who sticks around as a mod of 50+ subreddits because they see as an instrument of control, or someone that keeps running a big Mastodon instance despite financial struggles; and my point is to understand where most people lie.
I think you kinda answered your own question. Somewhere in between. You won’t get a better answer than that without some sort of rigorous study.
For instance, most of the mods I worked with or knew generally operated the way I did. But obviously there are all sorts of factors to consider about why I would see that potentially more than others would, so I can’t really assert with any confidence that my experience was representative
Some people are willing to go against their own personal wants and desires if the majority of the community agrees. They may do it because they believe in democratic principles and whatever it is may be not what they want but doesn’t cross the their “line-in-the-sand” of what they are willing to do in service of their community.
And when it does finally cross that line, people will step down like Kevin has done. I may not agree with the democratically elected government of America right now but I am still an American. You don’t have to agree 100% with the community to still be a member
I moderate a privacy community because they were looking for mods. I just delete spam from time to time
When the stakes are small, sure.
But if you were to find yourself with a community with hundreds of thousands of people, and let's say that 0.01% percent of any group is made of people who seem like they are out to just make everyone's life miserable, so every week we will have to deal with a couple of dozen cases of obnoxnious behavior, petty disputes, etc... how long do you think you'd be able to endure it?
Speaking for myself: I was remembering the time when I found myself as the owner and main mod of the University's group on Orkut. When it was mostly discussions among actual students and faculty, it was all nice. Even when discussions were heated, they were not out of control. But when Orkut exploded in Brazil and it became a place for soapbox politics, spam, shouting matches between the student factions, people wanting to share articles about city events, etc, etc... it became too much for me and the handful of co-owners that joined me in the period.
I'm just not invested enough to care. At the end of the day nobody forces me to check the reports
You can do things because you want to make a difference. A good difference. Not everything has to have an ulterior motive.
What "difference" is someone doing by being a mod of 50-odd subreddits, like the case of the mod in question?
Well I only moderate 1 community and there is a compensation component to it.
But for others, I'm sure they just enjoy having a community. Some of them might also just not care what the naysayers say.
So many questions... :)
Don't really want to get too deep into it but its a Facebook community and its relevant to my business and I use the community to promote my business. It's become a large source of my business. It's the only reason I can't delete my Facebook profile.
Ah, I thought you were talking about something here on the Fediverse.
In any case, I wish people didn't feel afraid to talk about business here. Maybe more people would realize that behind the majority of "business" there are genuine people and not just the cartoon capitalist pigs.
I have a Ghost blog for my business. It'll be in the fedi as soon as they make that available for self-hosters. For now, it's just crossposting via MastoFeed. I've also contacted them about posting them to Lemmy, as it seems like a much more fitting platform.
Interesting! I hope to see posts from your business soon, and it would be great to have more people like you contributing to the communities on https://indiehackers.space/
Some people volunteer and contribute out of their own good will for the betterment of society. Especially people who believe in FOSS which is a reasonable expectation out of someone who admins FOSStodon