r/AskModerators • u/MajesticCounter4174 • 3d ago
How do some of you justify moderating genuinely hateful communities?
I'm genuinely curious how some moderators are comfortable voluntarily running communities where misogyny, racism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry are practically part of the culture.
I get that moderating a subreddit doesn't mean agreeing with everything posted there, but there's a difference between allowing controversial opinions and actively maintaining a space where hatred is routinely encouraged or normalised.
At some point, surely you have to acknowledge that you're helping keep that environment alive?
So where do you draw the line? And for those of you moderating these communities, do you genuinely see no issue with what you're enabling, or do you just not care?
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u/zuuzuu 3d ago
In general those subs are moderated by people who agree with the sentiment expressed by their communities. A racist sub is going to be moderated by racists.
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
Right, that makes sense. I don't know why I assumed moderators were supposed to be these somewhat objective overseers, separate from the communities they manage, rather than just regular users with the same beliefs and attitudes who happen to have moderation powers 😬
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u/zuuzuu 3d ago
The bigger question is why reddit allows so many hateful subreddits and the hateful comments made there.
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
Exactly what I'm wondering. There's a subreddit I won't name that's absolutely full of incels, misogyny and even blatant calls for violence against women. I genuinely don't understand how bad things have to get before Reddit actually steps in. Like, where's the line?
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u/MadDocOttoCtrl 3d ago
That depends entirely on the topic of the community. All humans have bias but they don't have to let that influence their decision-making if the goals of a community are to enforce neutrality.
If you run a group that loves dogs, it makes sense for anyone running it (online or off-line) to love dogs.
If you are in a group that's supposed to discuss a topic from all viewpoints, then the people running it should be a team with a diverse set of outlooks to try to balance whatever unavoidable bias that all people have. A group about football shouldn't be dominated by people who are all fans of one team and that shouldn't be supported.
New To Reddit is about helping people understand how the functions of Reddit operate. We don't allow complaining because all that does is create more complaining and we're focused on dealing with Reddit as it exists - helping people deal with the reality of the site. It doesn't matter whether we agree with the person, disagree or are neutral, we're not a space for whining/ranting, there are subs that are intended for that. We don't discuss or debate the pros of cons of Reddit or their policies, there are places for that as well.
We don't allow politics, regardless of whether we agree with the viewpoint that is expressed or not.
We have images disabled because it's unnecessary 99% of the time and a huge vector for spam and hate. In the extremely rare case that an image would help with something that is being asked about, the person can comnent with a link to an image hosting site. Everyone on their team loves pet photos, but not in that sub, it's off topic.
We don't do chat, there are groups for that. We address this by having a weekly chat thread for brand new people who just want to say hello or are completely befuddled by how Reddit works and haven't figured out how to find a chat oriented sub.
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u/Kumquat_conniption 3d ago
Wait before we downvote this user (well too late I suppose) I don't think they are saying that mods should not be able to run their subreddits as they like, but that mods who have hateful opinions should not be able to run a sub with those same opinions.
Am I right? Or do you think mods should have to be completely neutral on something like, say, Trump or Palestine or hate against minorities, etc.
All I can say to that is that absolutely anyone can become a mod so you are going to get all the personalities spanning all of humanity as moderators on Reddit. If they are hateful enough and really blatant about it, hopefully Reddit will remove them, but it's perfectly easy to just take your time taking down hate comments, leaving them up for days, but by the time someone reports it to the correct admins and they look at it, if the comment was, in the end, either removed or no one did anything, and it's just still in the queue, they really cannot say that you are approving hateful comments- so there are ways around the idea that your sub will not be a bastion of hate. It all depends on what the mods allow to flourish there.
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
You're pretty much spot on. Damn, I wish I could name the subreddit that immediately comes to mind. 😂
Ultimately, I think my frustration comes down to not understanding where Reddit actually draws the line between allowing communities to express controversial opinions and allowing genuinely hateful environments to flourish.
How much hate is too much? At what point does a consistent pattern of hateful content, combined with moderators who seemingly tolerate or encourage it, warrant intervention?
I'm starting to think this might have been the wrong subreddit to ask, because the questions I'm really interested in are ones only Reddit's admins can properly answer.
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u/Kumquat_conniption 2d ago
Yeah probably. If you want me to check out the sub, send me a chat and I can tell you if it is something admins would take down and if it is, I can tell you how to report it, or I can try taking it directly to admins.
Sorry it seems like people are misunderstanding you. I think people think you are saying that mods should have to be neutral on shit like Trump or Israel or whatever. But you mentioned hate, so it seems like folks should have been able to read between the lines. I do have to say that we get so many people on this sub that are mad about being banned for their political theory, or their hate-speech or whatever- so mods on this sub tend to be touchy. I like to make sure to give people the benefit of the doubt, even if it means being nice to a bunch of assholes, just to make sure I'm not an asshole to the rare good human who slips through, lol.
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u/thepottsy 3d ago
Based on my personal participation in this subreddit, the answers you’re looking for won’t be found here.
The mods that usually participate in this sub, aren’t going to be the mods of the subs you’re referring to. So, the best any of us can really tell you is that mods aren’t a monolith, and some mods are pretty horrible humans.
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
Honestly, I know it's probably next to impossible, but I'd really like to have a conversation with Reddit's admins about this. I want to understand just how bad a subreddit has to get before they actually intervene. At what point does a pattern of hateful content become a moderation failure rather than just individual users behaving badly?
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u/sparklekitteh 2d ago
If you believe e there’s a moderation failure, you need to send in a Mod Code of Conduct report.
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u/MajesticCounter4174 2d ago
What exactly constitutes a moderation failure though? Say a subreddit has a specific set of rules but posts and comments regularly violate those rules with little to no moderator intervention. At what point does that become a failure on the moderators' part rather than just individual users breaking the rules?
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u/sparklekitteh 2d ago
Read the Mod CoC and it specifically identifies what constitutes an actionable failure.
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u/maiyannah 3d ago
Why are you posting here to hate on other subs?
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
Name the sub I'm hating on
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u/lilfunky1 3d ago
Name the sub I'm hating on
Based on your posting history, I'm guessing you're complaining about a red pill flavour subreddit
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u/4art4 3d ago
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
So you genuinely don't think moderators have any responsibility for the kind of community they're actively maintaining? That's a pretty convenient way to avoid accountability. Maybe I misunderstood you though...
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
I think if you started the sub. Sure. You’re responsible. But responsible for what? People being horrible on the internet? Any anonymous forum is gonna have some bad actors. Why ask the mods? We don’t own or profit from Reddit. That would be a better question for admin or the owners of the site.
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
I'm not talking about the occasional bad actor though. I'm talking about communities where hatred is practically the norm and moderators actively maintain that environment. Surely there's a difference between failing to catch every nasty comment and knowingly allowing a culture of bigotry to thrive? And I agree Reddit admins bear responsibility too, but why would that absolve the people actually running those communities?
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u/Congregator 3d ago edited 3d ago
“Moderators” aren’t licensed professionals taking oaths to some unified objective.
A moderator can quite literally just be some rando whose best friend started a sub on why they think Cheerio’s should be shaped like triangles.
You could literally start a sub for any asinine reason and give someone banning powers to it.
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
Who needs absolution? You know what happens when a sub gets too big? Reddit takes it over. Because it’s theirs. If all the mods quit and it’s active then Reddit will put its own mods in or give it away to anyone interested.
I don’t own my subs. I can’t delete them.
I’m not responsible for anything I don’t see. If I see something that’s against the rules I get rid of it. Boom. That’s moderating in a nutshell.2
u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
I think that a sub like that is modded by people who don’t care what people think. I’m not sure what we are even talking about at this point. Don’t blame the mods for what the people are capable of.
Allowing hatred and bigotry isn’t on my resume and eliminating hatred and bigotry isn’t in my skill set.
You’re asking the hall monitors why the halls aren’t pretty. And laying blame on them for things that are beyond our abilities.
Give me a way to kick users off Reddit. Then it’s my fault. But I can’t choose who logs on or what they intend.That’s a janitorial issue. I’m a hall monitor.
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
Yeah. They are called bigots. Bigots are allowed to exist. And they can start subreddits. Who’s at fault there? I mean. If someone dedicates their life to bigotry you expect them to not be themselves on Reddit? Everyone is allowed here as long as they don’t break rules.
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
Yeah. I got you. I have one of those unsent letter subs and it is toxic as can be. Not because it’s a hate sub. But because people hate each other and themselves.
I make sure no one gets bullied or harassed. I don’t dictate the posts. I just make sure they follow the rules of Reddit and the sub.
Im not a hateful person. I’m an optimist with a sunny disposition 😁. No. I’m not responsible for crappy people saying crappy things to no one in particular. I wade through that crap in the hopes that in the long run maybe people feel better insulting people that won’t ever hear that they were insulted. It’s meant to help. But it’s not always a nice place.0
u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
We don’t run anything. We approve or delete what users try to post. It’s not ours to be proud of or to ashamed of. It’s Reddit. And it’s like it or lump it.
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
Yeah. I personally don’t like all my subs or the users that use them. I maintain them. I don’t dictate them.
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u/soulself 3d ago
I am a mod and we can take steps to clean up a toxic sub. That is, unless the entire theme of the sub is toxic. In which case, I totally agree with you. If you want to take a hands off approach then thats your right, but if you don't like the sub or users, then why are you even modding it?
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u/aengusoglugh 3d ago
Moderators are users who volunteer to moderate — often by creating a subreddit.
Generally users create subreddits to talk about subjects of common interest with other like-minded folks — and they volunteer to moderate subreddits for the same reason.
As long as the community content does not violate the terms of service — in Reddit’s opinion, not yours or mine — Reddit is unlikely to intervene.
There are political parties I won’t vote for. There are bars I don’t drink at. There is music I don’t listen to.
I don’t feel particularly compelled to ban those parties, to shut down those bars, or to prevent anyone else from listening to that music.
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u/VerbingNoun413 3d ago
Each sub has its own individual mod team. In cases where a sub has a strong political bias, the mods usually share that bias.
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u/DoveStep55 3d ago
Why are genuinely hateful communities even allowed when there’s a site-wide rule against hate speech?
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out. If Reddit has a site-wide rule against hate speech, why are communities that seemingly exist to perpetuate it still allowed to operate? Where exactly is the line, and how bad does a subreddit have to get before Reddit intervenes? I'm starting to think this might have been the wrong subreddit to ask, though, since these are really questions for the admins rather than moderators.
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u/DoveStep55 2d ago
I recently came across this. Sharing in case it helps: https://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/
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u/Bardfinn 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hey there - I help run AgainstHateSubreddits.
The short answer is "Reddit admins do no proactive human moderation".
Because of various case law, they cannot have employees who have the ability and the opportunity to exercise the kind of agency involved in content moderation. Volunteer moderators and people reporting violations are therefore necessary.
For groups that are promoting hatred, one of two things happens:
1: People report hate speech, the operators approve the hate speech, and Reddit's AEO department (anti-evil operations) eventually review the report - too many incidents of AEO finding violations where volunteer mods approved it, and Reddit takes actions on the moderators, and eventually the community. This can take 6 months.
2: People report the hate speech and file a Moderator Code of Conduct Rule 1 Violation complaint via the link at the bottom of the ModCoC page, listing all the evidence that the operators of a given subreddit have made clear that they're promoting hatred - or are aiding & abetting (enabling or encouraging) a culture of hatred. Admins investigate that complaint, AEO evaluates user reports filed on the hate speech posts / comments, and depending on how egregious it is, Admins take various actions.
But importantly, no Reddit employees read the site on the clock - so people have to actually report hate speech. If it isn't reported, they don't know it happens.
There's also an expert system that picks up on blatant, egregious hate speech and harassment, and automatically removes it and refers it to anti-evil operations to check -- but it has a high false positive / false negative / blind spot rate, & the expert system machine-learning service that was powering it is going away December 31st, & there are replacement services / products that can step in, but they don't change the fact that there still has to be a human complainant. A human, reporting the hate speech.
Because Reddit can't employ someone with the ability & opportunity to yank content.
There was a case, Mavrix Photography LLC v LiveJournal, Inc., that got referred to the Ninth District appelate. One of their legal theories developed in that case is that (paraphrasing - i'm not your lawyer, not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice) when a user content hosting internet service provider has employees with the ability & opportunity to perform content moderation, they also have the ability & opportunity to recognise clear-cut copyright violations (think: a photograph with "Copyright 2003 Mavrix Photography LLC All Rights Reserved Do Not Reproduce" in watermark), and for every one of those they handle / encounter that they do not remove as a copyright violation, they could become liable for the violation, because DMCA Safe Harbour is premised on UCHISPs representing that they have noone employed with the ability & opportunity to yank copyright violations.
Given the immense amount of works on the site which could be argued in court are clearly copyright violations - the potential liability in just sitting employees down for depositions to perform discovery in a lawsuit over those alleged copyright violations - would be punitive; the potential fiscal liability enormous. For scope on that: Napster was found liable for copyright violations to the tune of something like 3 times the global net product for a year.
Other social media platforms either use volunteer moderators / editors (Section 230 protects us) or outsource content moderation to vendors following extremely rigid playbooks on how to process moderation.
"But what about AEO employees, aren't they paid"
They're paid to read snippets of content and to pull a lever (Yes / No) on whether it violates a rule (the rule it's reported under). They don't take action. An algorithm takes actions - removal, warning or suspending user - based on the AEO employee agreeing or disagreeing it violates that rule, and recent prior violations found.
The content they view is divorced from all* context - usernames, subreddit name, parent comment, etc.
They have neither the ability nor the opportunity to exercise moderation agency. They can't remove items. They can't investigate. They're just affirming or negating the accuracy of the user report / moderator escalation.
there's a moderator escalation flow where moderators escalating sitewide rules violations can pick up to three recent items by the same user to show a pattern establishing a violation. That's the only scenario where they get context.
So that's the short and the long of "Why are hate groups allowed to exist on Reddit despite the rule".
Because someone has to complain. Someone has to report.
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u/Kumquat_conniption 2h ago
Awesome reply, Bardfinn. I agree with absolutely everything you said about it being about reporting, and then people may just think "Well, I reported a bunch of hate and the mods did not take it down, so it must be true that Reddit allows mods to have hate on their subs" without even filing a mod code of conduct report- and they also think this if mods do not immediately take down that content.- like within 24 hours. When people come back a day later and still see it there, they may think "These mods are not doing anything." But is that content still there in a week? Ten days?
Because first a Moderator Code of Conduct report has to be filed for Reddit to really look at the rate of overturned content, and by the time they review that report it's often been a week or two at least, yes? (I could be wrong on this timeline, but do also know they have 15 minutes to make a decision on a mod coc report, which is not very much for some of them). If the mods have removed the content by then, admins are likely to view that as successful moderation.
I've seen subreddits take advantage of that more than almost anything else. I've known moderators who were told by admins not to allow usernames in screenshots because of brigading concerns. Their response was basically to leave the content up for 24 hours. By then, 95% of the people who were going to see it had already seen it. Then they remove it and the admins say, "Nothing we can do, they removed it." Meanwhile, everyone involved knows the content was left up precisely because the moderators wanted the attention and the harassment that would result. Or just be the "edgy" sub that leaves up hate for a considerable amount of time before removing it.
But I do have to ask a question, if you do not mind? When you say:
"The short answer is 'Reddit admins do no proactive human moderation'.
Because of various case law, they cannot have employees who have the ability and the opportunity to exercise the kind of agency involved in content moderation. Volunteer moderators and people reporting violations are therefore necessary."
This is the part that confused me.
My understanding of the case you later cited, Mavrix Photography LLC v. LiveJournal is that it was a copyright/DMCA case dealing with whether moderators could be considered agents of the platform for purposes of a safe harbor analysis. My understanding is not that it held that platforms cannot employ people to proactively moderate content. Also, I feel like virtually every major platform seems to employ trust & safety staff, content moderators, policy enforcement teams, etc., who review reports and remove content (or at least used to, I know many of them are going to AI content moderation, and Idk if they are developing their own AI to do it, but I would doubt that, but let's pretend we are talking10 years ago). So I'm not seeing how that case gets us to the conclusion that Reddit employees cannot have the ability and opportunity to remove content. Do they all farm it out to third parties for moderation? I do not see how that would even be substantially different.
I was also confused by the discussion of AEO. If an AEO employee reviews a post and decides "yes, this violates Reddit's rules," what happens next? Does it then go to some separate person or entity that makes the actual moderation decision? Or does the content get removed automatically based on the AEO finding that yes, it broke a rule (which would seem to be the most likely to me but what do I know) and If it's the latter, I'm struggling to see the distinction. A Reddit employee has already reviewed the content and decided whether it violates the rules. Even if software performs the actual removal, that still seems like content moderation to me.
Am I misunderstanding what you mean by AEO's role here? (Also, real quick, when you or anyone else says AEO I just assume that is the Safety team, am I wrong? I have never had an admin refer to them as AEO so I assumed it meant the same as the Safety team, with Reddit trying to throw off the cringe associated with "Anti-evil" lol. But they could be completely separate entities as far as I know, or one is a smaller piece of the other.)
And if a lot of this has to do with EU rules, then I don't know a single thing about them and will just trust your expertise. I am sorry for all the questions, but you are like a treasure trove of knowledge, and I am very impressed with all you have done to make Reddit a better place. Please do not take my confusion on anything as anything other than total ignorance and a desire to learn more. if I have completely overwhelmed you with all my questions and no need to reply (of course), or just reply the ones you want but I want to thank you for your comment nonetheless, and thank you for visiting the subreddit. What you have been able to accomplish at Reddit is just an amazing feat and I can't imagine how much work went into it. I'm exhausted just thinking about it!
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u/Kumquat_conniption 3d ago
I allow comments I disagree with, but I do not allow comments that contain hate whatsoever. So my subs are mostly liberal or leftist, and if someone has a post about a conservative woman, I will get a good number of dude's calling her a "bitch" "cunt" "slut" or "whore." Obviously, this is all misogyny. There is no reason to bring her identity into any of this, and then to criticize her for things that a man would never get criticzed for (like being a "slut" or whatever). So I remove all of these comments and warn the folks using them that we do not allow misogyny, even when it's directed at truly awful women, because misogyny hurts all women. So many people think this is because I am trying to protect conservative women somehow, and I will get comments like "oh the mods here are MAGA" or some dumb shit. I just do not understand this, because if they were making racial slurs aimed at minority conservative pieces of shit, then they would understand why those would be removed and would not be seen as protecting the minority right-winger from criticism, but the second you ask people not to use gendered slurs against women, it's all "you just don't want them to be criticized" "You are trying to protect their reputations.
That is just an example. There is a lot of hate where I put my foot down. If someone says "I pray to Allah that this woman is okay" and is not looking to convert anyone, and someone comes in all "you God allowed to this to happen. What a shitty God. Or maybe it's time for your to stop believing in your sky Daddy" or something totally obnoxious to someone who was just expressing some empathy and happened to include their God it in, I will issue a warning to that user to respect others opinions, and that if they came on and said they were an atheist, they would not want a bunch of people to start shaming them for not believing in God, so don't do that to those who do- and this makes people living. I am not sure why. Respecting other people when you talk about their beliefs does not mean that you have to believe that thing.
Anyway, I find that a lot of subs have mods who are not well-versed in what hate speech actually is and think that calling a woman a "bitch" is not misogynistic (just going back to my example), and they think women are completely equal in the U.S., or even more insane, that they have more privileges as women, and so they will mod their sub accordingly. Still, you can not go onto any subreddit on Reddit and leave blatant hate comments like "all women are bitches and hoes" because if someone reports you, hopefully Reddit will take the comment down for their rule against "hate based on identity," but Reddit is using AI for that now, and it sucks ass, so Idek anymore.
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u/Pedantichrist 2d ago
When I had more time, I used to actively look to moderate communities which have these problems. They are the ones which need the most moderation.
Some were successfully changed. Those we did not, it was because the moderation team was more interested in maintaining traffic numbers than fighting the awful misogyny, so I gave up on it, and now it is the sub we use as an example of incel posts, so I kind of regret not persevering.
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u/angrynirritable 3d ago
You might be surprised to learn it's not subreddits, it's entire networks of people working towards common goals. There have been numerous exposés on these networks.
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u/Mewpasaurus 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don't. I left a community at the beginning of this year for this exact reason. What I thought I was signing on to moderate and what I actually got were two very different experiences.. and it was compounded by the fact that no one else in that subreddit seemed to believe in moderating rule-breaking content (that existed prior to my coming onto the moderation team).
Tbf to the community in question though: it was not in itself a hateful community, but there were so many members that were totally okay advocating for violence, death and mistreatment of anyone who disagreed with them or were from a different generation (including the moderation team) and it just became an echo chamber of the worst of the worst sentiments, despite advertising itself as a positive, nostalgic community. I just couldn't do it anymore and left after moderating there for almost two years. Best decision I ever made in regards to moderation.
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u/lilfunky1 3d ago
There was a race-play kinky subreddit I volunteered to mod at one point because they asked for some more experienced mods and I was like "yeah I should be able to separate and compartmentalize racists from race-play kinksters"
I couldn't.
Tapped out after like 2 weeks, set them up with some automod features to keep spam down, wiped out their mod queue of old posts and comments so they'd have a fresh start, and GTFO.
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
So would it be fair to assume that moderators who willingly stay in communities like that generally share the attitudes of their users? I always assumed moderators were supposed to be somewhat separate from the userbase and exercise a degree of objectivity, but I'm starting to wonder how realistic that expectation is. Because if you're comfortable maintaining a space where certain prejudices are normalised, how different are you really from the people participating in it?
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
Well there is your problem. Assuming a moderator is anything other than a normal person with zero obligations to Reddit. Until they start cutting checks they won’t dictate mod behavior. the only standards are set in the code of conduct. anyone with an idea can be a mod. It’s not a calling. It’s not a profession. It’s a hobby at best.
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u/ohhyouknow 3d ago
No. I volunteered to moderate spaces that get a lot of hate speech because I don’t want the hatespeech there.
Just because I’m modding it out doesn’t mean it doesn’t get posted before I see it. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss things. Doesn’t mean people report things. Doesn’t mean you won’t see it before I get to it.
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u/eltonjohnpeloton 3d ago
It surprises me how many people will be upset with comments / posts and not report it, and then get mad that the mods did nothing. They seem shocked we aren’t reading every comment and every post on a sub.
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u/lilfunky1 3d ago
Not always, some might be playing a long game
There was a sub (can't remember specifics which one though) that was super problematic, someone got accepted as a mod, bided their time until they were top mod, then completely flipped the whole subreddit around once there was no one above them to stop them.
IIRC it took like 2+ years
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u/ohhyouknow 3d ago edited 3d ago
I did that. Public freakout.
It still has its moments but it’s nowhere near what it was. And it took manually reviewing comment sections in context.
Relying on reports doesn’t work because people don’t report. Literally had to spend years consistently sifting through comment sections issuing thousands of bans for unreported comments to make a dent in it.
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u/Kumquat_conniption 3d ago
Yes, I assume if your sub has a ton of hate, you are allowing it to flourish. I could be wrong, and you just never have time to mod, and you don't have other mods, and you put a call out and tried to get some and you can't, etc (there are some subs I mod where I am the only mod left because people are not want to be mods with all the hate they get), but I make reading reports a priority and if my sub was devolving into a place where there was a lot of hate and I could not keep up, I would ask the community or my mod friends or whoever if they can help with the hate. I would not want to be known as someone who mods a hateful sub, so at this point I could give it to someone else or even just abandon it and leave a post telling the sub has zero mods and if anyone would like to pick it up at Reddit request they probably can.
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don’t justify anything. I’m an adult with no obligations to anyone but my own standards. If a sub is toxic and I don’t want to be in a toxic sub I excuse myself.
Everything has a place here. You don’t have to visit. You don’t have to participate. Respecting the rights of others to have opposing views and lifestyles is easy.
If everyone was the same and we all agreed then why even bother?
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u/MajesticCounter4174 3d ago
But that's kind of my point. If your personal standards are the only thing that matters, what happens when a moderator's standards are perfectly compatible with the hatred being promoted in their community? Surely moderators have some responsibility for the environment they're actively maintaining, beyond whether they're personally comfortable being there?
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u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 3d ago
Why would a moderator be responsible for the environment that exists with or without Reddit?
Some people are into hate.
Some people hate themselves.
That’s not something I can change. But I can make sure no one gets bullied or harassed in my subs.
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u/eltonjohnpeloton 3d ago
How many of us do you think are actively involved in hate subreddits??