At this point Reddit mods look like unpaid employees to me. This was not the case say, 10 years ago, when Reddit admins enforced the sitewide rules and mods did their own thing. Now Reddit depends on mods to enforce the sitewide rules, instructs them in their work, removes them if their work product is not up to snuff, and I've even seen them demand minimum staffing levels be met.
I’m one of the mods of a subreddit with over 50K subscribers and all I could say is that it is very tiring. And, looking to quit being a mod.
People just can’t read or won’t read the rules. One thing I hate most is that YouTubers high jacking or spamming without even engaging the community or in the comments. It’s so frustrating to keep removing it.
Reddit is several orders of magnitude larger than it used to be. Managing a social gathering of 500 people has qualitative differences from managing a gathering of 5 people. Strategies that are beneficial at the small scale might not work or even have negative effects at the large scale.
