Reddit’s forum about home food canning used to have two moderators with science-related master’s degrees. And Reddit’s home automation forum used to be moderated by a former IT worker with decades of networking experiencing — and some training from a professional electrician.
After the great Reddit protests, all three were removed from their positions. But now Ars Technica asks whether Reddit’s replacement moderators will be as capable of spotting dangerous advice?
In response to concerns that the new r/homeautomation mod team could overlook posts with dangerous misinformation, one moderator requesting anonymity pointed me to the subreddit’s sidebar, which has a disclaimer about the dangers of electricity. However, the disclaimer is only visible on old Reddit. The mod doesn’t know why…
One of the top complaints I’ve heard about the Great Reddit Mod Purge is the company’s alleged disregard for replaced mods’ expertise. The swift, contentious nature of the mod replacements meant that old mods often didn’t share advice with new mods. Meanwhile, the users Reddit chose to replace protesting mods may not have been properly vetted. That includes one of the new mods of the 3D-printing-focused subreddit r/ender3, who requested to only be referred to as the subreddit’s top moderator. This person replied to a post by the Reddit employee going by u/ModCodeofConduct and requested to mod the subreddit as a “joke,” they said. The user got the job despite telling me, “I have never touched a 3D printer in my life, and there is zero activity on my Reddit account related to 3D printing….” [T]hat mod will step down eventually, “as the joke is starting to wear off.” But the story suggests that new mods weren’t selected with the utmost care…
None of the forcibly removed mods I spoke with have worked with or plan to work with replacement mods to pass on knowledge gained through years of experience… In addition to lost knowledge, new and old mods are also dealing with the loss of third-party apps considered helpful for moderating.
