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My Thoughts on the Fosstodon Drama | Kev Quirk
(kevquirk.com)
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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.
It depends on the community. Larger general purpose communities tend towards that, the people who acknowledge you are typically people disputing a ban or who took it personally. On the other hand, for a Lemmy example, look at the admin Ada (and similar examples) who have reasons to regularly communicate their decisions and achievements and are clearly in line with their general community's values – their community won't have as many people crying about censorship because the community doesn't pretend that they will tolerate bigotry.
Mods who just delete garbage posts (sometimes called "janitors" on other platforms) are typically faceless thankless volunteers, or abusive personalities powertripping. It's a tough job, and someone has to put their hand up for it.
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 a means 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.
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/
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?
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 get the pleasure of hanging out in well moderated communities where I feel like I am doing my part. Doesn't need to be more complicated than that.
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.