Reddit is a privately owned business that moderators access as public users under agreement by a terms of service document.<p>This is what can happen when you devote too much emotional capital to somebody’s private commercial centrally controlled enterprise. Early contributors to IMDB went through the exact same thing when IMDB sold to Bezos in the 90s. I understand the situation is frustrating but it’s clearly becoming a confused hallucination.<p>A better solution is to follow the example of Libera Networks after they abandoned Freenode.
To be honest, I don't think the core request (get paid) is unreasonable. Reddit has always relied on this fuzzy definition of what Mods powers and responsibilities are in order to tread the fine line between "You're employees we should pay, we're responsible - yes even for the child porn you guys are posting" and "You guys are totally independent we're not going to step in - yes even if you guys are posting child porn". It grew on the back of a weird free speech pitch, and quickly pivoted whenever it was convenient.<p>Right now, Reddit is clearly moving in the direction of professionalized moderators, so why not just bite the bullet and do it. 5% of advertiser revenue gets distributed to the moderators of a subreddit. It's a pittance, it gives the mods a financial stake in improving their sub-reddit and showing more ads. It also let's you say "As a moderator you get paid, but we expect X,Y,Z conditions". It also starts to answer some of those questions like "Can the founder of /r/WallStreetBets go off use that name as a trademark or does that belong to reddit?". If as a moderator you're signing an agreement and getting paid, then that question can be made <i>very</i> clear.
How can you demand <i>monetary</i> compensation for working on an entirely voluntarily basis?<p>They're already awarded power over the domain they moderate
More like power hungry mods who were happy ruling their subreddits not being happy that there are people who are more powerful then them and willing to make decisions without them.