I'd love to see some hard data on your claims because this seems cynical to the point of being inaccurate
As the creator and moderator of a 100k sub these are the last things on my mind - and same for the other moderators. The whole point of creating and moderating that was because 13 years ago I thought it was the best place to build a community that I wanted to exist.
I have no idea if that's true for the moderators for /pics or whatever massive sub-reddits are, but I do know that for a lot, and especially the long tail subs and the folks I see in the /modcoord sub and discord, moderators are people who are interested in maintaining a community because they are interested in the affinity.
How does one quantify that? Reddit moderators have a reputation that they themselves created. I'll tell you what, go ahead an post something (comment or topic) that goes against the prevailing group-think in any reddit sub, and you'll experience it for yourself. Record in a spreadsheet, and you'll have your hard data that supports reddit as cancer. As reddit moved away from free speech, and more towards totalitarian speech control, I honestly couldn't hope for a faster collapse or conflagration of those echo chambers.
I’m sorry but the scale that Reddit is at now and the number of subs that have large and thriving communities tells me that moderators aren’t creating some hellscape preventing community from forming.
As the creator and moderator of a 100k sub these are the last things on my mind - and same for the other moderators. The whole point of creating and moderating that was because 13 years ago I thought it was the best place to build a community that I wanted to exist.
I have no idea if that's true for the moderators for /pics or whatever massive sub-reddits are, but I do know that for a lot, and especially the long tail subs and the folks I see in the /modcoord sub and discord, moderators are people who are interested in maintaining a community because they are interested in the affinity.