I am an anarchist, so the idea of the community doing all the work, creating content, and then mods basically ruling over them as a reward, just doesn’t sit right with me.
We the users should collectively be in control of all our social media, economically and with regards of controling what goes on, on there.
All social media get’s its value from the users i.e. the network effect. However the users are subjected to a hierachical place where individuals in power act as tyrants.
We create the value we should be in charge.
Fellow Lemmings how can we create social media were the users are king/queen?
post Scriptum: just having a voting mechanism, might be gamed by unsavory charcters or groups to game such a system, unless voting requires your clear name id, which comes with other issues of course.
I don’t think you can, or should, do away with moderators. There needs to be a way to respond to illegal and abusive material quickly, before many people have to see it and it can propagate.
But I do think a good improvement would be improved transparency in moderator decisions, and accountability. It shouldn’t be that hard to implement a way for the community to remove and appoint moderators. The harder part would probably be safeguarding this mechanisms against trolls and hijackers.