I had the realization about this distinction several years ago regarding reddit. Over the years of attrition by various controversies, reddit no longer has moderators. They’ve all left. There are moderators in name but they do not moderate.

Many set the mod bots to do bot things and then fuck right off. To be fair moderating global scale messageboard is kind of an impossible task. Much less to do it for free. Can’t fault the the old school internet moderators for leaving.

On another note. There’s no way to tiptoe around the issue of intelligence. The baseline level of discourse just isn’t capable of hard topics as it used to be. People seem to like the social drama that arises out of lack of moderation. That biases towards the lowest common denominators. It’s like a modern day Jerry Springer shock jock entertainment. But live and interactive! Social media users seem to revel in it. Bread and circuses…