The 10 rules for the internet and the most important rule: don't abuse your power

 The 10 rules:
    1. Remember the human
    2. Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life
    3. Know where you are in cyberspace
    4. Respect other people's time and bandwidth
    5. Make yourself look good online
    6. Share expert knowledge
    7. Help keep flame wars under control
    8. Respect other people's privacy
    9. Don't abuse your power
    10. Be forgiving of other people's mistakes

I had originally planned to write about #2, adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life, and how if it is taken at face value it can cause a person to miss a lot of subtlety and misunderstand the culture of different online forums and chat-rooms. But after some thought I have decided that #9, don’t abuse your power, is the more important of them and that I would rather write about that as I have more relevant experiences with that. For context I have been surfing the web for 10+ years and have been of forms that are strictly moderated with clearly defined rules that were enforced fully, and have also been on forums that are almost lawless wastelands were anything went with moderators only interfering when illegal content was posted.
Most of what I can talk about the abuse of power is centered on Reddit, but I will mention some other types. 


From my experience browsing forums with strict moderation I have found that when the moderators are pick from users that actually like using the forum, there is little to no abuse of power as they don’t want to ruin their own reputation. While there isn’t really much to say about the lawless forums as the moderation there is almost non-existent so abusing it would take quiet some effort! So most of what can really be said is about forums, and other types of websites where users congregate that require moderation, that fall some where in between like Reddit. It has subreddits that are very strictly moderated, like r/askhistorians a subreddit where a users can ask questions about history and people knowledgeable in the area will answer with citations, or subreddits with out much moderation such as r/FiftyFifty where users can post some of the darkest clips but that is the point of that subreddit so moderation isn’t really required much. The most widespread abuse of power that is on the websites is committed by so called power mods, moderators who moderate 10s of subreddits and most likely coordinate with each other to squish users and movements that they do not like. The most blatant example of abuse of power by a single user is what was committed by u/GallowBoob, he started as a power moderator of the top 10 most popular subreddits it slowly grew until he was moderating 100s of subreddits, but he didn’t stop just there he started deleting posts from users and reposting their work himself to collect karma (he currently has 34 million karma), it was speculated that he was farming karma to sell his account to advertisers, and maybe he already has.

In conclusion I have found that on communities where the users that moderate the community have a reputation in it, they were less likely to abuse their power for their own gain as they didn’t want to ruin their reputation, while users who moderate communities that they don’t really participate in and so don’t have a reputation in, are more likely to abuse their power for personal gain.

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