The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Exhibit 1057

All That's Happening behind the Scenes: Putting the Spotlight on Volunteer Moderator Labor in Reddit

Exhibit 1057 ยท Peer-reviewed study

All That's Happening behind the Scenes: Putting the Spotlight on Volunteer Moderator Labor in Reddit

Across subreddits, the share of invisible work for human moderators ranges from 9% to 94% with a median of 43%.

Analysis of private moderator logs for 126 subreddits and over 900 moderator accounts (3 million actions; 39 of 967 accounts classified as bots, which did 73% of 25,812 daily actions). Visible-only analysis understates human moderation labor.

Source
Li, Hecht and Chancellor (arXiv 2205.14529; published at ICWSM 2022 per the authors' listing, venue to be confirmed)
Date
2022
Quoted from
Results, RQ on invisible work
Grade
Peer-reviewed
Document
https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.14529
Accessed
2026-11-10
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit
Note
Subreddits were those whose moderators volunteered logs; not a random sample.

Cited by

Finding INF-3.14
Primary record Reddit reports that from July to December 2023 moderators removed 1.9% and admins 1.8% of all content created, and that admins banned 640,685 communities: 456,849 (71%) for spam and 183,836 for non-spam violations, 92% of the non-spam bans because the community was unmoderated. Reddit's Form S-1 reports an average of over 60,000 daily active volunteer moderators in December 2023, and a peer study of 126 subreddits found that invisible work is a median 43% of human moderator labor.