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The problem with Reddit's business model is that it relies on massive amounts of volunteer labor (subreddit moderators). Moderators are unpaid, so these positions will be filled by people who value power and status over money, i.e. progressive activists.
In theory, this is solved by people who don't like the mods of one subreddit making their own subreddit with their own mods. In practice, mods of the largest subreddits, being progressive activists, will demand that site ownership take down dissenting subreddits. Site ownership can't afford to piss off the moderator class too much, because then they lose their massive source of unpaid labor, as very nearly happened before. This inevitably degenerates into the situation we find ourselves in now, where major subreddits simply lock any potentially controversial thread and ban anyone who complains about it.
How exactly do you know their political alignment and level of engagement?
Well how exactly would we find out other than observing who is banned anecdotally on the subs they moderate?
Its not like reddit is going to publish a comprehensive report on their unpaid volunteers who are (probably) doing it as much as the average joe does their full time job. If it became well known that the average powermod worked 12 hours a day modding the SEIU would unionize the place in 30 days or less.
You could, among other things, look at how they speak and act, especially when they put on the green hat. It's not ever going to be concrete, people get banned for political reasons even if they don't say it. Hard work, yes, but not impossible. I would probably start with checking out TheoryOfReddit, they seem to be a place for doing analysis of Reddit itself.
Go ahead then?
Why would I? I'm not the one making the claim about them.
You're the one who's disagreeing with what is akin to traditional knowledge about them. And then you ask people to do lots of work to prove to you that something as common sense as "don't walk barefoot in the city" is based on evidence. And people have seen this pattern before, and generally understand that people who make such claims rarely change even when presented with the evidence that required 12 hours + of data analysis.
Yes, and I'm sure that the Christian just knows that God exists. It's irrelevant, however, if we're claiming to be a space which is neutral. There's not supposed to be a consensus, meaning a question like mine is entirely appropriate. If I were to make the claim that actually, Reddit mods are all conservative Trumpists, would you be here defending me against another person asking me to prove my point?
Yeah, and people on the left have seen a pattern before in how anti-abortion people don't actually seem to care about women despite their words. Regardless, it would be entirely uncharitable to at least not take someone at their word to start with here if they said they really did care.
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