When it comes to subreddits, lemmy communities, and lemmy instances, the people enforcing the rules are the same people making the rules. To borrow from legal terminology, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are the same. Mods and admins are judge, jury, and executioner. This gives them a lot of power and allows biases in the way they enforce the rules to go ignored.

When it comes to the reddit admins, however, and sitewide bans and content removal, the people enforcing the rules are employees. They report to a boss, and have to follow guidelines already established. The content policy has already been written, and changing it is a big deal. If a ban is unjust, it can be appealed using the rules. When biases in the ways the rules are enforced happen, it’s easier to undo them. And I’m not saying it’s easy, but on Lemmy, it’s impossible. You can’t even log into your account if you’re banned, how are you supposed to appeal?

Reddit as a business has a great deal more power than any fediverse instance’s mod teams. But ironically, the low ranking admins have less power to make bad decisions. And that’s why I’ve noticed a consistent pattern that Reddit is better at moderating cases that are legally clear-cut, but emotionally controversial. On Lemmy, admins follow their feelings. On Reddit, people may have a lot of feelings, but the proletariat administration intern has had feelings beaten out of them, and they more often end up following the rules.

The way Reddit operates is soulless and horrible and capitalist, but… soul is where hatred comes from. You’re less likely to find that in the workings of an unfeeling machine.