There's a middle ground between being altruistic and having an ulterior motive:

You want the community you're willing to moderate to not be filled with crap because you personally like it better when it's not filled with crap.

I think it's similar to politics. Some people want to use privileges that the position provides for their own benefit, while others want to do good things and bring their ideas to life.

Most unpaid moderators across the entire Internet do so because they have a higher than average interest in the community and want to help keep it running well. You will find some who want to spin a narrative, and some who just want to see a number go up, and some that want to troll their community, and even a small amount who actually are paid shills - but all of these groups put together is but a tiny fraction of all moderators. They're just usually the most noticeable and so color your perception the most. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, shitty mod gets the public's attention.

As a moderator, i find it satisfying to clean my little corner of the internet.

We all see spam an scams when we use social media, and there's not much that you can do about it, maybe report it to admins if you have a minute. For the most part, you're powerless.

But on my fenced area of the internet, i actually get to do something about it. If your bot reposts content on r/shittyfoodporn to farm karma, i will pluck it out like a snail from my salad and kill it. Removing bad content is as satisfying as popping a pimple, it gives me the same joy as a retired dad meticulously cleaning his garden.

The less enjoyable part is when i have to interfere with the users themselves. Mildly saucy fanart will get posted to r/zootopia and i have to decide if it's over or under the line, and it feels bad to remove a post that somebody legitimately just wanted to share.

I moderated on Reddit for years. It was a subreddit that’d been an immense help for me at a vulnerable point in my life and I wanted to give back and ensure it remained a safe space. From there I branched out into communities dedicated to other things I cared about. I think it’s often altruistic, an act of love for something. But also it’s often self destructive and addictive. You feel you’re needed. And you are, it’s a thankless job that depending on the community can get you regularly threatened and told to kill yourself. But also you need to have a life and not make it into an escape or a cause to martyr yourself

I do it in our (largish) discord server because, quite frankly, the trash won't take itself out, and I like the community we have cultivated. Everyone wants a well moderated community, where people use the right channels for what theyre named, and don't come into other channels and start spamming Nwords and other slurs. Everyone wants an unbiased moderation staff that follows a set of their own rules so people don't get banned unfairly. And in my eyes that's what we do. (I wont speak for other places on discord, just us) I like to be part of the group keeping chat clean for others to find people to play with. I enjoy talking to users and the conversations happening, so why not give a little time back to keep it that way?

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As long as some company doesn't benefit financially, even a little bit, from me doing free work then I don't really mind. I just wanted to see a community on a subject I am interested in grow. If it gets too big or too much work I will need to find new moderators and may step down altogether. It doesn't seem like that will happen any time soon.

So basically I am already here browsing and it isn't really that much of an inconvenience to click a few extra buttons on occasion to keep a community clean.

I think there are a lot of reasons.

Some people perhaps find they enjoy being able to control large communities - there are definitely some "power mod" users forming here on Lemmy and I don't know that it is clear why or what that will look like going forward.

I don't think being a mod is always about having bad motives. I look after a community for a table top role playing game across Discord, Reddit, and here - the community isn't huge but isn't insignificant (expect here where there is no activity at all, the main hub is Discord). I recruited a team of mods to help with that, particularly Discord. Not to speak for them, but it's people who enjoy being around the community and being a part of it. Nothing selfish or power-hungry about it - it is simply for the love of supporting a community you come to love and helping to make sure it continues to be a space the people using it want to be a part of. I set up the community because I enjoy the game, there wasn't one already, and I didn't want to clutter up other spaces talking about it. People joined and more importantly stayed because they enjoy the people and the space.

I think a test is when there are issues, or when you decide it is time to move on - are you happy to pass the community on to others who would like to look after it, or do you not do that and lock it down or get rid of it entirely. That feels incredibly selfish, and speaks to your reasons I think; whereas if you are happy to pass the torch because you care about the community which has formed in the space more than whatever you get out of doing the job, it is probably more likely you are doing the job altruistically and because you care.

I'm sure the above isn't always the case and there are so many reasons and scenarios, just my thoughts at the moment :)

I haven't been a mod, but I volunteered for Transcribers of Reddit. For me, it was about having something to do that's not entirely a waste of time. So I'd call that egoistic altruism.

I think it's like taking the trash out, someone's gotta do it. Thankfully I don't have to but I would if a community I was super into needed it.

Power fantasies, of course.

@CaspianXI I've always been of the opinion that if something you want doesn't exist, go and do it yourself. That's why I've modded and continued to do so-- things don't just happen on their own.

I know there are some power trippers that just like to be the boss of things, but I'm assuming most are like me, who just want a happy and functional community to exist and thrive.

I've modded and ran communities on and off since the 90s. I do it because I enjoy giving back in my own way and creating a place people enjoy to be. Really is altruistic, I started because a forum i was on the owner no longer had the time and the other option was for the site to go down, never really looked back. Being in the industry, running another server and checking in on posts in a topic I am interested in is usually a light extra load.

I operate in highly topical spaces so moderation is easier and setup correctly it just takes care of itself mostly. I do not envy the people who take on the task of trying to moderate general open post areas. OffTopic and Gen Discussion are always the biggest sources of forum drama.

I'm seeing spam start to show up here and looking for ways to help stop that.

I'm a glass-half-empty person. My views of a situation tend toward the negative so to me, the desire to be a mod stems from the enjoyment of saying "That's not allowed!"

I know there are those who want to keep a community safe and assure the policies are enforced but if it means they get to swat someone's nose and say "No, bad member", all the better.

Lack of social skills, mixed with little to no control of things in their personal life.

ITT: almost noone admits they like they "power" and the replacement of a career which they lack irl. Barely anyone with a demanding career has time for this unpaid shit, especially with family.

I secured some subs to ensure I can powertrip against people on reddit. I dont have time to fully mod them so will get some janitor mods do the work while I can powertrip once in awhile (not main acc)

I just created a community here on the Fediverse/Lemmy that I enjoyed on Reddit . So now I'm a mod of it, nothing altruistic or ulterior about it, probably more egotistical.

I started a community on kbin because there wasn't really one there with the same kind of content that I wanted to see for this particular topic.

I've never really been a moderator before, but I'm excited by the fediverse and want to help grow it, so I thought I'd at least try.

Personally, I created two communities here that I frequented on /r, /m/Amex and /m/Signal because I wanted to help build kbin up overall, and give a home to those that migrated. Full disclosure, I will eventually step back from moderating once those communities grow and become self-sufficient with additional moderators joining in.

That’s a good question. I think, kinda like politics in real life, the people that would make the best moderators are the ones that have very little desire to do it while often times the ones that do want it are the worst suited.

Someone once made me a moderator of a ~30,000 subscriber subreddit without me asking and I hated every second of it. All I ever tried to do make the place as good as possible and enforce the rules in place. I got praised for being a good mod, but just as often I got called a power tripping asshole by people who didn’t want to follow the rules. You really can’t win, and honestly I wouldn’t want to even try to moderate again. It takes up too much of your time, you get almost nothing from it and even when all you are doing is trying to do your best, you still end up being hated by some people. It’s just not worth the hassle.

Each person has one's own reasons, I guess. And they might change and evolve over time. That's what happened with me.

Moderating a forum years and years ago, it was about contributing and "making my part", as if I had a moral duty to pay back to the community that I enjoyed. Then in Reddit it was about helping a small community to stay alive, when most mods were MIA and the only one who wasn't was [likely] overburdened; I feared that the community would end "banned as unmoderated" and/or taken over by a specific powermod. Then now in Lemmy it's about creating spaces to discuss things that I enjoy.

In none of those cases I'd say that I was/am being altruistic - I'm motivated by my own wants. But if other people benefit from it, so be it.

For some perhaps there's also the feeling of power (all hail the almighty janny). Others might get off-record monetary incentives to do it. Others might be genuinely altruistic, unlike me. Who knows.

Sometimes, it's about the perception of power, but these people tend to make the worst sorts of moderators. Sometimes, it's about wanting to steer a community in a certain direction or to stabilise a community in the direction it's already going in. As for me, I've gone through the first two, plus had a third path - I was effectively deputised as a moderator twice as a spam-catcher.

I personally moderated a few on Reddit just because I didn't want them to fill up with porn when it's a femboys hooters sub lol.

I recently offered to mod and the 3 other mods seem to have the same feeling... it needed to be done and we want the community to thrive... I'll let ya know when the power gets to my head though