Anecdotally, I've heard that spam is actually a pretty serious issue and keeping Reddit clean of it is fairly difficult (since you want to take it down ASAP to minimize it's audience). Obviously, the system works pretty well and we rarely see it, but I'm given to understand that's because of a LOT of behind-the-scenes effort.
The problem is, anyone who can eliminate spam can also eliminate posts that disagree with their politics, so you also need a supervisory layer above the spam-cleaners.
This is all pretty easy to balance in a smaller community, but spam is exponential to size: larger communities attract significantly more spam than smaller ones.
The problem is, anyone who can eliminate spam can also eliminate posts that disagree with their politics, so you also need a supervisory layer above the spam-cleaners.
This is all pretty easy to balance in a smaller community, but spam is exponential to size: larger communities attract significantly more spam than smaller ones.