I honestly don’t think mutual respect should be predicated on whether one is being paid or not, so…I’m not sure I’m going to do that.

I’m not sure where respect vs. disrespect figures in this discussion. Are you saying that removing comments/banning is inherently disrespectful?

You’d be suggesting u/awkward the turtle — a user whose habit of pinning their own wildly sexist comments to the top of every thread and then insta-banning anyone who had a problem caused a whole petition about it — should be ok, actually, because they’re not (officially) paid, and that I should do whatever strikes my fancy here as well.

I did not say or suggest anything of the sort. Please show me where you are getting that idea.

If any person doesn’t want the stress of abiding by the social contract, they really shouldn’t be interacting with others, but instead they deliberately accepted a position of power.

I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore. Being a mod or an admin is not about “the social contract.” It’s about enforcing rules either as a paid employee of the site or as an unpaid community volunteer. Being a jerk is just being a jerk, regardless of what position you’re in as you act like a jerk. I just don’t see the relevance here unless you’re trying to claim every action taken by mods/admins against a user (such as removals/bans) is somehow violating the social contract. But seeing as that is a ridiculous assertion I’m going to assume that is not what you’re saying.