I moderated a moderately sized gaming community forum during 2010-2015 as the "head admin".
It is a very thankless job, but harder than moderating the forum was moderating the mods themselves. Power corrupts, but the tiniest bit of lame internet power corrupts absolutely, and the only people that ever apply to be moderators are those that seek this lame power.
It starts off with reasonable people but slowly becomes a cabal of knobs with unquestionable authority who hire more of the same people until you've got an insular group of narcissistic, condescending mods that are just there to defend their own power.
> It starts off with reasonable people but slowly becomes a cabal of knobs with unquestionable authority who hire more of the same people until you've got an insular group of narcissistic, condescending mods that are just there to defend their own power.
As a Serb living in the UK this hit me pretty hard.
IMO, the healthiest way to run a community is for the head admin (and top lieutenants) to be inactive. Let the deputy admin and mods handle the site. When they start power-tripping, it's time for the head to step in and clear the house.
This model is dangerous when no worthwhile applicants arrive after the call for new mods. Then the forum either stagnates, is overrun with spam, or the head admin starts becoming active (therefore putting them on the path to petty power trips that they just cleared the leadership board to be rid of).
This sounds a lot like a dictator in the Roman Republic. He was called upon to clean house for a period of time with absolute power when the Republic was threatened from the inside or out. Cincinnatus is one of the good examples I'm aware of.
Theoretically isn't this was the head of state should do in many country's setups? They are the ultimate arbiter of power, and have the power to nominate prime ministers, but don't have real legislative power themselves.
They also have the sword over their head that should they ever use that power, they will be listened to and promptly have their office abolished after. [Or at least that's how I understand the modern British monarchy]
I'm mod of a medium sized group (10k+), and not because i wanted it. I simply asked the mods why someone was being ignored, so they made me one...i don't go back with enough frequency to handle all situations, but as everyone else is asleep at the wheel, I've done what i can to make sure the group doesn't get bombarded with crap posts.
It is very thankless, but i do think it's neat what tools reddit tried to give us.
Do you think anything could be done to keep moderators from going off the rails? Would making mod actions as transparent as possible help? How about user feedback that could see mods. Obviously you'd still need the dictator at the top to be benevolent but that seems to be more likely at least until the community gets big enough that selling out would actually pay.
I certainly think it's not a simple thing to solve.
One thing, and alluding to the other reply, is the "benevolent dictator", they need to be keeping the mods in shape - not doing any moderating themselves, but to keep them from running amok. This is how I ran thing until I didn't have time any more, at which point things deteriorated (not in some dramatic way, mind you.)
The other thing is that mod selection is really, really difficult. Maybe 100% of people that "apply" or show any desire to be a mod are mostly just thirsty for some of that banhammer power. Additionally, on a gaming forum, the general age and maturity of these applicants leaves much to be desired. Generally I handled this by throwing mod responsibilities as a burden of those that were generally already community contributors in other ways (devs, etc) and they seemed mature enough. I think this made a difference compared to other communities that I saw around that time.
In retrospect one other thing that should have been done would be to separate the mod identity from the community identity as a way of tempering the ego that sometimes causes issues. Lots of forums and whatnot slap a load of badges and medals on mods that gives the role an air of privilege that isn't deserved.
...and none of this really applies to the context of reddit, and especially not for the larger communities of millions of users. The structure just doesn't scale since your dictator just can't see what all the mods are doing.
Do you? What if,
instead the system promoted a random active user to moderator status, with a strict term limit, with the possibility of being kicked out if too unpopular. Power shouldn't be given to those who seek it, and kind of low stakes Internet forum seems like a way to thrust power unto those that aren't.
“Originally FYAD was a complete anarchy. Nobody moderated it, and it was good. When it started to become more popular, however, certain users did stuff that was just annoying (spamming huge images that broke the tables and made threads impossible to read, posting a billion threads, posting illegal porn, that sort of thing) so certain people called for some kind of moderation. Others said that a moderator would ruin FYAD. Fistgrrl, in her infinite wisdom, proposed the Idiot King contest.
Once a week, she (or another admin) posts a thread. The admin has already two numbers, one for the Idiot King and one for the Loser King. Everyone who wants to enter the contest posts under that thread, and chooses a number between 1 and 100. When the contest is over (Usually 20 minutes or so), the person who posted closest to the Idiot King number becomes the Idiot King for a week, with most of the powers of a moderator and a ceremonial title. The person who posted the number closest to the Loser King number is banned for a week. Anyone who posts a duplicate number, a number that is not between 1 and 100, or posts in the IK thread but has not posted in FYAD in the last 24 hours is also banned for a week.
UPDATE: April 30, 2003: Lowtax did the IK contest this week, and instead of numbers he asked people to post states. What a crazy guy!”
That still sounds like its selecting for people who desire power - perhaps even more so because of the risk of a ban. I guess it might be appropriate for that kind of forum.
This sounds very similar to slashdot and "meta-mod". Moderation was done through an infrequent escalation of privileges (sometimes this was weekly for me but sometimes I didn't get it for a month+), but everyone past a certain level could meta-mod every day.
Both operations were limited in scope for a prescribed number of moderations each time.
I have never done it but it seems like one of the most thankless endevours you can take on. If you do it right, from the outside it looks like you are doing nothing.
It is like the duck on the pond. Looks calm on top but the legs are frantically keeping them in place.
my only experience led to 'delegate fast, most people are reasonable' I helped build Jolt.co.uk & Squadlinks, a large UK gaming site during the Quake/Counterstrike era, while we had issues with occasional individuals, on the whole our forums were nice places to hang out, we had legions of gamers who loved taking ownership of their sub, they'd then sub delegate moderation, being liberal with trust engendered trust and we maintained a virtuous spiral, I imagine because our audience were closely aligned it made things a lot easier.
I worked a lot on blueyonder cs/dod communities at the time online and on irc.
It was mostly OK, the biggest eye opener at the time (I was 20ish) was when I'd hop onto one of the other admins (female) irc account and holy hell that was an experience in private conversations.
well recalled, that is very true and I am glad you raised that, obnoxious, on the other side of the coin, I fondly recall the UK Multiplay series of LAN events, for me these events showed that in person, people are just nicer, perhaps online it's not just the 'safety' of anonymity, it's closer to machismo posturing with a dash of mob rule combined with the tragedy of the masses, in real life, with a ratio of about 999:1 I saw a lot of good respectful behaviour and it was a great to be a part of that, that community had community at the core in a very genuine way, they deserved their success.
It's a completely volunteer job. Why do it if it's so horrible? Especially for free, for a corporation like Reddit? Either it's not as horrible as it is being often portrayed or the mods get something out of it too.
The day to day chore can still be a horrible experience even though you get something out of it. Whether it's a sense of charity (best case scenario) or a power trip (much more common), it doesn't mean the job is pleasant, but it may make the mission worthwhile for someone.
I was number 3 admin for two defaults back when there were only 20 defaults. Power mods are a cancer that got all the regular mods banned and then ran the places to the ground.
I'm confused by this link - it seems like a bit of a mish-mash of notes (to be fair, it is their wiki). Are they archiving Reddit, or not? It seems like mostly they were linking to Pushshift, and now that entry is struck through.
It is unfortunate that Pushshift's owner admitted he seemed overwhelmed working on the project as a solo individual and decided to stop communicating with everybody including the admins of reddit.
Since reddit is trying for an IPO and thus lawyers and execs looking to purge or exploit everything legacy it is hard to say how the negotiations would of went, but I'd imagine the terms would of impacted pushshifts functionality or been so unfavorable it would of shutdown anyway.
I'm going to miss pushshift, their service was valuable for catching reddit moderators performing underhanded censorship of posts they didn't agree with. Reddit is walking a thin line between becoming a dumpster fire and being the one stop shop for a good portion of the worlds interaction. I would personally prefer to see reddit kick all of their moderators to the curb and stop catering to the snowflakes of the world.
Reddit has censored themselves into absurdity. I literally can't read the front page without being logged in anymore because it's actually just all propaganda from top to bottom. At least the site was usable during this cached period, but that version of reddit is totally gone now. The fact that they used to tout free speech is hard to believe these days.
Check out https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditMinusMods. It's dead now, but the number of popular posts removed for arbitrary reasons is insane. According to the graph on the front page, something went wrong in mid-2017, because that's when the number of post removals suddenly accelerated.
That was when they decided the 2016 election could never be allowed to happen again, and “liberal” folks decided free speech (rather hilariously in a dark way) was a “danger to democracy”.
They then proceeded to call anyone who disagreed with this sentiment a “Russian bot”. I remember getting banned from certain subreddits just because I was guilty of the crime of posting in r/TheDonald (not even voicing support!)
Oh yea I've experienced that before by posting on r/subredditdrama. I was then banned from a relationship sub, a eli5 sub and another sub. Ironically I was posting to correct some bad information that was shared, but it didn't matter.
the mods abused the sticky functionality to get posts pushed to the front page for a long time. other subreddits were tired of t_d users brigading. they spread misinformation on purpose.
Engage in good faith in online spaces or get banned. hn is useful because it is tightly moderated.
the auto-ban of users that post in no-no subreddits was a reaction to the continued lack of action on reddit's part.
I remember that one day the frontpage was exclusively t_d posts. Insane stuff. Shortly after, they changed the algorithm. That was the day reddit officially jumped the shark.
I understand why they did it, but reddit was not the same afterwards. The content got stale and boring, astroturfed to hell, and that's without mentioning the clique of moderators pushing a specific narrative on all subs and the horrible, horrible, horrible redesigns that kept getting pushed in increasingly hostile ways.
I am honestly surprised, and saddened, that reddit still hasn't gone out the way digg did, but that's probably because there is no good alternative yet...
The only way to "enjoy" reddit is with old.reddit.com and sorting by "rising" instead of "hot"... or "controversial", if you have the guts.
Reddit will never die like Digg did, but also it already has. When Digg died, it was still primarily a news site, and the community was smaller and more cohesive.
Reddit is now what Forumer used to be and a less reactionary NextDoor if you're in at least a medium-sized city. Today there was a loud boom in my city and the first place I heard about it was the local subreddit. Digg never had that. Nor did it have the special-interest boards (including pornography). Reddit also functions as the best independent product reviews site — my back owes plenty to /r/Mattress.
But as a news and politics site, it's basically dead. If you use any reasonably independent subreddits, people will be talking about how awful the "defaults" are. People prefer Discord for video games and they join filter-bubble communities for politics. The all-time top posts on /r/news are mostly more than two years old. The same is true of /r/worldnews and /r/politics — in the former case, some minor Hungarian drama from years ago outshines every single thread about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
> I remember that one day the frontpage was exclusively t_d posts. Insane stuff. Shortly after, they changed the algorithm. That was the day reddit officially jumped the shark.
This was definitely a turning point of Meme War I.
>Memetic warfare on the part of 4chan and r/The_Donald sub-reddit is widely credited with assisting Donald Trump in winning the election in an event they call 'The Great Meme War'. According to Ben Schreckinger, "a group of anonymous keyboard commandos conquered the internet for Donald Trump—and plans to deliver Europe to the far right."
I'd love to see more systematic documentation of Reddit's censorship, since they have so much power over the opinions of so many. There is https://www.reveddit.com who has done a lot of work for anti-censorship.
I'm the author. Thanks for the mention below! A friend brought this post to my attention. I also have a substack now [1]. My talk from last year [2] did spur some discussion on HN [3], but it was too long for most to sit through.
To be clear, I'm anti-secretive censorship, not anti-moderation per se. But yes, secretive censorship is everywhere!
The long and short of it is that we are all equally guilty and equally capable of pulling ourselves out of this. It's not "just" the government as your article from The Intercept implies. The famous statements about "tyranny of the majority" came from Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill, but you can hear for example Jordan Peterson making roughly the same point [4]:
> "People think that when you're in a totalitarian state, the reason that the state is totalitarian is because everyone is the victim of top-down pressure from tyrants. And that's not how it works at all. A state becomes totalitarian when every single person is lying about absolutely everything all the time."
And shadow removals occur in many online spaces, not just Reddit. They don't get rid of spam, they promote it. Bots easily code around it and real users are left stuck in the mud. "Trolls" don't learn because they aren't facing consequences.
The thing to keep in mind is the future. If we all do this to each other in perpetuity, we're doomed. Fortunately, we humans are smart and can perceive a better outcome. The more people who understand that this does happen, the more who will decide not to do it because they don't want it done to them, and it looks bad when it's revealed.
Thank you for your great work! Reddit has been practically unusable without your tool for a long time. The site's original concept was perfect, reviving the old forum concept with spaces for discussion built around ideas, not people - which I've always loved. It's sad what it's been turned into.
It's more the fact that you NEVER get 2 sides on Reddit, every sub just turns into a circle jerk. Posting on Reddit is pointless unless you're just trying to validate your preexisting views.
The problem is that for some reason, nuance is scarce in Reddit threads. It's not usually thoughtful, multifaceted opinions that get posted, but instead short, quippy, polarized statements that intentionally or otherwise come off as combative.
It's not really possible to have a productive conversation like that, regardless of the topic. Everything degrades into an endless game of oneupmanship that escalates until the opinions being represented are distorted well beyond anything espoused by most people in real-life discussions.
My girlfriend browses Reddit often so I’ve had the chance to see how a self-proclaimed heavy user interacts with the platform. After seeing that, it makes sense to me why the platform is how it is when compared to isolated forums or discussion boards.
Reddit has two types of users, more or less: browsers and posters. The browsers will probably never post anything, or will post so rarely that it does not warrant mentioning. The regular posters will dominate the discussion in a given subreddit, and probably eventually moderate it, so there is a very strong in-group effect. The only way as an outsider to penetrate that in-group is to make well-liked, popular quips which pander to the moderators and browsers.
On the contrary, a forum or discussion board typically has two classes of users, in my experience: active posters who contribute to discussions they want to, and lurkers, who are usually new, and are absorbing from current posters. There is an implicit assumption that users have probably been watching the forum for a while to get a lay of the land before posting and have read through a good amount of the site’s content, and when they post, they are accepted since they are aware of the conversation and can build on it.
The culture of lurking and the desire of viewers to discuss topics with others is what keeps forums strong, IMO. In their place, Reddit has casual browsers who happen to see content and upvote it (effectively deciding democratically what others will see). When a large portion of users who have no intention to engage with others can dictate what their fellow members are most likely to see, it quickly degenerates to a “who can make the coolest comment” club.
The other problem is that forums are divided into threads that each progress in a linear fashion, while comment trees inevitably fragment into a thousand sub-discussions each regurgitating the same points and arguments over and over in slightly different form. It's certainly possible to be "jumped on" in a forum but if three people are making the same argument you can quote them all and make one reply which rebuts the point. It's effectively impossible for comment-tree discussions to come to any consensus except via mob-rule. There will always be someone else wading in with the same argument and someone else rebutting the point in the same fashion and being rebutted in turn.
Comment-tree discussions, especially gamified ones with "points" etc certainly are compelling, they're literally designed to be an endless quicksand for argumentation and gratification, which is why they've taken over. They're fun. But they are awful for reaching a consensus.
Also yes, suppressing dissident voices so that nobody can even read objections and counterarguments is the worst part about Reddit. That model barely even works here (politics discussions inevitably end up in a dogpile of flags and downvotes) with norms around not abusing your buttons, but it absolutely does not work in a mass-market social media site with hundreds of millions of users.
Rarely does a subject have two equally intellectually valid sides. BOtH sIDes is pointless once the facts have been observed and established. The world is not nearly as gray as some fantasize it to be.
If I go to r/cars and ask if I can safely use diesel in my gasoline vehicle there is not and should not be two sides. Destructive commenters who try to advocate for otherwise will obviously be immediately deleted or banned, and entertaining their arguments and complaints about "censorship" and why they think they should be let back in is futile. Trying to argue with them is like trying to argue a complex math problem with ChatGPT - they will always hallucinate a new excuse and nonsensical response no matter how many times you try. A brief look at r/ModSupport will lay evident that Reddit's issue is a lack of moderation tools, not excess.
As much as there is propaganda praising Russia in this conflict, there is pro-Ukraine propaganda, nothing new about it. The fact that you do see one sided propaganda is just indicative of media outlets you use filtering the propaganda they feed you. Or in other words, construct narrative "our side is good, their side is bad".
Why is it so hard for some people to accept that media outlets are filtering propaganda on other divisive topics too?
Reddit hive mind latches onto feel good stories but ignores logic and history. Everything is black and white, good and evil to the average Redditor.
It's best to avoid Reddit front page and large subs.
PS. Reddit's transparent upvote system highly encourages popular and feel good opinions at the expense of accuracy. You can write a quality post backed by peer reviewed science but still get downvoted if it doesn't fit within a sub's consensus opinion.
Absolutely, but the Ukrainian government is rotten to the bone and ultra corrupt as well, it needs to be exposed. Officials are lining their pockets with foreign aid, including the Ukrainian president. I'll still support Ukraine over Russia, but Ukrainian officials are crooks, and you cannot say that on r/worldnews without facing a ban.
It makes leadership complicit and is entirely fair if parent is correct; nobody's going to give a shit about wartime grift after the fact.
Men are/were being conscripted to defend that country. Knowing your leadership is selling you out is actionable information to those deciding whether to answer the call.
But this could also be psyops/lies/propaganda. Russia put a lot of effort into influencing opinion over the last two decades.
Yes, US side, NATO side and Ukraine side, war crimes that US has committed are also very bad.
Even though considering "whataboutism", Russians as a nation are universally hated among their neighbors, they invaded, killed and displaced and are currently occupying lands in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan etc. etc.
And that would be main difference, while US bombs tyrannic regiments and topples dictatorships, Russia invades and is trying to annex their neighbors. It has economy roughly of a Spain and is basically a shithole thug regiment that needs to be dissolved and fast.
Wrong. These are not views, these are facts. Yes, Russia is a terrorist state.
As I said, war crimes are wrong no matter the "side". However there is huge difference between bombing tyrants and dictators vs raping kids in Ukraine.
I mean, on the whole we profit more by having a cheap source of competent labor adjacent to europe, but that doesn't stop the military-industrial-congressional complex from making sales.
If the US is happy with a protracted war, then isn’t pro-Ukraine propaganda anti-war? If we’re willing to keep supplying them indefinitely, it just becomes a matter of which country has the will/manpower to fight.
Since Ukraine is fighting for their home, I guess they’ll have the willpower advantage. So, we should root for peace, achieved as soon as possibly, by the invaders leaving.
I don’t see a ton of other ways, it seems like anything else would require Ukraine to give up something, which is a pretty hard sell in response to an unprovoked invasion.
(I mean obviously it is Ukraine’s right to decide if they want to, like, sacrifice some territory in exchange for a peace treaty, but they seem to have pretty good morale and Russia didn’t respect their previous agreement not to invade, so it seems like it would be hard to start negotiating).
On the other hand, there are entire communities that would entirely disappear if Reddit died tomorrow. Stuff like Marathon (the game) and ergonomic mechanical keyboards just don’t have enough of a presence online to be able to direct everyone toward a new gathering point.
Fuck Reddit though. It’s all propaganda and censorship at this point. Both US political parties too - r/conservative has rules just as abusive as r/politics.
I hadn't thought about that before, but that might be one contributing reason why online communities are moving into discord chats instead. A subreddit or forum has its most toxic posts visible until they are deleted. A discord chat almost moderates itself because anything older than a few days is a pain to retrieve, and doesn't show up on Google.
I've gotten back into Myth 2 recently. I was surprised by the number of mods/plugins available that are of high quality having mostly played the OEM maps back in the day. And there are still people actively playing online. Good times.
> On the other hand, there are entire communities that would entirely disappear if Reddit died tomorrow.
I don't believe that. These communities can exist outside reddit. Plenty of communities that were banned by reddit live on with their own website and thrive.
I think you got your hands reversed - most popular/widespread media platforms, both traditional and social, seems entirely controlled by left-leaning interests.
Saying that corporate media is left leaning is just propaganda that the right uses to play the refs. It's just absolutely not true, downvote all you want. The reason reddi seems shockingly biased to many is because you don't see left leaning media very frequently if at all outside of reddit. Same reason why people search for reddit to try break out of google's seo bubble, it's one of the few outlets for noncorporate grassroots expression left on the internet.
I mean, I'm in Europe. To me, most western media - particularly US - seems to be between left and far left[0], but I'm realizing this may be selection bias, due to several factors:
- I'm thinking mostly about Internet-accessible media. That means social media, Internet-only news/opinion publishing, and legacy news/opinion media that underwent a transformation, from printing papers and running TV channels, to publishing articles on-line and running TV streaming. This is biased against media platforms that are still more focused on TV, radio and/or paper.
- I'm going by my own overall experience and exposure, which is likely biased by my interests and circles - STEM, software industry, higher education, and adjacent.
It feels to me that the "left/right" split in media is ~80/20, but I have no good way to estimate the the actual volume of right-leaning media, as I inhabit a left-leaning filter bubble[1]. That said, the reason I suspect there is some imbalance favoring "left" is because news publishing and advertising both focus mostly on-line these days, are run by well-educated people, and involve a lot of tech - and all those factors tend to lean left, AFAIK.
EDIT: also another factor suggesting an imbalance - there is clear one-sideness in terms of effective cancellation, performative victimhood and outrage activism - if there was no media bias, both extremes would be equally effective (or neither would be). This is not to say only one extreme is trying to manipulate people like this - I just suspect one side does it mostly through the media, and the other mostly through church sermons[2].
--
[0] - The meaning of "right"/"left" I'm using here is the US one, as much as I internalized it. Over here in Europe, the "middle point" is located somewhere else, making the US "right" and "left" both be mostly on the same side - I just can't ever remember which one.
[1] - I don't seek out news myself, so I ingest mostly whatever happens to cross my way (and half of that is via HN anyway). My main exposure to more right-leaning media is through the government TV station my in-laws watch, and some talking point one of my parents picks up from weird and mostly partisan political YouTube channels.
[2] - The little exposure I had locally with Catholic sermons tells me that priests often push specific political / social views on the parishioners.
Well I would consider far left media to be anti capitalist. Could you name one or more outlets that don't lick corporate boot and have any kind of relevancy outside the internet? The only one I know is Jacobin, which has 3 million views per month on their website and sells 75000 newspapers, which is not a large publication (Those are medium sized youtuber numbers).
I think this disagreement comes from people using vague terms like "leftist". E.g. one person might think it means anti-capitalism, anti-globalism and workers rights, while another might think it means pro-trans, pro-environmentalism and anti-hate speech. And both think the other is using their definition.
It is bizarre that for so many of the modern day cultural issues we have, there is extensive relevant academic work that we could leverage, but if you look around you at various discussions and goings on, it's as if these resources do not exist. I always wonder the degree to which this is organic.
I'd argue this is because those cultural issues aren't academic. The topics themselves may be studied to smaller or larger degree, and as you note, there's a wealth of relevant, universally applicable knowledge - but this doesn't matter for cultural issues, as the "issues" part here means this is a fight. The people driving the conversation are trying to win something - like political power for their group, or self-esteem for themselves. Being considerate and reasonable in fighting such fight is, unfortunately, a hindrance.
I absolutely agree, my point is I do not know of a single human being on this planet proposing that semiotics and various other academic disciplines within philosophy are relevant and or useful here, I haven't come across anything and I look for these things on the regular. From a systems analysis perspective, it seems to me this is where THE problem is.
If this is actually true, I think it would be absolutely hilarious if this is what took humanity down, I can't think of a more deserving species.
What jazzyjackson below said prompted the realization that the GP is indeed talking about leftism, as opposed to liberalism (conventionally seen as a center-right political philosophy).
Most popular and widespread media companies are bastions of liberal thought, not leftist thought. And can be as intolerant of leftists as they are conservatives.
I think they're serious but they have a particular definition of "left" which includes anti-work and late-stage capitalism. When you think the left isn't left enough, everyone else is to your right.
> I mean, Ghislaine Maxwell was the head moderator of /r/news.
The conspiracy theory claimed that Ghislaine Maxwell was a moderator of /r/worldnews, and the evidence supporting this is extremely weak.
> The “evidence” shared by conspiracy theorists is that the user in question, u/MaxwellHill, has the word “Maxwell” in their name. The conspiracy theory's architects claim that gaps in the user’s posting history are tied to what they believe to be significant events in Ghislaine Maxwell’s life that apparently would have precluded her from posting links to articles about climate change, insects, Bitcoin, and a host of other various general news, as the account has dutifully done since 2006. They also have glommed onto a 2011 Gizmodo article in which MaxwellHill mentioned they were "busy with a potential business venture."
> However, despite multiple Reddit users quickly jumping in on the investigation event to the point of conducting a stylometric analysis, it appears that maxwellhill isn't actually Maxwell. Already on the same day as the thread went viral, [edit to add: after the real Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested] /r/worldnews moderator hasharin posted screenshots of maxwellhill commenting in the subreddit's backroom and a chat between them.
I think it based on the u/MaxwellHill account going dead at the same time Maxwell was arrested.
Personally, if it was me and I was tired of the moderating role - I would use the name coincidence to create an absurd conspiracy and have an absolute laugh about it all! Sort of Andy Kaufman kind of thing.
They were just lax about moderation until things got out of control and the company was at risk of being kicked off the app stores and being held complicit in some of the illegal conduct that was happening on the site.
So the same arc Twitter is on. Claim “free speech*” and heavily take action when you realize your viable business model is advertising and that means some level of brand safety.
Reddit has always walked "a thin line between becoming a dumpster fire and being the one stop shop for a good portion of the worlds interaction" (1) (2). It is up to you to figure out how you want your experience to be.
> I would personally prefer to see reddit kick all of their moderators to the curb and stop catering to the snowflakes of the world.
I'm sorry about your experiences with whatever moderators you have a beef with. My guess is you are talking about large subreddit(s). Large subreddits have their issues with transparency I agree but what are you trying to suggest? Reddit-appointed moderators? If so, you are in for a rude awakening.
I would instead spend effort in stopping them from charging third party apps for API access that are objectively better than the official apps and ensuring that they dont kill old.reddit.com (3) like they killed i.reddit.com
> It is up to you to figure out how you want your experience to be.
No, it's up to the subreddit moderators. They are the hidden hand that shapes the conversation.
Many of the popular subreddits have been taken over by groups of full-time moderators who are pushing various agendas. Their actions can't even be seen. We can only see the posts they've chosen to allow in their subreddits.
>If a person saw a bush sculpture for the first time ever they would probably think how it's really curious the bush has this well defined shape, and happily conclude that the bush is just like that. "Pretty cool how there is a bush with the shape of a dog's face" they'll think.
>In the same way, visiting a subreddit you would think that that's just the community and content. But once you see how moderation works you realize that in reality, the community is pulling to all sorts of places at the same time, and by pruning the content here and there with the shears of moderation, using the chainsaw that is automod and by motivating growth with precision via shadowbanning and choosing what becomes popular, you can perfectly shape a subreddit into the content you want.
> My guess is you are talking about large subreddit(s). Large subreddits have their issues with transparency I agree but what are you trying to suggest?
I want unpaid mods removed from the equation and for all content to be judged on the same scale and have full transparency to why moderation actions were taken, by who, and easy links to appeal. I also want clear rules for every subreddit, and if it's not a rule, users cannot be banned for it.
I've experienced many types of censorship, everything from mods silently deleting my posts without any reason or notification, then I occasionally get things removed with notes that the audience is too sensitive to have a real conversation (The topic was about dogs attacking people in my city). However all of my posts do not violate any of the published rules of the related subreddit. I argued more times with the moderators than I care to admit, till I just said fuck it, go ahead and ban me because I'll be back with another account in 10 minutes. I've gotten the game figured out on just creating many accounts and when one goes down, many others are available.
The dead accounts I can't use anymore actually make me some money, depending on the age and posting history. They can be sold for up to 50'ish dollars for a 11 year old account with 5k karma. However they won't be able to post in every sub, they're all banned from r/denver , r/askcarsales , r/denverbroncos , some are banned from r/linux because I called out some stupidity around RS, GNU and why it shouldn't expressly call out LGBT as an audience member allowed to use their software.
I'm up to 51 different accounts, about 20 of them banned from the previous subreddit... I try to birth 2-3 reddit accounts every month, with different verified emails.
I specifically avoided going to /r/Denver after checking out the front page shortly after I moved here in 2020.
I don't think there are any city/state subreddits that are actually representative of their city/state. Except maybe /r/WashingtonDC. That subreddit was great when I lived there.
I mean I get the point you are trying to make but well...
There is a great book by Phil Rosenthal, the creator of 'Everybody loves Raymond' called 'Your lucky you're funny'.
He used to have a job as an overnight security guard in a museum. One night he was feeling very tired and for whatever reason decided to take a nap in one of the displays, this was like the bed of George Washington or something of equal importance. He got woken up by another security guards and was pulled up on it and was fired on the spot.
By Phil asked to be forgiven for this because of his previous good behavior and his superior got him his job back. This was the plot of an episode of Rosanne that Phil wrote.
Sure he got his job back but now everyone else hated him because it showed favoritism, and thus he was eventually forced out of the job by others disliking this.
The overall lesson was, just because you can get back into a position doesn't mean it is a good idea. Maybe if others dislike you that much, why do you keep trying to get back in? Sure they may be petty and it doesn't seem just, but why would you keep trying to get involved in that if the same result happens again and again?
I mean you 2-3 new accounts a month, it sounds like you didn't learn the lesson of Sisyphus. Maybe it is time to just let the boulder roll down the hill and enjoy its tumble to the bottom of the valley.
> Maybe if others dislike you that much, why do you keep trying to get back in?
Because with moderator actions it's not the others in the community (most of whom rarely, or never post) who necessarily dislike you, it's the government, or even just particular actors within the government, who dislike you.
> but why would you keep trying to get involved in that if the same result happens again and again?
I'm not the GP. I don't have multiple accounts. Someone would do this for the brief time that their posts are up, and eyes see it. To know that those ideas exist within others in the community.
I have an easy suggestion. Something like: a single person can be a moderator on 5 subreddits max
Edit: Uh, why is this so unpopular it's getting multiple downvotes? Like, there are people that moderate hundreds of different subreddits and I don't think that's how the community self-moderation is supposed to work.
>Large subreddits have their issues with transparency I agree but what are you trying to suggest? Reddit-appointed moderators? If so, you are in for a rude awakening.
I would create a system where moderators have far less power, and that Subreddit members can vote on rules, posts being deleted, etc. The system would be much more democratic. Members would also be able to challenge moderator actions or even reverse moderator actions.
As of right now, Reddit has a problem where moderators have too much power. On top of that, moderators aren't being paid so they can't be controlled.
Neat, then the trolls who already ruin many discussions would instead ruin whole subreddits. Just so people wouldn't get their feelings hurt when their ridiculous conspiracy theories get deleted.
There are conspiracy theories, and then there is soothsaying... It's one of the weird quirks of our culture that the former is considered bizarre, and the latter is considered ~logical/fine.
No "soothsaying" required. Look at every single "free speech" platform. They're horrible places that push away most people other than those on the extreme fringes.
However, you can base the democratic system based on the reputation of the user, rather than total number of votes. CS1.6 did not have these advanced systems in place.
That's called the tyranny of the majority and it is absolutely not the point of small community creation on Reddit. Imagine you create a reddit and put it work to make it popular enough to get attention only to have some other group come in and say 'thanks we'll take it from here' and take away the community that you created and completely change it's dynamics.
>Subreddit members can vote on rules, posts being deleted, etc. The system would be much more democratic.
If you've never been into one of those "we let the upvotes decide" subreddits, then you don't realize that they inevitably turn into a tepid, unfocused grey blur of samey garbage. Moderators are necessary to keep a subreddit on track.
How do you suppose a single or 1-5 human moderators can cope with bots better than the collective subreddit members?
Or do you think that some bots will be so human like that they can't be distinguished by other subreddit users, but they can be distinguished by moderators?
I would limit first-offense punishments to max 7 day bans. And to shadow-ban a post (versus locking it) for a first offense I'd require it be done by a Reddit admin, and then only for things such as site-wide rules violations.
Sure. They can't be controlled because they do it without monetary payments. But it's not a good thing that they can't be controlled when a sub gets to a certain size.
At some point, large subreddits become important to the internet and they outgrow the moderators.
You know how some founders are great when the startup is small but is completely incompetent when the startup grows and scales? Then VCs bring in "adults" to run the larger startup? Yea. It happens on subreddits too but founding moderators can't be kicked out as far as I know.
> They can't be controlled because they do it without monetary payments
... from reddit. Some are probably being paid by organizations, businesses, or even countries. And others might be monetizing their sub-reddit in some way (e.g. some of the crypto or investing sub-reddits).
All the more reason to create a more democratic and transparent system.
When crypto scams and exchanges were failing left and right, mods for official crypto exchange subreddits were deleting and censoring posts or shutting the subreddit down completely - leaving no place for bag holders to communicate and coordinate with each other.
Heck, even on HN, we could use a more democratic and transparent system. Right now, I'm convinced that HN blocks selective negative posts about Y Combinator.
It became a dumpster fire well over a decade ago and has never recovered since. Even the site administration is in on the act, lest we forget spez editing the database to modify users' comments with no indication.
> It became a dumpster fire well over a decade ago
Relevant: “Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity” (2014), Air Force Research Laboratory, Eglin AFB: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf
Are hate speech censorship apologists really the worst? I consider myself someone who believes hate speech should be censored. I’m pretty sure there are much worse things.
You can apply that argument to any kind of moderation. The core problem is not that hate speech is censored, the problem is about who is responsible for applying the rules and how these people are selected.
Hacker News is also censored and moderated, but it is my impression that the mods are quite carefully selected. On Reddit, the mods are anonymous and external, and are elected in an opaque process which I don't have a good understanding of. I fear that you end up with the catch 22 also seen in homeowner's associations: The people who have the time and dedication to rise to the top in these kinds of organizations are exactly the people you don't want to be in charge.
I think it should be censored because A. I think it’s important to protect victims of hate. and B. I believe allowing hate speech leads to hateful groups recruiting more members and gradually gaining power.
Who decides what hate speech is? The goverment… the same way they decide every other law.
Complaining about slippery slopes is fairly absurd. If we used similar logic we wouldn’t prosecute murder because of the slippery slope that would lead to locking everybody up.
I live in Canada… where unlike the US (but like many other countries), there are strong rules against hate speech, yet we haven’t descended into fascism nearly as much as the US has.
Hatred towards specific groups of people based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and gender should not be allowed in a civilized society. The value and and very existence of those groups of people is not up for debate.
Being banned is in and of itself only a signal of strong disagreement with those holding the banning power.
Often those holding bumming power will ban for being an arsehole but they can also ban for many other things.
For instance, I don't necessarily think not wanting to allow people with male levels of testosterone to compete in female sports is arseholishness, but reasonable people can disagree here and a moderator might ban for it.
Oh for sure, a 1-off ban in a single community doesn't mean much, but if you find yourself being banned from multiple communities because of the things you're saying, it's probably worth taking a moment of introspection to really assess whether you're in the right or not.
I also don't think that particular example is arseholeish but it sure is tedious to hear folks with no interest in sports who suddenly have an opinion on who can compete. If you want to engage in the subject matter go speak to folks at your local athletics or sports club.
> but it sure is tedious to hear folks with no interest in sports who suddenly have an opinion on who can compete
Clearly they do have an interest in sports - on the topic of fairness for female athletes at the very least - if they have formed an opinion on this topic.
Most folks talking about the issue only care about it in as much as it provides them with an opportunity to bash trans athletes.
It’s a complex topic and you’d do well to talk to folks who are actually affected by it.
I competed in the Southern Athletics league last summer and train with my local athletics club, I’m yet to even see a single trans athlete take part, let alone compete.
That's like claiming that most people talking about the subjugation of women and girls in Iran are only doing so as an opportunity to bash Islam. Even if this unevidenced claim was true, women are still being treated appallingly, regardless of anyone's motivations for raising the issue.
For your information, I have talked to women adversely affected by male athletes competing in their leagues. The issue is not particularly complex to understand, most people can easily see the inherent unfairness in this.
It usually is. Reddit in particular banned a whole swathe of women-focused communities, and users who commented in them, where women were advocating for their rights regarding female-only spaces.
Outside of social media, there is a significant amount of institutional censorship on this topic, favoring male privilege over women's rights.
Which banned communities are you referring to? I can't recall any ban wave targeting anything other than content most would consider to be hateful or bullying.
Ah so when you say "women-focused" community what you meant to say was "anti-trans" communities.
Those aren't communities I ever looked into but I can imagine the sort of content that got posted there, see my comment above about hateful or bullying content.
Why do I have to be DMCA compliant when reaching a US audience?
Because they want to ensure to be available and reach users there. There is no inherent need, but not playing by the rules may result in being banned from participating in countries. Sometimes that's accepted (your Saudi Arabia example), sometimes ensured via separate services or other tricks (e.g. Chinese markets).
There are vast differences as to what constitutes "hate speech". But even if the moderation here was the same as on Reddit it wouldn't necessarily mean that you can't criticise such moderation here.
Government (in my country we use a parliamentary system where laws get proposed/changed/...), courts.
For example in my country it is not legal to agitate to overthrow the political system, to form a new Nazi party, to use Nazi symbols as a political party, to organize a storm of the parliament, etc.
There are also strict laws to protect the privacy of people, incl. persons who are suspects of crimes. It's for example not allowed, without court order, to openly publish personal data (fotos, fullnames) of suspects and to search for those. Even the police can't do that without permission.
Yet so-called "hate speech" moderation on sites like Reddit tends to be a lot stricter than the law, often going as far as removing facts that might offend some group.
I meant it more in the sense that (in this case) the RNC weren't proposing that the solution for this is for google to do zero filtering. They're still accepting that spam filtering is important, they just want the rules changed in their favour.
I suspect the term "hate speech" is doing a lot more work than it should be and you two have different understandings of the term.
For instance, for some people talking about embryo selection is hate speech against the disabled, while for others only explicitly calling for the deaths of all <insert ethnic group> would meet the hate speech bar.
That's entirely the problem though: Hate isn't a property of the speech but a possible motivation behind it. But banning speech based on motivation is eerily close to making certain thoughts illegal. There are also a lot of speech motivated by hate that those pushing for hate speech regulation almost never want to see controlled. What is "ACAB" if not an expression for hate. What of "The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi". Even "calling for the deaths of all <insert ethnic group>" is entirely tolerated depending on the ethinc group in question. You see the motivation behind trying to ban the speech was never that its based on hate but wether it is "good" or "bad" speech - wether those in power agree with it or not. So no, I do not have a standard for "hate speech". I reject the concept of "hate speech" entirely. There is no standard. And there can't be one - surely you have heard the expression "one man's terrorist is anther man's freedom fighter". That abiguity is exactly what makes hate speech such an attractive moderation excuse. It is blank cheque that can and will be used to suppress whatever you want to suppress.
The question should be what kind of speech directly and provably causes actual harm. That is the only valid baseline for what should be outright banned everywhere. Not speech that could motivate others do do harm. Not speech that offends someone. Not speech goes against the current narrative. Of course you can have communities that have further restrictions. And you probably should. But you're not banning "hate speech", your're banning speech YOU don't like.
That's not motivated by hate, don't be absurd. People just want their local Nazis to improve themselves - why would they care about what constitutes a "good Nazi" otherwise?
You are 100% correct. I know of hordes of people being banned for the most ridiculous reasons. And it's always a power-hungry mod. And it would be fine if they were just banned from a sub, but I've seen guys get banned completely for the most stupidest reasons.
This is a total misunderstanding of the way Reddit works. If you don't like the moderation and enough people agree with you, you can just go start your own subreddit. All it is is an SSO and identity solution across multiple communities. If you don't like the moderators, you can start your own subreddit.
It's actually perfect because lots of people complain about "the power-hungry mods" but in the end, very few of those could do any better, which is why there are a few schism subreddits do well.
Ultimately, Reddit is the master of "show me the money". You think you could do better? Then do better. There's nothing stopping you. Just outcompete them in the marketplace of ideas.
You can start a subreddit and pay moderators. No one will get upset.
If you took more than 5 minutes, you would realize there is. There is still askthedonald and conservative, all the subreddits dedicated to people like ben shapiro, conspiracy, the catholic subreddits and politicalcompassmemes. And it's not as if isn't there a lot of right wing and reactionary takes that get upvoted on default subs whenever trans people or minorities are involved. Maybe you don't see it because you believe conservatism consists of spamming slurs and making thinly veiled threats, but there is a very health conservative portion on reddit.
Delusional. Let me know when any of those subreddits make it to the front page, while I have to endure the absolute propaganda shitshow of /r/whitepeopletwitter plastered all over the front page all day every day.
Ignoring the fact that the algorithms are almost certainly tweaked to make this the result, that's also what happens when the youth are systematically indoctrinated.
Sure sure, that's true. The highly controversial subjects Reddit is not good for. I assumed he was talking about something like lawn care or something.
It's definitely not the place to go for neutral political organization.
Politics is inherently highly controversial, is what I meant. And on forums like this, even a slight majority is enough to suppress the other.
After all, think about it: if you have 5000 rabid A voters and 4900 rabid B voters, every pro A comment will be at +100 and every pro B comment will be at -100 even if everyone participates. True approval will be slightly above 49% for B comments but will end up appearing to be massive disapproval.
That's a structural problem with additive/subtractive vote counts.
If you think the reason r/theDonald got banned was for having "conservative political opinions" then you're either ignorant of the situation or being intentionally disingenuous.
Keep in mind Reddit changed their entire front page algorithm because they weren't happy with r/the_donald getting to the front page as often as it was.
Ironically, that sub wasn't banned for supporting a right-wing political candidate but for repeatedly refusing to action content calling for violence against law enforcement.
I was no fan of that subreddit but I popped in from time to time and they were ridiculously stringent about adhering to Reddit's rules.
Also, it wasn't long after that many, many, many subreddits had far worse calls for violence against law enforcement and none of them got banned for it.
> Plurality is a noun that, like majority, can mean more than half of the whole. However when it comes to voting, plurality refers to “the excess of votes received by the leading candidate, in an election in which there are three or more candidates, over those received by the next candidate.” This means that someone who wins the plurality of votes received more than any of the other candidates but not necessarily the majority. (emphasis stripped by copy-paste)
Hillary Clinton won the plurality in 2016, but since this was not a democratic election she was ultimately not elected president. Joe Biden won the plurality (and majority) in 2020.
Unless you're talking about the electoral college vote, but I don't see how you can link the word "mainstream" with an electoral college vote, as that is a vote of elites.
Yep Reddit censorship only goes one way. There are tons of subs about white people doing bad things but as soon as someone makes a r/blacksdoing<bad things> it's almost immediately banned. Same goes with questioning trans/LGBT/Women/etc. Sub dedicated to misandry? OK.. your sub is loosely associated with misogyny? banned. What's funny is Elon Twitter reminding me of pre-2016 Reddit because they aren't censoring in an unbiased way.
This sentiment will forever fall on deaf ears because starting new subs cost you nothing but time and energy. I used to be a moderator on a fair number of subs with 30K+ members that I started from scratch based on that exact mentality. Nobody owes you an audience.
Doubt. Whenever a sub gets big enough the same cabal of powermods appears in the moderator list, as if by magic. They don't always replace the existing moderators but they do get added.
A user who no-one likes and not even the mods will defend suddenly appears in the mod list, and the head mod who would previously explain all decisions in detail is suddenly silent. I don't know if the admins add the new mods directly or lean on the subreddit mods to add them, but something's going on.
I've seen sub-reddits with moderator lists hidden for the safety of the moderators, or because there are too many moderators to list. How are these public?
An API may be technically public, but not for the hoi polloi. I would expect Reddit would bar API access for moderator lists that it has officially hidden.
> An API may be technically public, but not for the hoi polloi. I would expect Reddit would bar API access for moderator lists that it has officially hidden.
So what? If you are going to claim something as true you can't just say 'but the data was too hard to access so I claimed it anyway'.
I call bullshit on the parent's claim and no one has said anything to prove otherwise.
nuts, I have a little app that relies on it. It is still working atm and returning results from a few seconds ago but that sucks.
I was also always baffled how pushshift API is so superior to the Reddit API. AFAIK it is running for ~$1k/mo.
Locking down APIs like this could lead to way more scrapers which is expensive for everyone involved. I guess the number of people who know how to hit an API endpoint is way higher than the number who can setup a Selenium type scraper that runs JS and circumvents protections.
> In the case of Reddit I won’t cry for them, but it’s a protection mesure? Like stackoverflow closing it’s api to avoid being siphoned completely.
IIRC, it's not a protection measure. They now realize the data has value, so they want to sell it to people training AI models. That won't work if they keep giving it away for free.
Honest question, their biggest organic signals are from Google or bing, who happen to be the biggest model makers right now ("Open"AI and Bard).
What's stopping them from using their crawl data and building models. All reddit is doing is building a gate for small players while big players will leech their data anyway.
I’m curious how files like this comply with things like GDPR. For people who deleted their Reddit account, do individual user names show up in these files?
You mean the clown institute that pretends Taiwan isn't a country because the big bully would get mad? Pretty sure they don't actually have a say on whether countries exist.
While in theory GDPR claims global jurisdiction, in practice (pre-Brexit) UK ICO conceded they can't do much about US companies (Washington Post to be precise) as there's no EU presence, so there's that.
I guess it's a bit like if South Korea tried to enforce their North Korean songs ban in the US.
You are subject to the GDPR if you want to provide services to EU users. While on paper you’re subject to GDPR anyway, what kind of leverage EU can exert on you otherwise?
In theory at least the EU could arrest company representatives should they ever visit the EU and they can confiscate funds or equipment destined for your company if it should transit trought the EU. Whether they would go that far for the GDPR is another question. Usually its a lot easier to just comply which is why most companies consider GDPR to some extend or at least pretend to.
As for the original question, I don't see how deleting your reddit account would require an external archive based on publicly available data to follow that deletion. If there is personal data then you might have a basis for requesting it be removed but surely you'd need to make that request to whoever hosts the archive directly.
GDPR requires that there be a lawful basis for processing personal data (e.g explicit consent). If the archiving service is releasing the data without the explicit consent of the individuals involved and doesn't have another lawful basis for processing, it could potentially be in violation of GDPR.
Under GDPR, data subjects have certain rights, including the right to access their personal data, the right to rectification if the data is inaccurate, the right to erasure (also known as the "right to be forgotten"), the right to restrict processing, the right to data portability, and the right to object to processing. By releasing a torrent of the dataset, the archiving service is very likely to be infringing on these rights.
