Live data from Hacker News

Reddit is still in turmoil

techcrunch.com

301–310 of 521 posts

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is a lesson in this, it is that online communities which plan to implement anti-harassment policies ought to do so from the beginning, and develop the expectation among the users that such policies exist, and will continue to exist. A few relatively popular programming languages have begun publishing official community code of conduct documents[1][2]. While initially I thought it was a bit overreaching, I…

there is an inherent trade off though. would reddit have ever become so big and popular if it had enforced a strict conduct policy from day 1? many of the early users of reddit were not necessarily the mainstream "good" users that eventually came post-digg. it can be a distraction to focus on that early on when what's most important is user adoption...

>it can be a distraction to focus on that early on when what's most important is user adoption...

Distraction?

The wrong kind of initial user adaption will create a toxic community that excludes later users. Any community that goes unmoderated for long enough inevitably turns into a cesspool.

The most important users are the initial adaptors, they form the basis of the expectations of the community.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#302
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XD Oh no, I hope Yishan and Alexis didn't get too upset after someone criticized their billion dollar company.

I don't care about that. I care about HN not sucking, and that requires commenters to be more charitable.

I'll assume you're not included in that opinion. Because attacking a fair comment was uncalled for; but allowed because you're an admin.

The reason why we use throwaways is precisely because of sporadic and heavy-handed "moderation" by you and your employees.

Not only that, but you engage in hellbanning. It's an absolutely disgusting practice, which only encourages us more honest users to hide behind throwaways... Or toe the line with silicon valley groupthink.

(note: you can delete this username whenever. I plan not to use this again. I don't want my regular accounts hellbanned.)

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#303
post #292
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation. If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is/isn't acceptable. Twitter doesn't really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you're popular en…

If you ask us to compare between two examples, you are required to provide two actual examples instead of having us just imagine a scenario that fits your claim.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#304
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I really don't believe in creating a "safe place". It's simply not possible to provide a safe place online, while providing a platform for any meaningful debate. Rape threats and other threats of violence are not part of meaningful debate. Unsolicited images of genitalia are not part of meaningful debate. Anti semitism like this [1] isn't part of meaningful debate. You can safely ban all of these without harm t…

>You can safely ban all of these without harm to the robust debate in the community. Of cause you can, my point is that banning these things, all of which is illegal anyway, won't even get you half-way to creating a safe space.

Which is what Kiro5hin tried to do. Banned a lot of people and then key users left the site. The diaties and story articles slowed down as more users stopped using it. Until nothing was left but a few trolls that controlled the story que and then FNH and other stories got published.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#305
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation. That is the same. Both are absolutely terrible at consistency. They both have very clear and obvious "protected" groups who can violate the rules with impunity.

True. Some like Shit Reddit Says can get away with open brigading against other subreddits they don't like. There are cases where a post has a few hundred votes, gets linked there and ends up with a score in the minus hundreds range. And a few other subs seem like doxxing people they disagree with, usually with the depressing common assumption that there's 'no bad actions, only targets'.

The whole notion of "brigading" and "doxxing" that reddit has is just plan stupid. The whole site is build on linking stuff to other places on the internet, but suddenly, when you link to the site itself there's a problem? "Doxxing" is an issue, but reddit is overly sensitive where it's impossible to link publicly accessible data that the people in question put up for everyone to see. I've been banned for linking a facebook profile that had the same username as the account on reddit - stuff that takes one second to google.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#306

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

> The mistake was ever allowing that kind of freedom in the first place, because people developed an expectation that it would persist. Sure, and then we wouldn't be talking about reddit but rather whatever site was actually free at the time. The only reason web forums exist is because people are lazy about adopting decentralized Free software. Yet the owners of these centralized services, as well as paternalistic sp…

I'm wondering what kind of revenue can actually be generated by surveiling users. Any numbers?

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#307

I think much of Reddit's problems with its userbase boil down to an early failure to manage expectations. It's pretty clear that the Reddit corporation doesn't want Reddit to be an anything-goes, absolute free speech zone with no moderation or anti-harassment policies -- but that's what the site actually was for many years. Now, when the company cracks down, users think their freedoms are being curtailed. The mistake…

> The mistake was ever allowing that kind of freedom in the first place, because people developed an expectation that it would persist. Sure, and then we wouldn't be talking about reddit but rather whatever site was actually free at the time. The only reason web forums exist is because people are lazy about adopting decentralized Free software. Yet the owners of these centralized services, as well as paternalistic sp…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#308
post #292
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation. If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is/isn't acceptable. Twitter doesn't really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you're popular en…

If you ask us to compare between two examples, you are required to provide two actual examples instead of having us just imagine a scenario that fits your claim.

Perhaps I can assist: Shaun King calls Jason Whitlock a "coon". He keeps his verified check and account. If that isn't personal, racial abuse and harassment, I'm not sure what is.

EDIT: Not being tremendously familiar with this spat, it took me a while to figure out what Milo got banned for. Best I can figure out, it was for calling a Ghostbusters actress "barely literate". Since that's a bit of a weak-tea insult, I imagine the real offense was not stopping (how?) his army of followers from tweeting other vile things at the woman. Is that our standard? Should we hold peaceful BLM leaders responsible for tweets from their followers promoting cop-killing?

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#309
post #292
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's problem isn't quite the same as Reddit's. It's because the site is incredibly inconsistent with its moderation. If you run a community, you need consistency. Members need to know where the boundaries are in regards to how you can act and what is/isn't acceptable. Twitter doesn't really do this well. If you agree with the staff political stances, you can basically get away with anything. If you're popular en…

If you ask us to compare between two examples, you are required to provide two actual examples instead of having us just imagine a scenario that fits your claim.

They are probably talking about Milo Yiannopoulos being permanently banned from twitter.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#310
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask us to compare between two examples, you are required to provide two actual examples instead of having us just imagine a scenario that fits your claim.

Perhaps I can assist: Shaun King calls Jason Whitlock a "coon". He keeps his verified check and account. If that isn't personal, racial abuse and harassment, I'm not sure what is. EDIT: Not being tremendously familiar with this spat, it took me a while to figure out what Milo got banned for. Best I can figure out, it was for calling a Ghostbusters actress "barely literate". Since that's a bit of a weak-tea insult, I…

That's absolutely tame compared to the level of abusive content from right leaning accounts on the site. A mean spirited name calling like the example cherry picked has nothing on the hordes of alt-right leaning death threats and personalized abuse laid against progressive figures on the site.
Post reply on HN