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Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

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Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#51

Post by [deleted] »

colechristensen wrote: post #44
volak wrote: post #20

I don't really want to comment - but I'd just say to anyone (including the writer of this article) to imagine someone artificially limiting the impact of your favorite platform of free expression. Hell just turn the mental corner and consider your arguments FOR net neutrality. Or try to recall your disappointment every time you read about some site being banned in China or Iran. To China and Iran - facebook is a "dis…

The subreddit in question manipulates the algorithm in bad faith and bans any sort of dissent or disagreement. They're not attacking free expression but trying to reign in abuse of their platform. Nobody really knows what "liberal" means because it's been used in several very opposite ways in different times and places.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#52

Post by nindalf »

SixSigma wrote: post #19
meritt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they aren't their own little community. They actively target, brigade (large group upvoting/downvoting), and intentionally troll other communities with their only goal being to fuck with people and overwhelmingly push their rhetoric. Reddit strives to have a positive community and when you let the trolls run the system, you end up with an utter cesspool (e.g. https://voat.co/ ), and that kills your com…

> They actively target, brigade (large group upvoting/downvoting), and intentionally troll other communities with their only goal being to fuck with people and overwhelmingly push their rhetoric. [citation needed] I'm there every day and I don't know about that, quite the opposite. We don't link outside the sub, heck we are not even allowed to mention /r/politics in post titles under threat from Reddit admins. It is…

I have tried on many occasions to read posts on that sub but I found the hatred, the ALL CAPS, the doublethink and the crushing of any dissent nauseating. For example, members of that sub demonised a pizzeria owner with no evidence whatsoever, spreading lies and harassing him and anyone tangentially related to him. This incident is only the most recent one, by no means the worst.

What do you love about it that makes you go there everyday?

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#53

Post by watty »

walrus01 wrote: post #37

reddit does not owe alt-right assholes a zero-dollar platform to have a free forum. If alt right people want to run their own web forum they are more than welcome to find sufficient technical clue to rent a $250/mo dedicated server and install some http/https based forum software on it. people cry "censorship", but it's a private company, and if you're paying $0 they don't owe you anything. Set up your own system if…

This isn't about left or right, it's about a CEO censoring opinions that he doesn't agree with. If it helps you understand, pretend he censored Hillary or Bernie supporters.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#54

Post by freehunter »

kristianov wrote: post #33
watty wrote: post #22

Calling people you disagree with "trolls" and dismissing censoring as just "trolling" is a poor attempt at an apology. And that's coming from someone who hates /r/the_donald.

Calling part of their user base trolls is just dehumanization, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of fair treatment.

Calling a troll a troll is not dehumanization. Especially when spez called HIMSELF a troll and said he was trolling and was raised as a troll.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#55

Post by volak »

ajkjk wrote: post #49
volak wrote: post #20

I don't really want to comment - but I'd just say to anyone (including the writer of this article) to imagine someone artificially limiting the impact of your favorite platform of free expression. Hell just turn the mental corner and consider your arguments FOR net neutrality. Or try to recall your disappointment every time you read about some site being banned in China or Iran. To China and Iran - facebook is a "dis…

The counterargument is that loopholes in the mechanics allowed the community in question to artificially limit the impact of everyone else's favorite platform of free expression. The charitable view is to call what's being done a bandaid to fix a broken mechanic. It's also not an understatement to say that the level of rule-breaking (doxxing, vote brigading, abuse, etc) from the community, sanctioned (or at least not…

As a liberal - its been my view to respect and fight for anyone's right to say whatever they want, regardless of my own views.

If there are bugs with the reddit platform that are being exploited, there would be no reason to "prevent stickied posts from showing on r/all"

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#56

Post by ajkjk »

watty wrote: post #22

Calling people you disagree with "trolls" and dismissing censoring as just "trolling" is a poor attempt at an apology. And that's coming from someone who hates /r/the_donald.

Calling trolls 'trolls' is pretty reasonable, though, so what you're really saying is that you don't think they're trolls, whereas other people do? We could run a poll or something to find out, or listen to arguments from both sides, to get to the bottom of that.

I don't want to do that. I just want to highlight that it is very plausible that many people view them as trolls. Not because of their views, because of their behavior (there are thousands examples, right?). So then we have a problem --

If your default stance when someone disagrees with you (about whether the word 'troll' is fair here) is asserting that they're manipulating language for political reasons, when there's clearly a very reasonable argument for the use of that language (whether or not you accept it, you have to agree there's an argument), then you're committing the same crime they are - manipulating language to unfairly vilify them.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#57

Post by mediumdeviation »

volak wrote: post #20

I don't really want to comment - but I'd just say to anyone (including the writer of this article) to imagine someone artificially limiting the impact of your favorite platform of free expression. Hell just turn the mental corner and consider your arguments FOR net neutrality. Or try to recall your disappointment every time you read about some site being banned in China or Iran. To China and Iran - facebook is a "dis…

> To China and Iran - facebook is a "disruptive community." To use reddit's language.

There is a vast difference between the government banning you and reddit banning you (which they are not actually doing here, but for the sake of argument).

You have the right to free expression. You do not have the right to free expression on someone else's platform. reddit is not the Internet - if reddit does not like what you say, you can set up your own space on the Internet. If the government does not like what you say, then there is literally no legal alternative. That's the difference.

Oh, and stop confusing net neutrality with this issue. It's not the same.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#58

Post by volak »

colechristensen wrote: post #44
volak wrote: post #20

I don't really want to comment - but I'd just say to anyone (including the writer of this article) to imagine someone artificially limiting the impact of your favorite platform of free expression. Hell just turn the mental corner and consider your arguments FOR net neutrality. Or try to recall your disappointment every time you read about some site being banned in China or Iran. To China and Iran - facebook is a "dis…

The subreddit in question manipulates the algorithm in bad faith and bans any sort of dissent or disagreement. They're not attacking free expression but trying to reign in abuse of their platform. Nobody really knows what "liberal" means because it's been used in several very opposite ways in different times and places.

I don't buy the argument that they are exploiting anything - but I do recognize that their community is very overly active but I wouldn't call that exploiting

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#59

Post by fenomas »

michaelvoz wrote: post #9

I would hardly call this an apology. Also kind-of bold of him to use this as a platform to implement new abusive rules. I don't like the subreddit, but selective enforcement and targeting a single community is very toxic to what little trust I had left in the reddit admins.

This might be cynical, but I'm not sure it's possible to have an online community that doesn't function this way, more or less.

I think there's a general law of online communities: so long as there are rules of any kind, there will always be users who push into the gray area (e.g. by finding ways to follow the letter but not the intent), and then keep pushing until stopped(). The moderator is then always left with the choice between punishing only the bad actors (which will be interpreted as selective enforcement or unfair targeting), or changing the rules to make things stricter for everyone (disallowing behavior that wasn't causing problems apart from the bad actors).

() I read once in a parenting guide that children crave boundaries, and tend to escalate bad behavior until punishment occurs in order to establish where the boundaries are. Probably there's an analogy to be made there.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#60

Post by ajkjk »

volak wrote: post #55
ajkjk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterargument is that loopholes in the mechanics allowed the community in question to artificially limit the impact of everyone else's favorite platform of free expression. The charitable view is to call what's being done a bandaid to fix a broken mechanic. It's also not an understatement to say that the level of rule-breaking (doxxing, vote brigading, abuse, etc) from the community, sanctioned (or at least not…

As a liberal - its been my view to respect and fight for anyone's right to say whatever they want, regardless of my own views. If there are bugs with the reddit platform that are being exploited, there would be no reason to "prevent stickied posts from showing on r/all"

It's pretty clearly explained in Spez's post that it's a loophole, not a bug. The loophole is that there's an override for how sticky posts show in /all, used to elevate topical events -- which was being abused, against the spirit of the override, by pretty much only that one subreddit, for different purposes. There is probably a technical solution to this but it's probably complicated and this bandaid gets the job done for now.

But I think you knew that.

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