Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 99 posts

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

#71

Post by chris11 »

volak wrote: post #58
colechristensen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One of the issues the admins were upset about was pizzagate. Basically they found some emails where Podesta mentioned pizza and cheese. So after a lot of time investigating they decided that Podesta and Clinton were deeply involved in a child sex trafficking ring centered a local D.C. pizzeria. There was an NYtimes story about how the owners been receiving death threats. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/fact-check-this....

This whole witch hunt/conspiracy started and kept going with trolls from the_donald. People getting death threats from getting doxxed on reddit threads should not happen. Also, during this trolls kept accusing spez of being a pedophile. While changing user comments is extremely inappropriate, I think that the_donald has some extremely toxic trolls. So I'm definitely ok with reddit admins shutting some of that activity down. I would have found it completely understandable if reddit had shut the_donald down with that with the whole pizzagate thing. But that sub has a ton of activity with a lot of politically active posters, and so I don't think reddit really wants to shut it down.

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

#72

Post by volak »

colechristensen wrote: post #68
volak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The vote totals aren't anything like any other subreddit has been. They were also using the pinning in a way no other subreddit did. Just google – the_donald upvote script – to get an idea. Several tools were released for users to upvote or downvote everything targeting a subreddit or user. It's a sort of grassroots vote manipulation scheme.

Well I could write a r/hillaryclinton upvote script and post on gists in a few minutes - doesn't really prove anything. The only people who could have real evidence of rule breaking would be the admins and from the little we know we know the admins hate TD - if they are being botted they'd be gone already

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

#73

Post by hoppa_liza »

mr_blobs wrote: post #63
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…

"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." If you post something that doesn't conform to the current left-leaning narrative, you will be down voted by massive amounts of users because of your beliefs. I don't see…

> So it's fine for private organizations to discriminate against people simply based on their political beliefs? Do you really want to live in a world where this is accepted?

An employee who keeps on yelling, throwing stuff around, harassing people and disrupting the workplace should be warned and eventually kicked out. Political views have absolutely nothing to do with this.

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

#74

Post by volak »

ajkjk wrote: post #66
volak wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bandaid was to allow people to filter subs themselves (which is great). Writing code to target a specific community crosses the line

I disagree. I don't think it crosses the line. But that's a value judgment, I guess, so there's not a lot of point arguing it out. I especially think it was acceptable because it solves the urgent problem with a quick solution, whereas a technical solution would take a lot longer, and I do strongly believe that the problem was very urgent.

Trouble is that too is your opinion. As a frequent of r/all after the first TD purge I see 2-3 TD links there a day. Nothing so outrageous.

It kind of bothers me that people let companies like facebook, twitter, google, reddit, etc push their agendas and bury conservative news. Recent data suggests facebook "fake news" alone could have swung the election. Social media being the primary source of news these days.

I'm all for these platforms having the right the police their own site - but they have to be open and honest about it. Otherwise you end up with conspiracy theories going viral making one side super pissed and willing to elect Donald Trump over the beneficiary of what they perceive massive conspiracy to silence people.

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

#75

Post by ajkjk »

volak wrote: post #74
ajkjk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I don't think it crosses the line. But that's a value judgment, I guess, so there's not a lot of point arguing it out. I especially think it was acceptable because it solves the urgent problem with a quick solution, whereas a technical solution would take a lot longer, and I do strongly believe that the problem was very urgent.

Trouble is that too is your opinion. As a frequent of r/all after the first TD purge I see 2-3 TD links there a day. Nothing so outrageous. It kind of bothers me that people let companies like facebook, twitter, google, reddit, etc push their agendas and bury conservative news. Recent data suggests facebook "fake news" alone could have swung the election. Social media being the primary source of news these days. I'm…

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say this is burying conservative news, it's more like burying conservative meme-spamming. Especially because, well, now TD is going to be able to get on the page the same way every other subreddit normally does, which seems.. almost.. fair?

Certainly if you turn your head one way it's fair.

It's not inherently discriminatory for one-of-two political camps to have behavior that breaks the intended functionality of a platform and necessitates a response. You can argue that in this case it was, and that's fine, but I disagree.

Would it appease you if r/politics or a hillary subreddit had the same treatment? It wouldn't change anything but at least it would 'feel better'?

And I'd like to point out that one reason I'm defending spez and the reddit admins on this is that I think they've been extremely open and honest about it (barring the one idiotic mistake of Spez's). I like the guy because his admin posts have none of the veneer of bullshit that literally-every-CEO's has (ie Zuckerberg's "our mission is to bring the world together" drivel). It's super candid; he answers every question, even the sensitive ones; he's very open about mistakes and changes and motivations. It's rare for a company to display it and I value it highly.

I totally agree that doing special-case stuff to a community already obsessed with conspiracy theories about censorship is maybe a bad move, but I also think it's justifiable and probably justified. And also, there are tons of worse moves, in the game of not-pissing-everyone-off, in a generally shitty situation (such as banning the whole subreddit).

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

#76

Post by walrus01 »

watty wrote: post #53
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.

It's not a CEO censoring anything, it's a subreddit of people who troll for the lulz having a minuscule example of their own tactics turned around upon them, for the fleeting amusement of somebody with admin access on the servers.

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

#77

Post by JohnTHaller »

chris11 wrote: post #71
volak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One of the issues the admins were upset about was pizzagate. Basically they found some emails where Podesta mentioned pizza and cheese. So after a lot of time investigating they decided that Podesta and Clinton were deeply involved in a child sex trafficking ring centered a local D.C. pizzeria. There was an NYtimes story about how the owners been receiving death threats. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/f…

My buddy got doxxed and harassed by those the_donald pizzagate folks. reddit shut down the pizzagate subreddit (constantly posting personal information for the_donald fans to call/email/text to harass) but allowed the_donald to persist.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

volak wrote: post #58
colechristensen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by volak »

ajkjk wrote: post #75
volak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trouble is that too is your opinion. As a frequent of r/all after the first TD purge I see 2-3 TD links there a day. Nothing so outrageous. It kind of bothers me that people let companies like facebook, twitter, google, reddit, etc push their agendas and bury conservative news. Recent data suggests facebook "fake news" alone could have swung the election. Social media being the primary source of news these days. I'm…

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say this is burying conservative news , it's more like burying conservative meme-spamming. Especially because, well, now TD is going to be able to get on the page the same way every other subreddit normally does, which seems.. almost.. fair? Certainly if you turn your head one way it's fair. It's not inherently discriminatory for one-of-two political camps to have behavior that brea…

No what would appease practically everyone would be if r/all - the "frontpage of the internet" - had clearly defined rules as to what that means. Is it a collection of top up-voted content from a collection of subreddits? Apparently not due to this and other "algorithm changes."

Take twitter shadow banning people as its an easier example.

The rules of twitter are simple - someone tweets and it gets put at the top of a follower's feed. This is accepted as "the truth of twitter." When this truth is altered and all of a sudden some individual's tweets are NOT showing up in follower's feed people should be rightly pissed. No matter who the target is - because the accepted rules of the platform have been twisted to push an agenda. It is no different than propaganda and an insult to free expression.

> If you turn your head one way it's fair

Anyone can certainly justify anything if they are willing to turn their head with the breeze. I would point out the blatant mod and brigading bias in r/politics as an example of something you as a presumed liberal should be equally mad about. The content there is laughable and part of the reason why people even subscribe to the TD to get what little news is there.

Reddit has a problem - and its been written about before. Mods are dictators of their own communities and have complete control to push their own agendas within places that should be neutral. I don't see much of a future for the platform if this is not solved.

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

#80

Post by colechristensen »

volak wrote: post #72
colechristensen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vote totals aren't anything like any other subreddit has been. They were also using the pinning in a way no other subreddit did. Just google – the_donald upvote script – to get an idea. Several tools were released for users to upvote or downvote everything targeting a subreddit or user. It's a sort of grassroots vote manipulation scheme.

Well I could write a r/hillaryclinton upvote script and post on gists in a few minutes - doesn't really prove anything. The only people who could have real evidence of rule breaking would be the admins and from the little we know we know the admins hate TD - if they are being botted they'd be gone already

You could; I'm not talking about the existence of such things but the prevalence. There probably wasn't much blatant botting, but a lot of mild botting which is much more difficult to detect and lives in a grey area.
Post reply on HN