As a foreigner, i am massively puzzled by how people seem to want to place all this on some left-right axis when both "sides" seems to have a massive problem of authoritarianism and groupthink.
‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
221–230 of 618 posts
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
A subreddit solely dedicated to auditing the quality of moderation on various subs would go a long way to give reddit the tools to remove problematic moderators. Ultimately the quality of the mod makes the quality of sub.
The problem is that the reddit culture is that upvotes/downvotes solve all and that moderators should be invisible.
It's a difficult statement to agree with when the subreddits usually considered best-in-class are very heavily moderated.
Though of course some of the worst shit-shows are also heavily moderated.
At the end of the day, heavy moderation is not unlike absolute monarchy, it's a high-risk high-reward management system.
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#223And sure enough they didn’t do anything, and sure enough deaths were caused because of the shit going on in their channels. Which incident is this referring to?
Likely this, but perhaps something else...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunil_Tripathi#Misidentificati...
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#224I still can't get over the fact that their official mobile app stops rendering comments past a certain level of nesting. There's no indication that anything is missing, no "continue this thread" link, nothing... the comments just aren't there. I don't understand how one of the world's largest social media platforms could have a mobile app that silently hides content from the user. Just blows my mind.
Their mobile website is equally bad. A gigantic pop-up takes up half of the screen to tell you to use their app. Third party apps make Reddit so much more usable.
I always use https://i.reddit.com. It's their years-old mobile site and it's super fast and reliable.
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself. Wouldn't squashing the voices of the "right-wing contingent" just lead to an (already implied) echo chamber of leftist thought? Your one single comment sums up the problem I have with user-moderation systems like reddit (and HN).
What ever happened to neutrality? Moderators shouldn't be promoting an ideology left or right. I understand that Reddit admins themselves don't want to promote an ideology either -- they want to remain neutral -- but they are sacrificing their platform to people who don't hold he same ideals. The biggest change I've noticed is just how political the city/country subreddits have become. A few years ago, they used to b…
See this excellent post: Neutral vs. Conservative - The Eternal Struggle http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative...
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that the site leaks in a way which doesn’t have a real world analog. Your favorite coffee shop doesn’t have random skinheads show up as soon as someone starts talking about e.g. sexism or racism. If it did they’d be limited to who lives nearby and the manager could kick them out when they started bothering people. None of that happens on reddit and while intense moderation works (I love /r/AskHistorian…
Except, in the subreddits I frequent nobody brings up sexism, racism, politics, etc. so the skinheads (or whoever) don't have a toehold to start bothering people.
Lucky for you but that doesn’t help anyone who is targeted for some reason – remember all of the city subreddits getting “helpful” contributions from racists highlighting crimes committed by black people? The Internet shouldn’t just be for white guys even if we’ve gotten used to thinking of ourselves as the default.
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself. Wouldn't squashing the voices of the "right-wing contingent" just lead to an (already implied) echo chamber of leftist thought? Your one single comment sums up the problem I have with user-moderation systems like reddit (and HN).
By "right-wing" he means the particularly virulent ur-fascist type of characters. If you don't think that is a problem then... well, I can't help you.
Then he should say "virulent ur-fascists."
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is an important distinction. I could never quite understand what all the hub-bub was until I realized that. I've used my account to comment since before they added subreddits. And I never stumble across one of the "toxic" ones except for the rare occasions when one of the other subreddits links to those ones.
Wait, how did it work before adding the subs? A single board like HN, but without any specific topics? It seems crazy. I can't imagine Reddit without subs.
> I can't imagine Reddit without subs.
Reddit didn't even have comments at first!
https://web.archive.org/web/20050804002153/http://www.reddit...
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like a right-wing contingent has taken over the moderation of a lot of smaller subreddits, specifically city/country subreddits, and both the content posted and the commentary reflects that. It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself.
> It's a dangerous trend for both society and reddit itself. Wouldn't squashing the voices of the "right-wing contingent" just lead to an (already implied) echo chamber of leftist thought? Your one single comment sums up the problem I have with user-moderation systems like reddit (and HN).
There is "right wing" and there is "far right nationalism." Reddit has an issue with the latter. I have talked with many conservatives lamenting the loss of their given subreddits to trolls and /r/t_d devotees.
Furthermore, it is the internet - I've never been convinced by any argument that HN or reddit or even facebook has any obligation to give "fair time" to far-right nationalism. For as long as Fox News exists and promotes itself as an actual news agency (HAH!), I don't think community-generated content websites need to bother.
Why doesn't the far-right just "pull itself up by its boostraps" and make a reddit for the far-right? (sidenote, sometimes this does happen, and it almost always is full of the most comically hateful people: see voat)
Re: ‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
The internet is not your save space. Neither is reddit. If everbody were thinking your way, those posts would be downvoted into obliviation. I am sorry that you have to face the fact thst many people don't share your personal value judgement of what is considered to be racist/sexist.
I think this is an oversimplified view, especially when it is nearly a known fact reddit's votes are manipulated by automated imposters/"troll farms"/etc. The internet is not my safe space, but I think it's very reasonable for the subreddit about Canada to be moderated as a "safe space" free of racist ramblings. The people holding those opinions can go elsewhere, for example to The_Donald, where any dissent is quickl…
I think it's very dangerous to conceive of social subreddits as any sort of "safe space" due to competing access needs.