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Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

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Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#11

Post by jermaustin1 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #3

""" Under these new rules, users can be warned or even suspended for simply “upvoting policy-breaking content within quarantined communities.” """ That's an interesting policy. I can see the benefit if one's goal, as owner of a forum, is to constrain the tone of the forum. I wonder how the tone of Hacker News, for example, is changed by users upvoting comments in clear violation of forum policy.

As owner of a large HN dataset (~4M submissions, all the submissions since starting HNNotify.xyz), I've wanted to do some analysis on this.

Currently I only collect submissions, but it isn't hard to also look at the users and their age/karma as well.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#12

Post by rtkwe »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #8
shadowgovt wrote: post #3

""" Under these new rules, users can be warned or even suspended for simply “upvoting policy-breaking content within quarantined communities.” """ That's an interesting policy. I can see the benefit if one's goal, as owner of a forum, is to constrain the tone of the forum. I wonder how the tone of Hacker News, for example, is changed by users upvoting comments in clear violation of forum policy.

I think it would be more effective and less heavy-handed/controversial to take the newgrounds.com approach and give you more voting power if you upvote stuff that doesn't receive @dang-action and less voting power if you upvote stuff that eventually gets blammed/rejected/banned. I always thought it was a clever maneuver on newgrounds' part. Not to say this doesn't already happen on any forums, but my real point is th…

Maybe, that would require a more complex voting algorithm though which might be constrictive at Reddit's scale. I doubt it would be less controversial though, r/td is already convinced reddit is faking their subscriber count adding a shadowy vote weight to every users account probably wouldn't get a pass.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#13

Post by shadowgovt »

Andhurati wrote: post #4

What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp? Indian Nationalist movement grew to the level it is today in part because of the rapid growth of Nationalist whatsapp echo-chambers.

I think you raise an interesting point, but in a narrower scope the nature of conversation on Whatsapp isn't Reddit's problem.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#14

Post by floatingatoll »

maverick2007 wrote: post #7

I personally think that this article buried the lede as far as controversial Reddit actions go. Users now can be (and have been) banned for upvoting posts in quarantined subreddits (both on the right - T_D - and the left - Chapo Trap House - among others). I've seen controversy erupt all around Reddit about this and it doesn't feel right to me. If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over…

Were they upvoting posts that violated the Reddit participation guidelines?

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#15

Post by cwperkins »

News sites like NYT and WSJ have introduced a featured comments section that is curated by the editorial team. In order to expose reddit users to different biases could the politics sub appoint a moderation team “fairly” and pick a few featured comments to expose reddit users to different leanings?

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#16

Post by shadowgovt »

maverick2007 wrote: post #7

I personally think that this article buried the lede as far as controversial Reddit actions go. Users now can be (and have been) banned for upvoting posts in quarantined subreddits (both on the right - T_D - and the left - Chapo Trap House - among others). I've seen controversy erupt all around Reddit about this and it doesn't feel right to me. If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over…

"Don't encourage them" is a standard admonishment given to people in a group IRL when one member is acting out. And it's demonstrably impossible for moderators to find and remove 100% of content in violation of policy.

It pushes added responsibility on the upvoters to think before they upvote, but perhaps that is a fair request to make of forum participants.

(And taking off my "community moderator" hat and putting on my "sysadmin" hat---both dusty from lack of use---using sock-puppets or a like-minded collective to brigate-upvote content so that it is visible before it gets banhammered is a known attack vector against the infrastructure itself, and mitigating that attack vector via added penalty for the supporting accounts doesn't seem unreasonable).

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#17

Post by lukebitts »

iron0013 wrote: post #6

Any other subreddit would have simply been banned long ago for unremitting and unrepentant rule breaking and evasion. And by the subreddit moderators themselves, no less, not just the users!

Exactly, Reddit admins are never this patient with rule-breaking communities. If you check the timeline you can see how many times they have tried to work with the mods and they were uncooperative

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#18

Post by romwell »

Andhurati wrote: post #4

What does this do besides drive them to Whatsapp? Indian Nationalist movement grew to the level it is today in part because of the rapid growth of Nationalist whatsapp echo-chambers.

Give other users a better platform?

Reddit is a public forum, and it wasn't a nice place with T_D on the front page. T_D has mounted a coordinated effort to take over the platform for their needs to the detriment of others.

Reddit admins aren't doing it to stop Trump or his supporters. They are fighting to keep their platform alive for the other 99% who perhaps want to read about knitting and Linux without being called cucks.

I believe this would allow the civilized T_D members to continue having a presence on Reddit. It's for their sake too.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#19

Post by ordinaryradical »

A theoretical example

1. I develop a community dedicated to fascism. 2. I appoint moderators who are themselves avid ideological defenders of fascism. 3. Given the motives for belonging to the subreddit, the users naturally chafe at and violate the sitewide rules for reddit. They have their own interpretations of how to best implement and promote fascism. 4. Because of the moderators' sympathies for the underlying motives and tendencies, abuse and rule-breaking continues.

Is anyone at fault here other than myself, the moderators, and the users?

PS: This article is poorly written and doesn't actually explain any of actual things going on in the_donald, it just insinuates a political agenda to this happening.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#20

Post by baalimago »

The 'frontpage of the internet' is actively taking control of the subreddit of a presidential candidate, in an election year. I know that HN is highly against Trump, and probably cheer for this decision, but how is this not a democratic issue?
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