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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

#21

Post by Traster »

I find it kind of funny that people are getting so excited. Reddit has long had a policy of banning users who breach the site rules. /r/The_donald has long had a policy of breaching site rules including brigading, harassment, threats and sharing personal information. The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings. Given how often the breaches occur it seems quite reasonable to actually step in.

You'll note that with literally any other sub-reddit, the response to this behaviour would have simply been to shut down the sub-reddit. How many second chances do you need? Personally I would've thought the first person shooting up a restaurant would've been the red line but apparently not.

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

#23

Post by creaghpatr »

cwperkins wrote: post #15

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?

I would venture that reddit subs in "The_Donald" are not there to be exposed to reddit users of different biases.

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

#24

Post by mech1234 »

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.

The larger you grow the set of rules the more precisely you can apply selective enforcement.

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

#25

Post by ehsankia »

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…

Correct me if I'm wrong and I read it wrong, but I think you're mixing up things here.

> Users that have more than 500 karma in quarantined subreddits outside of The Donald will not be allowed on the list of approved applicants [to be a moderator]

This is only for being a moderator. Simply upvoting posts (that don't break any rules) in quarantined subreddits does not get you punished.

> If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over shouldn't it just be removed from the site and not left up to upvote?

What ends up happening in this subreddit is that the bad content doesn't get reported/deleted, which is what leads to the subreddit being quarantined in the first place. The whole point of a quarantine is exactly to push people to report bad content, and acts as a warning. This new change makes sense as far as pushing people to report said content and not keep promoting it.

I also don't think the content is being "left to be upvoted", but rather when found, they will retroactively flag anyone who upvoted it instead of reporting it. But the problem is that the content often doesn't get flagged/deleted until it gets to the top of the subreddit. This is the problem they are trying to fix with this change.

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

#26

Post by resters »

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 wonder if any proponents of deplatforming can comment on the parent's point.

edit: why downvote this? I think the parent makes an important point. Is the goal of deplatforming to herd members into their own fortified echo chambers?

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

#27

Post by runeb »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #11
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.

How can you own data that is submitted to a site you don't own? Or do users submit to hacker news through your site?

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

#28

Post by bmarquez »

This is incredibly disturbing, in light of the fact Reddit's CEO was once caught secretly editing[1] the comments of The Donald's users. Can't assume this is being done in good faith as the comments leading The Donald to be quarantined could be edits, or shill accounts.

I'm sure someone will say "their website, their rules" but in that case it's better to just ban it entirely instead of engaging in subversive practices. This is the equivalent of China buying a United States forum in order to shape political opinion...oh wait[2]

[1] https://gizmodo.com/reddit-ceo-caught-secretly-editing-user-...

[2] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/08/tencent-invests-so...

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

#29

Post by [deleted] »

floatingatoll wrote: post #14
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?

[deleted]

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

#30

Post by pacala »

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…

There is much more content than people. To the extent that a platform engages in policing thought, people will always be a much cheaper enforcement target than content.
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