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Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

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Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#41

Post by Someone1234 »

haunter wrote: post #14
eganist wrote: post #4

Relationship Advice lead-ish mod here. We were one of the subs "called out" as being controlled by Gallowboob with the original post and subsequent reposts. We (buu700 and I) added Gallowboob some years back largely to have insight into how other teams modded their subs at a time when we were growing quickly and needed to know what to do to keep up. While useful in meeting that goal, we quickly realized it was pretty…

>how meaninglessly violent people become when their posts are modded Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs. Most people get angry when someone removes their post and yet they see it reposted and approved hours or even minutes later (Gallowboob is infamous for that but regular users do it too)

> Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs.

Don't get me started.

Particularly "muting" posts with auto-moderator (silently hiding them for others without notification/warning/explanation). It was originally created for spam control but is regularly abused for generic moderation. It needs more controls placed on it.

To give a recent example, I wrote a long reply in /r/fitness's daily discussion but it was muted because it contained an offhand remark about COVID-19 (vis-a-vis getting hold of fitness equipment right now). Why are they muting all comments that contain "COVID?" Who even knows, but the /way/ it was done was pretty irksome and resulted in wasted effort on my part for a comment that violated zero published rules or etiquette.

/r/politics has a huge dictionary of phases and idioms that result in auto muting. None of which are defined in their rules.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#42

Post by bredren »

ryandvm wrote: post #30
bredren wrote: post #15

I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with t…

Hacker News suffers from the same problem. We have folks like dang (God bless him) manually dealing with assholes. Seems like we could solve these problems with technology, but here we are two decades into the 21st century and we still have humans cleaning the pools. I'd be interested to know if actual forum moderators think that we could solve the bad actor problem with algorithms...

As I was typing this, I was thinking about moderation of HN and but was cautious to comment on meta.

Speaking generally, without real-world consequences for violating community TOS on a service there are no teeth in tracking bad actors, banning them, etc.

For a long time, I loathed Facebook's real-name policy. However, to some extent I suspect the amount of identity validation and attribution of comments to actions does have a limiting impact on casual trolling and harassment on that service.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#43

Post by TechBro8615 »

hi41 wrote: post #9

Can someone please explain how doxing works at a technical level? Suppose I post something on Twitter or Youtube that someone does not like how would they dox me? For example, CNN outed a guy who did a video where Trump bashes a guy superimposed with CNN in a boxing ring. Wouldn't such attempts at doxing people also put pressure on their freedom of speech and expression?

The title is misleading. He was not doxed. People have known who he is for a long time.

The “outed” is referring to the fact that someone compiled a list of the small number of moderators that moderate a large number of subreddits, and gallowboob was on the list.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#44

Post by nsilvestri »

koboll wrote: post #27
BitwiseFool wrote: post #6

I downloaded Reddit Enhancement Suite and it has a feature that marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user when you see a post of theirs. It is absolutely eye-opening just how much content is posted by the same few dozens of usernames. GallowBoob is the most infamous but to focus on him would be a mistake. It's pretty clear to me that the vast majority of content on Reddit is heavily manipulated and a…

Or... maybe they just post good content? You yourself said the extension marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user. So, unless you yourself are engaged in this conspiracy to inflate GallowBoob's upvotes, then all this is evidence of is that GallowBoob seems uniquely skilled at finding and posting viral content.

Shortly after GB's rise to fame he was offered a job at one those horrible viral licensing companies, which definitely suggests he's skilled at finding viral content.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#45

Post by iratewizard »

Reddit's top user in the sense that he reposts to farm karma and moderates over 1000 subreddits. He is an opportunist seeking power. Generally, he is disliked by a large portion of reddit. Spamming reddit at that scale to become self appointed "top user" has a major impact on the site, and it's for the worse when it dilutes the content on a site. Unsurprisingly, there are several accusations of him selling his influence to other companies.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#46

Post by ptsdthrowaway33 »

eganist wrote: post #4

Relationship Advice lead-ish mod here. We were one of the subs "called out" as being controlled by Gallowboob with the original post and subsequent reposts. We (buu700 and I) added Gallowboob some years back largely to have insight into how other teams modded their subs at a time when we were growing quickly and needed to know what to do to keep up. While useful in meeting that goal, we quickly realized it was pretty…

As someone who was mentally and physically abused as a child, I'm so sick of people on the internet saying they have PTSD from mean comments that they can ignore and escape from.

You cannot escape abuse from someone that is supposed to be protecting you in childhood. You cannot escape from the trauma of war when you sign up or are conscripted to be a soldier. You cannot escape the horror of death being an EMT. Seeing actual horrific death, watching ones you love die, or having someone that is supposed to care for you destroy you cause trauma.

A stranger saying, "you're a piece of shit," is not fucking traumatic to anyone but an immature child or a weakling.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#47

Post by TheCapn »

hi41 wrote: post #9

Can someone please explain how doxing works at a technical level? Suppose I post something on Twitter or Youtube that someone does not like how would they dox me? For example, CNN outed a guy who did a video where Trump bashes a guy superimposed with CNN in a boxing ring. Wouldn't such attempts at doxing people also put pressure on their freedom of speech and expression?

There's not a whole lot of technicality to it imo. Say I take to google and start looking for your username. Will other websites turn up? Will one of them have a link to an email address of yours? Can I take that email address and find something else you've done? Perhaps you've used your real name and I can Google that to find info about you.

Maybe you've said something in comments that hints to an identity. Who is your employer? What is your line of work and the city you reside in?

Basically... how much effort does it take from me scouring your public profile before I can narrow down who you are with that info? People have built tools into reddit that does that automatically by pulling all the user comments then looking for info about the person they've shared.

The technical side that GallowBoob talks a bit about in the article is people engaging them in conversation and trying to get them to click a link to some site. If he was to click that link they'd have the IP he connected from and would probably start running hacker tools to try and find a vulnerability in his network.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#48

Post by JoeSmithson »

commandlinefan wrote: post #21
BitwiseFool wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a moderator you have the power to control what people see - subscribers and visitors alike. To me, it's easy to see how moderators with an agenda can curate content to match their views. It also wouldn't surprise me if some moderators are compensated - under the radar - by influencers and marketers.

When I first started on Reddit like 10 years ago, it leaned pretty libertarian (pro Ron Paul, pro free speech, etc.). I noticed over time that it leaned farther and farther left, and I wondered what had happened to all the previous users. Then there came a conspiracy theory that a handful of users had gamed the moderation system to take control of the tone of the site overall - especially the one that's the topic of…

I think they just got drowned out as it grew. Libertarianism is a very niche political position outside of the "opinionated hacker" crowd. I'd be very surprised if the actual gross metrics for /r/Libertarian have decreased rather than increased.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#49

Post by botolo »

ryandvm wrote: post #30
bredren wrote: post #15

I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with t…

Hacker News suffers from the same problem. We have folks like dang (God bless him) manually dealing with assholes. Seems like we could solve these problems with technology, but here we are two decades into the 21st century and we still have humans cleaning the pools. I'd be interested to know if actual forum moderators think that we could solve the bad actor problem with algorithms...

This was my same thought. We should understand the size of the problem and whether technology can help. If tech can’t help moderating, maybe tech can help in other ways. For example, establishing an anonymous unique internet ID that allows you to be online: if you get three strikes, your ID is suspended and you can’t spend time online for the duration of the suspension. Of course the system should be built so that you can’t bypass the one person-one ID and so that it’s completely anonymous. Also, the ID should not be transferable.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#50

Post by markstos »

hi41 wrote: post #9

Can someone please explain how doxing works at a technical level? Suppose I post something on Twitter or Youtube that someone does not like how would they dox me? For example, CNN outed a guy who did a video where Trump bashes a guy superimposed with CNN in a boxing ring. Wouldn't such attempts at doxing people also put pressure on their freedom of speech and expression?

It doesn't have to be that technical. People search for references that connect your username with a real name and possibly a location. If there is only one person with your name in your town, then your home address and likely phone number can be derived from there. No hacking skills required there, just researching.

If you send the target a link and they click on it and you control the server, you can find the IP address use to click on it and aren't using a VPN.

Home IP addresses don't change often, so with the IP address you have another bit of information that can searched on. This might lead to a second username associated with the IP address.

Sometimes simply paying attention to the content they post reveals a lot.

Once on a Reddit someone posted a "Guess what state this photo is from" post. It could have been from many places, but I checked out his profile and all of his posts from the same place in Pennsylvania, so I guessed that. He seemed amazed that anyone guessed so fast, but also unaware how the other content he posted made it very easy to fill in the blank.

Also, many people aren't trying that hard to hide, because they don't expect that anyone to put any effort into "outting" them.

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