61–70 of 482 posts
The way I see it is someone who has enjoyed a "privileged" position without transparency or accountability for a long time is surprised that people find issues with concentration of moderation powers (especially across subreddits). Makes me wonder what is it that people find so appealing in having moderation of subreddits as an almost full time job.
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…
There are roughly two views on moderators. Moderators think that moderators are the thin green line protecting the ordinary users from a handful of bad actors, letting them live in blissful ignorance of the awful things that are happening. Ordinary users think the that moderators are power-mad bullies who ban and delete as they see fit, with no accountability.
Both of these things can be true at once!
This reminds me a lot of the situation with the police, who are to an extent the moderators of the big room [1]. 90% of a policeman's time is spent dealing with a small number of really nasty people. 90% of a member of the public's interaction with the police is a policeman exceeding their authority, not being interested in helping with a problem, etc [2].
If you spend 90% of your time dealing with really awful people, you will get messed up. You will develop an itchy trigger finger. Most of the time - most of your time - that's appropriate. But when you're dealing with someone who's not awful, you will get it wrong.
[1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/Big-Room.html
[2] Maybe that's not true of you. Maybe that's not true in general where you live. It is true in general where i live.
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's very difficult to not leave breadcrumbs. Maybe your personal blog had your name, address, and phone number on it back in the 1990s and there's a record of that. Maybe you made one post six months back on your main account instead of your throwaway. Maybe you've inadvertently given enough details for someone to narrow it down. One mistake is all that's needed. For example, Mitt Romney's secret Twitter account was…
https://www.gwern.net/Death-Note-Anonymity
Even analysing what times of day you post can narrow you down a lot.
The way I see it is someone who has enjoyed a "privileged" position without transparency or accountability for a long time is surprised that people find issues with concentration of moderation powers (especially across subreddits). Makes me wonder what is it that people find so appealing in having moderation of subreddits as an almost full time job.
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…
Why do you free work for a for-profit social network, especially if you say yourself that the work negatively impacts your mental health and that the community you are moderating is toxic? What are you getting out of this?
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…
Why do you free work for a for-profit social network, especially if you say yourself that the work negatively impacts your mental health and that the community you are moderating is toxic? What are you getting out of this?
I don’t get it for relationship subreddits because it’s so mentally exhausting but for fandoms and niche communities the experience is super cool.
The way I see it is someone who has enjoyed a "privileged" position without transparency or accountability for a long time is surprised that people find issues with concentration of moderation powers (especially across subreddits). Makes me wonder what is it that people find so appealing in having moderation of subreddits as an almost full time job.
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 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…
I have a little over half a million karma, about 200k from posting links. I think it's incorrect to suggest that the "vast majority" of content is manipulated. You see the same names because they understand the game of karmawhoring. If you have one link which can fit in multiple subreddits and your goal is to get as many points as possible, you post it to all the relevant subreddits, repeat for every other link you h…
What is the distinction between content manipulation and the game of karmawhoring? They seem more or less the same to me. I think I would consider SEO a form of content manipulation, for example.
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…
If you're helpfully, innocently, looking after dozens of top subs, and people mention that and wonder what's going on, you don't censor them, you have flipping AMA about it!