Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#171

Post by staycoolboy » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #42

ryandvm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I would like to hear what LinkedIn moderators deal with. I wonder if it is easier/harder/same as Facebook or Reddit.

There might be some interesting data here supporting real-name policies. I don't say anything on LinkedIn because I'm scared anything I say can and will be used against me when job hunting.

Also: thanks for modding /r/portland. I love PDX. Just wish it was sunnier: it would be the perfect city.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#172

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #42

ryandvm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Facebook's real name policy is a complete failure. And professional PR, "influencing", and astroturfing are endemic, especially on political groups.

It seems to be trivial for bad actors to hack/farm unused accounts and impersonate people almost at will. Meanwhile nation state-level and/or corporate bad actors have the resources to bypass or subvert the id validation and create fake identities and accounts at industrial scale.

I don't think real ID is a solution. Not even if it's linked to some kind of robust physical key - which is obviously going to have privacy implications anyway.

AI or automated searching for troll-like activity, most likely followed by manual oversight, is more likely to be successful.

But there's the lingering question of whether FB is really interested in pursuing this with any effectiveness or enthusiasm. Given FB's resources and its lack of success to date, the answer seems to be "no."

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#173

Post by staycoolboy » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

jlg23 wrote: post #155

staycoolboy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, bad actor here. I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor". Usually I start off OK. I can rank up 1000 points on HN or 20k karma on Reddit quickly because some of the discussions are interesting and non-inflammatory and I have interesting things to say. But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find…

> But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned. Kurt Tucholsky gave great advice on how to write a letter to a government agency that is applicable to all potentially heated discussions: * write letter. * put letter in drawer. * wait thre…

Hey, that's a great idea!

Instead of getting warned or banned, a user is placed in a timeout box where all of their posts get a three day lag and remain editable, and when the user logs in, they must re-read their posts before proceeding to the site. Kind of an 'in-your-face' reminder not to be a troll.

It wouldn't stop the insane trolls, but maybe it would give the borderline trolls time to think.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#174

Post by bredren » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

Goronmon wrote: post #169

friendlybus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'criddler' word seems humorous. Is there any particular need to ban it outright? These kinds of neologism happen all the time in real life and we ask people to 'tone it down' or give some other social signal that the joke has gone too far. The social feedback is immediate with breathing room, nobody is ejected from social areas, but you know they might be eventually. The joke naturally deflates as the last dregs…

The 'criddler' word seems humorous. Is there any particular need to ban it outright? From my experience in the past, moderating doesn't scale at all. So you basically have to pre-empt issues that tend to lead towards requiring mod actions. An example of this would be the auto-mod stuff on Reddit (though I don't have any experience with the specifics here, just assumptions). Another approach is to root out the "trigge…

Excellent points. You also get at a key issue around volume of moderation tasks.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#175

Post by castillar76 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

jlg23 wrote: post #155

staycoolboy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, bad actor here. I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor". Usually I start off OK. I can rank up 1000 points on HN or 20k karma on Reddit quickly because some of the discussions are interesting and non-inflammatory and I have interesting things to say. But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find…

> But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned. Kurt Tucholsky gave great advice on how to write a letter to a government agency that is applicable to all potentially heated discussions: * write letter. * put letter in drawer. * wait thre…

This is absolutely true, and it's unfortunate that the current format of sites like Reddit and HN discourage this kind of behavior. The comments that get the most votes are the ones that have been present the longest, which incentivizes early and fast, "shoot from the hip" commenting so your comments get into the flow early where people can see and vote on them. In most large subreddits, it's basically not worth your time to comment on anything more than 12 hours old or so: no one but the original poster (and sometimes not even them!) will see or read your comments.

I'm not sure how best to fix that. Some subreddits like /r/scenesfromahat use a timed-release system that only displays vote scores on comments after a fixed period (12 or 24 hours, I forget which). That at least helps reduce the first-comment effect, but it still means that anything after the votes are revealed is basically not going to be seen.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#176

Post by snazz » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

_curious_ wrote: post #138

nsilvestri wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a game to try and get a higher score. Like HN points, karma doesn't actually get you any special benefits.

Prettysure there is some functionality benefits tied to karma here on HN...

Beyond reaching the threshold to be able to downvote comments, there is no significant functionality that you unlock as your karma increases.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#177

Post by Goronmon » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

jack_h wrote: post #167

Goronmon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs. This is a common refrain I've heard going back well before Reddit ever existed. I helped moderate the Vault Network boards for a while back when they were a thing. Its hard to overstate how amazingly...disturbed and vitriolic some of the individuals of a community can be. And dishonest. And spiteful. No amount of transparency helps when all it takes to refute a…

As someone who used to moderate a pretty large gaming community back in the day I think there are two things to keep in mind. The first is that transparency doesn't "fix" hostile community members. What it does is justify the actions of those in power to the rest of the community. Without this the community will very quickly lose faith and the situation just devolves into factions and hostility. This is very indicati…

Yeah, you definitely raise some good points here.

When the people lose faith in those in power due to perceived capricious or opaque behavior there tends to be a lot of civil disorder.

I would be really interested in figuring out how to combat "perceived opaque behavior" especially when the source of the complaints is more artificial, where the complaints are being used as a tool for manipulating the community rather than being based in an actual grievance.

That's the reality you run into sometimes, like that oft-used quote from the Batman movies "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#178

Post by Majromax » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #62

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…

This is a really interesting insight, thanks. 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 the…

> 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.

You can also split moderation along another axis, dividing on whether moderators are curators or janitors.

The janitorial view would be that moderators should be generally hands-off, acting only in clear-cut cases of abuse or spam. The community does or should mostly run itself through social norms, and heavy-handed moderation is unnecessarily and unfairly restrictive.

The curation view is that moderators serve an active role in building the community, and they should generally act strongly to define and preserve community norms. The community is the moderators' space first, and a free space second if at all.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#179

Post by lidHanteyk » Thu, May 21, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

staycoolboy wrote: post #110

ryandvm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Hello, bad actor here. I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor". Usually I start off OK. I can rank up 1000 points on HN or 20k karma on Reddit quickly because some of the discussions are interesting and non-inflammatory and I have interesting things to say. But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find…

Another "bad actor" here. I think that it's a combination of two phenomena:

* I have accounts not just here, but also at places like Lobsters and Something Awful. In those places, because accounts are rare and can be banned so easily, discourse is constantly trying to stay much more civil than here or Reddit.

* As a former community moderator, I don't respect moderation actions on sites where anonymous signup is allowed. You asked for hoi polloi to wander in off the street and give their opinions; you can't then wonder why discourse is trash. Here, it's even worse; the moderators are paid for their work, which lends a clear bias to every moderation action. Similar happenings on Reddit led directly to user protests and revolts, and it's amazing that the community tolerates paid moderation here.

The idea of the well-tended garden is a potent one. I have had to tolerate obviously toxic but helpful people before and it is always irritating to not ban them, despite knowing that they are good for the garden.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#180

Post by valuearb » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

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...

The problem is the “assholes” never get told they are assholes, just mysteriously rate limited for some offense never explained to them, such as having an unpopular opinion.

That sense of powerlessness doesn’t mitigate things, it sometimes escalates them.