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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#181

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

eganist wrote: post #121

ramphastidae wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What are you getting out of this? For a nontrivial number of people, this community is the only place to turn. If we step away, do people incur harm as a result? Most likely. (in other words, it's almost a psychological obligation of sorts at this point)

[deleted]

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#182

Post by 3pt14159 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:02 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...

This problem is really easy to solve. Make your forum invite-only and have a ban on a user revoke the ability of the person that invited you to invite new users. Do not make the links between who invited whom public. It's for moderation only.

You can still have throwaway accounts for commenting on things and the overall community will be increasingly more civil.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#183

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #139

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 problem is bigger than Reddit and focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm. Part of the problem is that online communities rely on the fallacy that, because most people are good, such communities can thrive with some reasonable amount of guidance. But it only takes a relative few people acting in bad faith to cau…

You make a good point. All online posts are equal, and that's a terrible thing because on popular sites a shouty bad actor looks just as credible as a real expert - especially if the former relies on dogwhistle rhetoric, deliberate confusion, and superficial point-scoring, and the latter is trying to respond with facts and reason.

Good moderation can keep out bad actors and promote an adult and civil tone, but it's insanely time-consuming and expensive.

There really needs to be a new legal concept - something like poisoning of free speech. It's one thing to have unpopular and unusual opinions and to argue them, but another to set out to knowingly and deliberately subvert and poison communities with calibrated lies and aggression.

There is no upside to the latter, and the face-to-face equivalent would usually have consequences. Free speech advocates online seem to believe that online communities are somehow magically strong enough to handle these threats automatically - but in reality they can be more fragile than face to face communities. Some formal appreciation of that might not be a bad thing.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#184

Post by tarkin2 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #139

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 problem is bigger than Reddit and focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm. Part of the problem is that online communities rely on the fallacy that, because most people are good, such communities can thrive with some reasonable amount of guidance. But it only takes a relative few people acting in bad faith to cau…

In person, people value civility to keep the shared benefit of social groups. In the digital world, you can easily find another group so lesser value is placed on civility. And that turns easily into the division you see in today’s digital world and society. And if you threaten the integrity of communities and societies you threaten the state and country upon which those are built.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#185

Post by crankylinuxuser » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

sasasassy wrote: post #95

nsilvestri wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have never used reddit, and just know that "karma" is a type of points system like here on HN. Could you explain why you personally are interested in accumulating karma by "karmawhoring"? I ignore the points system in HN too, but I think it's main function is to ban bad actors. So I don't understand on the other hand why someone would accumulate points unless they mean to later spend them on "bad actions".

Karma is a social proof for being able to astroturf and control the narrative. And depending on what group you're a mod in, can provide a great deal of influence and control.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#186

Post by bredren » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #59

thebouv wrote: post #5

So, I don't get it. Why does it matter if a few volunteer mods manage a ton of subs? Isn't it hard to do? So they have a hard job? And it's volunteer? And .. what? I don't understand the outrage directed at mods I guess. Note: I'm a light Reddit user. I follow a handful of subs. And I can't name a single mod of any of them. Maybe this is more meaningful for people who spend more time on the site and are more involved…

Mods on Reddit aren't _just_ mods; they're more like administrators for the subreddits they moderate. Not only do they enforce the rules of each sub, they also have free rein to decide what those rules are in the first place, and there are no formal mechanisms in place for community oversight or recourse for moderator actions. If the head mod of a sub about cats decides that henceforth only posts about dogs will be a…

> This isn't usually an issue; for the most part moderators are benevolent dictators.

Glad you used this term, because it is descriptive of the idealized leadership of a sub.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#187

Post by toyg » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #161

cecilpl2 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not possible that the situation is a win-win for all parties and that all parties feel like they are well-compensated in terms of the value they've received, and that therefore no money actually needs to exchange hands? You may as well ask why people volunteer their time at all.

Both points are valid I think. It's fair that both parties feel like they're benefiting, so no direct transaction needs to occur. Comparing this to volunteering generally isn't the same. I volunteer with local registered charities because I believe in their mission, and the volunteer work I do is directly impacting and improving the lives of the people I'm working with. Which may be the crux of the GP's question. Why…

It’s a false dichotomy.

A moderator’s work primarily benefits, directly, the users, because it allows them to communicate safely. The platform only gets help indirectly.

Charities often have salaried or reimbursed employees; do you volunteer in order to get their salary paid? Of course not, you do it because it helps actual users; the fact that this allows people to get paid, somehow, is an indirect benefit. Same here, really.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#188

Post by md224 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

It seems to me like the main purpose of moderation is to make sure posts conform to the theme of the subreddit... to keep things on topic. Almost everything else can be taken care of by the downvotes of the community members.

A subreddit is like a community where every citizen has a gun. They can police themselves by downvoting each other... the only thing mods need to do is make sure the theme of the community stays on track.

I'm the sole mod of a subreddit with over 600k subscribers and I basically do nothing. My case is admittedly special because the subreddit is a weird kind of "game" with very specific, well-defined rules about how to reply to posts (and a bot that deletes replies that violate this rule), but in general I feel like people don't have enough faith in the ability of a community to handle itself. Occasionally I've had to ban people who are spamming /new with disturbing content, and I did end up setting some useful automoderator rules, but otherwise I find that the community runs itself.

I've gotten a few messages from people over the years saying they're unsubscribing because they wanted me to take a more involved role in moderating the content posted to the subreddit, removing posts they thought were "low quality". That's fair, but I don't think it should be up to me what counts as "low quality"... I'm just one person. The beauty of a community is watching it develop organically from the actions of thousands of people, not molding it into some shape you happen to prefer. It's like an organism, and it has a mechanism to achieve homeostasis: upvotes and downvotes.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#189

Post by nsilvestri » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

emerongi wrote: post #160

snazz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the value of Reddit karma purely psychological? I know that you can sell accounts with high point values for significant sums of money, but I'm confused what the actual value is aside from the little dopamine rush you get when something is upvoted.

More entrepreneurial Redditors can use karma to signal that they know how to get posts to the front page of Reddit. Marketing companies might hire them to do promotions. At least this is how it was years ago. Maybe marketing companies have this all automated anyway already and don't need people like that anymore.

I've never been approached about marketing once, but I am not prolific like other users. I imagine you have to be in the top 100 or 1000 users in order to get those sorts of offers. The closest I've experienced was when I organically made a post on the speedcubing subreddit asking for opinions a new cube by a fairly unknown company and I was contacted by an employee of the company thanking me for the post and offering to give me one for free.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#190

Post by valuearb » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

Goronmon wrote: post #52

haunter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. 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…

Mods apparently inflict their PSTD from bad posters on good posters, given the common ban first ask questions later approach.

I really don’t care how shitty another poster was to you. I only care how shitty you are treating me.