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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#191

Post by akiselev » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

friendlybus wrote: post #112

twic wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you free work for a for-profit social network They don't. They do the work for a community they're part of. The social network hosts that community, and tries to make a profit doing so. I organise a meetup that's held in a pub (well, not at the moment). People coming to the meetup spend money on the pub's beer and pizza. Am i doing free work for a for-profit public house?

Yes you are. Social organizers, advertisers, trend setters, ect frequently get free product, kickbacks or some money for their 'work'. That's the work you have done. It's not your intent to do work and it's probably not the pub owners desire to pay for meetup organizers, but regardless of your and the pub owner's intent, work has happened.

A hotel conference room costs on the order of $50-300 an hour depending on location and group size and that's without the benefit of a bar so the host has to front the money for all the drinks. Most other available venues are either just as expensive or forbid alcohol, loud noise, and so on. A four hour party would cost at least $200 plus drinks before the hosts even collect any money - or if they do, that's another cost and more risk for everyone.

The option is to do "work for free" or to shell out hundreds of dollars.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#192

Post by throwphoton » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #156

throwphoton wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way term limits make sense. Hit the ceiling, then you're done. Make room for someone else. Avoid stagnation.

If you can simply register another account and start over, how would this help avoid stagnation?

You'd lose any privileges associated with a high number of karma points, also all of your previous content would be removed, so people could cover the same territory in possibly new ways with less fear of being called redundant.

It basically compensates for first-mover advantage in forums.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#193

Post by SlowRobotAhead » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #182

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...

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.

The fact that so many people have the need for throwaway counts entirely disputes the concept that this problem is easy to solve.

The upvote/downvote system is designed to reinforce echo chambers and create a chilling effect for your “real” opinion if you know it doesn’t agree with the hive.

That system is already trying to solve the problem and instead creating a different one.

All you can do with an invite system is to make sure the echo chamber is even more structured. That “those people” aren’t even allowed to join. Hello country club.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#194

Post by carapace » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

friendlybus wrote: post #168

bredren wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find plenty of debate on this specific subject in the sub's post about it. The word was humorous to me at one point as well. However, it was being applied in general to homeless people. Portland, like many cities, has a serious and growing problem with homelessness. The word was being used to demonize and unfairly group drug addicted folks, people with mental health issues and those who are not those things bu…

Is there any other tool you can use? A warning that it will be banned then lean into it a week later? Mark individual words automatically inside posts with a symbolic warning? That's what I'm getting at, I should probably do research on my own time. Thanks for doing the good & dirty work of moderating a subreddit.

Yeah! Shoosh already!

Don't drag the debate in here!

You might as well wave a red flag in front of a bull! Or pour gasoline on a tire fire!

(Meant humorously with no disrespect.)

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#195

Post by valuearb » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

Goronmon wrote: post #140

syshum wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am sure that occurs, I have been personally banned from several subreddits not for rules violations, or violence comments, but because the moderator simply disagreed with my comment or I was harsh in my commentary against the product the subreddit was about, for example a certain web browser subreddit banned me because I talked badly about a policy of that web browser I have much more experience in dealing wi…

Just to provide the other side of this. Imagine seeing a post exactly like yours, literally word for word, with the same civil tone and all. Except the user in question had been banned for posting a tubgirl (its gross) image by a moderator that happened be female and had responded in private messages on a clear alt account (minutes after the ban with the same IP address) calling that moderator a slut who deserved to…

Imagine treating a civil poster as if they were a jerk, just because a different civil poster once turned out to be a jerk.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#196

Post by MR4D » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

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…

Thanks for sharing. Kinda sux, especially for all the work moderators do (and thanks to dang for the hard work on HN!)

Free speech is hard. Really hard. Allowing communities to express themselves in person (aka pre-internet) was much easier, because there was a cost to appear in person (time, society's perceptions, etc).

With the internet, truly anonymous speech has flourished, and much of it really is a waste of time or even damaging.

I hope as a society that we will be able to figure out this conundrum without eliminating free speech. I think that just like credit cards accept some bad debts, we have to be able to accept some bad actors in speech - the trick is limiting it without killing free speech.

To me, communities like reddit, HN, FB, twitter, etc are all huge experiments in free speech and how to manage that problem. Hopefully it turns out right - I don't want the future to look like East Germany.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#197

Post by shigawire » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

Shorel wrote: post #127

polytely wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of examples of how 4chan routinely traced down individuals based on little evidence. For more recent examples see bellingcat.com it's amazing how far you can go with just open sources and a lot of determination. It also helps to have multiple people do the searching, if like a 100 people would trawl through your posting history here they could probably create a pretty detailed profile of you. For examp…

I wish TV show writers knew these things. It would be educative and more entertaining than the hacking stuff they write.

The show Mr Robot kind of does this. While there is "hacking", they make a point to have the main character explain most of what people think of as "hacking" accounts is just social engineering.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#198

Post by valuearb » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #128

twic wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Gallowboob and friends are just helpful innocent people, why were were the calling-out comments, dozens upon dozens of them, deleted, and the people posting them banned? 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!

I looked at some of the deleted comments, and if I were a mod, I would delete them as well.

I looked at some of the deleted comments, and there was no reason except hubris to delete them.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#199

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

lidHanteyk wrote: post #179

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…

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 allo…

Banning is more like pruning weeds than pulling out weeds.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#200

Post by SlowRobotAhead » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

vsareto wrote: post #37

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…

Sadly, I think you guys are at the intersection of wielding influence and being a target, but not really having any opsec/personal security (or at least you didn't think you'd need it when you took the job). Idk if GallowBoob tied his identity to that nickname himself at any point, but there's only so much reddit can do if he did.

Aside from the likely fact that “his” account is run by multiple people considering it’s his actual job to repost on Reddit... he definitely “outed” himself for news articles. He enjoys the fame and not the consequence.