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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#201

Post by crankylinuxuser » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

Causality1 wrote: post #147

"Five people moderate the 92 largest subreddits." If that's true, why? How could an individual possibly have enough time and attention to moderate more than one subreddit with millions of users?

NodeRed or Apache NiFi can help a great deal with that.

Both are great at posting and reposting (on and off Reddit, or between FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc), along with controlling botfarms.

edit: Seriously, why the downvotes? We had a NiFi post a week ago. And those of us who do OSINT and investigative work also use deanonymizing techniques. We automate our defenses as well using similar.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#202

Post by tracer4201 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:15 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…

I’m baffled what could motivate someone to get so worked up or angry as to go find strangers from the internet in real life and I’m sorry that’s happening.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#203

Post by IntelMiner » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:15 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...

I believe certain site features are gated off to prevent manipulation such as up/downvoting until users reach X points

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#204

Post by SlowRobotAhead » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #108

twic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're welcome. > Both of these things can be true at once! I've been on both sides of this. Last year, /r/portland began using the word 'criddler' to describe people in various states of meth-addiction and bicycle thievery. The word was beginning to be used very often to disparage many different types of people. The moderators made a decision to ban it, and the community backlash was supreme. I let the mods have it…

This is almost off topic... but can you explain criddler?

I think I’ve spent enough time around people on meth and bicycles to probably understand it - but I just don’t get it yet.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#205

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #142

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…

It's not that innocent. There are numerous examples of subs being taken over in order to push political agenda. Two notable ones are r/canada, which has been taken over by white supremacists who push alt-right ideology, and long ago r/atheism was taken over by convincing the admins to oust the top mod on a technicality. In the r/atheism case the new mods had their own ideas about what sort of content should be posted…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#206

Post by friendlybus » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #194

friendlybus wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Just interested in ideas. I'm not going to tell you were I got that old quote from, it has an incendiary speaker! :P

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#207

Post by ping_pong » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:19 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…

As a side question: As a moderator, you basically create the tone and feel of a subreddit. If a subreddit is successful, it's because of the moderators.

When reddit goes public, moderators get nothing. The employees of reddit will become defacto IPO millionaires, but moderators who create the success of the site, get nothing. Has anything been discussed along these lines about how unfair this is?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#208

Post by shuntress » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:19 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...

To beleaguer your "cleaning the pools" analogy: It is not as simple as just cleaning the pool of grime brought in through normal use.

The shit-peddlers outside the building are constantly convincing pool-goers to join a shit-peddling pyramid scheme so that they bring boxes of shit in to the pool.

And besides that, some people just want to trash the pool for their own enjoyment.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#209

Post by threatofrain » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #120

1024core wrote: post #92

Reddit just hasn't scaled well, and it looks like the operators of Reddit have no interest in scaling it properly. Case in point: the moderation system. Now, if you're passionate about some niche topic, and create a sub for it and become the moderator, then fine; you rock. Things work well for you and your subscribers. But if you're a sub of a large interest area (say, the country of India). How do you moderate there…

> Reddit just hasn't scaled well, and it looks like the operators of Reddit have no interest in scaling it properly. Has anyone scaled online moderation well? Facebook, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc. all struggle with moderating their communities.

People blame FB for social media woes, but I feel that FB is different from the other social networks in that it’s the world you fully curate and manage. If FB is giving you grief, that’s people on your green list giving you grief. If you need FB to come in to manage that, then you’re basically saying you can’t even handle the agency involved in freedom of association.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#210

Post by arprocter » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

ppod wrote: post #163

gwern wrote: post #106

This article doesn't actually address any of the questions (eg how does he have all this time?). Note that it's on the public record that Gallowboob has worked for social media marketing companies, eg https://www.forbes.com/sites/fernandoalfonso/2016/06/01/cash... > The Upvoted story never materialized; Reddit administrators were still digging out from under a deluge of drama including revelations about online harass…

The article is also borderline misleading, as initially I thought their real names had been posted. All that was posted was a list of which users are common moderators of large subreddits. If they are getting abuse to their accounts, the problem is the abuse, not the list.

Agree - "Outed" implies he was doxxed, but per link in the article his name was known in 2016