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Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

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Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#211

Post by ardy42 »

castillar76 wrote: post #175
jlg23 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Isn't that a standard subreddit setting? I don't think that actually affects the problem you were describing. I think it's only meant to help keep the vote tallys from influencing user behavior (e.g. bemoaning how many up/down votes some comment got, being extra motivated to karmawhore).

In my experience, quick-feedback scores seem to have a negative influence on people's behavior and emotional experience. IIRC, HN used to show comments scores, but stopped some years ago. I personally try to disable such "features" as much as possible.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#212

Post by jerrysievert »

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…

r/portland is one of the worst cesspool subreddits I've seen, and has had a history of really bad moderators over many years. I likely haven't read anything in r/portland since you became a mod, so I can't comment on how it is at the moment, but something about a liberal city draws out the worst in people on that subreddit.

but, "criddler" is much older on the sub than "last year", it's been a mainstay for at least 10 years. and Portland doesn't have a police department, they have a police bureau (sorry, that one's a pet peeve).

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#213

Post by hundchenkatze »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #193
3pt14159 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

In this system you could still have throwaways, but the throwaway has to be invited/created from another account. This way you can create as many throwaways as needed but if you behave badly with your throwaway and it gets banned, then your main account is prevented from inviting new users and creating throwaways. Trolls could create new, primary, accounts but someone would still need to invite them back in. I definitely don't think that this would eliminate them, but it could potentially slow them down.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#214

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

eganist wrote: post #4

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…

> Moderating Reddit's larger subreddits is absolutely capable of resulting in PTSD-like symptoms

There was a moderator of the gaming subs that killed himself fairly recently. He said largely the same thing that modding was not healthy - but he continued to do it.

Why do you think that is? I suspect it was because he had control over something and found that too appealing to let go of. That’s not really a soldier’s dilemma of duty and responsibility.

So that anecdote aside, I’ve worked with a special forces vet that actually has PTSD.

Respectfully, if you think moderating an online forum is any sort of analog even to be “PTSD-like” you are either mistaken or have a far more gruesome task than I think possible.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#215

Post by echelon »

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…

What in the world is wrong with people? Why do people expend so much effort doing these things?

It'd be awesome if we had anonymous reputation scores, like PGP or something, that other people could vouch for. Make bad actors pay to build up good reputation, then burn it down when they misbehave.

I really want a system like that to help filter the deluge of comments anyway. Though there's a danger of forming a filter bubble, I want to see commentary that is vouched for by those I respect. Not just on Twitter, but everywhere. As a protocol or data exchange format.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#216

Post by ChainOfFools »

e2le wrote: post #154
soylentcola wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a world where I would trust such a system (or trust anyone to create/run such a system). Is this just for websites? Or does it encompass all use of the Internet? At least as far as websites or individual platforms go, this is exactly what accounts, moderation, and "banning" already attempt to do. We've seen how difficult and expensive this is to scale when your site gets as big as Facebook or Reddit.…

Perhaps a potential solution is POW based registration, registration is slow and CPU heavy. I don't think it's likely there is going to be a perfect solution to this and might be that it's better to slow down bad users and make it expensive to ban evade.

This will just end up promoting the interests of already wealthy bad actors, and fomenting user cartelification behind a screen of anonymity. See also: Bitcoin

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#217

Post by staycoolboy »

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…

> I have had to tolerate obviously toxic but helpful people before

I understand where you are coming from here. I struggle with this. I think there is a legit theory for it, usually given in the context of how to reconcile shitty behavior of geniuses (Picasso comes to mind: legendary artist, shitty human.)

Even if toxic people have something good to say once in a while, do the ends justify the means if they stomp all over the roses in the process?

> You asked for hoi polloi to wander in off the street

The garden analogy is potent because where I live there is a huge rose garden that anyone can wander in off the street and visit. Some people come in and do stamp on the roses. And it sucks for everyone else. Which is why I can understand the desire to keep those people out.

However, shouldn't the gardeners KNOW that there are and always will be shitty humans?

I'm truly ambivalent on this one: I want to participate, but I lack impulse control, so I'm excluded. That's not fair. And if I was tending a garden, I'd want to keep the "me"s out.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#219

Post by 3pt14159 »

hundchenkatze wrote: post #213
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

In this system you could still have throwaways, but the throwaway has to be invited/created from another account. This way you can create as many throwaways as needed but if you behave badly with your throwaway and it gets banned, then your main account is prevented from inviting new users and creating throwaways. Trolls could create new, primary, accounts but someone would still need to invite them back in. I defini…

And because the moderators have the tree of invites it's pretty easy to determine which branches are yielding troll accounts and prune further up if necessary.
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