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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

#251

Post by Goronmon »

syshum wrote: post #231
Goronmon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its' not about treating people like a jerk, just that you learn quickly to never trust a person at face value when they say "I didn't do anything wrong" because that's usually the first and most common phrase a person who does something wrong uses. I was merely pointing out that the "public" persona a user portrays doesn't have to match the truth.

Which can be equally applied to moderation staff, mods that say "We are not biased, and always are fair only banning people that break the rules" are equally as likely to be bad actors as your narrative about regular users

Definitely. I mean, in the vast majority of cases, the moderators are just "regular users" who are given (or chose in the case of the creation of subreddits) power over other users. Even if the moderators are employees they are still fallible, with personal motives, just like the people they moderate.

In the end, that's why its such a difficult problem. You take the normal conflict that occurs in communities, add in the potential for malicious actors on both sides and it's no surprise that the normal conflicts can spiral out of control. Especially in the virtual and relatively anonymous setting of online communities.

And from a person on the outside looking in, it can be impossible to actually know what the truth is.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#252

Post by jerrysievert »

bredren wrote: post #244
jerrysievert wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

Jerry, I'd welcome you to come back and see how things are now. I understand there was some moderation in the past that was difficult but that a change went through some time ago. The group of mods running the show now seem to me good people and having seen how they operate I'd be impressed if other city subs of this size are doing a far better job. I realized after writing the above that it was likely an older word…

just went and looked, many of the most popular posts are still a cesspool once you dig in, and the moderator list looks little changed from 10 years ago. I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, and have drunk the koolaid, but this just reminded me why even r/politics is a nicer place to visit.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#253

Post by thejynxed »

ping_pong wrote: post #207
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?

Some mods have already openly discussed taking their subs entirely private and invite only in the event of an IPO. Reddit gets no ad revenue from private subs.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#254

Post by AlexMax »

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.

At a certain scale, I think threaded conversations are incredibly difficult to follow without a voting system to sort it out, and once you introduce a voting system you end up with voting system problems as you mentioned.

I honestly think that flat forums are more fit for purpose. Multiple concurrent conversations end up being a bit messy, but there was at least a reasonable chance that someone would reply to any given post, since everybody in the thread was on the same page.

Heck, you can even gamify engagement with a flat forum - one of those that I still frequent allows you to "react" to any given post. It doesn't actually do anything except have a number beside the post tick up, but people still use it.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#255

Post by dionian »

The 'spam filter' enabled on most large subreddits greatly adds to the 'echo chamber' nature of Reddit and leads to a tyrannical majority. If you get downvotes in a major sub due to not agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you are rate-limited and you can only post once every 10 minutes.

Imagine being in a debate with dozens of people and being rate-limited to only posting every 10 minutes because your opinion wasn't agreed to by people doing voting.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#257

Post by LoSboccacc »

GallowBoob is a scourge, I'm sad to see a human being harassed and I hope he'll see justice, but he's also all it's wrong with reddit moderation and two wrongs don't cancel out to make one a saint.

I encourage you to dig into the threads of the alleged post that made him 'flip' https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/t...

some are straight up harassment, which is sad. some describe however all the many things he did to ruin other people enjoyment to the site, most common of which was banning users to steal good content and repost it for karma, to fuel his own agenda, which include for example being paid from netflix to run advertisements as normal posts trough the subs he mods.

he's not the good, loving moderator that the article describes.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#258

Post by zahma »

Reddit has turned into a cesspool. I’m sure the majority of users are great, honest and open minded, but you can’t keep the internet outside the walled garden forever. And it only takes a handful of bad actors to ruin it for everyone.

As frustrated as I’ve found myself on Reddit, to the point I’ve all but quit using it save for some video game stuff, I still can’t imagine how mods can be bothered to put up with bad actors, trolls, whiners, and fools. Everyone checks out at some point —- and as a normal user, I can and I feel no compunction about letting the conversation devolve, but when you rely on volunteers to do the policing, it’s going to happen more often and with harsh consequences. And you can see on many subs that absent strong moderation, discussion on anything remotely contentious devolves into an ugly free for all. Even if the thread is locked or certain comments get deleted, it’s too little too late, and the damage has been done to civil discourse.

This article has me thinking more broadly about the internet and the future of online communities. Large platforms can’t thoroughly patrol every nook and cranny without unreasonable amounts of employees. And yet it’s never been more important to have fair and timely moderation on serious issues. Machine learning might have a role to play here, but it’ll require some sort of human oversight to provide a “starter” or some context within which a system can determine what can be censored. What else is left? Unmasking everyone isn’t going to happen for good reason. The internet is in dire need of a police force, and volunteerism isn’t sufficient.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#259

Post by joshuaissac »

throwphoton wrote: post #192
the_af wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If upvoting a post/comment (which gives the author karma points) would risk triggering its deletion (by making the author cross the karma threshold), then is that not effectively turning the karma system on its head?

Under such a system, if I think a post is valuable, I would then try to "protect" it and its author's account by downvoting it. Similarly, if I think a post is not valuable, I can help trigger its eventual deletion by upvoting it.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#260

Post by httpsterio »

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 know what you're talking about. I was also a mod myself on /r/Suomi (Finland) and quit after a rather serious incident. Other mods and users on far-right subs started to compile a list of European subreddit moderators whom they deemed 'SJWs' and tried to gather as much personal information on everyone. Someone from that group leaked the documents to us and it was quite alarming. The scale, effort and hate that went into those documents was the most surprising thing.

Anyways, when our main mod got approached on the street and asked if he was /u/nickname on reddit and he replied yes, he got stabbed. That was the day I quit.

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