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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#261

Post by notadev » Thu, May 21, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #96

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?

> 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?

AOL would use volunteers, called Community Leaders, to moderate chats/BBSes, etc. They even got perks, like free Internet. I volunteered as a Host Guide when I was 16. CLs eventually filed a complaint with the DoL claiming AOL violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by using non-employees to do unpaid work that could have been done by paid employees. In fact, it's still illegal even if the volunteer doesn't mind or doesn't want to be paid, so long as the company is for-profit. AOL paid out something like $15 million in a class action. [1]

The same will, and should, happen to Reddit. One of the largest sites on the Internet is making money hand over first while moderators end up paying the price for no real benefit.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#262

Post by lain_ » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #55

Someone1234 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs. Don't get me started. Particularly "muting" posts with auto-moderator (silently hiding them for others without notification/warning/explanation). It was originally created for spam control but is regularly abused for generic moderation. It needs more controls placed on it. To give a recent example, I wrote a long reply in /r/fitness's daily discussion but it…

> /r/politics has a huge dictionary of phases and idioms that result in auto muting. None of which are defined in their rules. This is true here on HN too. One such word that I’ve seen to cause comments get auto-killed is “m∗sturbation” (censored for obvious reasons), and I am sure there are others.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Though they very likely use dictionaries to find comments more frequently associated with undesired discussions since that should be more effective.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#263

Post by ertian » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #6

I downloaded Reddit Enhancement Suite and it has a feature that marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user when you see a post of theirs. It is absolutely eye-opening just how much content is posted by the same few dozens of usernames. GallowBoob is the most infamous but to focus on him would be a mistake. It's pretty clear to me that the vast majority of content on Reddit is heavily manipulated and a…

I'm not sure if that's what it shows. That's the same pattern you see on all kinds of sites: most Wikipedia edits are done by a handful of users. There's a small core of ridiculously-active people answering questions on Stack Overflow. Of the millions of people who try streaming games, a few are wildly successful and account for a significant share of all watched streams. Reddit, with it's super-submitters, seems to fit right into that pattern.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#264

Post by intopieces » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

nwsm wrote: post #246

intopieces wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally, he is disliked by a large portion of reddit. Huh? 98.1% of users don't post [0]. The user mentioned in the article has the most points of anyone, meaning their posts have the most votes. That doesn't indicate dislike. Quite the opposite, actually. Was there a poll about this user to gauge sentiment? [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/let...

That's an incredibly naive perspective on media to take. If national news stations get high ratings does that mean people necessarily like the people generating or publishing the content? Is it impossible for a medium to generate interest and attention while actively attempting to exploit or manipulate its viewers? Most users do not notice the poster at all when upvoting a thread. Notice the top level thread [0] here…

>If national news stations get high ratings does that mean people necessarily like the people generating or publishing the content?

I think national news stations are not an apt comparison, since they have faces. This user, for all intents and purposes, exists only in text and non-personal image posts. For that reason -- the lack of "personal connection" that voice and face provide -- upvotes are reasonable proxy for "like" and "approval".

I contend that people don't "dislike" this user specifically, but actually "dislike" the idea that the content they are consuming comes not from many original minds, but a few minds copying the same content over and over. As I pointed out in my original comment, this is the entire platform! What people dislike is not the user, but the entire system.

In that regard, it is possible for a medium to generate interest and attention while actively attempting to exploit or manipulate its viewers, because that's what Reddit does. It's a classic attention merchant.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#265

Post by meteor333 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:02 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…

We are solving these problems at - https://district.so. Dealing with trolls can be draining and it's a plague for a good community. We working on solving that.

@bredren Would you want to lead /Portland District?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#266

Post by nromiun » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

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…

The naming system in reddit is very misleading. For example /r/india is as much related to India as /r/politics to US politics. The toxicity is so much that they can give 4chan a run for their money.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#267

Post by tsukurimashou » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

ramphastidae wrote: post #51

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…

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?

this will certainly be unpopular but if they don't get any money out of it then most likely it's an ego / power thing

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#268

Post by stevebmark » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

I feel sad seeing this gaining traction, when Reddit's appalling history of enabling and supporting abuse has gone unchecked for so long. Why care about it now? You didn't care before. This is a real question. Why is now the time you choose to engage?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#269

Post by as1mov » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #38

I stopped being an active user of Reddit about 5 years ago. I felt that it wasn't a forum that was conductive to interesting discussion. But also, I know it's a cliche to talk about the eternal September effect, but somehow it feels like the discourse in the site is even more stupid today. At least to me it seems like it's just useful as a problem and answer site you Google on. But now it seems like to some of users…

I think most people take issue with the fact that reddit, one of the most trafficked websites in the world, has some of their biggest subs controlled by a few people. You can easily use this power to shape/influence public opinion of a large number of users.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#270

Post by Supermancho » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #159

Supermancho wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm so sick of people on the internet saying they have PTSD > Calling someone with PTSD “weak” That's a nonsequitor derail. The post you are responding to is about faux self-diagnosis.

> That's a nonsequitor derail. The post you are responding to is about faux self-diagnosis. "weakling" is right there at the end and the GP is going on about a strawman not mentioned by the OP anyways, as several of the child comments point out.

> "weakling" is right there at the end Again, this is not related to the assertion.

Name calling (as a proxy for illegitimacy) is all the same for the intent of the point. Claiming damage without evidence is not compelling, even if it makes for tasty fluff content.