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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#311

Post by FriendlyNormie » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #162

friendlybus wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'criddler' word seems humorous. Is there any particular need to ban it outright? These kinds of neologism happen all the time in real life and we ask people to 'tone it down' or give some other social signal that the joke has gone too far. The social feedback is immediate with breathing room, nobody is ejected from social areas, but you know they might be eventually. The joke naturally deflates as the last dregs…

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#312

Post by joshuamorton » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:28 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 can second this type of experience. When I (more actively) moderated the subreddit for my university, there were a few repeat offenders who took most of our time, and one who went out of his way to try and dox and threaten me specifically (which wasn't hard since I ran the account under my real name), and who I finally dealt with by involving the police.

Politically motivated reddit people are, or at least can be, scary.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#313

Post by bulldoa » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:30 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…

Does min account history + min karma to comment enforcement helps?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#314

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

uncletaco wrote: post #282

I was a moderator on /r/blackpeopletwitter and the amount of racist and outright vitriol we received was fucking insane. There are people out there who really have it out for BPT and we banned dozens of users daily who were legit there to only drop the n word with a hard r and make jokes about monkeys or something. I deleted my reddit account in a panic after someone sent me a DM saying they knew where I lived and I…

Wow... this and the stabbing story are making me happy that I only mod relatively tame subreddits.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#315

Post by ravenstine » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:32 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…

It's way too easy for bad actors to create throwaway accounts on Reddit. If I remember correctly, there's no captcha and no email confirmation required. I suspect a large swath of Reddit activity is bots and paid political actors.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#316

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

sova wrote: post #126

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…

There is no way to get unbanned on Reddit, even if your first post is innocuously misplaced, there is simply no mechanism to get unbanned. So what do you suggest people do?

[deleted]

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#317

Post by s_dev » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

Big/default subs are fast becoming outright mainstream trash on reddit. Fortunately like small businesses in the economy the smaller subs are holding the whole show together.

This is a positive change -- that one user account had too much power over too many subs. I refuse to believe money wasn't becoming involved.

Size breeds skepticism and the GallowBoob account (whomever was using it) just got too big.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#318

Post by elliekelly » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

nsilvestri wrote: post #122

elliekelly wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's incorrect to suggest that the "vast majority" of content is manipulated. You see the same names because they understand the game of karmawhoring. What is the distinction between content manipulation and the game of karmawhoring? They seem more or less the same to me. I think I would consider SEO a form of content manipulation, for example.

I'm distinguishing it between the "intended" way of using the site by making posts and then the community organically votes on it, and some unintended "manipulated" way where content is artificially voted upon or otherwise given an advantage over other posts.

And when someone posts OC, a photo, for example, to a small subreddit or at a low-trafficked time of day and a "karmawhore" screenshots the photo and posts it to several highly trafficked subreddits would you consider those upvotes organic or manipulated?

It's my understanding that this is a common tactic used by people who are "karma farming" on an account. I can certainly understand how the karmawhore feels the upvotes are organic but I can also see how the owner of the original content would very much consider those upvotes manipulated.

And when a karmawhore lifts content and uses a title that insinuates it's their content ("My Dog Spike Doing Funny Thing"), I think the fuzzy line between organic and manipulated feels a little less fuzzy and lot more manipulated. Not just for the content owner, but for the content consumers as well. I think there's some expectation, at least some of the time, that an "organic" OP will interact with commenters and provide more detail in response to questions and it can be disappointing when you come across an interesting post only to realize that isn't the case because OP is just looking to maximize eyeballs & upvotes.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#319

Post by dgzl » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:34 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…

One of my posts to r/Portland was incorrectly removed with the excuse "not related to Portland." in reality it was related however the post was contentious and I was prevented from re-posting. The moderator didn't even pretend to acknowledge a genuine rule that was broken, just simply told me not to post it. After I complained I was muted from contacting the mods.

Not to blame you but this is the kind of BS that makes me uninterested in the Reddit community, and uninterested in Portland in general, rife with cancel culture.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#320

Post by cwkoss » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

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…

It seems the one of the fundamental problems leading to this situation is that reddit moderation is unpaid yet requires large amounts of time. So anyone who becomes a 'big' moderator has to monetize their efforts externally, leading to communities being suspicious of the motives of any big moderator.