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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#321

Post by jakelazaroff » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

as1mov wrote: post #291

jakelazaroff wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>how meaninglessly violent people become when their posts are modded > Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs. Does the latter really justify the former? If you disagree with a moderation decision, take it up with them politely. If you consistently disagree, maybe this community just isn't for you! Mods are just people donating their time. Even if they're inconsistent or "corrupt", there's no reason…

What if you take it up with them politely and this is their response? https://imgur.com/a/jhmGXzJ

Find or create another community.

There are basically two scenarios here. One, a lot of people agree with you — in which case you should be able to appeal the decision or splinter off successfully. Two, most people disagree with you — in which case the mod is probably right, or at the very least you're simply not welcome in the community.

Let's also not forget that we're talking about violence in response to moderation decisions. So even if that's their response, it's still not okay to e.g. threaten them.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#322

Post by oldsklgdfth » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #62

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…

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…

>If you spend 90% of your time dealing with really awful people, you will get messed up.

I try to remember this when interacting with law enforcement. If you have to call the police, you're having a bad day. If you're a police your job is dealing with everyone's bad day.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#323

Post by dx87 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:37 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…

BPT twitter also did that "April Fools joke" where only verified black people were allowed to post there, so it's not a really a suprise that an overtly racist subreddit attracts racists.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#324

Post by ativzzz » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #101

teddyh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> /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.

Plenty of people complain about overmoderation here on HN as well... I am one of those people

I firmly believe that the only way an online forum, particularly an anonymous one with free signups can remain relatively civil is very heavy handed moderation. This is not a free speech zone (it's a privately owned space), and the only way to prevent bad actors is to be very liberal in applying heavy moderation.

If a few "medium" actors get banned by accident, that's the price to pay for the rest of us getting to enjoy discussing tech without dealing with a toxic cesspool.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#325

Post by dgzl » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

staycoolboy wrote: post #110

ryandvm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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…

I was banned from r/hotsauce because I posted a coupon-code for a brand I was interested in trying. They were trying to sell stock to help mitigate the downfall of the COVID-19. The mod said I was an advertising shill and needed to be purged... As if people posting their collections all day didn't count as advertising.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#326

Post by diebeforei485 » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

Good riddance, IMO

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#327

Post by loceng » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #272

loceng wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long argued that the downvote is terrible for civil discourse, I've had to tread carefully and be warned many times when I comment on it - including writing in-depth constructive criticism and not simply whining. It's strange to me that especially on a technology forum discussing the negatives or pitfalls of certain mechanisms is being suppressed, censored - just like with politics, as politics is inherently int…

The upvote/downvote thing was way, way worse when vote counts were shown per-post. That went away years ago and I think the current system seems to work pretty well when viewed through a macro lens. (In the sense of "is this a good community overall?" and "would it likely be worse if the up/down voting were entirely removed?") I'm on another forum that opted for an up/down vote system and showed counts per-post much…

What benefits do downvotes provide over just an upvote sorting the best content to the top and ability to report a link or comment for some greater infraction than difference of understanding?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#328

Post by oarsinsync » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:40 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #187

oarsinsync wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both points are valid I think. It's fair that both parties feel like they're benefiting, so no direct transaction needs to occur. Comparing this to volunteering generally isn't the same. I volunteer with local registered charities because I believe in their mission, and the volunteer work I do is directly impacting and improving the lives of the people I'm working with. Which may be the crux of the GP's question. Why…

It’s a false dichotomy. A moderator’s work primarily benefits, directly, the users , because it allows them to communicate safely. The platform only gets help indirectly . Charities often have salaried or reimbursed employees; do you volunteer in order to get their salary paid? Of course not, you do it because it helps actual users; the fact that this allows people to get paid, somehow, is an indirect benefit. Same h…

There's a difference between a charity and a regular for-profit corporation.

If the charity started stalking me to sell my data onto advertisers in order to pay the salaried staff or other stakeholders more money, I'd stop doing any work through them.

The charity's mission is not maximising revenue / profits.

Any VC/PE backed corporation's mission is to maximise revenue / profits at any cost.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#329

Post by naasking » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:40 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…

> After a few months, I came to terms with the label of 'criddler' and realized how it would come up in my mind as a form of negative judgement on a person that was not healthy for me. I realized their decision [to ban everyone's use] was a good one

Note how your conclusion doesn't actually follow: just because something isn't healthy for you, doesn't make it unhealthy for everyone else.

Trying to police too much is likely why moderators get such a backlash when they employ heavy-handed tactics like outright bans.

Moderators also very likely operate in a like-minded bubble: the sort of people who would volunteer to be moderators are far more likely to have more in common with each other, than with the average community member. As such, mods will likely always get backlash.

For instance, I'd bet it's far more likely that your fellow mods debate to what extent language should be policed, and there are probably almost no mods questioning whether language should be policed at all.

Some kind of moderation system with strictly limited mod terms and random promotions to mod status would likely improve relations, but achieving the right balance would be challenging.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#330

Post by cwhiz » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:40 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?

>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?

Yes. Unequivocally, yes. If I were the owner of X thing and Y person was sending lots of people my way I would be more than happy to give Y person something in return. In your example I would offer free pizza and beer at the absolute minimum. You are selling yourself short.