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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#331

Post by sokoloff » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #327

sokoloff wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Downvoting for being blatantly inaccurate or blatantly anti-community seems a worthwhile community-sourced signal for the posts of bad actors (whether temporary or permanently bad actors). This should absolutely factor into the sorting and eventual hiding of sufficiently negative posts.

For people who think of themselves as good actors, I will reflect on posts that attract downvotes and try to figure out if I should have been more constructive on a given post. (I don't "care" about the score per-se, but I do care about the community that I'm part of and if people are telling me that I'm being an asshole on a given post, I should reflect on that, decide if I agree with them, and if I do, to change next time. (Often, I think my content was fine and someone just disagreed and used a downvote to express that. That's not how I use downvotes, but if they do, so be it...))

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#332

Post by bluntfang » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

dgzl wrote: post #319

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 make…

>cancel culture

The only people I see using this phrase in the way you're using it are people who have consistently behaved in such a way to be "canceled" from multiple social groups after being asked to modify their behavior that adheres to a low bar of social norms and etiquette. Do you fall into this category?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#333

Post by organicfigs » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

There is definitely an anomalous uptick with reddit harassment these days. I posted a positive article to /r/Coronavirus and I was immediately harassed in the dumbest way possible (someone trying to counter an article I posted but their argument was actually restating the article thesis). He ended up getting a ton of traction because he probably sounded confident. It left me confused and saddened- I owe a lot of what I learned in the last few years through great discussions on reddit and hn, hopefully reddit's deterioration by bored/malicious actors is stopped.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#334

Post by BubRoss » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

dgzl wrote: post #325

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…

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.

A lot of subreddits end up being snakes telling their tail how it's the best tail. A lot of those can turn into ads as people start making whatever brands to get in on the circle jerk. Some subreddits I suspect go further and have companies working with moderators to do very potent marketing without anyone drawing attention to it. /r/mechanicalkeyboards, /r/gadgets, etc, the list goes on.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#335

Post by jethro_tell » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

thejynxed wrote: post #245

bredren wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Portland (and Seattle) have had such a terrible homeless (and drug addict) problem for decades that it's been reported on in various PBS shows such as Frontline several times over the years. It even spawned an entire music subgenre in rock that gave birth to the likes of Nirvana, Hole, Mudhoney, etc.

Heh, the dressing like a homeless logger/fisherman trend wasn't a show or a fashion statement.

In my area, people complain that there are homeless people 'now', when I was a kid, fishermem would come home from Alaska with thousands of dollars of cash in their pockets, buy a tent and a sleeping bag and just camp right next to the bar. Lots of couch surfing. People had bars on their windows.

These PNW cities have always had a lot of drugs and poverty and depression. Cities built on logging, fishing, lumber mills, paper plants, shipping ports and airplane factory work.

The tech hub vibe and the people who moved to here from the suburbs see this as new. And in a way, it's been exacerbated by skyrocketing rent, but part of what we're seeing is a lack of places where these people could hide in plane sight.

They've always been here. This is a subculture that has always existed.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#336

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:46 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…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#337

Post by xigency » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

md224 wrote: post #188

It seems to me like the main purpose of moderation is to make sure posts conform to the theme of the subreddit... to keep things on topic. Almost everything else can be taken care of by the downvotes of the community members. A subreddit is like a community where every citizen has a gun. They can police themselves by downvoting each other... the only thing mods need to do is make sure the theme of the community stays…

AskOuija? I appreciate your take on moderation. I think what happened on WorldPolitics with IAmanAnonymousCoward shows that at least a small bit of work is needed to keep things on topic, but overall I think free speech and self-moderation is better.

What seems unacceptable for moderators to do, which seems to happen a lot, is banning users from multiple subreddits due to comments or behavior in a different subreddit. That's really a power trip and it sounds like something that a lot of moderators on 'the list' have done.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#338

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:48 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…

>There current moderation system (whoever started the reddit, and whoever they blessed, get to be moderators; sortof like a monarchy and a feudal system) is horribly out of date in today's world.

This is the worst part for me, though truly unfixable in my opinion. Reddit has taken over forums for many topics, but the entire mod team is chosen by the person who thought up the name first in 2011, which hardly has the same barrier of entry as running and hosting a forum (generally you can assume someone who goes to that much effort is invested in the hobby).

>Here's how I would fix it: every year, have an election of moderators. People get votes proportional to their karma (or upvotes or some function thereof, which could heavily penalize bad posting behavior) earned since the last election. And the top N vote getters get to be moderators for a year.

We both know this wouldn't fix the /r/india issue, they would simply vote for the mods that lean the way they agree with, and since the current mod team has pushed out those who don't, it'll likely remain that way. And I also think this could even hurt many reddits, as the lowest-common-user would likely vote to allow things they really shouldn't such as meme posts (many a sub has banned this, though generally at the dismay of many of the community).

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#339

Post by ativzzz » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:49 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…

I feel the safest way to use Reddit is to create a new account for every subreddit/community/subculture that is in any way tied to real life, and absolutely minimize the amount of information you give out in each one by keeping it relevant to that particular topic.

If you have some niche gaming/entertainment/etc interests, use an account specifically for those without ever delving into personal details.

Have a separate account for BPT, where again, you minimize sharing personal details.

If you have a hobby that has more real life interaction (for instance is location based, or is small and you use personally identifiable information), use a separate account and minimize sharing anything not related to the topics.

Obviously if reddit gets hacked/info is leaked good luck, but controlling available information about yourself seems increasingly mandatory to protect yourself from the crazies if you want to participate in online discussions.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#340

Post by jldugger » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #215

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…

> 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.

The whuffie concept relies on strong online identities. Without that, declaring bankruptcy is too easy and allows malicious actors to simultaneously harm others and boost their own scores rep with bots.