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

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#341

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

bluntfang wrote: post #332

dgzl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#342

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

organicfigs wrote: post #333

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…

Well the coronavirus really does bring out the worse part of Reddit. If your article at all suggested that cases are decreasing/it's not going to lead to the end of the world, that sub is going to attack you.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#343

Post by dillonmckay » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #329

bredren wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Like moderator jury duty?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#344

Post by infogulch » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

three_seagrass wrote: post #302

infogulch wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so in addition to the community getting value out of it, the pub benefitted too , that's just called win-win. Why does the pub have to lose in this situation for you to be ok with the result?

They didn't really claim the inverse, just that any form of community organizing inside a private for-profit business profits the business, making it free work for them. It's one thing to organize a bake sale in a public park, but when you choose one pub over other competitors, and they profit from it, you're doing work for the pub for free. This is why experienced community managers works with businesses to get pric…

I don't disagree that incidentally involving a business in a community's activities benefits ('does work for') the business. But that doesn't mean that the business absorbs all the value a priori and the community no longer gets any value.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear, this point is not directed at friendlybus, but to the general sentiment upthread (e.g. ramphastidae) that seems to assume that because reddit is benefiting from the existence of the community therefore the community cannot benefit from the existence of reddit. The underlying reason why is because individuals benefit from the community.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#345

Post by BubRoss » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #158

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'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…

If you look at hacker news however, a lot of nonsense makes it to the front page. One word titles, clickbait, old links to wikipedia articles, submarine advertising, something no one has heard of announcing a new version, something few care about announcing they are shutting down, a point release of rust, a program that is only relevant because it was written in a certain language, pointless, trivial side projects that only seem relevant to people unaware of the the same idea being done before, etc.

I think a lot of that wouldn't make up such a giant part of the site if there were downvotes on stories.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#346

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #320

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.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#347

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:53 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…

> 90% of a member of the public's interaction with the police is a policeman exceeding their authority, not being interested in helping with a problem, etc

What complicates matters even more is that the interaction usually involves fear at least on one side. In a peaceful society, a regular citizen doesn't interact with police officers day to day. If you capture the attention of an officer, it usually means either something bad happened to you, or you're suspected of doing something wrong - both of which put you in a "fight or flight" state. I suspect that the most common interaction between a westerner and a police officer involves said citizen breaking traffic rules, which is a pretty antagonistic situation from the start.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#348

Post by fzeroracer » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #329

bredren wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

This logic doesn't follow. If you don't police enough, then users have an expectation that anything goes. When you do decide to moderate behavior, you experience a backlash because you've changed stances.

If you moderate too much, then you get accused of being heavy-handed, fascistic or trampling over their free speech rights. When you're a moderator, there's often very little that you can do that won't generate backlash unless the user in question is so toxic that the community as a whole agrees they need to go.

Your idea of random promotions to mod status w/ limited mod terms is an incredibly bad idea as well, because the moment a bad faith actor gets promoted to mod your entire community will quickly go up in flames. Trust me, there are people that will pretend to be in good faith for months, years until it gets them a position of power just so they can burn it all down.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#349

Post by dgzl » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

BubRoss wrote: post #334

dgzl wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And my desperate attempts to become unbanned was met with paranoid skepticism and unfounded rebuttals. I had literally only posted one other time, showing off a meager 10 bottle collection. And somehow trying to help not only the community by sharing a discount code, not only starting a discussion about the aforementioned sauces, but also helping the struggling company. I didn't really see a problem with it. The community like the post and engaged, but somehow I was a first-offence marketing shill worth banning for life.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#350

Post by this_user » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

andrewzah wrote: post #94

koboll wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... maybe they just post good content? You yourself said the extension marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user. So, unless you yourself are engaged in this conspiracy to inflate GallowBoob's upvotes, then all this is evidence of is that GallowBoob seems uniquely skilled at finding and posting viral content.

He also is paid to post on reddit. He also submits posts dozens of times, deleting them if they don't gain traction quickly. People don't dislike gallowboob and others because the content is necessarily bad... it's just inorganic and lame. I want to see content from other regular users, not power posters working for firms.

He has also been repeatedly caught abusing his moderator status to gain more karma. This works by suppressing, or outright deleting, posts made by other users before they can gain traction, and then immediately reposting their content with his own account. And he is by far not the only power mod who is using this tactic.