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Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

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Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#401

Post by jerrysievert »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #395
jerrysievert wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

r/portland is one of the worst cesspool subreddits I've seen, and has had a history of really bad moderators over many years. I likely haven't read anything in r/portland since you became a mod, so I can't comment on how it is at the moment, but something about a liberal city draws out the worst in people on that subreddit. but, "criddler" is much older on the sub than "last year", it's been a mainstay for at least 1…

I'm not sure what point in time you're referring to, but I've been subbed there for years and I find the content to be above average in quality (although not great) relative to other subs. If I had to rank it, a very rough ranking would be somewhere between r/diy and r/technology in terms of quality. Shit-posting is on just about every sub, so I don't think it's fair to base it entirely off of the handful of trolls r…

> just noticed you mentioned "liberal city", so if it's political stances you're referring to then yes a more conservative-leaning person may not feel welcome on r/portland

funnily enough, I'm referring to the sub often times having a more conservative audience, often coming in from the suburbs (Vancouver being a big one there).

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#403

Post by Mirioron »

ppod wrote: post #163
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…

The article is also borderline misleading, as initially I thought their real names had been posted. All that was posted was a list of which users are common moderators of large subreddits. If they are getting abuse to their accounts, the problem is the abuse, not the list.

From what I read, the guy that posted the list then got banned from plenty of those large subreddits. That probably fuelled the rage.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#404

Post by marcosdumay »

Goronmon wrote: post #177
jack_h wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who used to moderate a pretty large gaming community back in the day I think there are two things to keep in mind. The first is that transparency doesn't "fix" hostile community members. What it does is justify the actions of those in power to the rest of the community. Without this the community will very quickly lose faith and the situation just devolves into factions and hostility. This is very indicati…

Yeah, you definitely raise some good points here. When the people lose faith in those in power due to perceived capricious or opaque behavior there tends to be a lot of civil disorder. I would be really interested in figuring out how to combat "perceived opaque behavior" especially when the source of the complaints is more artificial, where the complaints are being used as a tool for manipulating the community rather…

> how to combat "perceived opaque behavior"

As the GP said, transparency is for the punished is not sufficient. Governance must be transparent to the public, otherwise it will seed distrust. The behavior you described isn't "perceived" to be opaque, it is opaque.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#405

Post by eganist »

doublesCs wrote: post #103
severine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe sorted by controversial? https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/controversial/?...

You don't know if that's what he's referring to. In fact, I expected that the best examples got modded out.

The "̶b̶e̶s̶t̶"̶ most representative examples often involve egregious cases of abuse against parties either without consent or without a capacity to consent.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#406

Post by posterboy »

pdonis wrote: post #361
staycoolboy wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have had to tolerate obviously toxic but helpful people before I understand where you are coming from here. I struggle with this. I think there is a legit theory for it, usually given in the context of how to reconcile shitty behavior of geniuses (Picasso comes to mind: legendary artist, shitty human.) Even if toxic people have something good to say once in a while, do the ends justify the means if they stomp all…

> I want to participate, but I lack impulse control, so I'm excluded. That's not fair. Yes, it is, because the problem is not the garden, it's you. You want to participate, but you don't have a basic skill (impulse control) that is required for participation. It's like saying you want to be a concert pianist, but you don't know how to play the piano, so you're excluded and that's not fair.

Stop making this personal.

> so you are excluded

from what, playing the piano? Do you maybe see a connection here to why somebody might not know "how to play the piano"?

Or in other words: A garden without "you" is not really a garden, except in theory, if the proverbial tree makes a sound when nobody can hear it fall. That's a slippery slope argument.

Many people may lack impulse control, but preemptive judgement can't weed them all out. That's one reason why it's "not fair". It's fair to those that have "impulse control", maybe, but it is perhaps unfair that they get to decide what that is, when a moderator might act out of impulse, or experience, all the same. It is however futile to assume that life were just not fair, because then "you" have already lost.

If entry is taken to afford the gate keeper, it is not an open garden anymore, open to the public. At least not if the submission requirements are arbitrary to an uncertain degree. Maybe it's the wrong approach to take that internet discussion is not important and impulse control therefore let down too easily. But then again, the impulse to post or visit at all might be the problem to begin with, as in this post.

Really, who's aspiring to become a concert pianist in this day and age? That's a weak rhyme, unless you meant to imply that the reddit moderator cabal were playing the readers like an instrument.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#407

Post by Mirioron »

jboog wrote: post #87
commandlinefan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first started on Reddit like 10 years ago, it leaned pretty libertarian (pro Ron Paul, pro free speech, etc.). I noticed over time that it leaned farther and farther left, and I wondered what had happened to all the previous users. Then there came a conspiracy theory that a handful of users had gamed the moderation system to take control of the tone of the site overall - especially the one that's the topic of…

I started on Reddit about a decade ago also. Early reddit was a lot more like current HN. You're right you'd see more pro Ron Paul and libertarian stuff. Then the site went mainstream. Users on the internet are more liberal than the general pop. Add that to the fact that Reddit up/downvote system does a terrible job of allowing unpopular/controversial views to reach the top. Those same Ron Paul fans are all in r/cons…

>Those same Ron Paul fans are all in r/conservative or r/The_donald, or other conservative subs now. There are way more now than there ever were.

Is this true? I hold quite a few libertarian beliefs and those conservative subs don't seem any more inviting than their left wing counterparts. It's so much about partisanship that it's off-putting to me.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#409

Post by aasasd »

cwhiz wrote: post #330
twic wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Selling friends or peers to an establishment for pizza and beer is not really how a trusted human relationship works.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#410

Post by Mirioron »

MattGaiser wrote: post #25

People love the idea of decentralized control, but that is not how people willing to make the effort are allocated. We see this on Reddit, on Facebook, and we see this in open source. On Reddit (I am not a mod but friends are) mods burn out quickly. Many people have never seen the horrible behavior that goes on in the background. Same thing on Facebook. I moderate a small 800 person group, one which is private and ha…

The issue is that we know reddit moderators play politics. Subs are taken over or subverted. Having control over a sub can give you an opportunity to control what people see and read. If you then find out that a small group of moderators moderates a large number of the big subs then it makes the decentralized control into centralized control.
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