Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies” • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#51

Post by henriquez » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #22

I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest re…

I think it was set up (or at least supported for this long) mainly due to thedonald subreddit. The admins were too weak-willed to outright ban that subreddit and deal with the PR and political fallout, but they wanted to prevent those posts from filtering up to the main site. Now that all the Trump people have left reddit I would guess that the concept of “quarantine” is no longer needed and goes away soon, in favor of simply banning subreddits. But we can all rest easy knowing that we can still watch people die or all sorts of weird porn - reddit has really cleaned up their act.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#52

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #22

I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest re…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#53

Post by MisterTea » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #22

I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest re…

> Once you've deemed a community so harmful that you don't want people accidentally stumbling into it, why go out of your way to allow it to exist behind a curtain, instead of just outright banning it (unless you want to support it discreetly).

Perhaps this is a way to sidestep claims of censorship. Deleting subs can embolden some community themes and messages by allowing them to play victim of censorship and bolster claims of conspiracy via attacks from left/right/government/lizard people. So let them carry on while alerting people of what lies ahead.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#54

Post by deft » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #12

zeveb wrote: post #6

So, if people don't vote the way the Reddit admins want, the Reddit admins will replace the voters. That is definitely a way to get only the things the Reddit admins want upvoted, upvoted. But it seems to me to be the opposite of free discourse. I can sympathise with the admins, because a) there are a lot of terrible, toxic people b) there are a lot of bot armies. The latter is probably easiest to combat, but it is s…

How so? Calling for someone to be murdered is understandably against their policy. As is doxxing someone. The user accounts that upvote the call for murder or upvote the doxxing details KNOW that the post is against their policy and decided to participate anyway. I hate how these conversations always devolve to "well they're just trying to control what everyone says!" as if it's black and white and not shades of gray…

Theres no upvoting on 4chan and bumping a thread (or on reddit upvoting) does not kill and cannot kill anyone. The people making the threads end up killing people (very rarely) not the randoms that reply (or upvote).

You don't even know what the account upvoted, and upvoting isn't hate speech (or calling for someone to be murdered). Do you have a bunch of unknown information on this or are you just defending reddit's continued slide to dystopian horror for no reason?

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#55

Post by Semaphor » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

justaman wrote: post #16

walrus01 wrote: post #8

Eventually reddit will go the way of digg and fade into irrelevance.

Can't happen soon enough. The days where forums were the defacto place for discussion were just better. The communities would self-police and alternative opinions weren't suppressed nearly as easily. Reddit is a meme slideshow, not a place for discussion.

You just have to be in the proper small subreddits. Reddit is where I get the highest quality of discussion (especially since Covid-19 as small subreddits stayed small but HN went downwards)

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#56

Post by marricks » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

An obvious concern of this would be just silencing content which isn't violent or morally wrong but just not wanted in a large commercially viable website. This is obviously polarizing but something I'll be watching is what happens to /r/chapotraphouse.

CTH has some posts that violated a rule but most don't, the admins claim their quarantining was never well communicated and intentionally vague, posting screenshots of lack of communication from mods.

If people get suspended for just participating there without any clear violations of calling for violence/brigading/etc then that's not really a great sign for transparency.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#57

Post by freeone3000 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #15

There is an alternative to the group think/hive mind called https://gab.com/ but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. Not sure what makes sense.

This is what happens. Banned content by reddit policies is hate speech, far-right politics, and targeted hate. People who leave reddit for somewhere else do so because... they want to do those things, and can't. It's no wonder that any forum they then choose would become dominated by those ideas, that's the entire point.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#58

Post by MattGaiser » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

torben-friis wrote: post #22

I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest re…

Reddit is an anonymous website, in a unique way that Facebook, Twitter, and even Hacker News (simply because of the small community) are not.

A lot of its success is built on content which is not as acceptable as one might desire. See what happened to Tumblr when they cracked down.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#59

Post by bradlys » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

psychometry wrote: post #38

dmart wrote: post #11

I don't understand why you would even publicize this. Just stop counting those users' votes, if that's what you want to do? There's enough fuzz in the vote counts that no one would notice, and you wouldn't have any controversy on your hands.

The point is that the users who are upvoting this kind of content will stay on the site if they think their votes matter. Reddit clearly would rather they leave entirely, and this is a good way to encourage racists/misogynists/incels/whoever to find another platform.

It happens for far left content as well. I don’t think it’s limited to hateful content. At least, that’s what I’ve read from the chapotraphouse subreddit. Example being upvoting some far left stuff in r/politics.

Re: Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

#60

Post by gnulinux » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

justaman wrote: post #16

walrus01 wrote: post #8

Eventually reddit will go the way of digg and fade into irrelevance.

Can't happen soon enough. The days where forums were the defacto place for discussion were just better. The communities would self-police and alternative opinions weren't suppressed nearly as easily. Reddit is a meme slideshow, not a place for discussion.

I don't want to register zillions of forums and manage my passwords. I contribute to hundreds of subreddits. If reddit dies I'll find a replacement like reddit and move on.