Live data from Hacker News

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

old.reddit.com

161–170 of 401 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit isn't even remotely anonymous. Pseudonymous at best. Anonymous forums are completely incompatible with user identity centric moderation mechanisms (Karma, Gold, rep etc...) Once you assign usernames and attach any type of value counter to an account, you've effectively dumped true anonymity out the window due to essentially creating a pseudonymic marketplace. People may think "How pseudonymous do you need to b…

Anonymous relative to Facebook and all the other social media sites. Sure, having user accounts is not completely anonymous, but it is good enough for 99% of people.

Not having a real name policy isn't the same as being anonymous. Back in the day my irc nick and my WoW username were far more well known than I, the human, will ever be.

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

#162
post #111

I don't think Reddit should be able to censor lawful content and also claim protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If they want to police lawful content that is fine but then they are no longer an open platform and they should forfeit their Section 230 protections. I dislike the ability for online platforms to have their cake of protection against lawsuits and also eat their cake of policing…

What model makes sense and why should it be treated differently than other forums with moderation?

I'm a big fan of the idea that internet providers, DNS registrars, etc. need to be neutral to content in the way common carriers are, but I'm not convinced yet that platforms should have similar obligations. It seems that the appropriate response to schismatic disagreement with the "SysOps of the BBS" is to build another BBS as the "telephone network" is open to all.

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

#163

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…

There is a marijuana related subreddit that is geo-banned from Canadian IPs. Reddit just says “This content has been restricted in your country in response to a legal request. Geoblocked in Canada due to General legal request” Is there any way to push Reddit to disclose who sent the request? I’d love to followup with that agency, but we have a lot of police services in Canada, if it was one.

You seem to have forgotten to name the subreddit.

Reddit stopped copying Lumen (Chilling Effects) around 5 years ago.

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

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why an ActivityPub based, federated forum system might be the future here. Have it so you can join the network once, and carry the same username to any other site on the network without anything resembling a signup process. Perhaps you could even have a choice of aggregators which then displayed content from all those sites in one place, or let you view a combined karma score or post count or whatever too.

That'd fix most of Reddit's issues and then some.

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

#165
post #37
post #2

Reddit admin message: > Your account has been suspended from for breaking the rules. Your account has been suspended for 3 day(s). >> You recently upvoted a post or comment that was determined to be against our policies. Abusive content is not acceptable on Reddit nor is engaging with it. Please be thoughful about the content that you interact with. Interestingly nothing in the Reddit policies seems to mention voting…

This is super stupid. If they're so against the content why allow it to exist in the first place?

Leaving the content up allows Reddit to track users' engagement and categorize/map their viewpoints.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I don't want to register zillions of forums and manage my passwords.

and I don't especially want the admins of any one site to be able to erase my entire existence off the net on a whim.

single/token login from known net authority agents is common. I'd rather embrace that kind of thing than the idea that any one site should be our de facto forum and communications standard.

I was reminded of this recently when a personal favorite BB forum disappeared , taking years and years of niche automotive data with it. Data that was rare from the get-go, and un-replaceable now.

I'd rather decentralize my 'data-stores'. Reddit will disappear one day, and it's up to them to be a good actor towards the archival group, providing data bandwidth during a time when investors have become disinterested, and paying the light bill is near impossible.

I wouldn't count on that.

Keep archives, repeat information elsewhere , and most importantly : don't embrace adding and relying on centralized structure where doing so inherently adds weakness and fallibility.

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

#167
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without section 230 protection it would be impossible for the site to stay open, so in effect you're saying sites that moderate user content should be shut down. Does that seem like an accurate interpretation of your position?

Sure it will be possible to stay open: just double down removing offending content and defend from the lawsuits. Large companies routinely have multiple ongoing lawsuits.

> just double down removing offending content and defend from the lawsuits

This is unsustainable though, there is just too much content to filter. There is also the fact that lacking such protections the site will be targeted by bad-faith actors who intend to harm the site by posting lots of legally problematic content.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’s a good way to encourage any user at all to leave.

Nope, I would use reddit even more if it meant a higher quality user experience, which the expulsion of those sorts of people would guarantee.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. And forcing all of your unwanted/toxic subreddits to Reddit clones only damns them from ever gaining traction. Take a look: https://voat.co/

Subreddits can be unwanted by Reddit, but otherwise non-toxic.

This is correct, but the toxic, racist, alt-right, pro-fascism posts covering the front pages of sites like voat and ruqqus make me and many others wholly uninterested in these sites.

If someone wants to provide an alternative to reddit but they don’t want to moderate/censor content that makes people uncomfortable, Reddit becomes the lesser evil.

Post reply on HN