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

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

#391

Post by Supermancho »

root_axis wrote: post #323
Supermancho wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subbredits are run by users. No, they are run day to day by users, but ultimately are at the discretion of the site owners. Case in point, this article we are discussing. > Reddit would say they don't tolerate those things, you say they do, how do we determine who is right? The behavior of the site owners? Reddit site owners treat different subreddits differently and different viewpoints differently, although there…

> but ultimately are at the discretion of the site owners The site owners don't ban users based on race and gender which is the claim I responded to. > Reddit site owners treat different subreddits differently and different viewpoints differently Well yes, that is how standards work, "different views" are treated differently based on how they stack up with respect to the standard. I understand that you're arguing tha…

> does not do your case any favors

I'm not making a case. I'm describing the state of the reddit culture. Whether you believe it or not, is incidental.

> The site owners don't ban users based on race and gender which is the claim I responded to.

Your statements were broader than that. Revisionism aside, you can get banned for voting on a post, and there are lots of rules (written and unwritten by each community) that can get you banned from the subreddit or reddit as a whole. Making statements about YOUR gender (or a number of other attributes) can also get you banned. Here, I'll do a google search for you (since you can't be bothered) for subreddit bans, to start you off: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=subredd...

You aren't informed enough to be discussing this and it's not worth rehashing.

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

#392

Post by root_axis »

Supermancho wrote: post #391
root_axis wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but ultimately are at the discretion of the site owners The site owners don't ban users based on race and gender which is the claim I responded to. > Reddit site owners treat different subreddits differently and different viewpoints differently Well yes, that is how standards work, "different views" are treated differently based on how they stack up with respect to the standard. I understand that you're arguing tha…

> does not do your case any favors I'm not making a case. I'm describing the state of the reddit culture. Whether you believe it or not, is incidental. > The site owners don't ban users based on race and gender which is the claim I responded to. Your statements were broader than that. Revisionism aside, you can get banned for voting on a post, and there are lots of rules (written and unwritten by each community) that…

> I'm not making a case.

That much is clear.

> I'm describing the state of the reddit culture. Whether you believe it or not, is incidental.

Very convincing. Oh, I know, you don't care about that in the least.

> Your statements were broader than that. Revisionism aside...

No, they weren't. You stated that the subreddits are ultimately controlled by the site owners, and I explained that the site owners don't ban people based on race and gender. Simple. Revisionism indeed.

> Making statements about YOUR gender (or a number of other attributes) can also get you banned. Here, I'll do a google search for you

The results of the google search does not support the claim you're making, like, not even a single result. Beyond that, mods can ban users for whatever reason they want, but the site owners do not ban people based on their race and gender, that claim is totally false.

> You aren't informed enough to be discussing this and it's not worth rehashing.

lol, a laughable assertion coming from someone who can't even cherry-pick google search results to support their argument. Stop wasting my time.

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

#393

Post by muyuu »

wildmusings wrote: post #341
majormajor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no site should be allowed to have moderation policies that include things like "no trolling," "no flaming," "no swearing," or anything like else like that for things that don't cross into "illegal" abusive speech? Without becoming a target for filling up with illegal shit to overwhelm the moderators and cause legal trouble for the owners? So HN is gone, too, then.

Free speech is not so daft a concept. Where some restrictions are necessary, the principle of “viewpoint neutrality” still works to prevent censorship. This is the approach that First Amendment jurisprudence takes. So, where the government allows pro-abortion expression, it must also allow anti-abortion expression. But it can still set volume limits and control crowd movements and so forth, as long as it does not dis…

But Section 230 doesn't account for it... I honestly don't think it's practicable as much as it pains me. You rely on some goodwill from the site, and if you open it to lawsuits you will get none.

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

#394

Post by Grue3 »

bradlys wrote: post #289
zozbot234 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't characterize far left content as hateful. You're not familiar with, e.g. tankies, I take it?

The term has evolved over time. The people going by tankies now are likely not the same as decades ago. So, it's unclear what you think it is. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/hb0xep/wtf_... https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/hb0xep/wtf_...

They still defend indefensible things like Holodomor or Tiananmen Massacre.

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

#395

Post by shostack »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #383
AlwaysRock wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big brands don't want to be advertised on r/watchpeopledie but probably have no issue with being advertised on r/relationshipadvice which is almost entirely a sub about controversy and thus drives clicks and revenue. I've done some searching and it seems that reddit gold is a pretty small piece of the reddit revenue. Campaigns start at $50,000 with Reddit Ad's.

Oh I just found this: https://www.feedough.com/reddit-make-money-reddit-business-m... Reddit made close to 1 million in revenue from Reddit gold in 2016.

That's pretty old data. And I realize I said Gold when what I meant was Reddit Coins, ie. the currency that lets people gild posts with various things like flames, and other colors.

I'm deeply interesting in learning what % of revenue that is for them and how quickly it is growing.

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

#396

Post by thejynxed »

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #266
Jonnax wrote: post #107

I used Reddit a lot back in 2013ish but went off of it. Looking at it now, it feels like that in general the site is really mean spirited. Also upvoting means that you're just seeing whatever the majority of voters want you to see. It works on a smaller community like HN because comments get 10s of upvotes at most. It's not a site for good discourse. However there's communities where there is interesting discussion s…

I have been a redditor for a decade and have a few remarks based on my experience. I feel like reddit has always had recurring and overlapping cycles of mean spiritedness. For instance, during the summer holiday period it becomes notoriously harder to have a reasonable exchange of ideas there (don't ask me why; I'm not quite sure). This year, since the beginning of the COVID19 isolation period in March, we've been in…

The phenomenon you are describing is called "Summer Reddit", and that term comes about yearly because schoolchildren are home for the summer, with the average age of Redditors participating during this time lowering from 24 to 16. It also heavily correlates with an increase in edgy commenting and shitposting.

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

#397

Post by thejynxed »

shostack wrote: post #395
AlwaysRock wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I just found this: https://www.feedough.com/reddit-make-money-reddit-business-m... Reddit made close to 1 million in revenue from Reddit gold in 2016.

That's pretty old data. And I realize I said Gold when what I meant was Reddit Coins, ie. the currency that lets people gild posts with various things like flames, and other colors. I'm deeply interesting in learning what % of revenue that is for them and how quickly it is growing.

A recent heavily awarded post was broken down by cost per award. The money spent to award that post what it got was over $24,000, and that was just in the new award types and not the older medal/coin types. Adding the latter in pushed the total to just under $36k for that single post.

As for advertising on Reddit, I view it as a fool's errand on the part of advertisers given the extensive popularity of PiHoles and adblocking software among the userbase.

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

#398

Post by shostack »

thejynxed wrote: post #397
shostack wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty old data. And I realize I said Gold when what I meant was Reddit Coins, ie. the currency that lets people gild posts with various things like flames, and other colors. I'm deeply interesting in learning what % of revenue that is for them and how quickly it is growing.

A recent heavily awarded post was broken down by cost per award. The money spent to award that post what it got was over $24,000, and that was just in the new award types and not the older medal/coin types. Adding the latter in pushed the total to just under $36k for that single post. As for advertising on Reddit, I view it as a fool's errand on the part of advertisers given the extensive popularity of PiHoles and ad…

Do you have a link to that breakdown? I'd love to dig in further. I suspect that there's a lot of Coins in circulation from Reddit seeding the system. The marginal cost to them is roughly $0. Without being able to confirm if users paid the list price for those awards, I'm not sure we can confidently say Reddit banked ~$36k revenue for that post.

That said, my concern is that it creates an environment for misaligned incentives. If say, hostile foreign governments have their troll farms buying awards to increase visibility of divisive and inflammatory posts in key threads, that furthers their agenda and creates a revenue stream for Reddit that is fueled by creating an environment where that flourishes.

I'm NOT saying Reddit is actively trying to do this as I think they'd be horrified to find this happening, but they have a fine line to walk here from a product and business standpoint.

Re: your other point, I do digital advertising for a living. I can assure you that the vast majority of users on Reddit are not using PiHoles. While many may be using ad blockers, those largely don't work for native ads in the mobile app.

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

#399

Post by jlawson »

braythwayt wrote: post #224
jlawson wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For structural reasons this comparison makes no sense. HN has one homepage; one sub-community. Reddit has an infinite number of subreddits. Similar for facebook. Even with no moderation, in no case would anyone be exposed to content that wasn't posted and allowed in a community that they deliberately subscribed to. Reddit polices what kinds of communities are allowed. HN is one kind of community.

It makes no sense to you , but for years , users on certain subreddits were exposed to users and their views from other subreddits thanks to brigading. Likewise, Reddit and Facebook both have to deal with being judged by all the forums they "host." You may not think it makes sense to criticize Reddit as a whole for hosting white supremacist forums and violent misogyny forums, but the rest of society seems to think th…

>users on certain subreddits were exposed to users and their views from other subreddits thanks to brigading.

Brigading has been rightly against the rules of Reddit forever, that's a hostile action, rare, quickly punished and not significant.

Also, critically, it applies the same way to completely separate websites as well. Redditors could brigade HN or vice versa.

On Reddit, nobody gets exposed to content they didn't subscribe to.

>I don't have to read any thread I don't want to on HN

True, though you still have to see it, so in the interests of time at the least it's good to have a filter.

>we could argue that HN shouldn't censor anything, but if we let people tag threads and comments with labels like "white supremacy" or "SJW raving," then everyone can filter what they don't want to see, so what's the problem?

That's a great idea! We could do a curator system where anyone can sign up to be a curator to tag things with their own personal tags. Then you can just find a curator who matches your wishes and we're golden.

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

#400

Post by braythwayt »

jlawson wrote: post #399
braythwayt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes no sense to you , but for years , users on certain subreddits were exposed to users and their views from other subreddits thanks to brigading. Likewise, Reddit and Facebook both have to deal with being judged by all the forums they "host." You may not think it makes sense to criticize Reddit as a whole for hosting white supremacist forums and violent misogyny forums, but the rest of society seems to think th…

>users on certain subreddits were exposed to users and their views from other subreddits thanks to brigading. Brigading has been rightly against the rules of Reddit forever, that's a hostile action, rare, quickly punished and not significant. Also, critically, it applies the same way to completely separate websites as well. Redditors could brigade HN or vice versa. On Reddit, nobody gets exposed to content they didn'…

Let’s compare this to a mall. If 50% of the stores sell confederate merchandise, Nazi memorabilia, MAGA hats, and souvenir photographs of Black people getting lynched and/or Jews being gassed, can we ask Blacks people, Jews, and generally people who are not ideological racists or libertarian enablers to just walk past what they “disagree with” and spend money elsewhere in the mall?

Not in this or any other timeline. Even if we cover up the shops, knowing that your money in a normal store helps the mall stay in business to rent space to a racist store makes this mall anathema to a huge segment of society.

—-

YOU may be comfortable shopping there, and YOU might construct all sorts of rationalizations for being complicit in racism, but YOU are being unrealistic if you think that everybody else is going to be all, “racism is terrible, but hey, it’s a mall, what’s the big deal?”

Not everybody is going to go along with rationalizing away being complicit in violent racist ideologies. And thus it is that companies like Facebook and Reddit end up being judged by the worst things they support.

If you think that’s terrible and want to trot out “logic” that “proves” they aren’t complicit in racism, you’re going to have to accept that plenty of people can’t be persuaded to do nothing while their country slips into Nazis II.

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