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Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

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Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#171

Post by nonbirithm »

andrewzah wrote: post #58
ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can always just stop using Reddit. Digg went this way, too, and it ended badly for them.

Was digg as big as reddit is now? The issue for me is I don't know of other good places for long-form discussion and good link aggregation in general. Most of the time in smaller subreddits there aren't really any issues. What alternative is there to /r/AskHistorians? Etc.

This is the saddest thing, in my opinion. Everything is a content silo. To get "genuine" opinions on anything relevant to the past six years I have to append "site:reddit.com" to all my searches. It seems that setting up independent phpbb communities has fallen out of favor with the convenience of starting off with a much larger audience. But the downsides of letting a single org host and moderate all of these communities are apparent.

I mean, their tagline "the front page of the Internet" screams arrogance to me, in the face of what Tim Berners-Lee envisioned the Internet to be, and yet it's probably not wrong at this point.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#172

Post by zionic »

Akinato wrote: post #95
testfoobar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss humor and authenticity from old reddit the most. E.g. the classic: "I also choose this guy's dead wife." or the AMA with the vacuum repair guy. These days just about any popular thread that I wander into, I see wide swaths of "deleted" comments. I'm sure they were deleted for many good and valid reasons. IMHO, reddit's aggressive moderation suppresses spontaneous comments and is off putting to lurkers. The wit…

I'd argue that it's not Reddit's aggressive moderation, but that Reddit is now so popular that the racist, illegal, fickle beast that can no longer stay on topic. If they weren't so aggressive, they'd have a much bigger problem of everyone thinking they're a cesspool of hatred.

Reddit is heavily moderated, curated, and gamed for advertiser friendliness. If you consider the popular reddit subs to be a "cesspool" the issue might be on your end due to lack of exposure. Just about anywhere else on the internet is worse.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#173

Post by Number157 »

Spivak wrote: post #156
slg wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That old reddit was also a haven for near child porn and other sorts of immoral or illicit content. Reddit needed strong moderation to become a functioning business and probably for the good of society as a whole. Maybe their current approach to moderation is overzealous, but let's not look at "old reddit" through rose-colored glasses.

Hahahahahha. Reddit was a haven for literal child porn and is still today a haven for "jailbait" content. God I hope the "waiting"/"grooming" subs that were for lewding over pics of under-18s got banned. Reddit might have cleaned their act up a bit but it still a gross wild west.

...no.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#174

Post by caslon »

esja wrote: post #162
pen2l wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets brought up a lot. And it's a bit of a doozy to make sense of. First, consider the context: the CEO (spez) was an easy punching bag on the_donald subreddit, in fact it was a bit of a meme there to attack reddit's admins (and those in the know do know that the attacks were often crossing a line, like accusing them of being pedophiles and things of the nature). The change that spez made was a bit of a joke its…

There is really no excuse for what he did and most other businesses would have fired him immediately. Reddit simply has a very immature corporate culture. Post-IPO (if they get that far) I would expect a massive clean-out.

What's the harm in such a pointless joke? It was silly, but it's not like the meme subreddit he did it to was a super serious one like AskHistorians is.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#176

Post by lukebitts »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #101
skrowl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I left after The_Donald ban. Like Donald Trump or hate him, his supporters have a right to speak.

I was gobsmacked that The_Donald was banned because some users 'threatened police officers' and then a slew of ACAB and anti-police subreddits faced no repercussions during the summer riots. I shouldn't really be that shocked though, it was well known that the admins and site moderators wanted The_Donald banned for quite a long time.

I shouldn't be shocked people are trying to rewrite such recent history, but it still feels weird when most people here were there watching it happen. Reddit not only bent over backwards to try and keep TD up, they went to lengths they definitely don't go to when they ban other subs. TD stayed up past numerous warnings. They even tried direct intervention to get the mods to do their work.

"It is well known the admins wanted TD banned" is a direct lie. I doubt you have better insight than anyone else about what was going on inside Reddit.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#177

Post by Number157 »

Akinato wrote: post #95
testfoobar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss humor and authenticity from old reddit the most. E.g. the classic: "I also choose this guy's dead wife." or the AMA with the vacuum repair guy. These days just about any popular thread that I wander into, I see wide swaths of "deleted" comments. I'm sure they were deleted for many good and valid reasons. IMHO, reddit's aggressive moderation suppresses spontaneous comments and is off putting to lurkers. The wit…

I'd argue that it's not Reddit's aggressive moderation, but that Reddit is now so popular that the racist, illegal, fickle beast that can no longer stay on topic. If they weren't so aggressive, they'd have a much bigger problem of everyone thinking they're a cesspool of hatred.

No that's not it.

Practically nothing makes it to the front page organically these days. It's all orchestrated.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#178

Post by trident5000 »

pen2l wrote: post #152
trident5000 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO himself admitted to going into The_Donald subreddit (before it was banned) and editing user comments. I don't think this guy is leading the charge to admin transparency. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reddit-ceo-edits-user-comment...

This gets brought up a lot. And it's a bit of a doozy to make sense of. First, consider the context: the CEO (spez) was an easy punching bag on the_donald subreddit, in fact it was a bit of a meme there to attack reddit's admins (and those in the know do know that the attacks were often crossing a line, like accusing them of being pedophiles and things of the nature). The change that spez made was a bit of a joke its…

Thats a lot of mental gymnastics and whataboutism to give him a pass. At the end of the day he did what he did. And they lost trust through his actions which is the currency of their platform. As CEO, he made a stupid decision and then joked about it more than he apologized after. If they're doing that type of thing on the front-end, what do you think they're doing on the back-end?

I barely even use Reddit anymore because I simply dont trust it for an accumulation of reasons. Its ~50% astroturf for political and commercial reasons, you can somewhat easily game the votes, and I don't think they care because they make money.

Re: Reddit’s most popular subreddits go private in protest against ‘censorship’

#180

Post by nonplussed »

duxup wrote: post #120
Rebelgecko wrote: post #52

Reddit has addressed the situation here, in a mealy mouthed sort of way: https://www.reddit.com/r/modsupport/comments/mbqgx2 However they seem to be denying the accusations that admins (possibly including the individual in question) were manually editing contents containing her name. This whole situation is incredibly bizarre to me. In the first place, why would reddit hire a 23 year old admin whose greatest accompli…

Reddit administration seems pretty ad hoc, undisciplined, at times weirdly disconnected from the community, and uncoordinated as it could possibly be. Then again so are all its subreddits, and the volunteer mods are about as opaque and strange as the admins, with the added excuse that they're doing it for free. The fact that the ecosystem has survived seems more like happenstance.

It'd be interesting to see demographics on moderators. My perception is that they must skew young because who else has time to do all that work for free?

Volunteer moderation is one of those things that must baffle economists. Here you have people putting in a lot of work for free for a profit seeking enterprise.

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