Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people • Hacker News Board

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#241

Post by foodjinn » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #225

supperburg wrote: post #131

Even if you took away all controversy and politics, I hate Reddit. The search function sucks. They shoved their own harebrained video player down everyone’s throats and it constantly plays by itself without opening. And when you do open it it doesn’t fucking play half the time. They also foisted their eye-bleeding updated user interface upon our innocent souls and forever corrupted us. It can only be described as Fis…

You left out the worst thing: the upvote-downvote system, which ensures that an hivemind echo chamber is almost guaranteed to arise. Any slightly controversial post, or in fact anything which does not run with the dominating opinion , is immediately hidden from view.

This is far and away the largest reason I avoid the site beyond niche hobby stuff.

The moment a discussion CAN have dissent, the "game" of the site incentivizes you to only say things people agree with, otherwise you are hidden from conversation, and in many cases limited to respond.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#242

Post by defaultprimate » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

qmmmur wrote: post #20

ddalex wrote: post #3

Also see https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Cabal/ I also filter, using RES, all posters and commenters with over 100k karma, and it's like taking a trip back in time when the internet wasn't tuned to inane content and advertisers

Nice to see the usual suspects on The Cabal. People who believe ivermectin is some kind of miracle covid drug (even the manufacturers say its ineffective) and those who deny COVID even exists. Quality people. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w

Regarding Ivermectin: Tell that to India, whose states that adopted it into their treatment regimen had a >95% reduction in death and infection in less than five weeks in a population https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-iv...

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#243

Post by djhn » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #72

fnord77 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced the political subs are run by people employed by the two large US political groups

A more pychonesque* idea would be that the political subs of whatever colour are run by only one US government agency to give the illusion of freedom and dissention. "The party is over". *E.g. Inherent Vice. A more believable idea as it's based on fact is that Reddit is the playground of paid PR and marketing firms. Makes sense for a PR firm to have moderation powers too. (I suppose this might also be later Pychonesq…

Having been on the PR and PA agency side of things, comments like yours are vastly overestimating the agencies' capabilities and incentives.

Are you, as a senior consultant, going to sell your team's time to a client at £750 an hour per person to astroturf on reddit? How do you plan on quantifying the benefits, vs the same budget going to the same team to influence traditional media and lobbying?

Heck I'd love to know any half-decent agencies that offer these services.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#244

Post by ajay-b » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

krono wrote: post #16

There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages…

Why not create a new account?

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#245

Post by HyperLinear » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

krono wrote: post #16

There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages…

I can conform this, because I want through the same process.

It was all fun and games until May last year and all my posts were automatically shadowbanned. Fired of a message to the mods and got no reply, hung out on their Discord but by al measures it didn't seem a fitting place. Since I received no notification about the shadowbans nor any warnings about ban evations I ended up creating a new account and continued to interact with these communities again.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#246

Post by ecmascript » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

zibzab wrote: post #90

ecmascript wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true for swedish subreddits. /r/sweden for example is also heavily pushed by Reddit as all new users from swedish ips automatically is subbed to that subreddit. I stopped using Reddit because of the increased amount of censorship and bans for thinking the incorrect stuff and as someone else said my life is better for it. Reddit was once a beacon of freedom of speech and today it is a tool to supress freed…

Not sure what your issue is. I find r/sweden pretty okay, not perfect but tolerable. They don't allow outright hate speech which is btw illegal anyway. Misinformation is usually not deleted but often called out and down voted by members. I am 100% okay with that. r/sverige on the other hand is run by a really angry uncle who probably doesn't like most people. r/okpolarncp is basically incels and nazis. It is too prom…

Hate speech is not illegal in Sweden, but ok.

They have, at least when I used to be a regular, deleted tons and tons of threads because they had an political incorrect opinion stated. They banned a lot of users for no real reason and revamped the rules many times in order to silence peoples opinions that were widespread on the sub.

Now afaik there is only people like themselves (and presumably yourself) left, I wonder why? Reddit itself took a stance a while ago for specific political opinions and removed a lot of subs that I was subscribed to. Many others were famously quarantines like /r/theredpill and others. If you simply upvote the incorrect thing you can be banned. This is basically punishing thoughts.

You can't claim freedom of speech if you silence a very large group of people from speaking.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#247

Post by ddtaylor » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #220

arepublicadoceu wrote: post #218

Funnily enough, I was shadowbanned from the only community in reddit that I was active and cared about (/r/firefox) after respectfully complaining about the redesign in 2 different posts. Maybe there's a threshold of how many times we're allowed to complain over there? This was my first shadowban and teached me: a) It's not worth to invest time in these communities. b) To be shadow-banned is extremely insulting, espe…

I will not engage in a community that shadow-ban people even if they have inflammatory or abusive behavior I just wanted to point out that hacker news shadow bans...

Yup! It shadowbans some domains too. If you're unlucky enough to write blog posts on the shadowbanned domains you won't be notified in any way at all and your submissions will still appear in the listings while you're logged in. Very frustrating.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#248

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #174

krono wrote: post #16

There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages…

It might not be forever. I had an admin shadowban me once across the entire site for daring to post on r/indiegaming and r/gaming, two subs I commented on constantly, a single link to a video game I made over six months (well at least that's the best reason I can come up with, I was never told a reason why, I know certain subreddits are super anti-self-promotion for some reason though). I didn't even notice for six m…

Honest question: Why would you continue using a site that treats you like this? I would go find something else to share my limited attention with. I remember getting banned on Fark (remember them?) and I simply never went back. If you don't want me participating, I won't add free content to your business. I was even a paying subscriber there, and dropped the subscription immediately.

People need to start cutting ties with companies that treat them badly. How many times have you seen this conversation: "A: Company Xyz took my money and screwed something up and can't be contacted. B: That's fraud--Just do a credit card chargeback. A: But, then they'll ban me!" Why the hell do people want to continue using, let alone continue giving money to, a site or business that treats you this way?

On a related note, I seem to be back in that HN purgatory where you can only post a few times a day. As usual, with no indication of what triggered it. Getting really close to throwing in the towel here, too.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#249

Post by mdp2021 » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

Tenoke wrote: post #127

mdp2021 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely that place has value: in the posted material, if you can scavenge. On the human side, it can be a mess - extremely difficult to have a proper and mature discussion there. In places that entice emotional participation it is sheerly consequential that gut behaviour is effectively promoted. But this excludes «proper and mature discussion» as a consistent plan. It is very different from "[scope: ] «anything that g…

The audience and types of conversations vary wildly between subreddits and the issue you are experiencing is likely due to where you have subbed.

I am sure it does - it will depend on the moderators.

For many reasons, I am sure that it will be much, much easier to find there guts-dictated comments - no content, no reasoning, no arguments, but lots of partial statements claiming status of truth, and declarations of sympathy. I have not see it happen here.

Incidentally, I noticed there are guidelines there, being circulated in the past hours, very recently, that are inviting to censorship. Which creates another effect: sequences of "Yea, Well done, This is the way, Down with the scum, Frown on the snakes", with no single "Yes but" and obviously no "Boo". In the section about "horror movies featuring fancy cars", the participants and/or moderators are now scientists with truth in the pocket. Honestly, this makes it unnatural to go to those places to note a fancy car in an horror movie.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#250

Post by EForEndeavour » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

neverywhere wrote: post #239

UncleSlacky wrote: post #11

(In)famously, the account widely believed to belong to Ghislaine Maxwell is a moderator of several major subs: https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill (moderator of r/worldnews, r/environment, r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, r/cyberlaws, r/enviroaction and r/greed)

Interesting. They supposedly shared content previously that indicated they were not a woman: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditoroftheday/comments/bdl3o/max... Maybe, maybe not. What is the proof of the connection? Just the time of disappearance and the username? That is pretty circumstantial, but maybe. Not conclusive though. EDIT: This article seems to have more evidence and is at least interesting: https://www.inputm…

I put very little trust in self-reported information online. Someone like Ghislaine would probably recognize the value and zero cost of sowing nuggets of false information in public posts. (However, this expectation also makes me doubt that Ghislaine Maxwell would choose a username with "maxwell" in it...)