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Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

cantsayanything.win

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Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#51

Post by jules »

fuckstick wrote: post #32
mariusor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This subreddit has something like 1000+ moderators and they remove any comments that doesn't fit into Reddit's very narrowly defined overton window Or the subreddit has a very strict set of rules for posting top level comments which include: > 3. Non-professional personal anecdotes will be removed > 4. Criticism of published work should assume basic competence of the researchers and reviewers > 5. Comments dismissi…

> Criticism of published work should assume basic competence What this is saying is that even if egregious blunders are made it is against the rules to call that out - how can I point out incompetence if I have to assume competence? I host a medical journal club - statistical incompetence in the life sciences is bountiful. > Comments dismissing established findings I’m sure defining established isn’t difficult to do/…

I once simply pointed out how an equation in a climate science paper didn't make sense because there was a unit error (there was exp(x) where x was not unitless) => removed.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#52

Post by kiririn »

rhaksw wrote: post #15
throw_m239339 wrote: post #13

Wow, great. Of course I'm getting shadow censored left and right on reddit, but I always knew it was the case. I'm not using reddit anymore anyway. Too many hidden rules, not even as a simple user, but as a sub creator, where you can't tell your own sub redditors why their comment were removed, per reddit admin rules, that's absolutely crazy, and if you disclose the hidden rules, your sub is banned.

> I'm not using reddit anymore anyway. Secretive removals happen on all of the platforms (see 5:50 in the talk [1]). Plus, the groups who are brainwashed by it are large enough to have an impact in the real world. I don't think it benefits anyone. We're much better off knowing when conversations have been interrupted. [1] https://cantsayanything.win/2022-10-transparent-moderation/

It is a scary reality, one that I think the average person would be strongly against if they were aware of it. I would go so far as to say there should be laws or regulations preventing shadow banning/deletions

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#53

Post by GameOfFrowns »

pontsun wrote: post #49
GameOfFrowns wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the day you fail the purity test and have your IP and all accounts permabanned due to a disagreement with a mod in disguise.

Luckily, moderators can't IP ban anyone. :)

They just use the internal tools and create a ticket to have an admin ban your IP and all current and future accounts. Wow, such a hurdle!

Even more awesome to have this happen with a dormitory IP. /s

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#54

Post by rhaksw »

kiririn wrote: post #52
rhaksw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not using reddit anymore anyway. Secretive removals happen on all of the platforms (see 5:50 in the talk [1]). Plus, the groups who are brainwashed by it are large enough to have an impact in the real world. I don't think it benefits anyone. We're much better off knowing when conversations have been interrupted. [1] https://cantsayanything.win/2022-10-transparent-moderation/

It is a scary reality, one that I think the average person would be strongly against if they were aware of it. I would go so far as to say there should be laws or regulations preventing shadow banning/deletions

> It is a scary reality that I think the average person would be strongly against if they were aware of it.

That makes it easy to support raising awareness about it, which isn't scary at all.

> I would go so far as to say there should be laws or regulations preventing shadow banning/deletions

Nope, don't go there. The government is a huge hammer and they would love the opportunity to take this win from you. If you start making exceptions to the holding that "code is speech", then eventually you're going to lose something you care about that the government is after, such as encryption. And, a law that "bans encryption", which we all know isn't possible, would just further entrench existing power structures. The law would be arbitrarily applied because you can't ban math.

The same is true for banning shadow moderation. Either the behavior will shift overseas, or local companies will skirt around the written law.

Ultimately, society will have to accept that only individuals can hold individual decision makers accountable. We are each our own worst enemy, and each our own best advocate.

And, it takes less time to build Reveddit-like systems that apply transparency to existing social media platforms than it takes existing platforms and power structures to alter their behavior or grow userbases for new platforms. You need to flip your thinking. They don't have the power to control you, you control yourself, and therefore you have the ability to challenge the status quo.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#55

Post by laputan_machine »

mariusor wrote: post #33
dmix wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, have you spent time looking at the type of comments getting removed? Have you looked at any of the top threads on Reveddit/Unddit with 75% of the comments gone? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how it goes way, way beyond those rules you just listed, into something that can only be described as a petty dictatorship - but with any hundred angry nerds who happened to show up playing the dictator.…

You call it petty dictatorship, I call it the best moderated subreddit of the whole platform.

Wait until your view becomes the one attacked. Regardless of scientific merit.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#57

Post by samhuk »

I can see how shadowbanning ("bot-bans") is effective against bot accounts, since it's less trivial for a bot maker to write code that detects when their bot has been detected, resulting in a lower rate of new bot accounts. That makes sense. However what seems to have occurred is a widespread blatant misuse of bot-bans to silence different views from the group of moderators.

shadowbanning is obviously a security-through-obscurity measure. Instead of having good bot detection, they seem to just give moderators an invisible-yet-almighty ban hammer with no accountability.

I've personally never used Reddit other than as a lurker to skim the valuable content from subreddits like r/BIFL, etc. I've found the politiking of platforms like Reddit too vitriolic for my tastes :/

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#58

Post by sokoloff »

feet wrote: post #45
mariusor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This subreddit has something like 1000+ moderators and they remove any comments that doesn't fit into Reddit's very narrowly defined overton window Or the subreddit has a very strict set of rules for posting top level comments which include: > 3. Non-professional personal anecdotes will be removed > 4. Criticism of published work should assume basic competence of the researchers and reviewers > 5. Comments dismissi…

It makes me think about comment sections here on HN when a study on psychedelics gets posted. Suddenly 90% of top comments are all personal anecdote about mushrooms or whatever.

That seems normal to me. I click and comment on the articles on topics that interest me. Aviation articles will have aviation buffs over-represented. Math articles math buffs. EV articles will have EV buffs and people with an opinion about Teslas over-represented.

For psychedelics, the effect might be more pronounced because there aren’t that many people casually interested and/or those who are are reading and not writing. (I’ve never taken any; what am I going to add to the discussion? If someone has and their comment is interesting, I’ll upvote it.)

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#59

Post by rhaksw »

samhuk wrote: post #57

I can see how shadowbanning ("bot-bans") is effective against bot accounts, since it's less trivial for a bot maker to write code that detects when their bot has been detected, resulting in a lower rate of new bot accounts. That makes sense. However what seems to have occurred is a widespread blatant misuse of bot-bans to silence different views from the group of moderators. shadowbanning is obviously a security-thro…

> I can see how shadowbanning ("bot-bans")is effective against bot accounts, since it's less trivial for a bot maker to write code that detects when their bot has been detected, resulting in a lower rate of new bot accounts.

Huh? It's trivial to write code that detects shadow bans, and bot-makers are more likely to write such code than individuals who get shadow banned. I mention this at 28:00 in the linked video on this post.

The fuss over bots makes no sense to me. It's just an excuse to build more dystopian shadow removal or shadow demotion tools. Bot or not, some human is behind the pushing of every single piece of content you see. There is no AGI, and therefore machine-learning-driven algorithms are trained on data that comes from humans.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#60

Post by pluc »

I was a mod, this tool is the worst from a mod's perspective. In a sub with 100k-200k people, I would spend all my time telling users why I took action. Instead I take action when content breaks rules, and it's your responsibility to abide by the rules to not have your content deleted. This tool complicates the life of people who give their time for free, and asks them to provide even more time solely to satisfy user curiosity. I don't like it.
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