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Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

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Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#301

Post by 14 »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #190
kitsunesoba wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During this whole debacle, there's been quite a few posts across various parts of the internet that register to me as astroturfing, including a handful on HN. It's not about the opinions presented, nothing wrong with dissent, but the way these posts express those opinions just feels wrong somehow — I've seen 20 years worth of impassioned people posting on the internet, and these posts come off as poor imitations of t…

I agree. The posts here on HN about how all the mods are terrible human beings... that just read as an oddity.

I’ve been on HN for years as seen by my post history. I’ve been on reddit for years. I would love to see the mods stripped of power and the ability to vote them out. A lot of mods are terrible, probably not human beings but terrible at moderating.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#302

Post by AlexandrB »

nilespotter wrote: post #87
bluescrn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of them go waaaay too far. Mass purges of disagreement/dissent have become normal on there, but they're now going after 'prethoughtcrime' - banning anybody who's ever posted to any of a growing list of subreddits deemed 'bad'.

The ideological enforcement is unbearable. I can't believe people still use it.

I don't get why. Am I not allowed to create a community where rule #1 is "no Hacker News posters allowed" and ban anyone that seems to be coming from Hacker News? You don't have to engage with my community.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#303

Post by MrBodangles »

bioemerl wrote: post #222

Reddit is starting to seem genuinely spooked by what's happening here. Confidence implies inaction, so the fact they want to undelete things says to me that it's having a real impact and they are scared of it. Mister "this will pass" certainly doesn't seem to believe it's going to pass.

It was always obvious this would be the result, because spez is a manchild narcissist, thus incapable of understanding he is unfit for leadership… Though I doubt most of Reddit’s senior management is any better, given the way they’ve completely failed to understand their value proposition (or lack there of).

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#304

Post by cellularmitosis »

devit wrote: post #69

Well, that's accurate and indeed a major problem. Subreddit moderators, like unfortunately usually moderators everywhere, can act arbitrarily and there is no way for users to remove or punish moderators. So this means that /r/$FOO is not actually a subreddit about $FOO, moderated so that exactly any non-spam discussion about $FOO is allowed, but rather a dictatorship ran by whoever happened to grab the name first. So…

It would be great if there were a mechanism which provided some transparency around the decisions being made by the mods. If I could see a list of all of the posts and comments which they have removed, I could get a sense of how reasonable their moderation is.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#305

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

joshstrange wrote: post #155
htag wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subreddit is not a dictatorship. Everyone that participates in the subreddit it doing so voluntarily. Your argument that Reddit has a higher authority that can deal with bad moderators just kicks the can. What if the Reddit universal mods abuse their power in the same ways your described?

Yeah, I mean what if a Reddit admin abused their power by like, I don't know, editing a user's comment. How would you address that? I guess you could punish them by letting them continue to be CEO or something.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#306

Post by colpabar »

OnlyLys wrote: post #168
lazystar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored over the course of their tantrum. I've commented more in the past few days than i have in the past few months, because it's obvious the mods have completely lost perspective of the average user experience.

> There's a silent majority - "lurkers" - that the mods have completely ignored What is there for the mods to ignore, when the lurkers are - as you said - silent?

This is just an anecdote, but I just went on my city's sub this morning to see how they were handling this. Apparently the (singular) mod did the initial blackout, then put up a poll on whether it should continue, the sub voted not to, and he is now holding another poll this weekend on the same topic and everyone seems to think it's because he didn't get the outcome he wanted the first time.

I think all the people posting stuff like "reddit is DYING" are in for a rude awakening because the overwhelming majority of users do not give a single shit. They wanna see memes that confirm their biases and maybe see what is going on in their city/locality, and they can't do that if all their subs are blacked out.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#307

Post by joshstrange »

carstenhag wrote: post #291
joshstrange wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the surface that seems like a bad idea but get enough users coming in from another sub and "just asking the question" or not arguing in good faith and you'll understand really quick why it's easier to ban them all than play games where they try to stay just barely on this side of the rules while still harassing your community. You also get a lot of the "I'm a gay black guy [0]"-type people which makes modding even…

This stuff started at the Donald subreddit and spread onto other similar subreddits. I haven't seen it in any sane subreddit.

I have no data/info on who all is doing this type of modding, I was just saying I understand it. The only one I know for sure that does it is /r/conservative (which I'm not a part of), but I could absolutely see LGBTQ+ subs making use of it to cut down on the spam/trolls. Sometimes you want a safe space to talk without constantly dealing with bad-faith-actors. It doesn't bother me that /r/conservative does it though I do find it hilariously hypocritical. In fact most of the time I see it mentioned it's making fun of it, not annoyed by it or mad at it.

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#308

Post by [deleted] »

BeefWellington wrote: post #74
llm_nerd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pretty common sentiment that opinions that differ from our own must be corrupt, bought, sock-puppets, etc. People on virtually every side of any issue feel this way because it's comforting to imagine that our own opinion is the only authentic one. Loads of reddit users are annoyed by the blackout thing and find the arguments for it unconvincing. I mean personally I think all of the blackout people should just…

> delete your comments Given reddit is apparently restoring deleted comments, that's going to be a useless gesture.[1] I agree with the sentiment though; if people en masse migrated away from Reddit the way they did with Digg, that would be the only really impactful long-term gesture. Edit: Regarding the sockpuppet thing, I mean, we've literally seen that happen a number of times. When you see an account created in 2…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#309

Post by leke »

Too powerful? Don't flatter yourself. I'm the creator and mod of a sub with 25K members.

I'm really not happy with reddit and participated in the 48h blackout, so I'm a good example of what they're talking about.

I'm done with them, but this shows you how much he's out of touch with the situation.

> He said he planned to change the rules so users could vote them out of subbreddits.

I've already posted my resignation notice and have stickied a post requesting applicants to take over the sub. People drunk on "power" do not relinquish their power voluntarily. Mods being "too powerful" are not the problem, because we are not interested in "power".

Re: Reddit CEO Says Mods Too Powerful, Plans to Weaken After Blackout

#310

Post by joshstrange »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #305
joshstrange wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean what if a Reddit admin abused their power by like, I don't know, editing a user's comment. How would you address that? I guess you could punish them by letting them continue to be CEO or something.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Obviously, do you really think someone could do that and keep their job/credibility? I just thought it would be a fun thought experiment, maybe it was a little far-fetched though.
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