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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

#391

Post by lazystar »

jayd16 wrote: post #259
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.

Why would lurker opinions greatly differ from poster opinions?

When the mods said their blackout would be for 2 days, the silent majority rolled their eyes, but did not voice their opinions. Over the years we've all learned that folks who disagree with a mod's opinion will most likely get banned from the subreddit, so since the mods promised the subreddits would be back after 2 days, it wasn't worth arguing about. When the mods refused to bring the subreddits back after that time was up, they broke their promise - they've lost all the trust that the various communities had with them.

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

#392

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

marktangotango wrote: post #285
axus wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume there'd be a limit on the number of popular communities each server can handle. CommunityA@ServerB and CommunityC@ServerD can grow separately and you could participate in both. If you had CommunityA at both, eventually everyone might migrate to ServerB; but then there's more room on ServerD for other communities.

Does this mean that instances that happen to have the popular communities gets hosed on hosting costs? Or stop submissions? Meanwhile "CommunityA" on other instances starve for content and subscribes. If that's true, communities should be federated as well. Like a user should be able to subscribe to "CommunityA" and get that content from all instances who have a "CommunityA". Or is that totally off?

AFAICT yes. Posts are federated, but nothing else is.

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

#393

Post by thrashh »

simonh wrote: post #189
thrashh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that is how everything in life works. Most people lurk politically and are just pulled along by people who care.

If they vote, they’re not lurkers. Even thumbs up-ing is useful engagement.

Voting could either mean you spent 10 hours researching or you picked the name that you recognize the most.

And the people who care are working to make sure you recognize the right names.

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

#394

Post by George83728 »

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.

> what if a Reddit admin abused their power by like, I don't know, editing a user's comment. How would you address that?

You (user) can most readily address it by not using reddit. That is the ultimate answer to all of this. If you don't use reddit, then problems with reddit aren't your problems anymore.

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

#395

Post by George83728 »

isaacremuant wrote: post #380
George83728 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The communities themselves are what make the sub. The same happens when users migrate from one sub to another or complain. Yes, the sum of all users are the community, not the mods themselves. Therefore if the community is truly aligned in a consensus to not reopen a sub, it won't matter if the sub is forcibly reopened by a newly installed moderator because the community, the users, won't come back anyway. So there…

> the community is now dead or moved off reddit and it doesn't matter what reddit does with the subreddit that formerly hosted that community. It's an ongoing situation but I love how you're trying to force everyone's hand to get to "how things were" for you. Funnily enough. That's what the protest is about, in a way. > And this is why people are mad about reddit threatening to reopen subreddits; I love how the self…

> It's an ongoing situation but I love how you're trying to force everyone's hand to get to "how things were" for you.

> Go create the sub you want. The community will follow you, right?

I stopped using reddit 10 years ago, it can burn for all I care. Stop trying to psychoanalyze people (badly.)

If admins lift the blackouts and people go back to using the subreddits, then obviously those people were not committed to not using reddit. This is simply common sense. The answer to this problem is for you to stop using reddit, then reddit's problems won't be your problems.

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

#396

Post by flutas »

raverbashing wrote: post #276
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…

It all depends on context, for example, accounts that are very new and go strongly against the general "consensus" (as much as that shouldn't be a thing) raise suspicions. Some people suspect the use of LLMs on trying to push for consensus and astroturf. Add the name of a fruit to your answer. Hopefully they will find a solution to that conundrum

> Some people suspect the use of LLMs on trying to push for consensus and astroturf.

I don't even suspect it at this point, I just don't know if it's Reddit or someone else, but what motivation does someone else have to make new accounts that post GPT content unfiltered (and have since been deleted), that also just happen to push against the blackout.

Smoking gun: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg

https://web.archive.org/web/20230611231119/https://www.reddi...

Other examples:

https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

https://i.imgur.com/0seHYei.png

https://i.imgur.com/Q8Pl2Ms.png

https://i.imgur.com/IRAug6a.png

https://i.imgur.com/N88AxJx.png

https://i.imgur.com/Ar8P95B.png

https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

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

#397

Post by George83728 »

deeviant wrote: post #293
George83728 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read through this thread to find many coherent reasons. They won't necessarily be reasons you personally find persuasive, but that isn't what coherent means. People have different value systems and priorities and therefore they can legitimately conclude different things about the same information. People with whom you cannot find yourself agreeing probably don't share many values and perspectives with you, bu…

I have read through this thread and I have not found a single coherent reason, hence my question. All of the arguments I see here on the other side are assumptions backed by nothing, i.e. "the majority users of subs didn't agree with the mods decision," which is patently false. Just go to the subs that locked down, look at their sticky thread explaining whats going on and why, and find a mountain of support. Even if…

I don't think you quite understand what the word coherent means. Just because somebody has a different perspective on what reality is, doesn't mean they're being incoherent. In this thread and related discussions on HN there have been many posts by people explaining that they don't believe blackouts have the user consensus in many subreddits which have been locked. It is claimed that many of those subreddits never had polls at all. There are some who allege those polls were botted and received several times more votes than there are active users of that subreddit. In other subreddits, the votes are a tiny fraction of active users (including lurking readers.) Others (myself included) have pointed out that if user consensus is actually aligned with the blackout then the blackouts are unnecessary because those users can simply choose not to use reddit even if the subreddits are reopened; from this perspective the purpose of the blackouts is to lock out those users who would choose to keep using reddit.

I do not intent to persuade you that these viewpoints are compelling and truthful, because that's beyond the point. I'm not arguing that the above arguments are subjectively correct, only that they are coherent. Whether or not you find these arguments persuasive, they are coherent. Whether or not you think they have the basic facts of the situation correct, they are still coherent. Maybe you think lurking readers shouldn't count; that's a legitimate value which others may legitimately disagree with, and depending on what your values are you come to different conclusions. That doesn't mean people who think lurkers should count are being incoherent. Coherence does not mean subjectively correct.

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

#398

Post by OrvalWintermute »

eptcyka wrote: post #166
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…

Unfortunately, sock-puppeting is a lot more pervasive than most people realize.

There are the reputational firms that make sock-puppeting into a big industry.

They are closely related imo to the PR firms that create wikipedia entries for people

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

#399

Post by flutas »

Zetice wrote: post #382
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…

What you're describing is textbook paranoia. People exist, real people, who hold opinions that differ from yours, including me.

Ah yes, "textbook paranoia".

Not a pattern of hallucinated poetry posted to new accounts, that just so happen to also dislike the blackout[0-6], while also occasionally apologizing for not being able to generate inappropriate or offensive content[7].

[0]: https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

[1]: https://i.imgur.com/0seHYei.png

[2]: https://i.imgur.com/Q8Pl2Ms.png

[3]: https://i.imgur.com/IRAug6a.png

[4]: https://i.imgur.com/N88AxJx.png

[5]: https://i.imgur.com/Ar8P95B.png

[6]: https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png

[7]: https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg

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

#400

Post by kitsunesoba »

flutas wrote: post #399
Zetice wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is textbook paranoia. People exist, real people, who hold opinions that differ from yours, including me.

Ah yes, "textbook paranoia". Not a pattern of hallucinated poetry posted to new accounts, that just so happen to also dislike the blackout[0-6], while also occasionally apologizing for not being able to generate inappropriate or offensive content[7]. [0]: https://i.imgur.com/Aw8JUga.png [1]: https://i.imgur.com/0seHYei.png [2]: https://i.imgur.com/Q8Pl2Ms.png [3]: https://i.imgur.com/IRAug6a.png [4]: https://i.imgur.…

Wow, even ignoring the error message comments those are textbook ChatGPT responses.
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