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A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

larslofgren.com

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Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#101

Post by stefantalpalaru »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #81
analog8374 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you could. And you wouldn't even need a reason. In fact, you could ban AND make the whole conversation disappear. And nobody would ever know. That's a problem.

It’s not a problem, you are owned nothing by participating in an online forum. Your participation is a privilege, not a right. You are free to participate elsewhere. HN moderates mostly transparently, which they do not have to do at all. That demonstrates respect for their participants, or ideals, your pick.

[dead]

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#102

Post by toomuchtodo »

analog8374 wrote: post #98
toomuchtodo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a problem, you are owned nothing by participating in an online forum. Your participation is a privilege, not a right. You are free to participate elsewhere. HN moderates mostly transparently, which they do not have to do at all. That demonstrates respect for their participants, or ideals, your pick.

"if you don't like it then you can leave" (to paraphrase) evades my point. My point (the problem) is that, when you do it this way, trust is right out the window. It looks like a forum but it really isn't. The conversation suffers from a taint.

All you have is trust. No evasion, those are the rules of the road as it stands in the jurisdiction of US web properties.

If your point is "I don't like the law of the jurisdiction and its outcomes," that is a feeling and a choice, but the fact remains. You can either change the law or change the feelings. Again, participation is a choice and optional, and the status quo is unlikely to change.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#103

Post by irjustin »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #87
irjustin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit was knowingly ruined by google. Once google pushed reddit to the top of search results Ehhhhh I agree and yet also disagree (it's fun though). Yes they were ruined by being promoted by algo changes, but do I blame google directly? For me, no. It's exactly as we stated before, it's because it was so trustworthy. Individual people's personal experience with X or Y many times with good details. That earned a lo…

So then why haven’t the higher credibility people in each niche set up an alternative? Why let reddit drag down the credibility of well everyone in their niche by association. Even if it’s only a tiny bit per year, that adds up over time.

Beyond my pay grade but I'll take a stab (meaning I'm talking out of my ass).

Some in fact have but the majority? Probably laziness, but laziness is just misaligned incentive-goals.

Communities have very little incentive to de-reddit. It's actually a huge amount of work and they gain almost nothing directly.

Separately, I was thinking you know HNews is pretty immune to this problem because we don't have a central theme or something, right?

But no, that just means I can't see how I'm being monetized is all. Blind leading the blind.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#104

Post by sunshowers »

michaelnovati wrote: post #47
rvitorper wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t know when to stop, do you?

[flagged]

Hi Michael. We overlapped significantly at Facebook and chatted a few times (I was on the source control team from 2012-2018ish, part of which was the migration to Mercurial). Correct me if I'm wrong, but you wrote some posts about how you wanted something like git rebase -i, right?

I know your heart is in the right place, and have a great deal of respect for you. I think being the most active moderator of a coding bootcamp subreddit while also running one is probably not the best use of your time, right? Even though I know you're being honest, just the appearance of a conflict of interest can be an issue. Why not find someone else to take over the reins, someone who isn't actively involved in the industry?

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#105

Post by fragmede »

phil-martin wrote: post #94

The article was fascinating, but the part I didn't see was... what was the motive? Assuming the article paints an accurate picture of what was going on... why was it going on? Is it solely because he runs a company in the same competitive space?

> And I believe that’s why Michael is doing what he’s doing. He wins when Codesmith loses.

Yes.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#106

Post by GenerWork »

michaelnovati wrote: post #97
SilverElfin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you planning to write something up about it? It would be interesting to hear the other side that you’re hinting at. It’s also not clear to me if the person who wrote this article was paid for it or if they’re somehow affiliated with someone involved. It says they’re a “Fractional VP of Content”. I’m curious if you know more.

I might. I have hordes of documents. It's a really sad situation and very sad that he characterized this this way without even talking to me whatsoever.

I believe the phrase that applies here is "put up or shut up". If you have hordes of documents to draw on as primary sources, then it should be pretty simple (but perhaps time consuming) to write a rebuttal.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#107

Post by SilverElfin »

neilv wrote: post #84

I don't know about this particular case, but, generally... bad actor subreddit moderators have been an occasional thing for well over a decade. And it's also been widely known for that long that Reddit is an influential venue in which to take over a corner -- for marketing or propaganda. What's an equal concern to me is how insufficiently resilient Reddit collectively appears to be, in face of this. A bad actor mod o…

> A bad actor mod of a popular subreddit can persist for years, visibly, without people managing either to oust the mod, or to take down the sub's influence.

This happens because the regular users have no power. I remember seeing some article that said a small number of mods control most of the popular subreddits. Many of them put their own bias into the system by banning users, banning sources, deleting content based on ideology, shadow banning, etc.

The other issue is as these mods linger for a while, they drive away or ban everyone who might disagree with them. So then the “community” ends up not actually disagreeing with the authoritarian mod. Reddit ends up not being resilient because it doesn’t want to be. Everyone else, is gone.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#108

Post by throwaway8902 »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #79
analog8374 wrote: post #59

Michael reminds me of a fellow named ewk, from the zen subreddit. In his obsessive energy and poisonous tactics. It really is a thing to see. A type. There must be a name for it

What's the story there? I'm curious to know how such behavior manifests in Zen Buddhism, of all things.

Many folks end up in r/zen after reading books like “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind” written by Japanese Zen Buddhists.

Ewk is obsessed with the Chinese source material, written by Chan (Chinese for Zen) masters, and believes that the Chinese Chan masters were not Buddhist at all.

Many people who come to the subreddit are interested in meditation. It is a big focus of Japanese Zen as practiced in the west. It is not particularly emphasised in Chan… at least not in the records we have. Some of the most amusing bits on r/zen are watching Ewk lay into some poor suffering sap looking to get some semblance of peace in their life by starting a meditation practice. According to Ewk, meditation is “not zen”.

It’s hard to explain exactly how crazy things are. He’s not wrong about everything. Chan really doesn’t emphasise having a meditation practice. But he also, despite being interested in this for over 20 years and posting nearly full time - literally for 16 hours a day every day for two decades - has never taken a single Chinese lesson. And he has major, major disagreements with the translators of these ancient Chinese texts (because they are Buddhists). So he uses Google translate to prove the translators wrong.

But the old Chan texts are full of violence and masters bashing one another on the head, as Ewk is quick to point out. Maybe he’s onto something. It really is pretty entertaining.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#109

Post by lemagedurage »

phil-martin wrote: post #94

The article was fascinating, but the part I didn't see was... what was the motive? Assuming the article paints an accurate picture of what was going on... why was it going on? Is it solely because he runs a company in the same competitive space?

Yes, he owns a competitor with his wife, formation.dev, so there is a clear incentive.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#110

Post by UltraSane »

analog8374 wrote: post #61
UltraSane wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit moderation is also completely broken. Mods can ban anyone for any reason and do ban people for very stupid reasons with absolutely no recourse. It is so bad I have completely stopped posting on Reddit.

Is it any different here? Is this not the standard setup for all forums and considered perfectly right and normal?

I was banned from /r/comics for saying a comic wasn't funny. Hacker news doesn't ban anyone for such stupid reasons.
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