Live data from Hacker News

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

larslofgren.com

201–210 of 996 posts

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

#201

Reddit should not be considered an authoritative source. Period. At this point it's the most astroturfed place on the internet. Accounts are bought and sold like cheap commodities. It's inherently unreliable. That said, in this instance Codesmith actually has an unusually strong defamation case. That Reddit mod is not anonymous, and has made solid claims (about nepotism with fabricated details, accusations of resume…

> Reddit should not be considered an authoritative source. Period. I cringe inside every time I search for something, and the first autocomplete is "mysearchterm reddit"

name one dataset used for AI that doesn't include Reddit

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

#202

Reddit should not be considered an authoritative source. Period. At this point it's the most astroturfed place on the internet. Accounts are bought and sold like cheap commodities. It's inherently unreliable. That said, in this instance Codesmith actually has an unusually strong defamation case. That Reddit mod is not anonymous, and has made solid claims (about nepotism with fabricated details, accusations of resume…

> At this point it's the most astroturfed place on the internet.

YouTube is far worse and it isn’t even close.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was being threatened by anonymous Reddit accounts a few weeks ago so I made some defensive PR docs but I need to sleep on it to decide what to do. This is what I do all day: https://github.com/mnovati But yeah two sides to every story and if this has been going on for years, "1000 posts", there's clearly more to the story, and it's irresponsible to not reach out for comment if you are going to try to summarize that…

Is that what you do all day? Its trivially easy to make a profile look like yours, its a lot harder to actually have an average of 28 commits a day every day for a year with zero days off. Not for weekends, not for vacations, not for sickness. All in completely private repositories

It's real code.

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

#204
Pretty shocking that someone whose business is being actively attacked on a subreddit, one that is not only relevant to them but is one of the biggest drivers of student interest and a major recruiting tool, has no recourse in this situation. A lot of people mentioning the legal angle don’t realize what a nightmare that kind of litigation would be. It’s frankly outrageous that Reddit doesn’t take the time to investigate such a flagrant conflict of interest and just chooses not to respond at all. I understand not wanting to police every subreddit but now you’re talking about potentially millions in losses for a business. All because of one unhinged asshole who’s trying to promote his own competing business. If this doesn’t turn into a lawsuit hopefully it makes enough noise for Reddit to pay attention and help resolve the issue.

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit should not be considered an authoritative source. Period. At this point it's the most astroturfed place on the internet. Accounts are bought and sold like cheap commodities. It's inherently unreliable. I don't disagree with any of this, but I'll note that in addition, it's also the most reliable place to get a general crowd-sourced opinion on the internet. There are specialist forums for specialist subjects,…

This isn't true. It leans extremely heavily left-wing so you won't get an accurate crowd-source opinion that disagrees with left-wing politics. There are pockets of conservative views but it's generally heavily left wing and you will get banned from many subreddits if you espouse any views to the opposite. EDIT: I don't know why I'm getting so many downvotes, nothing I said is controversial at all.

Reddit is not left-wing. Could you define left-wing?

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

#206
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're proving my point. At least in the US half of the country is right wing. If you want an accurate crowd-sourced opinion you need to take that into account, regardless of your own beliefs.

That is not true. Labels aren’t for normies. There’s a reason a lot of center-right people love Bernie. And it’s not because of your incorrect use of political labels.

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

#207
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really cared, this should have started with: "I am stepping down as the moderator..." Even though you have counter claims, you moderating the forum for your industry is problematic. You also seem keen to chime in about a competitor when you should be impartial and allow users to discuss their experiences alone. Yes there are two sides to every story, but in no universe should you be the mod of that subreddit.

This is not my industry, no. Had the author reached out for comment they could publish my claims. More interested in a hit piece than the truth.

Even if we accept all your claims at face value, your behaviour in your capacity as the moderator of that subreddit was still immoral. However you feel about it, being a moderator is a voluntary responsibility which comes with an expectation of impartiality and service at the expense of, not in furtherance of, your personal goals.

At best, if everything you say is true, what you are doing is akin to proudly volunteering as a firefighter so that you can slow-walk the response if a fire is ever reported at the NXIVM HQ. Your crusade against NXIVM may be righteous, and it might even be universally considered a net good if its HQ were to burn down, but it would still raise a lot of eyebrows if it came out that you intended to use your position in that fashion.

edit: To be clear, I sympathise with your claim that you are being subjected to a one-sided hit, and am starting to feel uneasy with the dogpiling atmosphere that is building in this subthread. However, it is understandable to me why this is happening - fundamentally, Reddit has become a town square that is really not engineered correctly to be one. In a town square, people want to choose their leaders, but subreddits are by design "storefronts", in which leaders (moderators) choose their people. This tension is resolved by a very unpleasant jerry-rigged substitute for democratic control: the one way you can "vote out" a moderator (who has the backing or indifference of everyone above him) is to apply psychological pressure, or other harm (such as the reputational damage your company is no doubt taking as we speak), until they crack and resign. This is sort of democratic because larger fractions of the "electorate" can achieve it more easily, but even turning up to such a "vote" that you ultimately lose entails social violence.

It doesn't seem like you are willing to resign, nor to put your moderator status up for a community vote (if that could even be made fair, after you presumably banned a lot of would-be voters, and conversely could accuse the other side of botting/brigading). What other options do those who do not want the town square to be moderated by you have?

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

#208
post #52
post #49

someone mind actually giving a detailed history of the timeline outside of the two main parties? this has those inklings of wordpress drama where not a lot of people are not invested enough and that obviously works to an advantage of sorts.

> someone mind actually giving a detailed history of the timeline outside of the two main parties? You have that in TFA? Author is an outsider to the drama.

The author talked to numerous Codesmith staff and their cherry picked information provided for the article.

I got no request for comment, no interviews, sitting on a treasure trove of my own documents the guy should look at.

So yeah. I would love an actually neutral party to put together a timeline after talking to both sides fairly.

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

#209
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're proving my point. At least in the US half of the country is right wing. If you want an accurate crowd-sourced opinion you need to take that into account, regardless of your own beliefs.

Reddit is far from left wing, liberal maybe, but not left wing.

Yes exactly. Actual left wing communities get banned on Reddit (like Chapo Trap House did a while back and when I started visited it a lot less)

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

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was banned from /r/sourdough for asking a question about rye flour, because someone dug into my post history and saw that I had posted a few times on the Catholicism subreddit. Someone's first instinct when reading a completely benign, neutral question was to see if I was on this or that "team".
Post reply on HN