A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by qingcharles » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

neya wrote: post #236

I wonder what makes a platform like HN work, but not the others. In almost every other platform moderators are just sad, angry little entitled narcissists who love exerting control over others. This has been proven time and again across multiple platforms: Wikipedia Quora Stackoverflow (surprise, surprise!) Reddit .. And basically anything else that depends on those so called moderators for fairness and equality. It…

I've asked myself this many times. It warrants a study.

I have managed large sites where I had to recruit mods. I would recruit the most popular and lovely users to be mods, and universally I would be forced to ban them within about 6 months. The power would go to their heads and every one of them would turn into a fascist dictator just banning anyone who spoke out of turn and deleting any content they didn't like.

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

#272

Post by petesergeant » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #248

petesergeant wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re going to be able to tell me what _is_ the most reliable place to get a general crowd-sourced opinion then?

Argh, there isn't one - is the message we're trying to get you to accept. Just because reddit is reliable vs its peers != absolutely reliable. Like Amazon, Yelp, Google any review system will become gamified for money. So just like those platforms every review you read you need to ask "who is the reviewer? do they review other things? how 'realistic' does it read? Are they pushing anything? Is the thing i'm reading a…

> is the message we're trying to get you to accept

You're replying to a comment where I said I agree with the statement "Reddit should not be considered an authoritative source"

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

#273

Post by whatshisface » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:41 AM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #226

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…

Reddit has a moderation problem, and it's a big one. They've now been asked to appear in front of Congress to address concerns about politically motivated violence being incited through their platform: https://oversight.house.gov/release/chairman-comer-invites-c... Personally I believe I've seen more people in the past few years wish a politically motivated death on somebody else via Reddit, than I have anywhere else…

That may be a politically motivated congressional hearing. :-)

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

#274

Post by JoBrad » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:42 AM UTC

Finbel wrote: post #200

fwipsy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that you should mention a Reddit-originated conspiracy theory on an article about how Reddit is deteriorating as a source of information. I found this blog post: https://coagulopath.com/ghislaine-maxwell-does-not-have-a-se... which appears to conclusively refute the main evidence above, but I haven't independently verified. If you have stronger evidence than what appears to be copy-pasted AI output, I will re-e…

Your link actually don't touch upon what I found most compelling: That /u/maxwellhill stopped positing two days before her arrest and haven't posted again since then.

Except it does

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

#275

Post by fancyswimtime » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:43 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #259

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…

> 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. Capturing moderation of a subreddit has long been a strategy of marketing agencies. Even when they can’t take over the actual mod positions, they’ll shower the mods with free product and make them feel like a VIP. I watched this happen from inside one company and I couldn’…

this seems to be happening on city based subs as well where the split is political; creating echo chambers for each side. This feels dangerous as any potential middle ground gets eroded away.

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

#276

Post by qingcharles » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

michaelnovati wrote: post #157

simianwords wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like to hear both sides to the story. But from the data it seems like you have been obsessively commenting on the subreddit about codesmith for more than a full year. And almost 80% have been negative. This looks unhinged because you are a moderator of the subreddit. What's the other side to this?

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…

A github with no public work isn't really a flex.

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

#277

Post by smcin » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #219

petesergeant wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re going to be able to tell me what _is_ the most reliable place to get a general crowd-sourced opinion then?

I don't think there is one. Prediction Markets are probably the closest and even those have problems. But at least incentives in a prediction market aim for the truth rather than an entertaining experience.

No, incentives aim for whatever gives a return - not an objective neutral verdict-of-the-crowd. It requires a regulator to be active.

Read about the whale trades and wash trades on Polymarket: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41999743

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

#278

Post by re » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:47 AM UTC

raincom wrote: post #183

That's common. A marketing company took over r/mattress in order to get rid of any unfavorable reviews and pump up any bed in box mattress company as long as these companies pay to that market company. For more, https://www.reddit.com/r/MattressMod/comments/1c28g7b/recent...

A happy(ish) ending: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattress/comments/1l81nn6/and_were_...

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

#279

Post by rjbwork » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:47 AM UTC

lurk2 wrote: post #213

ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most online communities work that way. It’s highly unusual to have some sort of judicial process.

> It’s highly unusual to have some sort of judicial process. Every forum I ever used prior to Reddit had a ban appeal process, as did most game servers. For a few games reading the ban appeals could be more fun than playing the actual game. This was usually moderators making executive decisions based on a user-submitted form, but it was better than nothing.

Reddit also has a ban appeals process. But it's the same people you're appealing to - the mods.

Speaking for myself I generally will unban if people are nice and express understanding for why they were banned.

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

#280

Post by user_7832 » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 5:48 AM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #110

analog8374 wrote: post #61

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.

Let me guess: it was a Pizza Cake Comics post? (Context, she's made posts about how women are always paranoid about men and men minimize/make fun of that and she says she's not anti men as she has a son herself. All this (edit: plus lots of commenters and mod drama) in the span of a single comic btw.)

Edit: this comment on such a politically touchy topic lasted almost 40 minutes before getting 2 downvotes, honestly I'm impressed it lasted almost an hour.

Of course as always, the downvote is a signal of communication, and without a reply, all communication I receive is that this is a sensitive topic. If there's anything factually wrong I'll be happy to change it. (And I would consider myself having spent ~~too much~~ enough time on reddit to know which comics are popular and/or get folks banned easily.)