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A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
341–350 of 996 posts
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
What country are you from? To " wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? Reddit set itself up as a speakeasy, people speak their minds openly because it appears in some areas to be free of thought policing. Do you think it is wrong to wish a dictator dead? Over the past decades USA has not only wished it, but made it happen, at the cost of many lives.
Many people in this forum mistakenly think that violence isn’t a historically efficient way to solve political problems.
Well at least we can all agree violence is efficient way to create political problems
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Follow the money.
Agreed, try to figure out how I benefit in any way from Codesmith's decline. Not theoretical, but hard facts. I know of THREE people that considered going to Codesmith and went to Formation instead. One of them I tried very hard to convince to go to Codesmith and she instead got a job on her own and then came to Formation. All of this for three customers? It doesn't add up and there are some missing pieces in the sto…
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Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Example?
/r/Seattle and /r/SeattleWA.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/54ie2t/seat...
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#345This is oddly a case to signify there is value in an AI moderation tools - to avoid bias inherent to human actors.
The AI moderation tools are trained on the Reddit data that is actively being sabotaged by a competitor. If an AI were to take up moderation now, mentioning this specific bootcamp would probably get you warned or banned because of how bad it is according to the training data. AI is as biased as humans are, perhaps even more so because it lacks actual reasoning capabilities.
> [AI] lacks actual reasoning capabilities.
Evals are showing reasoning (by which I mean multi-step problem solving, planning, etc) is improving over time in LLMs. We don't have to agree on metaphysics to see this; I'm referring to the measurable end result.
Why? Some combination of longer context windows, better architectures, hybrid systems, and so on. There is more research about how and where reasoning happens (inside the transformer, during the chain of thought, perhaps during a tool call).
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, he owns a competitor with his wife, formation.dev, so there is a clear incentive.
Why didn't the author sue? Feels like this is a case where if what he says is true then that's what litigation is for, no?
Lawsuits can be very expensive. Even if you win.
I’ve given up on recovering tens of thousands of dollars in the past because it would likely ruin me to pursue it.
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
What country are you from? To " wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? Reddit set itself up as a speakeasy, people speak their minds openly because it appears in some areas to be free of thought policing. Do you think it is wrong to wish a dictator dead? Over the past decades USA has not only wished it, but made it happen, at the cost of many lives.
Many people in this forum mistakenly think that violence isn’t a historically efficient way to solve political problems.
And many others think that violence is the only way to solve political problems.
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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"
These days, all the results that AREN'T from reddit are AI slop.
Still preferable to the disinformation in that cesspit.
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#349I'm going to focus on the MODERATION ACCUSATION first since that seems to be the main issue.
What moderating r/codingbootcamp actually looks like:
I don't own the sub - I report to the owner who asked me to help after I'd been one of the most active and helpful contributors. The coding bootcamp industry is absolutely infested with astroturfing. Brand new accounts, manufactured conversations, fake testimonials. It's constant daily spam trying to manipulate people making $15K-20K decisions.
My job is to support authentic discussion. We have above-average Reddit AI filters. We generally don't review flagged content because we can't tell who these suspicious brand new accounts are. Occasionally we approve legitimate posts caught in filters.
The accusation that I delete Codesmith's posts:
This is not only false, it's the exact opposite of what I do. I regularly break the sub's rules to manually approve Codesmith content that Reddit's automated systems flag as spam. I shouldn't be doing this - the same rules should apply to everyone - but I do it constantly because their posts get caught unfairly.
Why are their posts getting flagged?
In mid-2024, Codesmith hired a marketing contractor to post on Reddit. Their CEO even sent me proof of this. They probably didn't know it at the time, but this guy was running one of the most extensive astroturfing operations I've ever seen. Dozens of high-karma sockpuppet accounts. Fake conversations across hundreds of subreddits promoting hemorrhoid cream, garage door openers, lava lamps, custom suits, you name it.
I helped uncover this network and Reddit nuked all those accounts. But Codesmith's legitimate accounts got tangled up in it, and Reddit's AI started auto-suspending them by association - IP addresses, posting patterns, behavioral signals.
I explained this to Codesmith. Multiple times. By email. By phone with their CEO directly. With screenshots. With specific suggestions on rebuilding trust signals through authentic engagement.
They accused me of "deleting their posts." I told them I was approving their content, not removing it. They didn't listen, didn't change their approach, and to this day their content gets constantly flagged.
The evidence is in their own sub, look at some of their official AMAs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1iduu2d/ https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/ https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1gvazaz/
Go look right now. Count how many comments are flagged/suspended/deleted/collapsed. Roughly half get flagged by Reddit within weeks. Not by me - I'm banned from that sub. That doesn't happen with legitimate engagement.
There was a fake account on LinkedIn liking all their stuff that is now suspended as well.
With my moderator hat on, I'm being accused of bias while actively protecting Codesmith from the consequences of their own marketing decisions. I approve posts that should probably stay filtered. I give them more leniency than other bootcamps. I've consistently tried explaining how Reddit works and how to fix their reputation signals.
On my criticism of their program:
Yes, I've been critical of specific Codesmith practices since 2022 - whether bootcamp grads should present 3-week projects as "4 months of mid-level experience" or market themselves as "mid-level engineers" with zero professional experience. I have strong opinions backed by outcomes data and CIRR reports.
But that has nothing to do with how I moderate. I've been equally critical of other bootcamps like TripleTen, BloomTech, App Academy. I recommend a dozen or two people go to Codesmith! At the same time I was questioning their marketing. My moderation standards apply to everyone except Codesmith, who I give more leeway to.
Bottom line: If I wanted to hurt Codesmith as a moderator, I would simply let Reddit's automated systems do their job. I wouldn't override the filters.