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

larslofgren.com

431–440 of 996 posts

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 base…

When the mods of major subs are also mods for over a hundred other subs, you have to doubt how much actual moderating they are actually doing in their holier-than-thou positions.

I think Reddit gives them some automation tools so it's not all hands on moderation.

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

#434
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation on Reddit has been questionable for a long time and its killing the site. To give some examples: - /r/energy used to ban everyone in favour of nuclear energy - If you post on /r/conservative you can expect to receive a bunch of bans from unrelated (popular) subs. Doesn't matter what you posted, being associated with that subs "taints" your account enough for some moderators. - /r/UnitedKingdom banned me fo…

/r/conservative is probably the most heavily censored echo chamber on Reddit, yet somehow you only take issue with other subreddits flagging participation.

Does r/conservative ban you for posting in some other sub?

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

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point out what exactly you find confusingly one-sided? Happy to update the list of examples if it enhances the quality of my post but when writing it I could only draw on personal experience.

All your examples are hand-wavey and and follows a stereotypical right-wing grieviences pattern, while still somehow trying to discuss polarisation in a neutral manner. You also suggest in another comment in this thread that Twitter is somehow a better place, suggesting a pretty significant lack of nuance. I don't expect to see any, but I'd certainly be curious to see what posts that got you banned or admonished so I…

You seem to focus a lot on the examples that I provided (and my opinion of Twitter?) and not so much on the content of my comment or the general topic of the conversation.

Could you motivate why this is relevant and what your counter point would be? I'm genuinely curious!

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

#436

Reddit has a huge moderation issue. Mods run the place like their fiefdoms with no regard to being fair. There should be a way of flagging reddit users and especially mods if they are seen to have a clear conflict of interest (as is the case with Michael Novati) and Reddit should not allow them to run groups where they are openly harassing their competitors.

As an extreme example of this, the Iran subreddit is 100% run by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Any opinion wavering from official state messaging is moderated out of existence. Reddit seems to happily tolerate this kind of thing across its platform on many levels.

Same is the case with many of the groups relating to India. Some of these groups are clearly run by proxies of the Indian govt and shutdown any criticism of India or the government.

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

#437
post #173

Earlier 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?

The author is not a party to the case but an investigative blogger.

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

#438
post #334

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...

I'm not interested in doing this at all, but how does a person take over a subreddit? That sounds like a very difficult thing to do.

Probably in the same way as Jia Tan took over the xz.

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

#439
post #420
post #369

I'm french I was banned from the France subreddit for saying Hamas fighters dress as civilians. The problem of Reddit goes beyond astroturfing. It's a judge jury executioner problem. Moderation is the most expensive problem of online platforms.

The irony of your post being downvoted for stating facts (i.e. what personally happened to you).

Not all facts are on topic.

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

#440
I’ve no idea whether the allegations in this piece are true.

But what is noteworthy is that the author of the article has also - on the same blog - written a bunch of content about how Reddit is used for spamming search results.

That includes one piece with detailed step by step instructions for how to spam Reddit apparently because Google and Reddit have poisoned the well of SEO.

“Why I’m Sharing Secret Tips on How to Manipulate Reddit: Shouldn’t I keep this all to myself? […] Because fuck Google that’s why… Reddit used to be a reliable source… Google torched all that.”

Make of that what you will - but the author seems to waging a one man campaign targeting what he identifies as dodgy Reddit moderation practices.

When you’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail and all that.

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