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

larslofgren.com

531–540 of 996 posts

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

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There's few places on Reddit where you will be banned for expressing liberal opinions. /r/conservative, a place for conservatives to discuss "from a distinctly conservative point of view", is one of them. It's kind of also in the name. Do they ban conservatives for criticizing Trump? I don't know, perhaps. I'm going to assume many such comments on there will in fact be made by liberals. Meanwhile, I was i…

/r/conservative has absolutely nothing to do with conservatives, but everything to do with the cult-of-trump. It's a great place to read up on how completely crazy the world has become, if you had posted any thread there on the onion a decade ago absolutely nobody would have believed it to be possible.

If you think "any thread there" is that absurd, you are clearly not a conservative at all. You are another liberal ranting about /r/conservative, are you not?

It is in my opinion a very weak argument to point at /r/conservative specifically as an example for how the mainstream censorship on Reddit is not overwhelmingly liberal.

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

#532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty crazy. I've been on reddit since its inception and have never been banned from pics despite having posted on all kinds of unsavory subreddits over the decades.

Try posting in /r/conservative, I replied to a comment there once and received a bunch of bans from other subs shortly afterwards. It doesn't matter what you post, just the association with that sub is apparently enough.

Ironically enough, I'm banned from /r/conservative for years for posting innocuous shit. It's probably the most ban-happy place on that site.

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

#533

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…

It sounds like a large part of the problem is how important a subreddit name is to popularity. If a subreddit has a good obvious name it is going to collect members and activity even if the mods are awful. Competing subreddits will struggle to attract new users as they need some different less-obvious name. I wonder if this could be approached in a way that new subreddits didn't have this disadvantage so that they co…

That's an interesting idea!

Perhaps intentionally using uuids in the URL instead of slugs and improving the recommendation/search algo (e.g take into account the average post length or cited sources in the ranking) would solve this issue. Main challenge might still be that its very hard to move an existing user base if the moderator(s) blocks all posts about other communities.

Perhaps a more democratic moderation system or a system wide rule that disallows moderators from blocking posts about other (competing) subs would work?

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

#534
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RE: CODESMITH. For starters as an example, Codesmith's website, email, and entire AWS account was down for 3 weeks because they got locked out from not updating their credit card and then losing the root password and their 2-factor was a phone number. This is unacceptable. Everything I can find online, including your post on reddit about the outage, says the outage was for 4 days. Not 3 weeks. I'll also note that y…

It was 3 weeks.

No

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

#535

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.

>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 That's a pretty hilariously one-sided example, given /r/conservative is one of the most comically moderated subs on Reddit. Like, you were so close with that example, but no, it turns out it's all the o…

That's a bit rich to say while complaining about the moderation in /r/conservative specifically.

Per the subreddit description it is a place for conservatives to discuss "from a distinctly conservative point of view".

I am getting the feeling that you may in fact not be a conservative. That's fine. You don't need to participate in /r/conservative any more than I need to participate in /r/progressive. It simply does not concern you, and your focus on how a subreddit for conservatives is moderated paints a better picture of why you may have been banned from there.

The problem is default subreddits handing out permabans over political opinions.

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

#536

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/AskBrits banned me for pointing out that there are several threads each day about immigration, each tailor made rage bait. Sometimes they’re not even a question. I’ve personally caught a couple of Iranians and Russians brazenly posting such threads at 4am British time (working hours in Tehran) and the moderators did nothing. They simply allow such threads while deleting any thread that goes “is anyone sick of the…

I've often posted on the internet at 4am local time before. How did you establish the posters were Russian or Iranian, other than by time zone? (4am London is working hours for around half the world population.)

Not denying that there are people in these countries who want to cause trouble on the internet. But there are many such people in all countries...

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

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand, and while I don't fully agree I do agree that having some insight into biases could be relevant since moderation choices are always subjective. I would prefer not to link my Reddit account to my HN account furthermore it's common for comments to be deleted at a ban so I'm unable to give you the exact comments but happy to provide insight into any (perceived) biased! I have voted D66 ( https://en.wikiped…

> I would prefer not to link my Reddit account to my HN account Understandable, no worries. > I have voted D66 [..] during the last elections I've been seeing sentiments like this before but I don't value them high because what matter is what people do and decide when things becomes hot and their professed principles need to be actually proven. As an anecdote, and yes, I know it's an extreme example, but it's interes…

The audio book sounds interesting, could you share the title?

I understand your point about deciding and acting when things become hot but shouldn't we place political vote(s) above comment(s) on social media? Realistically I would hope that the average voter in Europe does not encounter a "hot" situation where his or her morals will be tested as they were during the second world war.

Yet what we vote for influences real world actions, what we say online might influence one or two opinions slightly.

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

#538
post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be as kind as to point out where I'm _only_ taking issue with the moderation of other subreddits? As you can see in my comment I'm merely listing a few examples.

You're listing several examples, including /r/conservative, yet even though this subreddit is widely known (on Reddit) to be a censored echo-chamber, you do not mention this aspect. I find it hard to believe, that this would be a coincidence.

That's a very weak argument in my opinion.

How does the moderation in /r/conservatives, a subreddit for conservatives to discuss "from a distinctly conservative point of view", concern a liberal like yourself in any way?

This isn't a subreddit you need to participate in. I think it's more relevant how default subreddits or country subreddits are moderated in a similar way.

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

#539

Considering coding boot camps are borderline snake oil I'm struggling to take any of this seriously.

I don't think they're as bad as snake oil. I taught at one for a year and a good number of my students (it was above 50% last time I took a pulse) had life-changing career switches. I think what people don't realize is that the student is really the difference maker, and that it really takes a lot of effort, dedication, and interest to succeed. I think it's possible some of these folks could have "self-taught" their…

Did you teach in 2021? That kind of ratio seems unthinkable now. Hope I'm wrong though!

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

#540
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/r/AskBrits banned me for pointing out that there are several threads each day about immigration, each tailor made rage bait. Sometimes they’re not even a question. I’ve personally caught a couple of Iranians and Russians brazenly posting such threads at 4am British time (working hours in Tehran) and the moderators did nothing. They simply allow such threads while deleting any thread that goes “is anyone sick of the…

I've often posted on the internet at 4am local time before. How did you establish the posters were Russian or Iranian, other than by time zone? (4am London is working hours for around half the world population.) Not denying that there are people in these countries who want to cause trouble on the internet. But there are many such people in all countries...

There are huge influence operations basically on every national sub.

I found one on r/portugal, clearly coordinated network spreading political news of a certain persuasion.

R/donald became famous because the admins turned on national flags for users there revealing a significant percentage was Russian IPs without even a VPN. The Russian users called it “the mark of David” and compared it to Nazism.

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