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

larslofgren.com

551–560 of 996 posts

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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes both ways. If you try to post anything remotely criticizing Donald Trump or his government on /r/conservative you'll also get banned. Even if you try to keep it objective.

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…

Your country sub sounds cool

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

#552
post #520

Used to moderator a decent sized sub for a decent stint. Learned a fair bit from it. Eventually decided to step back because it’s a raw deal - all interactions are antagonistic, the torrent of confrontations is essentially endless, it’s not seen or appreciated by users and obviously not paid. So not much of a personal payoff, right? UNLESS you’re the kind of person that thrives on drama, conflict and power trips. Mea…

Samesies. I even had to switch to using a different pseudonym once I started receiving death threats :)

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

#553
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?

[deleted]

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not a conservative. Why are you so concerned about participation criteria for the conservative subreddit, one of the only distinctly right wing places on the whole platform?

The way HN and public forums work is that people can ask questions and others can answer. The post you are replying to is an answer to a question. You need to scroll a bit up to see the original question.

Pointing at the moderation of an explicitly conservative place for right wingers as a grievance to illustrate how it is only balanced how conservative opinions are getting banned across mainstream subreddits is fairly disingenuous.

And clearly this has been a discussion on that angle, rather than an answer to the rhetorical question above.

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

#555

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…

Personally learning that tons of Nazis started as liberals isn't even the least bit surprising.

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

#556
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve never heard of Reddit revealing the nationality of members of any sub. Do you have a source for this?

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

#557
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/r/conservative doesn't even allow comments of users without a user flair. They state: "This is designed so that a couple posts per day are almost guaranteed to have conversation which is not hijacked by leftists and other non-conservatives.Who Gets Flair? Only mods can assign User Flair, and User Flair is only for conservatives. Once you have a solid history of comments in /r/Conservative, and have been commenting i…

You're not a conservative. Why are you so concerned about participation criteria for the conservative subreddit, one of the only distinctly right wing places on the whole platform?

How do you know their beliefs?

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

#558

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…

You missed maybe the biggest one, /r/bitcoin, which around 2015 started banning anyone who wanted Bitcoin to actually follow the original design and continue scaling up on-chain transactions. The moderator, some anonymous student (possibly named Michael Marquardt), literally declared anyone who wanted Bitcoin to be used for regular transactions offtopic and banned them on a massive scale. When explaining his actions…

I think maybe this is a feature rather than a bug.

I know at least a couple of subreddits for specific 'true crime' cases which split into one for people who believed the suspect was guilty and one where everyone believed they were innocent.

The thing is, the split fora were actually much better than pre split. When both sets of people were together every topic degenerated rapidly in exactly the same way:

    meticulous_postrr: I just reread the transcript of Fred's sixth interview and noticed that he mentioned seeing a purple t-shirt in the woods. Could this be the shirt that Ahab was wearing at the road house, which looks blue in the security footage? 
    middled_aged_loner: Nice try, but unless you can explain the severed foot in the ashtray, the blue shirt is irrelevant here. 
    AhabDidIt: Still trying to shill the 'only two feet' theory, m_a_l? What about what Edgar saw?

    curious_n00b: Hi, I love the podcast but I'm not sure about one thing: is the Sylvia mentioned in Dushane's diary the same Sylvia who knew Edgar from volleyball camp? 
    AhabDidIt: welcome curious. Good question, but you're wasting your time with the diary. The July entries were written in August, by April. See my previous threads /r/TheScarletFred/Ahabs_lies /r/TheScarletFred/Ahabs_lies_2 and /r/TheScarletFred/the_diary_evidence_reexamined
    middled_aged_loner: So in your opinion ADI, April apparently knew that Dushane had seen Vanessa on the rollercoaster but didn't mention it to the police on the 1st October? This completely fails to stack up. What about Vanessa's unfinished ice tea? WHAT ABOUT THE SEVERED FOOT?
The split subreddits have better information, better curation and better flow. People who are otherwise in agreement debate precise points carefully and in detail. Both are available on the same internet so anyone who wants to can read both and make up their own mind.

I know we're all supposed to be worried about echo chambers, but sometimes an echo chamber is somewhere a specific conversation can take place which couldn't elsewhere.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see that I am getting banned for no other reason than liberals like yourself disagreeing with my opinions. I never even participated in /r/conservatives, I am merely pointing out that it is hardly relevant whether /r/conservatives has anything to do with conservatives. You, and I imagine many other complainers, are obviously disqualified from participating there from the start. That is not a problem. What is…

>it is hardly relevant The entire basis of your argument was that it is for conservatives, so non-conservatives should be banned. And FWIW, I am classically a conservative. An actual conservative, not the cult of personality sort. In this new era suddenly I'm some weird liberal. >many moderators, just like you Like me? LOL, I'm not a moderator on Reddit, and can't fathom wasting my time like that. But, eh, people hav…

That is what it says in the subreddit description and name, not my personal opinion of its content.

There are not numerous other mainstream news subs where you would not get banned for conservative opinions. In fact I believe worldnews may be the most conservative leaning one. I know that /r/news is far more left.

You don't think that's a problem with the platform?

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

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t help but notice that Twitter and TikTok didn’t get called for that session. In November 2023, Twitter went from a zero tolerance policy for violent speech to “we may remove or reduce the visibility of violent speech.” Seems really relevant for the topic of the hearings! And yet. I’m thus unwilling to take Rep. Comey’s decision to call Reddit to testify as evidence of anything. Feels more like political theate…

While Twitter has many problems it does seem to do a reasonable job of not promoting hate and violence towards a large audience. There's many messages critical of immigrants on my timeline but none calling for violence against them (or any other group that Twitter users dislike). Meanwhile posts about violence against Trump, Musk or celebrating the dead of Kirk did get massive upvotes and visibility on some of the bi…

Twitter is absolutely full of calls for violence, i genuinely don't know how you can use the platform and not see any of it
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