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Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

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Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#131

Post by throwaway122378 »

CriticalCathed wrote: post #62
bmarquez wrote: post #28

This is incredibly disturbing, in light of the fact Reddit's CEO was once caught secretly editing[1] the comments of The Donald's users. Can't assume this is being done in good faith as the comments leading The Donald to be quarantined could be edits, or shill accounts. I'm sure someone will say "their website, their rules" but in that case it's better to just ban it entirely instead of engaging in subversive practic…

Disturbing? I don't think so. I subscribe to the_donald because I want to keep up with what the nutters are saying. Yesterday I reported a post where they had photshopped out the dots in the " i "s in all of Mike Bloomberg's ads and replaced them with the star of david. That's just yesterday. And just one post that caught my eye. And it was one of the top posts of the day with thousands and thousands of votes and hun…

I’m a Jew and saw that Bloomberg post. So what. It bothered me but I got over it. Freedom of speech covers things that you may not agree with.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#132

Post by adventured »

jedberg wrote: post #115
baybal2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Reddit's major investors include one big Internet company from Shenzhen Advance publications is also having huge exposure to China through Condenast's business in China

This is fearmongering. Tencent owns a small part of Reddit, has no board seat, and has no influence. They can’t “pull their money” so they would have no leverage to make threats. And by the way do you know who is the majority owner of Tencent? Naspers, a South African media company.

> And by the way do you know who is the majority owner of Tencent? Naspers, a South African media company

Naspers does not own a majority position in Tencent. They own closer to ~31% of the company. A large position, however that means very little given it's a Chinese juggernaut (see: Yahoo vs China in the Alibaba & Alipay spats).

https://www.investopedia.com/news/nasper-set-earn-10b-tencen...

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#133

Post by luckylion »

macspoofing wrote: post #52
bmarquez wrote: post #28

This is incredibly disturbing, in light of the fact Reddit's CEO was once caught secretly editing[1] the comments of The Donald's users. Can't assume this is being done in good faith as the comments leading The Donald to be quarantined could be edits, or shill accounts. I'm sure someone will say "their website, their rules" but in that case it's better to just ban it entirely instead of engaging in subversive practic…

>This is incredibly disturbing Meh. You're blowing this out of proportion. >in light of the fact Reddit's CEO was once caught secretly editing Again, you're making this seem more nefarious than it actually was. He did it because he thought it would be appreciated (obviously he was wrong). In the end, it was a dumb and immature move from a young, rookie CEO ... on a social network site (i.e. not that big of a deal in…

> He did it because he thought it would be appreciated (obviously he was wrong).

It's a bit beyond "I thought this would be funny, honest mistake, sorry", isn't it? How often has he (and others) done that without being caught doing so? And of course, once you're caught red handed in the cookie jar, is anything you say about acting alone and that not being SOP true, or is it just damage control?

Regarding him being a "young, rookie CEO", he's been the CEO of reddit for years previously and was the CTO of Hipmunk. It's not like he found himself in a role with a lot of power and overstepped the line a bit in his first week.

I don't think it's a state affair, but it's not "I was tired and emotional and I kind of clicked on the wrong button" either.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#134

Post by bmaisonp »

Someone1234 wrote: post #70
maverick2007 wrote: post #7

I personally think that this article buried the lede as far as controversial Reddit actions go. Users now can be (and have been) banned for upvoting posts in quarantined subreddits (both on the right - T_D - and the left - Chapo Trap House - among others). I've seen controversy erupt all around Reddit about this and it doesn't feel right to me. If the content that people are upvoting is bad enough to get banned over…

Misleading summation. Reddit will ban users for upvoting RULE BREAKING posts on quarantined subreddits. In other words, they're going to ban the people posting rule breaking content and also people promoting it via upvotes (after warnings/repeat behaviour/etc). To let others know about this without including the RULE BREAKING part is misleading.

Given they don't have to specify the rules broken nor the posts which broke the rule, that clarification is essentially irrelevant to the way in which this policy will likely be used.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#135

Post by sneak »

Traster wrote: post #21

I find it kind of funny that people are getting so excited. Reddit has long had a policy of banning users who breach the site rules. /r/The_donald has long had a policy of breaching site rules including brigading, harassment, threats and sharing personal information. The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings. Given how often the breaches occur it seems quite reasonable to actually step in…

> The users of that forum have literally been linked to public shootings.

I dislike that subreddit as much as anyone, but that’s guilt by peaceful association and can be leveled at a lot of different websites, video games, and political parties.

Let’s not go there.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#136

Post by kickopotomus »

handedness wrote: post #51
ordinaryradical wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a private enterprise and enforces its own rules for conduct across all communities and the_donald has routinely broken those roles as have the moderators. You don't have free speech on a private platform nor is there any democratic mandate to how Reddit must operate.

Regardless of where you fall on the ideological spectrum, selective enforcement is a significant problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

If that is the case, would you mind sourcing policy-breaking content from antithetical subreddits that have not been removed, quarantined, banned, etc?

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#137

Post by LargeWu »

chrisco255 wrote: post #96
Fauntleroy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this as if the members of r/the_donald are just regular ol' folks just talkin' about their candidate. This was/is one of the most rule-breaking subreddits on the entire website, which has only survived until this day due to preferential treatment. Subreddits have been completely banned for much, much less.

It is one of the largest subreddits and it deals with a highly charged topic (politics) so naturally it draws in all the trolls.

It's misguided to think that T_D is about politics, because it's not. It's about identity. The politics here are incidental.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#138

Post by skocznymroczny »

golf3 wrote: post #121
sergiotapia wrote: post #42

It looks like they've moved to https://thedonald.win/ - I wonder if they're using a fork of reddit's old source code. The site feels like a subreddit.

Smart move, quarantine is prelude to deletion, they're just waiting for a pretense.

Deletion will come around election time. Can't have users exposed to non-leftist point of view.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#139

Post by XPKBandMaidCzun »

Don't know about the politics, but we beat up each other too much:

People end up in groups based on their journey to find someone who validates their hardship.

In 201x, the process goes something like this:

When we struggle, we reach out for help, and rather than finding articles that are soothing chicken soup, they're news articles that we are worthy of contempt based on characteristics we have. The reader may get angered, as preposterously, some how, a specified group of people's needs and niche circumstance eclipses everything else. The algorithms leads to a string of sensational articles about how society needs to be restructured honor the whims of people based on a trait and exceptional edgecase circumstances.

Respect is conditional based on tribal loyalty and repeating generalized tropes with religious zeal - if you dare to dissect it as a social construction - you're out of the club. You're not enlightened, don't get it, and generally what's wrong with society, somehow.

I think general miserliness and insensitivity create the conditions for people to resort to unifying over absurd polarizing generalizations above all else. If our feelings and worth are based on preconditions, I'd assume it'd be pretty hard to build consensus, cooperate and make everyone feel loved and cared for.

That said, when people squabble over rhetorical devices instead of unifying to improve the conditions of legal persons universally, it's great for the stock market.

Re: Reddit purges 1/2 of The Donald’s moderators – replaces them with approved mods

#140

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

bovermyer wrote: post #45
baalimago wrote: post #20

The 'frontpage of the internet' is actively taking control of the subreddit of a presidential candidate, in an election year. I know that HN is highly against Trump, and probably cheer for this decision, but how is this not a democratic issue?

I am continually amazed at how many people believe that "free speech" applies to anything other than the government. No government agency is allowed to impede free speech (with a handful of exceptions). This rule does not apply to any other organization.

Free speech isn't limited to the government. The government may be the only entity legally obligated to uphold it, but we can still be unhappy when others elect to suppress it.
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