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Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

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Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#171

Post by yellowapple »

Toutouxc wrote: post #81
commandlinefan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> personally affected because they are trans That's something I find surprising about reddit - I can't remember what the exact percentage is, but I think it's something like 0.1% of the world population is trans... but it seems like 90% of the moderators on reddit are. What is it about reddit that attracts them?

I have similar questions about the apparent over-representation of LGBT people among high-profile software developers, but it feels like it's never okay to ask those questions.

One possible factor is that GSRMs are still widely persecuted and thus are not inclined to be "out of the closet" about it. That's also why people can get a bit defensive about asking questions; enough people ask such questions in bad faith that it makes it hard to identify when someone's asking in good faith.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#172

Post by yellowapple »

knolan wrote: post #100
chungy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just plainly false. Their private life was not affected by what JK Rowling has said. Rather, their political opinion differs and a choice to be offended was made. As political protest, the mod decides the best course of action was to violate subreddit rules and spoil a game for people (instead of, you know, offering a counter position to Rowling's views).

You keep claiming it’s political when it isn’t. The mod feels personally that JKR is bad and lashes out on a website to hurt other people. They aren’t protesting the legal status of trans people. They aren’t demanding changes to health care policy. They are saying some rich celebrity is bad and fuck you if you enjoy that person’s creation. It’s all about personal feelings and has nothing to do with politics. What rol…

> Does she hold office or set policy?

Does she influence those who do?

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#175

Post by brhsagain »

tptacek wrote: post #154
lmm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it should. There are plenty of similar laws (e.g. when you sell shares to your 2001st investor you're suddenly subject to a much stricter disclosure regime, and this is widely considered a good thing).

That law is an OTC anti-fraud measure. The Constitution has something to say about the ability of Congress to nationalize and impose its own speech controls on private websites that happen to become popular. Congress also doesn't get a say in who performs the Super Bowl Halftime Show, despite its immense audience.

If we’re going to assert the inalienable right of free speech, then arguably free speech is such an important cornerstone of society that we should think long and hard before letting any company have such influence in that sphere to begin with.

To me the big glaring central point here is that everyone uses big tech platforms. It’s just a fact of life. If you tell people, sorry, I don’t use Facebook, I use some wonky alternative instead, can you add me there? you’ll get weird looks. I think it’s insane to just ignore that elephant and continue studiously down the path of, well, they’re a private company and therefore are entitled to publish whatever they want.

When we established the precedent that private entities can say what they want, we clearly didn’t have Facebook in mind. Like there is just intuitively an obvious difference between a private journal deciding what to write about and a huge platform everyone uses deciding what to pass through or not. The state of the law doesn’t currently reflect this but that doesn’t mean the difference doesn’t exist.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#176

Post by peyton »

slfnflctd wrote: post #101
BitwiseFool wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know some power-users are paid to promote things by advertising agencies and other special interest groups. We know some PACs are active in trying to shape public opinion on Reddit. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of the moderators, especially the "powermods", are earning a living based on payments by some of these groups.

That is a popular opinion amongst redditors, and I find it a bit conspiracy-theory-ish. Shills doing anything potentially impactful are often easy to spot and tend to be called out on it or ignored. I expect there is some quid pro quo going on, but "earning a living" seems like a stretch (with maybe some very rare temporary exceptions in burgeoning frontiers). More plausible is that there are lobbyists or employees o…

The entire site was seeded by and built on fake accounts. An extreme amount of content is fake. There are people who control thousands of accounts.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#177

Post by pictur »

dageshi wrote: post #48
pictur wrote: post #26

[flagged]

It's easy to understand, it'll take hours of your day on a big sub, many subs regularly advertise for mods, but most people aren't interested in the extra work.

I think you have problems understanding what is written. I'm not asking why they can't catch up. I don't understand why an unqualified group of people is empowered.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#178

Post by dageshi »

ilyt wrote: post #139
dageshi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is, being a mod means you see patterns and you know when something is going to descend into a shitstorm because you've seen similar comments descent into a shitstorm before. So eventually mods kill comments not because they particularly dislike them but because they can't be bothered with dealing with the inevitable shit to come.

Right but at that point you're not doing your job and should leave. And also some mods think it's their job to delete stuff that was self-moderated by downvotes anyway which is just silly in the first place.

It's not a job. It's a hobby at best. The people who do it don't have to care about your free speech, nobody has to care about your free speech other than the government.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#179

Post by dageshi »

pictur wrote: post #177
dageshi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to understand, it'll take hours of your day on a big sub, many subs regularly advertise for mods, but most people aren't interested in the extra work.

I think you have problems understanding what is written. I'm not asking why they can't catch up. I don't understand why an unqualified group of people is empowered.

Because reddit wouldn't exist without them. Likely no forum like reddit could exist without them.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#180

Post by sebstefan »

ChickenNugger wrote: post #125
sebstefan wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you pause for a minute, can you think of a place on the internet where there isn't a systemic problem with mods being power crazy? Genuine question!

4chan? I'm not sure they do anything but remove child porn based on the fact that I've never seen it there, thankfully. Maybe Gab or communities.win? I don't use those two enough to know. Twitter post musk? But even there I've seen people complain. It's a shame because reddit used to literally advertise being a free speech platform.

Oddly enough the only one I could think of as well was 4chan.
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