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Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

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231–240 of 319 posts

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#231

The online platforms that were supposed to provide us a democratic free space to communicate are in fact governed by a tyrannical and unaccountable minority. We see the same situation on Facebook with group moderators and on Twitter (albeit less so) with high follower count blue-check accounts. Not to mention the companies themselves having the power to ban any speech they want.

It's almost as if this utopian techno-ararchism is a naive fantasy. And it simply creates digital societies with all of the downsides of their real world equivalents, and none of the checks to power and even more susceptible to manipulation.

And yet it's only a matter of time until another 20 something will announce that they can solve the problems of the world and human nature by creating yet another digital environment free from the rules (and responsibilities) of the real world. And we'll all act shocked when it somehow backfires into unintended consequences and recreates a worse version of the thing it was trying to replace.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, because for some reason this is suddenly unacceptable but it is ok to have an Indian variant or a Brazilian variant.

There's a semantic difference with "X virus" and "Y variant". "X virus" denotes the virus was caused by country X and is behind it all, whereas "Y variant" denotes it was mutated in there but is not the root cause of it all.

I don't think that's true. West Nile Virus wasn't caused by people West of the Nile, the Spanish Flu wasn't caused by Spain, MERS is called that because it was discovered in the Middle East, not because people in the Middle East caused it, etc. The form "X virus" does not at all imply that the virus was caused by X.

Then, of course, there is the very real possibility that China literally did cause the virus.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#233
post #16

There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages…

Same. The dutch subreddit mods will ban anyone that doesn't align with them on tiny things. So if you want to keep contributing to that community you must swim with the majority or they will ban you.

I often go against the flow in thenetherlands and I haven't gotten banned. You get downvoted to oblivion if you dare go against the progressive, young, left-leaning narrative of the sub, but the same is true on any network. I don't think the "tiny things" will get you banned from the Dutch subreddits, though; it's mostly broad strokes (just post that you've considered voting on one of the "wrong" parties once and you'll get flack). It's a pretty bad situation, but it's the same situation you find on any platform.

HN has some very clear biases that you simply must subscribe to if you don't want your comment to be downvoted. It's clear that people here have certain stocks and don't like certain companies to be put in a negative light, for example. I don't think my account suffers the problems from this too often, but I've seen plenty of comments here at the bottom of the comment section simply because they disagreed with the status quo or because they asked an uncomfortable question.

Every now and then, I also see shadowbanned people here, who continue to make nearly invisible posts for a while and then just leave, seemingly caught by some kind of automatic filter or punished severely for a dumb comment weeks ago.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#234
post #20
post #3

Also see https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Cabal/ I also filter, using RES, all posters and commenters with over 100k karma, and it's like taking a trip back in time when the internet wasn't tuned to inane content and advertisers

Nice to see the usual suspects on The Cabal. People who believe ivermectin is some kind of miracle covid drug (even the manufacturers say its ineffective) and those who deny COVID even exists. Quality people. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w

NIH says ivermectin is effective.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#235
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually pretty simple to read the evidence and come to the conclusion its not suitable to be used in the treatment of COVID. Unfortunately the issue is plagued by misinformation and those who profit from peddling it.

Which evidence do you find simple - those two links you posted? (Non rhetorical question - in case of doubt.) People who will read that evidence without full contextual intellectual preparation will not be able to be certain of their evaluation; they are not competent to review it ("review" as in the expression "peer review"). On the other hand, yesterday I started exploring the material of a medical doctor who publi…

Sorry, critical mistyping as I looked for the best formulation:

«it will be very clear that the censorship will [/not/] help approaching truth».

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#236
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes about 10 seconds to create a new Reddit account so it's the moderators who'd be fighting the uphill, impossible battle to keep someone banned.

Reddit provides tooling to identify people on new accounts that have been banned in the past. I think you'd need to couple this with a VPN

Not true. Only admins can see alt accounts(based on IP address), and they never reveal alt accounts of others to even mods.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#238
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as an anecdote, I used to moderate one of the more popular political subreddits. It was a difficult task and burnout on the team was common. I can say that the mod team was not just shills for a particular party (unless they were undercover even to me). The entire mod team, even to this day, is there for altruistic reasons - we felt we were doing a service to our fellow Americans by fostering healthy political d…

> unless they were undercover even to me Yes I would expect undercovers to be undercover to other mods. Like imgaine some random guy starts some subreddit adds a few friends as moderators right. Then it blows up, so some influence group decides they need to get in on it. They would certainly not be open about their strategy of gradual take over.

This literally has happened to multiple subreddits too, it's not like this tactic hasn't been effective in the past. /r/punchablefaces comes to mind.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#239

(In)famously, the account widely believed to belong to Ghislaine Maxwell is a moderator of several major subs: https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill (moderator of r/worldnews, r/environment, r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, r/cyberlaws, r/enviroaction and r/greed)

Interesting. They supposedly shared content previously that indicated they were not a woman:

https://www.reddit.com/r/redditoroftheday/comments/bdl3o/max...

Maybe, maybe not. What is the proof of the connection? Just the time of disappearance and the username? That is pretty circumstantial, but maybe. Not conclusive though.

EDIT: This article seems to have more evidence and is at least interesting: https://www.inputmag.com/culture/is-ghislaine-maxwell-secret... I think there is definitely a chance it is her. Strange.

Re: Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

#240

Funnily enough, I was shadowbanned from the only community in reddit that I was active and cared about (/r/firefox) after respectfully complaining about the redesign in 2 different posts. Maybe there's a threshold of how many times we're allowed to complain over there? This was my first shadowban and teached me: a) It's not worth to invest time in these communities. b) To be shadow-banned is extremely insulting, espe…

Moderators can't shadowban you, only admins, and you can't be shadowbanned from just one subreddit as far as I know.
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