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Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

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Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#31

Post by scrollaway »

SixSigma wrote: post #19
meritt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they aren't their own little community. They actively target, brigade (large group upvoting/downvoting), and intentionally troll other communities with their only goal being to fuck with people and overwhelmingly push their rhetoric. Reddit strives to have a positive community and when you let the trolls run the system, you end up with an utter cesspool (e.g. https://voat.co/ ), and that kills your com…

> They actively target, brigade (large group upvoting/downvoting), and intentionally troll other communities with their only goal being to fuck with people and overwhelmingly push their rhetoric. [citation needed] I'm there every day and I don't know about that, quite the opposite. We don't link outside the sub, heck we are not even allowed to mention /r/politics in post titles under threat from Reddit admins. It is…

What's there? For the citation, ask any mod of a decently large non-pro-altright subreddit. I've personally witnessed it in several gaming subreddit (/r/hearthstone, /r/overwatch) but the mods pretty quickly crack down on it.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#32

Post by meritt »

michaelvoz wrote: post #26
meritt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have, overwhelmingly. The problem is it's an anonymous platform and bans are irrelevant for most internet users today. This was all nicely summarized by John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in 2004.

Was not familiar with the theory - I disagree with it. This site is a wonderful example of the opposite. My experience with reddit (6+ year old account, at this point) is that, just like in life, most people on reddit are fine. The illusion of toxicity comes from a large vocal minority.

HN isn't really. Take any thread which talks politics and you'll notice it gets flagged, removed very quickly. HN works because it's heavily moderated. It's the equivalent of "No politics discussion!" instilled by many American families over this Thanksgiving.

Even with the tech topics: Try talking about the positives of PHP and you'll also see this community has a lot of hostility beneath the surface.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#33

Post by kristianov »

watty wrote: post #22

Calling people you disagree with "trolls" and dismissing censoring as just "trolling" is a poor attempt at an apology. And that's coming from someone who hates /r/the_donald.

Calling part of their user base trolls is just dehumanization, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of fair treatment.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#35

Post by yuhong »

boomzilla wrote: post #12
minimaxir wrote: post #7

Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao made a good comment on the controversy: https://reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_e...

That's very childish and lame for Steve Huffman to say "Ellen wasn't the first Reddit engineer, so she probably lacked the expertise to do it, and even if she did, she was smart enough to not". I think this guy needs to grow up.

This is a good time to mention the https://archive.is/9RFIp fiasco (I think there is another example just after she left Reddit). I am thinking of Yishan-style CEOs seriously now, including in public companies too. As another example, here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#36

Post by unlikelymordant »

watty wrote: post #22

Calling people you disagree with "trolls" and dismissing censoring as just "trolling" is a poor attempt at an apology. And that's coming from someone who hates /r/the_donald.

There were a lot of comments whos only content was "fuck u/spez". I saw quite a few and I don't subscribe to the donald. This is obviously not constructive commenting, its just plain abuse. If you insult the donald mods you'll be instantly banned (from the subreddit), so it's not like the subreddit should find banning users for abuse strange.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#37

Post by walrus01 »

reddit does not owe alt-right assholes a zero-dollar platform to have a free forum.

If alt right people want to run their own web forum they are more than welcome to find sufficient technical clue to rent a $250/mo dedicated server and install some http/https based forum software on it.

people cry "censorship", but it's a private company, and if you're paying $0 they don't owe you anything. Set up your own system if you don't like what their management is doing. You'd think that ultra right wingers, of all people, would appreciate the irony of depending on somebody else's free forum because they're too lazy, incompetent or feckless to do it themselves.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#38

Post by 8gbFg4MF8QzsuZa »

Nothing new and nobody should be surprised. Over 5 years ago I moderated a community that had extensive problems with a subset of very problematic users. This lead to real world problems and ultimately intervention from local law enforcement. It was during this time that I learned the admin team dealt with these times of users by working, not dealing, with them. It became evident that [a]dmins had been tipping off these users, keeping them one step ahead. As these admins were called out they would fall silent and the cycle would begin again.

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#39

Post by [deleted] »

SixSigma wrote: post #19
meritt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is they aren't their own little community. They actively target, brigade (large group upvoting/downvoting), and intentionally troll other communities with their only goal being to fuck with people and overwhelmingly push their rhetoric. Reddit strives to have a positive community and when you let the trolls run the system, you end up with an utter cesspool (e.g. https://voat.co/ ), and that kills your com…

> They actively target, brigade (large group upvoting/downvoting), and intentionally troll other communities with their only goal being to fuck with people and overwhelmingly push their rhetoric. [citation needed] I'm there every day and I don't know about that, quite the opposite. We don't link outside the sub, heck we are not even allowed to mention /r/politics in post titles under threat from Reddit admins. It is…

[deleted]

Re: Reddit cracks down on abuse as CEO apologizes for trolling the trolls

#40

Post by freehunter »

volak wrote: post #20

I don't really want to comment - but I'd just say to anyone (including the writer of this article) to imagine someone artificially limiting the impact of your favorite platform of free expression. Hell just turn the mental corner and consider your arguments FOR net neutrality. Or try to recall your disappointment every time you read about some site being banned in China or Iran. To China and Iran - facebook is a "dis…

It's more along the lines of fixing a bug in the system. It's not about flushing out an ideology like TD wants you to think. They're exploiting Reddits code to have more weight than similarly sized communities. Reddit is balancing that.

It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with these guys actively exploiting the voting system.

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