Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#61

Post by operatingthetan » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #59

operatingthetan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're belaboring the point because whether it's trust or a contractual agreement to run the site a certain way the result is the same. Either way works for my argument which was that the relationship is the difference from reddit's way. I don't care how the relationship is mediated.

About the most interesting thing you can say about YC's "vested interest" is that they have a vested interest in having HN continue to be moderated at Dan's total discretion. That interest would change, obviously, if Dan was raptured. But discussing the possibility of Dan's rapturing is not interesting, curious, or productive: we're not talking about the failure modes of moderation when moderators are incapacitated,…

[flagged]

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#62

Post by knolan » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

nemothekid wrote: post #42

knolan wrote: post #20

Interestingly enough there’s been some mod drama over on /r/AskScienceFiction today. This is a sub where people ask questions and get in universe responses. It’s very nerdy and can be fun. It also can attract a certain type of poster who can be lacking in say, self awareness and take it too seriously. The new Harry Potter game is generating a lot of posts and a particular mod who has personal reasons to dislike JK Ro…

> a particular mod who has personal reasons to dislike JK Rowling I think it's disingenuous to paint what are likely political reasons as just personal quibbles.

If I painted it as a political agenda someone else would complain. They are personally affected because they are trans. That seemed the most honest way to phrase it.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#63

Post by Sunspark » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #55

Sunspark wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so sure that some of the mods don't work for Reddit. Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the millions of subscribers, and they seem to be able to get their way instantly with anything they want. Pretty lucky of Reddit to have people who can mod multiple huge subs for years for "free". Not only that, but Reddit wants to do a public IPO to raise more money. So let's see how that's going t…

People are entitled to run their own private sites in ways that restrict you from sharing your opinions that are not the same as theirs. The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent…

Sorry, but if you have control over 5, 10, 20+ million subscribers, it's not your own private site. You're either a paid employee or you're a freeloader riding on someone's carriage, in which case they should be paying Reddit for allowing them a platform and bandwidth in which they can shape and control the narrative by controlling what speech is allowed.

It goes beyond just controlling the speech or opinions of people who disagree with you such as I am doing here, there is also money involved such as in controlling which links get published. Those links drive traffic to specific sites which host ads. Surely you do not believe that all the links to specific sites over and over is simply because they are "fast to publish" or something do you?

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#64

Post by jldugger » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

Sunspark wrote: post #60

mike_d wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sorry, but no. Hogwart's Legacy the game is simply part of the franchise. It does not promote any sort of political speech. People attacking it are attacking it because they have an issue with the person, not the franchise in which JKR doesn't actually exist. My perception of JKR is that she was simply a person with a personal opinion, and then it became a holy war against her because certain individuals became enrag…

> It does not promote any sort of political speech.

I mean, the analysis of Harry Potter's universe goes beyond trans identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#65

Post by tptacek » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:33 PM UTC

Sunspark wrote: post #63

tptacek wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are entitled to run their own private sites in ways that restrict you from sharing your opinions that are not the same as theirs. The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent…

Sorry, but if you have control over 5, 10, 20+ million subscribers, it's not your own private site. You're either a paid employee or you're a freeloader riding on someone's carriage, in which case they should be paying Reddit for allowing them a platform and bandwidth in which they can shape and control the narrative by controlling what speech is allowed. It goes beyond just controlling the speech or opinions of peop…

No, that's not a thing, we don't nationalize websites because they become popular.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#66

Post by eggbrain » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

faeriechangling wrote: post #54

eggbrain wrote: post #27

Would it be potentially viable to make moderators more like filterers (e.g. like filter lists in Ublock Origin)? You could "subscribe" to a moderator if you like the way they filter content, and if you "unsubscribed" from all moderators you'd get as much of an "unfiltered" view as possible. Bad moderators, over time, would get less and less subscriptions to their filtering of content, and would have to adapt, or be f…

Reddit uses the actual users as the main filtering mechanism (upvotes/downvotes, spam button, report button) and this most of the time works better for most communities. I think it's very questionable if giving moderators the power to soft-censor is a good idea, because it will cause moderators to censor posts they probably wouldn't have censored before, and moderator influence is inherently less democratic than user…

> "...Reddit uses the actual users as the main filtering mechanism (upvotes/downvotes, spam button, report button) and this most of the time works better for most communities."

I might be alone in this, but for me upvotes/downvotes/reports have become increasingly less useful as Reddit has gotten larger and larger. It's great up until a point in communities (during which time a user-base acts in good faith), and then at some point a report becomes a "mega-dislike", people click "spam" for links that are doing "better" than what they submitted, etc etc.

I've tried to stick to smaller communities to combat this, but they also can suffer from things like "drive-by" brigades from larger communities (e.g. when a post unexpectedly reaches /r/all).

> "...Reddit Enhancement Suite has long implemented various filtering mechanisms for users though so users DO have some capability to censor things themselves if they have the know-how, but it's not like these mechanisms are built into say the official reddit app which is the main way reddit is overwhelmingly used."

RES is indeed great -- although like you said it's a pity it isn't built into the site natively.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#67

Post by tough » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #34

operatingthetan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No, it's run by a few humans. Dang is employed by HN. >That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent. You're disagreeing and then saying something that isn't appreciably different.

Dang might be well-intended kind dictator, but he’s no machine. He’s just a very thoughtful and kind person with human limits and capacities.

DanGPT won't have those limitations

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#68

Post by chungy » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

knolan wrote: post #62

nemothekid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a particular mod who has personal reasons to dislike JK Rowling I think it's disingenuous to paint what are likely political reasons as just personal quibbles.

If I painted it as a political agenda someone else would complain. They are personally affected because they are trans. That seemed the most honest way to phrase it.

It's still political. It's extremely unlikely the mod in question and JK Rowling have ever met, which makes it impossible to be personal.

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#69

Post by goatlover » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

tough wrote: post #67

numpad0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang might be well-intended kind dictator, but he’s no machine. He’s just a very thoughtful and kind person with human limits and capacities.

DanGPT won't have those limitations

What about when DanGPT hallucinates a violation?

Re: Reddit mods and scaling problems in social control

#70

Post by riffic » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #38

operatingthetan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For people who are saying "thankfully HN is different!", it really isn't. Yes it is. HN's moderation is run by HN. The rules are applied consistently because there are are no third party mods or rules. People know what to expect and that builds community better. You don't have to wonder if some edgelord mod is going to get home from school and delete your post based on their mood.

Most importantly: HN is moderated by payed moderators, which are hired and selected to do a good job here. They are still humans and fallible, obviously, but it's a far cry from "random dude that started a community in his free time".

paid

there's a great reddit bot that explains that "payed" is a sort of nautical term.