I've seen a lot of shady moderation on reddit and it's one reason I quit using it. There is the obvious brigading, mods on powertrips and but also massive probably paid astro turfing campaigns. Reddit has gone downhill substantially in the last five years. HN is not immune either, but at least we dont' have a 'mods on powertrips' problem, in fact the opposite.
A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
661–670 of 996 posts
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#662The discussion at https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/ is not going well for Mr. Novati. Edit: oops, that was the wrong link! I meant to link to the reddit post discussing that article: https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1o1guxj/tho... I think one of the most telling facts is that pro-Novati poster u/Ok-Donuts has posted numerous comments that are clearly a violation of all norms…
Were there replies to the comment you linked? Because I don't see any now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1o1guxj/tho...
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#663I'm Michael and this was about me. This person never reached out for comment and is missing half the story. I'm happy to fill people in on the rest if this person or someone else wants to hear. I agree with one or two of the characterizations but the majority I don't and there is a lot more to this story than it seems... RE: INDUSTRY. Rithm School (their main competitor) shut down. Hack Reactor is down to single digi…
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#664Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keeping the country in one piece is exactly why Trump won, the alternative was falling off the cliff.
So, how is it working out for you so far? I find it hard to believe that otherwise intelligent beings can both make claims like this and at the same time observe reality. The USA has in all of its history since the civil war not been this divided. And it is falling off a cliff as we speak.
Widescale race riots, Vietnam war protests, a President and Presidential candidate assassinated etc. That said a few cms or so difference and that bullet takes out Trump.
Certainly divided right now just genuinely not sure if it's quite at that level or not.
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moderation on Reddit has been questionable for a long time and its killing the site. To give some examples: - /r/energy used to ban everyone in favour of nuclear energy - If you post on /r/conservative you can expect to receive a bunch of bans from unrelated (popular) subs. Doesn't matter what you posted, being associated with that subs "taints" your account enough for some moderators. - /r/UnitedKingdom banned me fo…
You missed maybe the biggest one, /r/bitcoin, which around 2015 started banning anyone who wanted Bitcoin to actually follow the original design and continue scaling up on-chain transactions. The moderator, some anonymous student (possibly named Michael Marquardt), literally declared anyone who wanted Bitcoin to be used for regular transactions offtopic and banned them on a massive scale. When explaining his actions…
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like a large part of the problem is how important a subreddit name is to popularity. If a subreddit has a good obvious name it is going to collect members and activity even if the mods are awful. Competing subreddits will struggle to attract new users as they need some different less-obvious name. I wonder if this could be approached in a way that new subreddits didn't have this disadvantage so that they co…
That's an interesting idea! Perhaps intentionally using uuids in the URL instead of slugs and improving the recommendation/search algo (e.g take into account the average post length or cited sources in the ranking) would solve this issue. Main challenge might still be that its very hard to move an existing user base if the moderator(s) blocks all posts about other communities. Perhaps a more democratic moderation sys…
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
do you think maybe they could have kept it up if they didn't layoff 80% of their staff because of your modding? reddit is essentially google results at this point, don't act coy.
That's not correct. Their closest competitor entirely shut down for example, and the industry is the main factor responsible for their decline. They laid off their Future Code (a completely funded program by the city of NY) overnight with no warning - some of the most dedicated staff.
* Industry wide layoffs are happening.
* This company had a layoff.
* This company did not tell their workers they were being laid off in advance.
But that's not how you phrased it. You dismissed concerns about your biases by saying there are industry wide layoffs, and then in the exact next sentence castigated codesmith for having a layoff. Those statements don't align, that everyone is having layoffs and it's no big deal, and codesmith is having layoffs and it's a big deal.
Futher you add charged language about no notice, which is perfectly standard, and an assertion you can't possibly know, about codesmith having "the most dedicated staff". That's just not something you have context to state and its only purpose is to inflame and paint the worst possible picture.
In the words of Ron Swanson: Son, people can see you
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keeping the country in one piece is exactly why Trump won, the alternative was falling off the cliff.
So, how is it working out for you so far? I find it hard to believe that otherwise intelligent beings can both make claims like this and at the same time observe reality. The USA has in all of its history since the civil war not been this divided. And it is falling off a cliff as we speak.
There is a lot of hot talk, a lot of insular bubbles working themselves into online frenzies, but it is, objectively, a boring, passive time out on the street. No, there is no cliff.
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can replicate by googling "sverken.se" But also: what google shows here is what's being indexed on your website. It shows "porn and prostitution" because at one point that's what your website served. Was sverken.se ever in the hand of shady domain parking services that advertised porn services? Strangely enough, the Internet Archive only saved the safe-for-work version (records start in Jan 2025, so the misdeed mus…
My website never served any of that. You got to stop using this very well known techniques by associating further names (knowing perfectly that HN comments get indexed very fast). The domain in question Sverken.se was always used for science or respectable business. Please refrain mentioning otherwise as I repeat, at any point my company website did such thing. Whoever keep associating them further is doing so by mal…
Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
#670Earlier quoted context omitted.
do you think maybe they could have kept it up if they didn't layoff 80% of their staff because of your modding? reddit is essentially google results at this point, don't act coy.
That's not correct. Their closest competitor entirely shut down for example, and the industry is the main factor responsible for their decline. They laid off their Future Code (a completely funded program by the city of NY) overnight with no warning - some of the most dedicated staff.