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A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

larslofgren.com

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Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#831

Post by johnnyanmac »

neilv wrote: post #84

I don't know about this particular case, but, generally... bad actor subreddit moderators have been an occasional thing for well over a decade. And it's also been widely known for that long that Reddit is an influential venue in which to take over a corner -- for marketing or propaganda. What's an equal concern to me is how insufficiently resilient Reddit collectively appears to be, in face of this. A bad actor mod o…

>What's an equal concern to me is how insufficiently resilient Reddit collectively appears to be, in face of this.

it's a three-fold issue here.

1. Admins really don't care about moderator behavior. As long as you aren't breaking reddit you'll be ignored. Events like r/wow going private is one of the few times they directly intervene.

2. Moderator rankings is seniority first. Without admin intervention, you can have a "head moderator" who only really acts once a month and they will have the final say on anything in that sub.

3. Network effects. Like anything else the soluion of "start your own subreddit" is a doomed task unless the sub is very new. People will pool around the sub with the most subscribers. So avoiding the bad mod is difficult.

These are issues I was hoping in the '10's they'd attempt to address. But not much has changed to addreess this. At best the rule of only moderating 5 "high-traffic" subs may help the most extreme cases, but I'm not confident.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#832

Post by greenshackle »

trilogic wrote: post #823
greenshackle wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not making much sense. Anyone googling the domain and following the link can plainly see there is adult content being served from there. No amount of insisting that it doesn't is gonna help you. If you own the domain, it looks like your site was hacked or your domain hijacked. That is the problem you need to deal with.

Why is it so hard to understand... The domain and the website is not ours anymore, we let it go June 2025. Someone else bought it and is using it with malicious intentions to discredit and damage us. The website offers illegal services but in the description is talking about our company. Is hiding behind Cloud Flare with HQ in San Francisco. Is not anymore in our hands, now the authorities are investigating it.

It's hard to understand because the way you write is like jumbled stream-of-consciousness, you did not lay out the facts clearly from the start.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#833

Post by bawolff »

vkou wrote: post #790
bawolff wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You left out the fact that you can’t post to /r/conservative until the moderators there audit your post history and perform an interview with you to confirm your ideology matches theirs. > If someone does pass the test they’re allowed to comment. If they make a comment that disagrees with the message the moderators want to push, their commenting privilege is revoked. Be that as it may, i dont see how the solution t…

Parent poster isn't saying that r/conservative should be banned for that behavior. Since that sub's arbitrary ban behavior is allowed, other subs banning people for similarly arbitrary reasons (like people who have been vetted by its mod circle into being allowed to post there) should be permitted.

They say "It’s not a real subreddit". I think its reasonable to conclude that they at the very least disapprove of that behaviour

To more precisely respond: "A eye for an eye leaves the world blind"

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#834

Post by johnnyanmac »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #704
Aurornis wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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. You left out the fact that you can’t post to /r/conservative until the moderators there audit your post history and perform an interview with you to confirm your ideology matches theirs. If someone…

Lets go down to /r/conservative and throw rocks at them for being dumb was a pretty popular activity for people. For anyone who has been on reddit for any length of time, it should be abundantly obvious why the sub needs extremely heavy moderation. That sub is like having an LGBTQ tent at a redneck festival.

There's heavy moderation, and then there's enforcing propaganda. If you really want to look there during controversial issues, you'll see even long time posters get comments removed when it goes against whatever agenda they want to push. That's no longer a matter of trying to facilitate unpopular discussion.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#835

Post by johnnyanmac »

LexiMax wrote: post #781
Aurornis wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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. You left out the fact that you can’t post to /r/conservative until the moderators there audit your post history and perform an interview with you to confirm your ideology matches theirs. If someone…

> They run it like a propaganda outlet, only allow approved thought from approved commenters, and ban anyone who steps out of line with the mods. When almost any community is particular about who it lets in and who it doesn't let in, it can be seen as a reasonable moderator precaution. Heck, some of the very best social spaces I'm a part of are only accessible by knowing people who know people. But Reddit at it's cor…

>there's nothing stopping an outside mob from trying to control a narrative by mass voting in a way that mods have little to no control over.

if it's really persistent they can't. Votes are one of the few mechanisms mods have no control over in their sub.

But in general, mods can remove any post they don't like, even if it gets voted against their wishes, as well as ban any users posting such posts. Do that for a few days and that usually wins out.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#836

Post by watwut »

diogocp wrote: post #476
throw-10-8 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me again how the American slaves were freed?

Your best example of a "historically efficient way to solve political problems" is a 4 year civil war that killed more than half a million people and, after all that, still left African Americans as second-class citizens for a century after? I wonder what an inefficient way would look like.

The amount of violence to keep the slavery running was huge. You cant pretend that all that violence does not count. That being said, war was more about south wanting war/leave the union, because the north did not wanted to expand the slavery to new territories. That threated the south.

It is not like north would march in there to stop the slavery. There was an anti slavery army - John Brown with his, like, 20 or so people attacking south.

African Americans as second class citizens were in fact much better off then them being slaves.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#837

Post by trilogic »

greenshackle wrote: post #832
trilogic wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so hard to understand... The domain and the website is not ours anymore, we let it go June 2025. Someone else bought it and is using it with malicious intentions to discredit and damage us. The website offers illegal services but in the description is talking about our company. Is hiding behind Cloud Flare with HQ in San Francisco. Is not anymore in our hands, now the authorities are investigating it.

It's hard to understand because the way you write is like jumbled stream-of-consciousness, you did not lay out the facts clearly from the start.

> like jumbled stream-of-consciousness LOL, that was I good one, I agree :)

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#838

Post by johnnyanmac »

docmars wrote: post #654
Aurornis wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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. You left out the fact that you can’t post to /r/conservative until the moderators there audit your post history and perform an interview with you to confirm your ideology matches theirs. If someone…

Could it be that sharing conservative ideas is against Reddit's community guidelines? There are other subreddits with primarily right or moderate leaning communities and comments in those get deleted all the time with moderator messages saying they risk the entire subreddit getting taken down by Reddit simply for sharing basic conservative views.

>Could it be that sharing conservative ideas is against Reddit's community guidelines?

Sharing conservative ideas is not against reddit's community guidelines. the sitewide guidelines are pretty simple, actually:

https://redditinc.com/policies/reddit-rules

to summarize:

1. don't harrass people on or off-site, nor promote hate

2. no spam or content manipulation

3. no doxxing nor non-consential sexual material

4. no CSAM or CSAM-adjacent material

5. don't impoersonae others

6. label NSFW content

7. no illegal content

8. don't break reddit on purpose

other conservative subs have historically had issues with rules #2 and #8, so I'm sure Reddit is more sensitive to that. In addition, current conservative leaning subs do tend to have more issues with rule 1, even to this day. I imagine what you are seeing are content being pre-emptively removed to prevent potential harassment that can get the sub banned.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#839

Post by shoobiedoo »

asveikau wrote: post #766
shoobiedoo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was banned from /r/sourdough for asking a question about rye flour, because someone dug into my post history and saw that I had posted a few times on the Catholicism subreddit. Someone's first instinct when reading a completely benign, neutral question was to see if I was on this or that "team".

I have a lot of Catholic family, is there some connection between Catholicism and sourdough that I'm unaware of? As someone whose family comes from the more left wing Catholic culture, which is a thing, I sometimes am disappointed when Catholics are thoughtlessly lumped into right wing culture war topics. It feels like this assumption is particularly common in the US vs. other places.

I don't think there's any connection... I was still a rabid atheist when I started making sourdough.

Re: A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator

#840

Post by johnnyanmac »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #722
abustamam wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what views? I'm trying to understand if Reddit is just ban happy against conservatives or if basic conservative views are really against reddits TOS

Trans related topics are expressly against TOC and enforced unless a subreddit is ruthless in removing any comments that aren't expressly positive and affirming. There is no room for nuance on this topic. Just giving an example.

to be precise:

>Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.

is against TOC. You can talk about trans issues and offer reservations. You cannot say "trans people are a mental illness" or "trans are not people". That is clearly promoting hate and has nothing of substance to discuss.

For a more explicit and current example, you can say "I don't think female-affirming trans athletes should be allowed to compete in female oriented divisions of sport. Their testosterone output makes for an unfair advantadge".

That might STILL be removed, not because that comment breaks the rules, but because reddit seems to have a serious problem on the issue and it always devolves to "we need to take men out of women's sports" and then some long chain of people denying trans people of their identity. That's promoting hate. Especially since that is not too far off from what the U.S. president argues.

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