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A little bit of backstory from r/outoftheloop on this issue : To explain what's happened to anyone not wanting to dig through the threads, Spez, the CEO of Red
by vvdcect 10y ago
A little bit of backstory from r/outoftheloop on this issue :
To explain what's happened to anyone not wanting to dig through the threads, Spez, the CEO of Reddit, has admitted to editing some comments on The_Donald. Specifically, he changed mentions of his name in insults to the usernames of The_Donald moderators. According to his comment, he did this for about an hour before stopping. His comment states that he was very stressed over dealing with the removal of r/pizzagate and being called a pedophile for it, resulting in him going out of line and making edits to comments. He also says that he won't do it again, and that the community management team is angry with him.
The Reddit admins have had a strained relationship with the moderators and users of The_Donald, for multiple reasons. For a lot of users there, this validates some beliefs about the admin's treatment towards them, specifically that they make an active effort to censor their content. Other users on the site feel like this sets a dangerous precedent, as it demonstrates the admins can and have edited comments without disclosure. Further users feel like, while Spez made a mistake, he was unfairly treated and harassed by TheDonald and his response was an understandable outburst.
Now, people around the site are wondering what the repercussions of this will be. Some question if Spez will be removed from his position over this. Some wonder if the admins will come forward and admit they've edited comments in the past. Others wonder if a significant population from The_Donald will migrate to Voat, a Reddit alternative.
- Fluid_Mechanics 10y agoI genuinely don't understand why that subreddit hasn't been suspended.
- CmdrSprinkles 10y agoThe same reason youtube and twitch (and youtubers and streamers) seem to have so much difficulty with moderating chat Yes, getting rid of the hate and the stupid is something the owners of the site (and the content creators) want. It gives them a horrible reputation (and can impact business, as Twitter discovered). But that is still their userbase, and getting rid of the userbase drastically decreases their value. So it is a balancing act. And the trump subreddit would be a disaster to remove as everyone would REALLY get on them for being "too political"
- Mithaldu 10y agoNot only that, usually hate and stupid is born by different people, where the stupid ones are gullible and numerous but earnest, and the hateful ones are trolls pushing the stupid ones for their own purposes; and punishing one groups effectively is hard without affecting the other unduly.
- ganeshkrishnan 10y agoIsn't that life in general?
- snowwrestler 10y ago> But that is still their userbase, and getting rid of the userbase drastically decreases their value. Only if they wait so long to clean house that their user base consists mostly of the folks who give them a horrible reputation. The most valuable online communities are those that aggressively clean house along the way. Losing a small amount of jerks is more than made up for by the non-jerk users who feel comfortable enough to join and stay. That's why HN has grown as fast as it has. That's why the advice for normal people interested in Reddit is "unsubscribe from the defaults and find niche subreddits." Because the niche subreddits moderate aggressively. That's why web forums beat Usenet in the first place.
- Thimothy 10y agoI'd argue that, while most of reddit value is in the niche and heavily moderated subreddits, it's not where most of the eyeballs (revenue) is. If they start moderating heavily, deleting the jerk subredits, they are risking the ire of most of most their user base. I bet they checked it a long time ago: How many of the users that hang out or lurk in those "jerk" subredits also participate in more civil subs? If those people where in their own jerky Venn circle with little superposition with the rest of reddit, I think they would have deleted those subs by now.
- CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
- lujim 10y agoThere are also several subs that I don't care for. We could get everyone to help put a list together and remove everything except for r/oddlysatisfying Reddit tolerates subs that promote all out illegal behavior, so suspending the_donald for being obnoxious would be a bad move. If you have hate speech or whatever you handle that by banning the user not the sub.
- dominotw 10y agoslippery slope.
- adamors 10y agoHe also edited the comments in a way that they didn't seem edited. Reddit adds the "Edited" message after a 5 minute old comment is edited by anybody.
- nexxer 10y agoI'm waiting to see who will first set up a system that stores all of reddit's posts and then checks them every X minutes/days for silent edits while posting a reply to it letting everyone know, or provides an API to check an individual post.
- MagnumOpus 10y agoThat already exists - there are plenty of "undelete" sites spidering and archiving comments on Reddit as soon as they are made.
- samstave 10y agoand did they catch this?
- JonnieCache 10y agoPosting "fuck /u/spez" has become something of a meme, and every time you write out someone's username like that, they get a PM. This, combined with the accusations of paedophilia that the lunatics at /r/pizzagate were making, understandably seem to have caused him to snap.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- russelldc 10y agoAccording to a leaked Reddit moderators Slack chat right after his editing spree, he turned off PMs for mentions a long time ago.
- tenpies 10y agoThis is the leaked Slack for anyone interested: http://archive.is/ZmULb http://archive.is/ZmULb
- tibiapejagala 10y agoThanks. And I thought that I work in an unprofessional company on a useless project. I feel a lot better now. This reads like a chatlog from minecraft server for teenagers.
- meowface 10y agoTo be fair, this Slack chat isn't reddit's internal company chat. This is a group with default sub-reddit moderators (random volunteers not associated with reddit the company) and a few reddit admins. But yes, it's pretty awful and highly unprofessional. spez's comments in the chat are unprofessional and concerning as well.
- syshum 10y agoif only there was a way to turn of notifications when a person says your name.... Ohh wait... there is. http://imgur.com/a/wXsWU http://imgur.com/a/wXsWU
- raverbashing 10y ago> Others wonder if a significant population from The_Donald will migrate to Voat, a Reddit alternative. Oh let them please do that. Rats belong in the sewer And I have no qualms about what Spez has done. Internet trolls deserve it.
- rfrank 10y agoIs administrators editing users' posts as a norm of the internet something you would be comfortable with? Are spez's actions acceptable in a vacuum, or should they be a norm of internet moderation in your eyes?
- taurath 10y agoWhen did it become a norm?
- rfrank 10y agoThat has literally nothing to do with the question. Considering whether an action is acceptable only in an instance, or universally, is an extremely basic way of determining if it is morally correct. Do you think spez's actions can or should be made a norm?
- Pyxl101 10y agoKant called this the categorical imperative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative - a philosophical statement about morality: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."
- rfrank 10y agoThank you. That's exactly what I was thinking of, it's just late haha.
- raverbashing 10y ago
- joshontheweb 10y agoHe out trolled the trolls then fixed it and fessed up. No big deal. Pretty funny in fact.
- neximo64 10y agoThere's a bit of cognitive dissonance in this view, i don't think its funny from the point of view of the commenter. Imagine that happened if the political viewpoint of the commenter aligned with something you were not against? Or what if there are edits that Spez isn't mentioning that are more intrusive than what he's admitted to? A commenters own text isn't his own.. It's a slippery slope.
- DSMan195276 10y agoI understand your point, but at the same time I don't feel like anybody thought they didn't have the capability to do such a thing. If you have control of the site and control of the data, it's not a stretch to imagine they can edit anything they want. I'll be honest and say that if I was actually worried about such a thing happening, I'd go somewhere else. The bottom line is that Reddit doesn't exist to serve /r/the_donald - and that's not a shot at /r/the_donald, just that clearly it's priorities and Reddit's priorities are fairly different. If I was involved with something that I thought the admins weren't ok with, then I would take it somewhere else because I'd be well aware it's the admin's site to mess with in anyway they please. Even if they 'promise' not to do anything, there's no guarantee. Other sites that align more with their views could give them much better guarantees of that sort. I'm in agreement with you though, to a point - I think it was a horrible move on Spez's part and I don't really find it funny. But while I (along with probably everybody else) didn't personally think something like this would happen, I didn't ever hold the opinion that it couldn't happen, just that the admins were smart enough not to do something like this, and that the admins had no reason to bother with my posts (And none of my posts are really that important anyway). If I had reason to suspect that the admins didn't like my stuff being there and was concerned about it, I'd go somewhere else. It's no different then why I wouldn't store sensitive information only on Google Drive - Google has full control over it and could take it off on a whim if they really wanted.
- my_ghola 10y ago> Now, people around the site are wondering what the repercussions of this will be. They should make it harder for anyone other than the user to edit their comments. Maybe sign the messages and store the signature so a flag shows up if the signature doesn't match. Or users themselves could sign their messages and put the signature as part of the message. Is there an add-on for this?
- akerro 10y agovoat is really good, but they lack API :<
- randomname2 10y agoA "strained" relationship is putting it lightly. They were dealing with actual harrassment and are now finally fed up, and planning to deal with the subreddit in a more final way: http://archive.is/ZmULb http://archive.is/ZmULb Quarantining it altogether is under consideration, but as mentioned in the link above, this will need further planning.
- toss1941 10y agoDidn't follow this whole saga but I know before Nov 8 the Donald's subreddit felt quite harassed by the mods. Allegedly they first kept changing the front page algo's just to keep the_donald off of there, then they disabled voting at times for the_donald. The_Donald was so big they could push any thread they wanted to onto the front page. Reddit has never seen such a thing I think. The thing is, it's no secret that the political views of the_donald don't match the mods. During the last year and especially the last 6 months, it was widely known that /r/politics was basically a front for CTR. Pro-Trump posts and even Pro-Bernie to some extent were like a dog who speaks, very rare. Personally I think that the mods tried to counter balance the_donald by making sure that /r/politics was as biased in favor of Hillary as they could. My guess is, this was the last election cycle where Reddit matters at all for Republicans because it's clear the platform doesn't like free-speech for the sake of free-speech.
- basch 10y agomods are non reddit employees who volunteer to run subreddits. admins are employees who work on the platform. mods have no power to edit the algo.