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I would hardly call this an apology. Also kind-of bold of him to use this as a platform to implement new abusive rules. I don't like the subreddit, but selectiv

I would hardly call this an apology. Also kind-of bold of him to use this as a platform to implement new abusive rules. I don't like the subreddit, but selective enforcement and targeting a single community is very toxic to what little trust I had left in the reddit admins.

meritt 10y ago
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/ https://voat.co/), and that kills your company's value. Reddit (nor Twitter) is under no obligation to be a platform for free speech, and it's completely within their right to dictate who gets to participate and what they're allowed to discuss.
- michaelvoz 10y ago
  If that is true, then they should present evidence of such action and ban it! Applying rules with extremely heavy discrimination is never the way to manage a community.
  - meritt 10y ago
    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.
    - michaelvoz 10y ago
      Pardon, I should have been clearer - ban the subreddit.
      - ajkjk 10y ago
        I think they wish they could but are avoiding doing that if they can due to the (much more) immense backlash that would ensue. Which seems, well, reasonable to me.
    - michaelvoz 10y ago
      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.
      - meritt 10y ago
        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.
      - freehunter 10y ago
        HN has made me leave several times for being so god damned ridiculous. We're not special. Wander into any Apple, Google, or Microsoft thread and watch the idiocy. Or anything to do with poliics (not even US politics, I've seen so many flame wars about countries I didn't even know existed).
  - icanhackit 10y ago
    > they should present evidence of such action and ban it! How would they do that adequately without a public display of user activity? > Applying rules with extremely heavy discrimination is never the way to manage a community. It's less than ideal but when the targeted group seeks to ultimately control or destroy your platform then what you have is a cancer that will spread unless it's removed.
- SixSigma 10y ago
  > 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 now know as /r/[redacted] for that reason. EDIT: downvotes are not citations
  - meritt 10y ago
    http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294 http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294 has a decent summary of the problems over the past few months. > Centipede Central is the chat Reddit is referring to—a chat room within the Slack-like Discord program ... its users have encouraged the harassment of other moderators, artificially inflated the vote count on posts, rigged off-Reddit polls, and posted John Podesta’s personal Netflix login information for the chat’s 1000+ members to use at will.
    - SixSigma 10y ago
      There are 300k+ subscribers to T_D I am one of those who have never even heard of that chat room, nor visited. And I am on T_D all day long every day since February. We have posts with 7k+ points and 56% upvoted. https://i.redditmedia.com/RbqqP0Cpfs-o-B1DVWIwIqtUU8-dtxUahf_uosOAKB0.png?w=848&s=d639846d2be5372531367f9a5e8073aa https://i.redditmedia.com/RbqqP0Cpfs-o-B1DVWIwIqtUU8-dtxUahf... If anyone is under attack, it is us. Even the famous Ellen Pao thinks Spez made a huge mistake and says "I would have immiediately fired anyone did that [edited user posts]" https://i.redditmedia.com/-VmuoYhuKv-Uj-Ild8_FAhGgQgXM68OsuN_E-DYOxyc.jpg?w=1024&s=826da08b70c7409958d08b2b70b1209f https://i.redditmedia.com/-VmuoYhuKv-Uj-Ild8_FAhGgQgXM68OsuN... /r/all is now a safe space for people who can't handle seeing certain text !! And the stupidest part is : Reddit is a commercial enterprise. 300k t_d subscribers. Instead of embracing a customer base and working out how to profit from it, he's pissed everybody off my repeatedly kicking the nest. Either directly or by letting CTR take over r/politics. They should have had a sales team focussing directly upon us and building an income stream. Instead they've generated a whole bunch of people who actively boycott buying Reddit Gold, will never click on your ads, even in other subreddits. What would you give for 300k high energy cross demographic customers with a tight focus on conservatism. I wouldn't be giving them annoyance and grief. "Front Page of the Internet" is the greatest joke of all
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mr_blobs 10y ago
  "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." If you post something that doesn't conform to the current left-leaning narrative, you will be down voted by massive amounts of users because of your beliefs. I don't see much difference than these brigades. Except it's done by 75% of the community, rather than the bottom 1%. A minority subreddit is being discriminated against and blamed for all of the bad behavior on Reddit. I suppose the CEO isn't all that much different that the people on the alt-right. "Reddit strives to have a positive community and when you let the trolls run the system" Yeah, well, if this is really the case and not just a childish political stunt, why are only Trump-related groups targeted? I'm really tired of a 'positive community' being used an excuse to stifle opposing political opinions. It's becoming really clear that it only has to do with politics based on the abhorrent behavior of site owners and moderators (the CEO purposely altered user comments that he doesn't like. He should have been fired on the spot). "Reddit (nor Twitter) is under no obligation to be a platform for free speech, and it's completely within their right to dictate who gets to participate and what they're allowed to discuss." So it's fine for private organizations to discriminate against people simply based on their political beliefs? Do you really want to live in a world where this is accepted? I find that this is being used an excuse to silence divisive political viewpoints and left-leaning organizations are purging their sites of anyone that disagrees with them. Most left-leaning media sites have banned all comments for exactly this reason. Lately, the only sites that are truly free are the right-leaning ones. Fox news, for instance, doesn't ban anyone for merely stating a political opinion...unless you are harassing other users (stating an opinion isn't harassment). The irony is that people voted Trump because of this behavior by the media (which has slowly been getting worse since the 90s). Continuing to do this will not only create more of a divided nation, but many will be more likely to re-elect Trump.
  - hoppa_liza 10y ago
    > So it's fine for private organizations to discriminate against people simply based on their political beliefs? Do you really want to live in a world where this is accepted? An employee who keeps on yelling, throwing stuff around, harassing people and disrupting the workplace should be warned and eventually kicked out. Political views have absolutely nothing to do with this.
fenomas 10y ago
This might be cynical, but I'm not sure it's possible to have an online community that doesn't function this way, more or less. I think there's a general law of online communities: so long as there are rules of any kind, there will always be users who push into the gray area (e.g. by finding ways to follow the letter but not the intent), and then keep pushing until stopped(). The moderator is then always left with the choice between punishing only the bad actors (which will be interpreted as selective enforcement or unfair targeting), or changing the rules to make things stricter for everyone (disallowing behavior that wasn't causing problems apart from the bad actors). () I read once in a parenting guide that children crave boundaries, and tend to escalate bad behavior until punishment occurs in order to establish where the boundaries are. Probably there's an analogy to be made there.
abandonliberty 10y ago
Reddit already has a history of killing subs it doesn't like via 'quarantine' or outright bans. "Restrictions on a quarantined community include: Requiring an account with a verified email address Requiring an explicit opt-in No custom images Will generate no revenue, including ads or Reddit Gold" This effectively kills subs unless it's lifted. Subs targeted for this range from offensive to innocuous (E.g. freckles, female ejaculation, a racist anti-black community) https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldTesting/comments/3fxs3q/list_of_quarantined_subreddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldTesting/comments/3fxs3q/list_of... Reddit is a business, not a bastion of free speech. They have killed communities for less than what The_Donald was doing. I'll let you speculate on the motives (:

meritt 10y ago

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/ https://voat.co/), and that kills your company's value. Reddit (nor Twitter) is under no obligation to be a platform for free speech, and it's completely within their right to dictate who gets to participate and what they're allowed to discuss.

michaelvoz 10y ago
If that is true, then they should present evidence of such action and ban it! Applying rules with extremely heavy discrimination is never the way to manage a community.
- meritt 10y ago
  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.
  - michaelvoz 10y ago
    Pardon, I should have been clearer - ban the subreddit.
    - ajkjk 10y ago
      I think they wish they could but are avoiding doing that if they can due to the (much more) immense backlash that would ensue. Which seems, well, reasonable to me.
  - michaelvoz 10y ago
    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.
    - meritt 10y ago
      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.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      HN has made me leave several times for being so god damned ridiculous. We're not special. Wander into any Apple, Google, or Microsoft thread and watch the idiocy. Or anything to do with poliics (not even US politics, I've seen so many flame wars about countries I didn't even know existed).
- icanhackit 10y ago
  > they should present evidence of such action and ban it! How would they do that adequately without a public display of user activity? > Applying rules with extremely heavy discrimination is never the way to manage a community. It's less than ideal but when the targeted group seeks to ultimately control or destroy your platform then what you have is a cancer that will spread unless it's removed.
SixSigma 10y ago
> 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 now know as /r/[redacted] for that reason. EDIT: downvotes are not citations
- meritt 10y ago
  http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294 http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294 has a decent summary of the problems over the past few months. > Centipede Central is the chat Reddit is referring to—a chat room within the Slack-like Discord program ... its users have encouraged the harassment of other moderators, artificially inflated the vote count on posts, rigged off-Reddit polls, and posted John Podesta’s personal Netflix login information for the chat’s 1000+ members to use at will.
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    There are 300k+ subscribers to T_D I am one of those who have never even heard of that chat room, nor visited. And I am on T_D all day long every day since February. We have posts with 7k+ points and 56% upvoted. https://i.redditmedia.com/RbqqP0Cpfs-o-B1DVWIwIqtUU8-dtxUahf_uosOAKB0.png?w=848&s=d639846d2be5372531367f9a5e8073aa https://i.redditmedia.com/RbqqP0Cpfs-o-B1DVWIwIqtUU8-dtxUahf... If anyone is under attack, it is us. Even the famous Ellen Pao thinks Spez made a huge mistake and says "I would have immiediately fired anyone did that [edited user posts]" https://i.redditmedia.com/-VmuoYhuKv-Uj-Ild8_FAhGgQgXM68OsuN_E-DYOxyc.jpg?w=1024&s=826da08b70c7409958d08b2b70b1209f https://i.redditmedia.com/-VmuoYhuKv-Uj-Ild8_FAhGgQgXM68OsuN... /r/all is now a safe space for people who can't handle seeing certain text !! And the stupidest part is : Reddit is a commercial enterprise. 300k t_d subscribers. Instead of embracing a customer base and working out how to profit from it, he's pissed everybody off my repeatedly kicking the nest. Either directly or by letting CTR take over r/politics. They should have had a sales team focussing directly upon us and building an income stream. Instead they've generated a whole bunch of people who actively boycott buying Reddit Gold, will never click on your ads, even in other subreddits. What would you give for 300k high energy cross demographic customers with a tight focus on conservatism. I wouldn't be giving them annoyance and grief. "Front Page of the Internet" is the greatest joke of all
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mr_blobs 10y ago
"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." If you post something that doesn't conform to the current left-leaning narrative, you will be down voted by massive amounts of users because of your beliefs. I don't see much difference than these brigades. Except it's done by 75% of the community, rather than the bottom 1%. A minority subreddit is being discriminated against and blamed for all of the bad behavior on Reddit. I suppose the CEO isn't all that much different that the people on the alt-right. "Reddit strives to have a positive community and when you let the trolls run the system" Yeah, well, if this is really the case and not just a childish political stunt, why are only Trump-related groups targeted? I'm really tired of a 'positive community' being used an excuse to stifle opposing political opinions. It's becoming really clear that it only has to do with politics based on the abhorrent behavior of site owners and moderators (the CEO purposely altered user comments that he doesn't like. He should have been fired on the spot). "Reddit (nor Twitter) is under no obligation to be a platform for free speech, and it's completely within their right to dictate who gets to participate and what they're allowed to discuss." So it's fine for private organizations to discriminate against people simply based on their political beliefs? Do you really want to live in a world where this is accepted? I find that this is being used an excuse to silence divisive political viewpoints and left-leaning organizations are purging their sites of anyone that disagrees with them. Most left-leaning media sites have banned all comments for exactly this reason. Lately, the only sites that are truly free are the right-leaning ones. Fox news, for instance, doesn't ban anyone for merely stating a political opinion...unless you are harassing other users (stating an opinion isn't harassment). The irony is that people voted Trump because of this behavior by the media (which has slowly been getting worse since the 90s). Continuing to do this will not only create more of a divided nation, but many will be more likely to re-elect Trump.
- hoppa_liza 10y ago
  > So it's fine for private organizations to discriminate against people simply based on their political beliefs? Do you really want to live in a world where this is accepted? An employee who keeps on yelling, throwing stuff around, harassing people and disrupting the workplace should be warned and eventually kicked out. Political views have absolutely nothing to do with this.

fenomas 10y ago

This might be cynical, but I'm not sure it's possible to have an online community that doesn't function this way, more or less. I think there's a general law of online communities: so long as there are rules of any kind, there will always be users who push into the gray area (e.g. by finding ways to follow the letter but not the intent), and then keep pushing until stopped(). The moderator is then always left with the choice between punishing only the bad actors (which will be interpreted as selective enforcement or unfair targeting), or changing the rules to make things stricter for everyone (disallowing behavior that wasn't causing problems apart from the bad actors). () I read once in a parenting guide that children crave boundaries, and tend to escalate bad behavior until punishment occurs in order to establish where the boundaries are. Probably there's an analogy to be made there.

abandonliberty 10y ago

Reddit already has a history of killing subs it doesn't like via 'quarantine' or outright bans. "Restrictions on a quarantined community include: Requiring an account with a verified email address Requiring an explicit opt-in No custom images Will generate no revenue, including ads or Reddit Gold" This effectively kills subs unless it's lifted. Subs targeted for this range from offensive to innocuous (E.g. freckles, female ejaculation, a racist anti-black community) https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldTesting/comments/3fxs3q/list_of_quarantined_subreddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldTesting/comments/3fxs3q/list_of... Reddit is a business, not a bastion of free speech. They have killed communities for less than what The_Donald was doing. I'll let you speculate on the motives (: