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As a liberal - its been my view to respect and fight for anyone's right to say whatever they want, regardless of my own views. If there are bugs with the reddi

by volak 10y ago

As a liberal - its been my view to respect and fight for anyone's right to say whatever they want, regardless of my own views. If there are bugs with the reddit platform that are being exploited, there would be no reason to "prevent stickied posts from showing on r/all"

ajkjk 10y ago
It's pretty clearly explained in Spez's post that it's a loophole, not a bug. The loophole is that there's an override for how sticky posts show in /all, used to elevate topical events -- which was being abused, against the spirit of the override, by pretty much only that one subreddit, for different purposes. There is probably a technical solution to this but it's probably complicated and this bandaid gets the job done for now. But I think you knew that.
- volak 10y ago
  The bandaid was to allow people to filter subs themselves (which is great). Writing code to target a specific community crosses the line
  - ajkjk 10y ago
    I disagree. I don't think it crosses the line. But that's a value judgment, I guess, so there's not a lot of point arguing it out. I especially think it was acceptable because it solves the urgent problem with a quick solution, whereas a technical solution would take a lot longer, and I do strongly believe that the problem was very urgent.
    - volak 10y ago
      Trouble is that too is your opinion. As a frequent of r/all after the first TD purge I see 2-3 TD links there a day. Nothing so outrageous. It kind of bothers me that people let companies like facebook, twitter, google, reddit, etc push their agendas and bury conservative news. Recent data suggests facebook "fake news" alone could have swung the election. Social media being the primary source of news these days. I'm all for these platforms having the right the police their own site - but they have to be open and honest about it. Otherwise you end up with conspiracy theories going viral making one side super pissed and willing to elect Donald Trump over the beneficiary of what they perceive massive conspiracy to silence people.
      - ajkjk 10y ago
        I think it's a bit of a stretch to say this is burying conservative news, it's more like burying conservative meme-spamming. Especially because, well, now TD is going to be able to get on the page the same way every other subreddit normally does, which seems.. almost.. fair? Certainly if you turn your head one way it's fair. It's not inherently discriminatory for one-of-two political camps to have behavior that breaks the intended functionality of a platform and necessitates a response. You can argue that in this case it was, and that's fine, but I disagree. Would it appease you if r/politics or a hillary subreddit had the same treatment? It wouldn't change anything but at least it would 'feel better'? And I'd like to point out that one reason I'm defending spez and the reddit admins on this is that I think they've been extremely open and honest about it (barring the one idiotic mistake of Spez's). I like the guy because his admin posts have none of the veneer of bullshit that literally-every-CEO's has (ie Zuckerberg's "our mission is to bring the world together" drivel). It's super candid; he answers every question, even the sensitive ones; he's very open about mistakes and changes and motivations. It's rare for a company to display it and I value it highly. I totally agree that doing special-case stuff to a community already obsessed with conspiracy theories about censorship is maybe a bad move, but I also think it's justifiable and probably justified. And also, there are tons of worse moves, in the game of not-pissing-everyone-off, in a generally shitty situation (such as banning the whole subreddit).
        volak 10y ago
        No what would appease practically everyone would be if r/all - the "frontpage of the internet" - had clearly defined rules as to what that means. Is it a collection of top up-voted content from a collection of subreddits? Apparently not due to this and other "algorithm changes." Take twitter shadow banning people as its an easier example. The rules of twitter are simple - someone tweets and it gets put at the top of a follower's feed. This is accepted as "the truth of twitter." When this truth is altered and all of a sudden some individual's tweets are NOT showing up in follower's feed people should be rightly pissed. No matter who the target is - because the accepted rules of the platform have been twisted to push an agenda. It is no different than propaganda and an insult to free expression. > If you turn your head one way it's fair Anyone can certainly justify anything if they are willing to turn their head with the breeze. I would point out the blatant mod and brigading bias in r/politics as an example of something you as a presumed liberal should be equally mad about. The content there is laughable and part of the reason why people even subscribe to the TD to get what little news is there. Reddit has a problem - and its been written about before. Mods are dictators of their own communities and have complete control to push their own agendas within places that should be neutral. I don't see much of a future for the platform if this is not solved.

by volak 10y ago

ajkjk 10y ago

It's pretty clearly explained in Spez's post that it's a loophole, not a bug. The loophole is that there's an override for how sticky posts show in /all, used to elevate topical events -- which was being abused, against the spirit of the override, by pretty much only that one subreddit, for different purposes. There is probably a technical solution to this but it's probably complicated and this bandaid gets the job done for now. But I think you knew that.

volak 10y ago
The bandaid was to allow people to filter subs themselves (which is great). Writing code to target a specific community crosses the line
- ajkjk 10y ago
  I disagree. I don't think it crosses the line. But that's a value judgment, I guess, so there's not a lot of point arguing it out. I especially think it was acceptable because it solves the urgent problem with a quick solution, whereas a technical solution would take a lot longer, and I do strongly believe that the problem was very urgent.
  - volak 10y ago
    Trouble is that too is your opinion. As a frequent of r/all after the first TD purge I see 2-3 TD links there a day. Nothing so outrageous. It kind of bothers me that people let companies like facebook, twitter, google, reddit, etc push their agendas and bury conservative news. Recent data suggests facebook "fake news" alone could have swung the election. Social media being the primary source of news these days. I'm all for these platforms having the right the police their own site - but they have to be open and honest about it. Otherwise you end up with conspiracy theories going viral making one side super pissed and willing to elect Donald Trump over the beneficiary of what they perceive massive conspiracy to silence people.
    - ajkjk 10y ago
      I think it's a bit of a stretch to say this is burying conservative news, it's more like burying conservative meme-spamming. Especially because, well, now TD is going to be able to get on the page the same way every other subreddit normally does, which seems.. almost.. fair? Certainly if you turn your head one way it's fair. It's not inherently discriminatory for one-of-two political camps to have behavior that breaks the intended functionality of a platform and necessitates a response. You can argue that in this case it was, and that's fine, but I disagree. Would it appease you if r/politics or a hillary subreddit had the same treatment? It wouldn't change anything but at least it would 'feel better'? And I'd like to point out that one reason I'm defending spez and the reddit admins on this is that I think they've been extremely open and honest about it (barring the one idiotic mistake of Spez's). I like the guy because his admin posts have none of the veneer of bullshit that literally-every-CEO's has (ie Zuckerberg's "our mission is to bring the world together" drivel). It's super candid; he answers every question, even the sensitive ones; he's very open about mistakes and changes and motivations. It's rare for a company to display it and I value it highly. I totally agree that doing special-case stuff to a community already obsessed with conspiracy theories about censorship is maybe a bad move, but I also think it's justifiable and probably justified. And also, there are tons of worse moves, in the game of not-pissing-everyone-off, in a generally shitty situation (such as banning the whole subreddit).
      - volak 10y ago
        No what would appease practically everyone would be if r/all - the "frontpage of the internet" - had clearly defined rules as to what that means. Is it a collection of top up-voted content from a collection of subreddits? Apparently not due to this and other "algorithm changes." Take twitter shadow banning people as its an easier example. The rules of twitter are simple - someone tweets and it gets put at the top of a follower's feed. This is accepted as "the truth of twitter." When this truth is altered and all of a sudden some individual's tweets are NOT showing up in follower's feed people should be rightly pissed. No matter who the target is - because the accepted rules of the platform have been twisted to push an agenda. It is no different than propaganda and an insult to free expression. > If you turn your head one way it's fair Anyone can certainly justify anything if they are willing to turn their head with the breeze. I would point out the blatant mod and brigading bias in r/politics as an example of something you as a presumed liberal should be equally mad about. The content there is laughable and part of the reason why people even subscribe to the TD to get what little news is there. Reddit has a problem - and its been written about before. Mods are dictators of their own communities and have complete control to push their own agendas within places that should be neutral. I don't see much of a future for the platform if this is not solved.