4 ms·

>the platform itself hosts tons of alt-right, incel, racist, sexist, and violent content. This is despite being pretty ban-happy in general about topics they d

>the platform itself hosts tons of alt-right, incel, racist, sexist, and violent content. This is despite being pretty ban-happy in general about topics they don't like. So now they've got the worst of a censorship-heavy platform and the worst of a censorship-free platform.

vkou 8y ago
That's because at first appearances, the Reddit hive mind would make Karl Marx blush red. Dig a little past the front page, though, and all the problems of having those groups share the same space with everyone else become evident.
vivekd 8y ago
Yeah the bigger subreddits tend to be bad for meaningful discussion and have a lot of deplatforming and trolling. That said the smaller niche subreddits dedicated to a parituclar specialization tend to be better. I really got a lot our of r/ppc for internet marketing. I found that r/candlemaking was a great subreddit for the niche hobby. I think it's a bit like real life, things that are popular tend to attract trolls and megalomaniacs while small, niche and technical things tend to attract a better group of people. y. The only downside is that maybe these niche communities would have done better as individual forums existing on the open web rather than as a part of reddit's walled garden.
hart_russell 8y ago
the_donald subreddit is basically not allowed on the front page from what I understand
- Bograff 8y ago
  They sort of earned that by gaming the front page algorithms. The mods would repeatedly sticky 2 minute old posts and encouraged all their users to upvote the stickies. This caused any post of their choosing to surge into the the front page. They would have 1/4th of the front page full of posts less than 2 hours old pre-election.
this_user 8y ago
> This is despite being pretty ban-happy in general about topics they don't like. So now they've got the worst of a censorship-heavy platform and the worst of a censorship-free platform. I think you have to separate the admins, who are reddit employees, and the subreddit moderators, who are mostly not. The admins are ultimately accountable to the CEO, who is accountable to the board and, by extension, the investors. The admins want to maximise traffic, because that maximises their ability to monetise the users. A certain degree of controversial content is actually good for that as long as it remains below the threshold where you start losing advertisers (see 4chan). Meanwhile, the moderators are usually volunteers, but there are a few very active "powermods" (or groups thereof) who have control over one or more large default subs. This has allowed them to carve out their own personal fiefdoms. Some of them are abusing this power to enforce their own idea of how things should work, or to push their ideology and narratives. Some others (like the infamous GallowBoob) have even found ways to monetise their influence by getting paid to promote content for 3rd parties without disclosing that fact. This often goes hand in hand with abusing their moderator privileges in order to increase visibility of their own posts (e.g. by removing highly upvoted posts from users, so their own posts can take the top spot in that sub). This is a real problem, but reddit are mostly unwilling to intervene unless there is a large degree of external pressure, like we saw with the "creepshot" subs that got banned in 2013 after the media picked up on their existence and the one user behind a lot of them.
- unityByFreedom 8y ago
  > I think you have to separate the admins, who are reddit employees, and the subreddit moderators, who are mostly not. Admins created automod which delegated shadowbanning to moderators. Who's to blame for that? The mods or the admins? It's an age-old question whether kings or peasants are to blame for humanity's imperfections. Some mods probably would have scripted something themselves, yet admins helped them and others along. You can go in circles trying to assign blame. I'm not sure there's an answer except to continue to try making it better.
  - xiongchiamiov 8y ago
    > Admins created automod They did not. Automod was created by a user as just another script that interacted with reddit's api (albeit, a powerful and useful one). Deimorz eventually joined reddit and became an admin, and Automod was eventually integrated into the site code (primarily for performance reasons), but that was completely user-created, and in fact a great example of how reddit's community governed the site for a long time in absence of much direction from reddit Inc.

vkou 8y ago

That's because at first appearances, the Reddit hive mind would make Karl Marx blush red. Dig a little past the front page, though, and all the problems of having those groups share the same space with everyone else become evident.

vivekd 8y ago

Yeah the bigger subreddits tend to be bad for meaningful discussion and have a lot of deplatforming and trolling. That said the smaller niche subreddits dedicated to a parituclar specialization tend to be better. I really got a lot our of r/ppc for internet marketing. I found that r/candlemaking was a great subreddit for the niche hobby. I think it's a bit like real life, things that are popular tend to attract trolls and megalomaniacs while small, niche and technical things tend to attract a better group of people. y. The only downside is that maybe these niche communities would have done better as individual forums existing on the open web rather than as a part of reddit's walled garden.

hart_russell 8y ago

the_donald subreddit is basically not allowed on the front page from what I understand

Bograff 8y ago
They sort of earned that by gaming the front page algorithms. The mods would repeatedly sticky 2 minute old posts and encouraged all their users to upvote the stickies. This caused any post of their choosing to surge into the the front page. They would have 1/4th of the front page full of posts less than 2 hours old pre-election.

this_user 8y ago

> This is despite being pretty ban-happy in general about topics they don't like. So now they've got the worst of a censorship-heavy platform and the worst of a censorship-free platform. I think you have to separate the admins, who are reddit employees, and the subreddit moderators, who are mostly not. The admins are ultimately accountable to the CEO, who is accountable to the board and, by extension, the investors. The admins want to maximise traffic, because that maximises their ability to monetise the users. A certain degree of controversial content is actually good for that as long as it remains below the threshold where you start losing advertisers (see 4chan). Meanwhile, the moderators are usually volunteers, but there are a few very active "powermods" (or groups thereof) who have control over one or more large default subs. This has allowed them to carve out their own personal fiefdoms. Some of them are abusing this power to enforce their own idea of how things should work, or to push their ideology and narratives. Some others (like the infamous GallowBoob) have even found ways to monetise their influence by getting paid to promote content for 3rd parties without disclosing that fact. This often goes hand in hand with abusing their moderator privileges in order to increase visibility of their own posts (e.g. by removing highly upvoted posts from users, so their own posts can take the top spot in that sub). This is a real problem, but reddit are mostly unwilling to intervene unless there is a large degree of external pressure, like we saw with the "creepshot" subs that got banned in 2013 after the media picked up on their existence and the one user behind a lot of them.

unityByFreedom 8y ago
> I think you have to separate the admins, who are reddit employees, and the subreddit moderators, who are mostly not. Admins created automod which delegated shadowbanning to moderators. Who's to blame for that? The mods or the admins? It's an age-old question whether kings or peasants are to blame for humanity's imperfections. Some mods probably would have scripted something themselves, yet admins helped them and others along. You can go in circles trying to assign blame. I'm not sure there's an answer except to continue to try making it better.
- xiongchiamiov 8y ago
  > Admins created automod They did not. Automod was created by a user as just another script that interacted with reddit's api (albeit, a powerful and useful one). Deimorz eventually joined reddit and became an admin, and Automod was eventually integrated into the site code (primarily for performance reasons), but that was completely user-created, and in fact a great example of how reddit's community governed the site for a long time in absence of much direction from reddit Inc.