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Not just open-source maintainers but also moderators. A bad thing about moderators is that nowadays they tend to be immature teens, it's one of the reasons Red

Not just open-source maintainers but also moderators. A bad thing about moderators is that nowadays they tend to be immature teens, it's one of the reasons Reddit content quality has been going down in the past few years. It also creates some moral questions, as companies with giant revenues are outsourcing their internet janitor duties to naive unpaid child labourers

drei109 7y ago
In my experience with moderators on Reddit, is that they are power driven adults who still act like teens.
- falcolas 7y ago
  The sad thing about aging - the body and mind (metaphysical mind, not the brain itself) don't necessarily age at the same rate.
- rhizome 7y ago
  It's the Stanford problem, but not everybody succumbs to the allure of power. We see it pretty much everywhere, like on IRC, where power-madness is an expected consequence of giving someone ops in a channel. You win some and you lose some, moderation isn't "set it and forget it," you have to remove some and acquire others from time to time.
  - mrmuagi 7y ago
    > moderation isn't "set it and forget it," you have to remove some and acquire others from time to time. A great point. Succinctly, the moderators need moderators.
volkk 7y ago
i see your point, but it also brings about something like where certain people see quality degrading, and go off to make their own subreddit/community like /r/truereddit or /r/truetruereddit, etc. it's an interesting phenomenon and am curious as to whether its better this way, or actually making things worse.
- TheCapn 7y ago
  I think if things worked purely that way and everything was completely transparent it would be fine but there's a few things that muddy the waters 1) Moderators create alternate accounts and gobble up offshoots. They'll either have multiple mod accounts so they can "step down" and pass power to themselves when opinion rallies against them or they straight up seed themselves throughout reddit as moderators to dozens of communities 2) How do you spread the word when moderators have final word on what's posted in the "main" subreddit? Say there's an uprising in some obscure fandom and fans want a new place to correlate outside of the moderator's rule; how do they spread the word to the community efficiently that they exist when there's only one main hub for that fandom currently and the moderators silence anything (often with the AutoMod) that reference the new community? --- I think public moderation in general is good. But the tools for the community to branch out are often lacking and when moderator power-tripping crosses a line there's no outlet for members to reach Admins who will objectively weigh the facts and act on complaints.
cheez 7y ago
Edit: very interesting that this post is getting downvoted. I didn't even say anything controversial, just that banning people is bad. Exactly the danger we face online, which will eventually get into broader society. I got banned on a platform for saying a public figure was physically attractive to me. Prior to that, I had engaged in a perfectly factual discussion about certain statistics that were in favor of a particular political position. There is no doubt in my mind that I was flagged for having a political position (to clarify: I didn't actually have the position, I was just posting statistics that supported that position). I like HN's approach to moderation. You don't ban the person unless they are really unreasonable. You flag the comment, disappear it from the thread and tell them to behave. I also like Gab's approach which is: if it's not illegal and you don't like it, then just block them from your feed. The wholesale banning of people for single statements that are generally taken out of context is emblematic of cancel culture and it isn't surprising to me that "hacker news" is more nuanced and understands that people are not one statement or one act.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  You can treat it like an “emblem of cancel culture” and if you’re right. It’s also an emblem for “people doing things other people don’t like and getting ditched for it” but which emblem you choose to see is up to you. That’s kind of the power and the weakness of emblems.
  - irrational 7y ago
    I see it as emblematic of weak people who don't want to ever be exposed to anything disagreeable. Why can't the whole world be sunshine and unicorns?
  - jerf 7y ago
    There is, I think, a fairly sharp line between you deciding you don't want to interact with someone in some particular forum, and someone else deciding you can't interact with someone. That line is not the line between "good" and "bad", necessarily. I'm just saying it's a relevant difference that shouldn't be blurred away.
  - 7y ago
helpPeople 7y ago
Or worse, a corporation secretly pays mods to let spam pass and delete dissent.
jen_h 7y ago
I think (mainstream) Reddit content is something completely different; more like big clumps of PR firms employed by corporations and lobbying groups bitbotting around with nation states, all fighting and agreeing with each other and trying to build false consensus. Source IP analysis there is probably pretty interesting.
- jamiequint 7y ago
  Yeah, that's not even remotely true. Have you ever worked with a PR firm or talked to folks that work at one. Have you ever worked at a large company, or talked to people who manage social media at one? They are very far from this level of coordination. Most can't even manage to deploy a properly measured ad campaign, much less some kind of op sec driven Reddit content campaign.
  - notduncansmith 7y ago
    This. You don’t need to orchestrate mob-like behavior on Reddit, it’s already full of people who like mobbing. The most outside interference you need is (maybe) privately stoking a few radicals to action and letting them inspire the rest of the mob.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    It's possible 99% of PR/marketing firms don't have armies of Reddit/Twitter bot accounts, while at the same time the 1% that do make up a big power base on Reddit. There are plenty of companies doing things like SEO and suchlike that build up networks of websites/content farms, and bots to comment on blogs and suchlike. Not much of a jump from bots commenting links on blogs to bots commenting more subtle messages on Reddit.
    - jamiequint 7y ago
      There is no 1% of PR firms that have Reddit/Twitter bot armies, that's a crazy conspiracy theory. There are also plenty of companies that are "doing things like SEO" but none of them run networks of interconnected websites that they all control or content farms because those tactics stopped fooling Google over a decade ago.
mopsi 7y ago
I believe redesign is the single largest contributor to Reddit's decline. It went from text-based site (like HN is at the moment) to image-based site.
- jen_h 7y ago
  You can get around this, though via https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com and, in Preferences, disable thumbnails, image previews, and "allow subreddits to show me custom themes."
  - mopsi 7y ago
    Sadly, that doesn't change how others see the site: they're still guided towards consuming and contributing image-based content.
  - onemoresoop 7y ago
    You can get around it for now. They may pull the plug
nitwit005 7y ago
I assumed from the headline that this would be about moderators. Given how major sites depend on them, and how many forums there are strewn about the internet, the total man years of free labor must be enormous.
moron4hire 7y ago
When I first got on the internet 20 years ago, moderators were all teens, too. But I didn't notice because I was also a teenager. Then I grew up, and those mods for too, and we all went on to different things. Going back to the forums, it's just a different set of teens. It was always immature. What changed was that I matured.

drei109 7y ago

In my experience with moderators on Reddit, is that they are power driven adults who still act like teens.

falcolas 7y ago
The sad thing about aging - the body and mind (metaphysical mind, not the brain itself) don't necessarily age at the same rate.
rhizome 7y ago
It's the Stanford problem, but not everybody succumbs to the allure of power. We see it pretty much everywhere, like on IRC, where power-madness is an expected consequence of giving someone ops in a channel. You win some and you lose some, moderation isn't "set it and forget it," you have to remove some and acquire others from time to time.
- mrmuagi 7y ago
  > moderation isn't "set it and forget it," you have to remove some and acquire others from time to time. A great point. Succinctly, the moderators need moderators.

volkk 7y ago

i see your point, but it also brings about something like where certain people see quality degrading, and go off to make their own subreddit/community like /r/truereddit or /r/truetruereddit, etc. it's an interesting phenomenon and am curious as to whether its better this way, or actually making things worse.

TheCapn 7y ago
I think if things worked purely that way and everything was completely transparent it would be fine but there's a few things that muddy the waters 1) Moderators create alternate accounts and gobble up offshoots. They'll either have multiple mod accounts so they can "step down" and pass power to themselves when opinion rallies against them or they straight up seed themselves throughout reddit as moderators to dozens of communities 2) How do you spread the word when moderators have final word on what's posted in the "main" subreddit? Say there's an uprising in some obscure fandom and fans want a new place to correlate outside of the moderator's rule; how do they spread the word to the community efficiently that they exist when there's only one main hub for that fandom currently and the moderators silence anything (often with the AutoMod) that reference the new community? --- I think public moderation in general is good. But the tools for the community to branch out are often lacking and when moderator power-tripping crosses a line there's no outlet for members to reach Admins who will objectively weigh the facts and act on complaints.

cheez 7y ago

Edit: very interesting that this post is getting downvoted. I didn't even say anything controversial, just that banning people is bad. Exactly the danger we face online, which will eventually get into broader society. I got banned on a platform for saying a public figure was physically attractive to me. Prior to that, I had engaged in a perfectly factual discussion about certain statistics that were in favor of a particular political position. There is no doubt in my mind that I was flagged for having a political position (to clarify: I didn't actually have the position, I was just posting statistics that supported that position). I like HN's approach to moderation. You don't ban the person unless they are really unreasonable. You flag the comment, disappear it from the thread and tell them to behave. I also like Gab's approach which is: if it's not illegal and you don't like it, then just block them from your feed. The wholesale banning of people for single statements that are generally taken out of context is emblematic of cancel culture and it isn't surprising to me that "hacker news" is more nuanced and understands that people are not one statement or one act.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
You can treat it like an “emblem of cancel culture” and if you’re right. It’s also an emblem for “people doing things other people don’t like and getting ditched for it” but which emblem you choose to see is up to you. That’s kind of the power and the weakness of emblems.
- irrational 7y ago
  I see it as emblematic of weak people who don't want to ever be exposed to anything disagreeable. Why can't the whole world be sunshine and unicorns?
- jerf 7y ago
  There is, I think, a fairly sharp line between you deciding you don't want to interact with someone in some particular forum, and someone else deciding you can't interact with someone. That line is not the line between "good" and "bad", necessarily. I'm just saying it's a relevant difference that shouldn't be blurred away.
- 7y ago

helpPeople 7y ago

Or worse, a corporation secretly pays mods to let spam pass and delete dissent.

jen_h 7y ago

I think (mainstream) Reddit content is something completely different; more like big clumps of PR firms employed by corporations and lobbying groups bitbotting around with nation states, all fighting and agreeing with each other and trying to build false consensus. Source IP analysis there is probably pretty interesting.

jamiequint 7y ago
Yeah, that's not even remotely true. Have you ever worked with a PR firm or talked to folks that work at one. Have you ever worked at a large company, or talked to people who manage social media at one? They are very far from this level of coordination. Most can't even manage to deploy a properly measured ad campaign, much less some kind of op sec driven Reddit content campaign.
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  This. You don’t need to orchestrate mob-like behavior on Reddit, it’s already full of people who like mobbing. The most outside interference you need is (maybe) privately stoking a few radicals to action and letting them inspire the rest of the mob.
- michaelt 7y ago
  It's possible 99% of PR/marketing firms don't have armies of Reddit/Twitter bot accounts, while at the same time the 1% that do make up a big power base on Reddit. There are plenty of companies doing things like SEO and suchlike that build up networks of websites/content farms, and bots to comment on blogs and suchlike. Not much of a jump from bots commenting links on blogs to bots commenting more subtle messages on Reddit.
  - jamiequint 7y ago
    There is no 1% of PR firms that have Reddit/Twitter bot armies, that's a crazy conspiracy theory. There are also plenty of companies that are "doing things like SEO" but none of them run networks of interconnected websites that they all control or content farms because those tactics stopped fooling Google over a decade ago.

mopsi 7y ago

I believe redesign is the single largest contributor to Reddit's decline. It went from text-based site (like HN is at the moment) to image-based site.

jen_h 7y ago
You can get around this, though via https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com and, in Preferences, disable thumbnails, image previews, and "allow subreddits to show me custom themes."
- mopsi 7y ago
  Sadly, that doesn't change how others see the site: they're still guided towards consuming and contributing image-based content.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  You can get around it for now. They may pull the plug

nitwit005 7y ago

I assumed from the headline that this would be about moderators. Given how major sites depend on them, and how many forums there are strewn about the internet, the total man years of free labor must be enormous.

moron4hire 7y ago

When I first got on the internet 20 years ago, moderators were all teens, too. But I didn't notice because I was also a teenager. Then I grew up, and those mods for too, and we all went on to different things. Going back to the forums, it's just a different set of teens. It was always immature. What changed was that I matured.