4 ms·

I've been moderating a handful of communities over on Reddit for about ten years now, among them several are focused on hearing health. Something I see as a ma

I've been moderating a handful of communities over on Reddit for about ten years now, among them several are focused on hearing health. Something I see as a matter of routine is the roughly 21 day arc of folks learning that some aliment exists to speaking intentionally as if they are an educated medical professional, while essentially medical rumour and legend mongering. I don't think this is limited to those with issues of hearing health and I suspect that, while it's more common in circles where doctors often give unspecific bad news with no real resolution (something that many folks don't want to hear), it's not limited to them either. Right now on Reddit there are scores of subreddits focused on COVID-19 and the Coronavirus, with really terrible moderation. If the admins were actually serious about dealing with missinfo they'd be shutting more than a few down.

jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
Reddit has been a very good source of information in this crisis. Of course there will be misinformation. That's not as big of a problem in Reddit because of moderation and voting, compared to Facebook and the likes.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > Reddit has been a very good source of information in this crisis. Got to be joking right? Reddit is pretty much the battleground of misinformation. It's run by think tanks, ngos, intel, media, etc. Most of the threads and most comments are pretty much anti-china propaganda along with some pro-china nonsense. That's it. Every gilded and boosted thread and comment are of a particular propaganda bent. > That's not as big of a problem in Reddit because of moderation and voting, compared to Facebook and the likes. The problem with reddit is precisely the moderation. It's why you have garbage echo chambers like r/politics, r/the_donald, r/worldnews, r/news, r/china, r/atheism, [do I need to continue]. Even the coronavirus related subs are heavily politically driven. Because of the rise of moderation, reddit has turned into hives of extreme echo chambers. Whereas in the past, most major subs allowed all viewpoints, now each sub moderates toward a particular worldview and you get the worst echo chambers. You get the worst echo chambers due to moderation and censorship. Moderation and censorship doesn't prevent echo chambers and extremism. It promotes it. It's why nazi germany, soviet union, north korea, saudi arabia, silicon valley, etc love moderation and censorship.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    I think you are correct and overambitious moderators are indeed a problem that fragment communities. t_d, politics and to a degree worldnews are ridiculous instances of this, although there is probably even worse stuff in the underbellies. I just look at the result and while efforts to manipulate content increases (malicious and manipulative, not moderation), the situation is far, far worse than 5 years ago. Additionally the content has become much more stale. reddit probably has accurate date, but as a user the impression is pretty obvious.
    - belltaco 7y ago
      Having been on Reddit since before it had comments or subreddits, I can assure you that the bias i r/politics is the because of the userbase rather than the moderation.
      - raxxorrax 7y ago
        I have been there too and I think the content massively changed in the last years. I don't even disagree politically on the points they make, but it has got to levels beyond what I call reasonably sane. Not that this wouldn't be true for their most prominent detractors too, perhaps they just adapted. Perhaps it is due to a change in userbase, but the morosity certainly changed.
        belltaco 7y ago
        The mods there don't do much except remove personal attacks and calls for violence, they even have a couple of Trump supporters on the team. You can even submit Breitbart. If it gets dowvoted, how is that the mod's fault? They can't control voting.
  - jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
    No, I am not kidding. Several subreddits kept track of all reputable worldwide news sources of all kinds: news agencies, governments, health organizations... Deciding who you trust or not is your call, but those news subreddits are invaluable to get updates from all over the world. I have not claimed all are to be trusted or anything like that, so please do not make strawmen.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I wouldn't want them to care about missinfo to be honest and see this road as a mistake. Education should provide answers, for why reddit cannot be a place for medical or any relevant information. And I don't think there are many users that treat it that way. I am opposed to the view of some moderators want to paint the site as something different than it is. Reddit consists of user generated content. Users have a right to be wrong. And it is not a place for moderators to distribute their opinions or any official information.
1_player 7y ago
The only subreddit worth reading about this disease is /r/COVID19 The rest is absolute crap.
christophilus 7y ago
I’ve noticed this arc in myself and my colleagues from time to time: “Oh, you don’t know this thing I just learned?” ... proceeds to lecture condescendingly. I’ve tried to eliminate it in myself, but I’m curious as to the underlying psychology of it. It’s such a damaging behavior.
- Quequau 7y ago
  Yes, I think you are correct. I've also noticed it in own behaviour and now deliberately and consciously avoid it. Instead I try to convey and share my enthusiasm for something I just learned because I think a lot of folks enjoy finding out about things.
tomp 7y ago
I’d rather have information and misinformation - I’m more than capable of filtering myself (years of experience haha) than someone at Twitter deciding for me and banning accounts reporting accurate info from China for being “Sino-phobic” or some other politically-correct censorious reason.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  That is: a bad signal-to-noise ratio is inevitable with people. A raw feed plus a moderated feed with the option to toggle between them is welcome. The notion of an Edenic situation where enlightened moderation can squelch the noise is bunk, and a cure worse than the disease.
PeterisP 7y ago
The problem is that if we look back with hindsight, knowing what we know now, then back in (for example) early february there's a lot of material in the "Reddit rumors" that turned out to be accurate and the official position of certain major governments and even WHO was misleading, possibly intentionally. Yes, it's important to reduce misinformation, but it's also important (and IMHO even more important) to allow challenging the official information. The issue of "truth vs misinformation" is orthogonal to whether the information is approved by some particular source. So what I'm worried about is when the official position of some nationstate conflicts with the truth, then they'll be able to label the truth "misinformation" and get it removed/suppressed because of that, and that is something we definitely want to avoid. Sure, politicians can call anything they dislike as misinformation or fake news, but it's imperative that they don't get the ability to remove/suppress that information just because of that. Rumors spread in the absence of trustworthy, extensive, reliable information. If in some situation there's no trustworthy, extensive, reliable information provided (for example, about the early situation in Iran) and rumors is all we can get, then rumors don't need to be suppressed as they are the best source of truth available even if it's not perfect.
- makomk 7y ago
  Not just the WHO and major governments. Remember the whole wave of "worry about the flu, not the coronavirus" articles, some of which outright said that people were irrational for worrying about it? The press haven't got better since either, they've just changed the narrative they're misleading people towards.
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    The press that has got ,,better'' just is doing the minimum necessary to publish anything believable by a non-informed person. At this point anybody can look at Italy and see that COVID is clearly not better than the flu.

jfkebwjsbx 7y ago

Reddit has been a very good source of information in this crisis. Of course there will be misinformation. That's not as big of a problem in Reddit because of moderation and voting, compared to Facebook and the likes.

dntbnmpls 7y ago
> Reddit has been a very good source of information in this crisis. Got to be joking right? Reddit is pretty much the battleground of misinformation. It's run by think tanks, ngos, intel, media, etc. Most of the threads and most comments are pretty much anti-china propaganda along with some pro-china nonsense. That's it. Every gilded and boosted thread and comment are of a particular propaganda bent. > That's not as big of a problem in Reddit because of moderation and voting, compared to Facebook and the likes. The problem with reddit is precisely the moderation. It's why you have garbage echo chambers like r/politics, r/the_donald, r/worldnews, r/news, r/china, r/atheism, [do I need to continue]. Even the coronavirus related subs are heavily politically driven. Because of the rise of moderation, reddit has turned into hives of extreme echo chambers. Whereas in the past, most major subs allowed all viewpoints, now each sub moderates toward a particular worldview and you get the worst echo chambers. You get the worst echo chambers due to moderation and censorship. Moderation and censorship doesn't prevent echo chambers and extremism. It promotes it. It's why nazi germany, soviet union, north korea, saudi arabia, silicon valley, etc love moderation and censorship.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  I think you are correct and overambitious moderators are indeed a problem that fragment communities. t_d, politics and to a degree worldnews are ridiculous instances of this, although there is probably even worse stuff in the underbellies. I just look at the result and while efforts to manipulate content increases (malicious and manipulative, not moderation), the situation is far, far worse than 5 years ago. Additionally the content has become much more stale. reddit probably has accurate date, but as a user the impression is pretty obvious.
  - belltaco 7y ago
    Having been on Reddit since before it had comments or subreddits, I can assure you that the bias i r/politics is the because of the userbase rather than the moderation.
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      I have been there too and I think the content massively changed in the last years. I don't even disagree politically on the points they make, but it has got to levels beyond what I call reasonably sane. Not that this wouldn't be true for their most prominent detractors too, perhaps they just adapted. Perhaps it is due to a change in userbase, but the morosity certainly changed.
      - belltaco 7y ago
        The mods there don't do much except remove personal attacks and calls for violence, they even have a couple of Trump supporters on the team. You can even submit Breitbart. If it gets dowvoted, how is that the mod's fault? They can't control voting.
- jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
  No, I am not kidding. Several subreddits kept track of all reputable worldwide news sources of all kinds: news agencies, governments, health organizations... Deciding who you trust or not is your call, but those news subreddits are invaluable to get updates from all over the world. I have not claimed all are to be trusted or anything like that, so please do not make strawmen.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I wouldn't want them to care about missinfo to be honest and see this road as a mistake. Education should provide answers, for why reddit cannot be a place for medical or any relevant information. And I don't think there are many users that treat it that way. I am opposed to the view of some moderators want to paint the site as something different than it is. Reddit consists of user generated content. Users have a right to be wrong. And it is not a place for moderators to distribute their opinions or any official information.

1_player 7y ago

The only subreddit worth reading about this disease is /r/COVID19 The rest is absolute crap.

christophilus 7y ago

I’ve noticed this arc in myself and my colleagues from time to time: “Oh, you don’t know this thing I just learned?” ... proceeds to lecture condescendingly. I’ve tried to eliminate it in myself, but I’m curious as to the underlying psychology of it. It’s such a damaging behavior.

Quequau 7y ago
Yes, I think you are correct. I've also noticed it in own behaviour and now deliberately and consciously avoid it. Instead I try to convey and share my enthusiasm for something I just learned because I think a lot of folks enjoy finding out about things.

tomp 7y ago

I’d rather have information and misinformation - I’m more than capable of filtering myself (years of experience haha) than someone at Twitter deciding for me and banning accounts reporting accurate info from China for being “Sino-phobic” or some other politically-correct censorious reason.

smitty1e 7y ago
That is: a bad signal-to-noise ratio is inevitable with people. A raw feed plus a moderated feed with the option to toggle between them is welcome. The notion of an Edenic situation where enlightened moderation can squelch the noise is bunk, and a cure worse than the disease.

PeterisP 7y ago

The problem is that if we look back with hindsight, knowing what we know now, then back in (for example) early february there's a lot of material in the "Reddit rumors" that turned out to be accurate and the official position of certain major governments and even WHO was misleading, possibly intentionally. Yes, it's important to reduce misinformation, but it's also important (and IMHO even more important) to allow challenging the official information. The issue of "truth vs misinformation" is orthogonal to whether the information is approved by some particular source. So what I'm worried about is when the official position of some nationstate conflicts with the truth, then they'll be able to label the truth "misinformation" and get it removed/suppressed because of that, and that is something we definitely want to avoid. Sure, politicians can call anything they dislike as misinformation or fake news, but it's imperative that they don't get the ability to remove/suppress that information just because of that. Rumors spread in the absence of trustworthy, extensive, reliable information. If in some situation there's no trustworthy, extensive, reliable information provided (for example, about the early situation in Iran) and rumors is all we can get, then rumors don't need to be suppressed as they are the best source of truth available even if it's not perfect.

makomk 7y ago
Not just the WHO and major governments. Remember the whole wave of "worry about the flu, not the coronavirus" articles, some of which outright said that people were irrational for worrying about it? The press haven't got better since either, they've just changed the narrative they're misleading people towards.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  The press that has got ,,better'' just is doing the minimum necessary to publish anything believable by a non-informed person. At this point anybody can look at Italy and see that COVID is clearly not better than the flu.