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Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

• Eagleflight 6y ago
  I was outraged when I first saw that list and how a few mods control everything, but this totally sheds some new light on the situation. The internet can be really shitty sometimes.
• chomp 6y ago
  Vaguely reminiscent of MrBabyMan and Digg.
• eganist 6y ago
  Relationship Advice lead-ish mod here. We were one of the subs "called out" as being controlled by Gallowboob with the original post and subsequent reposts. We (buu700 and I) added Gallowboob some years back largely to have insight into how other teams modded their subs at a time when we were growing quickly and needed to know what to do to keep up. While useful in meeting that goal, we quickly realized it was pretty meaningless for /r/relationship_advice because of the nature of the questions we were getting. The only sub like ours is /r/relationships, and we each differentiated from each other by having different rules and content creation controls. As best as we know, Gallowboob enjoys the place and is pretty decent at modding, so we're pretty happy to have him. Most mods burn out quickly because of how dark the questions get as well as because of how meaninglessly violent people become when their posts are modded. --- Separate comment on an item in the story: > Allam believes his time on the site has made him a more “paranoid” person and led him to develop “borderline PTSD.” Moderating Reddit's larger subreddits is absolutely capable of resulting in PTSD-like symptoms. I've been dealing with some on and off after a post some years ago where somebody who requested advice followed through with the best course of action only to find that his wife killed their kids soon after. And Reddit has absolutely no support system for things like this.
  • waterside81 6y ago
    As a mod - how much time do you commit to this? Are you just sitting there reading comments all day? I'm fascinated by this whole mods thing especially since it's volunteer (!!) work - which strikes me as insane.
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    And Reddit has absolutely no support system for things like this. My immediate thinking involves referring affected parties to professionals and specialists who deal with this sort of thing, but in your opinion-what should Reddit (the company) be doing?
    • commandlinefan 6y ago
      If anything Reddit (the company) should be working to limit the influence of a single "power" user like this particular moderator, not make it easier for him to control the site.
      • dvtrn 6y ago
        That's fair, I was more speaking to the question of moderators affected by PTSD. I don't necessarily disagree with what you've said here, but it doesn't quite answer my question, or are you suggesting Reddit Admins limiting mods ability to be mods is a solution to this particular problem? I guess I'm having some trouble unpacking your suggestion, can you help me gain some clarity on what you're saying?
    • headsupernova 6y ago
      paying for the councelling of the moderators.
  • doublesCs 6y ago
    > Most mods burn out quickly because of how dark the questions get Care to give us some examples?
    • severine 6y ago
      Maybe sorted by controversial? https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/controversial/?sort=controversial&t=all https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/controversial/?...
      • doublesCs 6y ago
        You don't know if that's what he's referring to. In fact, I expected that the best examples got modded out.
        • eganist 6y ago
          The "̶b̶e̶s̶t̶"̶ most representative examples often involve egregious cases of abuse against parties either without consent or without a capacity to consent.
  • haunter 6y ago
    >how meaninglessly violent people become when their posts are modded Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs. Most people get angry when someone removes their post and yet they see it reposted and approved hours or even minutes later (Gallowboob is infamous for that but regular users do it too)
    • Someone1234 6y ago
      > Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs. Don't get me started. Particularly "muting" posts with auto-moderator (silently hiding them for others without notification/warning/explanation). It was originally created for spam control but is regularly abused for generic moderation. It needs more controls placed on it. To give a recent example, I wrote a long reply in /r/fitness's daily discussion but it was muted because it contained an offhand remark about COVID-19 (vis-a-vis getting hold of fitness equipment right now). Why are they muting all comments that contain "COVID?" Who even knows, but the /way/ it was done was pretty irksome and resulted in wasted effort on my part for a comment that violated zero published rules or etiquette. /r/politics has a huge dictionary of phases and idioms that result in auto muting. None of which are defined in their rules.
      • teddyh 6y ago
        > /r/politics has a huge dictionary of phases and idioms that result in auto muting. None of which are defined in their rules. This is true here on HN too. One such word that I’ve seen to cause comments get auto-killed is “m∗sturbation” (censored for obvious reasons), and I am sure there are others.
        • syshum 6y ago
          Plenty of people complain about overmoderation here on HN as well... I am one of those people
          • ativzzz 6y ago
            I firmly believe that the only way an online forum, particularly an anonymous one with free signups can remain relatively civil is very heavy handed moderation. This is not a free speech zone (it's a privately owned space), and the only way to prevent bad actors is to be very liberal in applying heavy moderation. If a few "medium" actors get banned by accident, that's the price to pay for the rest of us getting to enjoy discussing tech without dealing with a toxic cesspool.
  • ptsdthrowaway33 6y ago
    As someone who was mentally and physically abused as a child, I'm so sick of people on the internet saying they have PTSD from mean comments that they can ignore and escape from. You cannot escape abuse from someone that is supposed to be protecting you in childhood. You cannot escape from the trauma of war when you sign up or are conscripted to be a soldier. You cannot escape the horror of death being an EMT. Seeing actual horrific death, watching ones you love die, or having someone that is supposed to care for you destroy you cause trauma. A stranger saying, "you're a piece of shit," is not fucking traumatic to anyone but an immature child or a weakling.
    • filleduchaos 6y ago
      Unfortunately (or fortunately, as the case may be) PTSD and trauma in general are not yours to define or gatekeep.
    • snazz 6y ago
      This is a little more serious than "you're a piece of shit", no? > I've been dealing with some on and off after a post some years ago where somebody who requested advice followed through with the best course of action only to find that his wife killed their kids soon after.
    • elliekelly 6y ago
      Calling someone with PTSD “weak” is exactly how society brushed aside soldiers and child abuse survivors with PTSD for decades.
      • Supermancho 6y ago
        > I'm so sick of people on the internet saying they have PTSD > Calling someone with PTSD “weak” That's a nonsequitor derail. The post you are responding to is about faux self-diagnosis.
        • magicalist 6y ago
          > That's a nonsequitor derail. The post you are responding to is about faux self-diagnosis. "weakling" is right there at the end and the GP is going on about a strawman not mentioned by the OP anyways, as several of the child comments point out.
  • ramphastidae 6y ago
    Why do you free work for a for-profit social network, especially if you say yourself that the work negatively impacts your mental health and that the community you are moderating is toxic? What are you getting out of this?
    • friendlybus 6y ago
      It used to be that the mods ran little fiefdoms that they advertised things to buy in some subreddit's feed. Those micro business success stories seem far less common in the past few years. I don't know why you would anymore.
    • Spivak 6y ago
      Because the continued existence and quality of the subreddit brings value to them. It’s no different than volunteering. The fact that Reddit is for-profit doesn’t really enter into the equation. I don’t get it for relationship subreddits because it’s so mentally exhausting but for fandoms and niche communities the experience is super cool.
      • dvtrn 6y ago
        It’s no different than volunteering. It's certainly volunteering in the synonymous sense of 'doing something for nothing because you can' but I feel this statement-left in the vacuous state of its own brevity-comes loaded with an unsaid implication that "volunteering" on Reddit is no different than "volunteering" in one's local community and I'm not sure it's that simple.
        • toyg 6y ago
          A lot of volunteer groups meet in for-profit places like cafes, and use for-profit ISPs and for-profit email providers or IM operators to talk to each other. An online forum is basically the same thing: a way to communicate.
          • dvtrn 6y ago
            Meeting together, talking about %thing%? Okay that's fair, I don't disagree that there are similarities. It does feel just as limited of a definition of 'volunteering' if taking the grandparent comment at face value.
  • twic 6y ago
    If Gallowboob and friends are just helpful innocent people, why were were the calling-out comments, dozens upon dozens of them, deleted, and the people posting them banned? If you're helpfully, innocently, looking after dozens of top subs, and people mention that and wonder what's going on, you don't censor them, you have flipping AMA about it!
    • BeetleB 6y ago
      I looked at some of the deleted comments, and if I were a mod, I would delete them as well.
      • valuearb 6y ago
        I looked at some of the deleted comments, and there was no reason except hubris to delete them.
    • eganist 6y ago
      > If Gallowboob and friends are just helpful innocent people, why were were the calling-out comments, dozens upon dozens of them, deleted, and the people posting them banned? Because personal witchhunts are against Reddit's rules as a form of targeted harassment, and mods are de-modded by Reddit for not enforcing Reddit's rules -- or worse, subreddits that consistently see significant Anti-Evil Ops (effectively Reddit's on-payroll God-Mods) action may be quarantined.
  • jseliger 6y ago
    I more or less quit Reddit when I realized what kinds of traits moderation tends to select for: https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/16/the-moderator-problem-how-reddit-and-related-news-sites-decline https://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/16/the-moderator-problem-how.... Perhaps you're an exception, or the exception, and, based on Reddit's growth, it seems that my preferences are minority ones.
  • starpilot 6y ago
    Why is that subreddit so similar to Jerry Springer? How did it become so trashy?
    • scollet 6y ago
      You shouldn't be seeking relationship advice from random strangers or a reality show in the first place. Given that no one is a verified counselor the sub is largely redundant at best, knowingly harmful at worse. It is rife with low-effort karma farming, and toxicity, among the defaults.
      • eganist 6y ago
        Largely true with two caveats. 1. We're trying to keep the subreddit as accessible as possible to people with nowhere else to turn. This is 𝐇ard. 2. There's at least one verified crisis counselor who frequently comments - u/ebbie45. We've verified their credentials.
        • scollet 6y ago
          I stand corrected.
    • eganist 6y ago
      drama-farming. We're still figuring out how to deal with it short of a figurative nuke.
  • lobotryas 6y ago
    Why should reddit offer you any support? You volunteered; no one forced you.
  • SlowRobotAhead 6y ago
    > Moderating Reddit's larger subreddits is absolutely capable of resulting in PTSD-like symptoms There was a moderator of the gaming subs that killed himself fairly recently. He said largely the same thing that modding was not healthy - but he continued to do it. Why do you think that is? I suspect it was because he had control over something and found that too appealing to let go of. That’s not really a soldier’s dilemma of duty and responsibility. So that anecdote aside, I’ve worked with a special forces vet that actually has PTSD. Respectfully, if you think moderating an online forum is any sort of analog even to be “PTSD-like” you are either mistaken or have a far more gruesome task than I think possible.
    • eganist 6y ago
      > Why do you think that is? I suspect it was because he had control over something and found that too appealing to let go of. That’s not really a soldier’s dilemma of duty and responsibility. Speaking solely on behalf of myself: we see a notable volume of fantasy and fetish posts as well as legitimate pleas for help that veer into extremely disturbing territory. The result is a situation where mods may well find themselves feeling substantially troubled with extended exposure. I'm not about to impose that on someone else, and as a result of inevitable scope creep from the sub gaining readers, we've now got to sustain an environment that people use as either a first- or last-resort option while at the same time turning away significant populations of people (a subset of followers from influencers such as https://twitter.com/redditships/ https://twitter.com/redditships/) who appear to relish creating drama from people calling for help. Great example: https://twitter.com/eganist/status/1263534755045412870 https://twitter.com/eganist/status/1263534755045412870 When staying imposes a burden on myself but leaving heightens the risk that people may be harmed, it's a lose-lose, and the trauma arises from this. I'd show you some of the stuff we've had to mod out, but it's too dark for Hackernews.
    • AgentME 6y ago
      > but he continued to do it. Why do you think that is? I suspect it was because he had control over something and found that too appealing to let go of. Why do people volunteer on anything online, like open source projects even? Sometimes people like a thing, want to keep it good, and feel that it's less likely to happen without them. Leaving is condemning the thing to possibly get worse and decay through less contribution, and interrupts their social connections formed through it and their established routine that gives the satisfaction of contributing. It's not something easily abandoned after investing years in.
• someonehere 6y ago
  There are subs dedicated to calling out his bs. One sub has figured out how he games reddit in his favor for karma and front page placement.
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    Yeah, I can't think of any one single action that would make Reddit a better site overall than him leaving it.
• pgrote 6y ago
  I understand why mods of smaller subreddits do it. They are passionate people looking for a community. The volunteer efforts they put into it help them and the community. I do not understand why mods work for free on the huge subreddits. Abuse, spam and more would make the position horrible. Reddit needs to start paying folks to do this job.
• MattGaiser 6y ago
  People love the idea of decentralized control, but that is not how people willing to make the effort are allocated. We see this on Reddit, on Facebook, and we see this in open source. On Reddit (I am not a mod but friends are) mods burn out quickly. Many people have never seen the horrible behavior that goes on in the background. Same thing on Facebook. I moderate a small 800 person group, one which is private and has mostly pre-screened people. We burned through so many mods over the years and the worst things we encounter are insult wars as nobody is going to post porn or graphic violence with their real life account. In open source, the heavy lifting on a lot of projects is done by just 1-2 people. Sure the project might have 30 contributors, but it is those 1 or 2 who dedicate their evening when a major bug is found to fixing it. In all these cases, the work is mostly done by whoever is willing to do it. Over time, people who find the work stressful quit and those who don't end up taking on an enormous amount.
  • Mirioron 6y ago
    The issue is that we know reddit moderators play politics. Subs are taken over or subverted. Having control over a sub can give you an opportunity to control what people see and read. If you then find out that a small group of moderators moderates a large number of the big subs then it makes the decentralized control into centralized control.
• raverbashing 6y ago
  The way I see it is someone who has enjoyed a "privileged" position without transparency or accountability for a long time is surprised that people find issues with concentration of moderation powers (especially across subreddits). Makes me wonder what is it that people find so appealing in having moderation of subreddits as an almost full time job.
  • karaterobot 6y ago
    Concentration of influence in the media is a real issue, yes. However, doxing him isn't a reasonable or helpful response to those concerns.
    • raverbashing 6y ago
      Completely agree. And while there are advantages to those positions being "anonymous" the impact of an eventual doxxing is heightened by it. Maybe an initial greater transparency would have been better in the long run. Or something like rotation of positions, etc.
    • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I think you're underselling the other side of the problem. The guy had real, significant power, overseeing many of the largest discussion forums on one of the most popular websites in the country. It's unreasonable to expect anonymity when you wield that much power to control the national discourse.
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    You answered your own question already: power.
  • fgbgbf 6y ago
    It's almost like they enjoy doing it for free.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Jonnax 6y ago
  I stopped being an active user of Reddit about 5 years ago. I felt that it wasn't a forum that was conductive to interesting discussion. But also, I know it's a cliche to talk about the eternal September effect, but somehow it feels like the discourse in the site is even more stupid today. At least to me it seems like it's just useful as a problem and answer site you Google on. But now it seems like to some of users they feel like the website is the definer and trendsetter of western culture. Instead of a website where people post memes and shit post. Like what am I reading? That there's a shadowy cabal of moderators? Who cares if they're running the big subreddits? Even who cares if they're being paid by companies to post things. Reddit is website that does little moderation themselves (except when it gets them in the news) and rely on volunteers to actually manage the site. What do expect? That people are going to spend 10s or hours a week for the joy of community? So they can make Reddit's employees and shareholders money? When it comes to Facebook people say "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" But it's the same for Reddit. But this time it's the users which are taking advantage? Oh no. But perhaps I don't understand the seriousness of Reddit.
  • as1mov 6y ago
    I think most people take issue with the fact that reddit, one of the most trafficked websites in the world, has some of their biggest subs controlled by a few people. You can easily use this power to shape/influence public opinion of a large number of users.
    • asdff 6y ago
      More worrying to me is the great effects that botnets can have on reddit post. If you can get a post off and running early, it will appear on hot and then get to the front page, and grow exponentially. I mean, the internet research agency is no big secret and this sort of work is their bread and butter 1. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
• thebouv 6y ago
  So, I don't get it. Why does it matter if a few volunteer mods manage a ton of subs? Isn't it hard to do? So they have a hard job? And it's volunteer? And .. what? I don't understand the outrage directed at mods I guess. Note: I'm a light Reddit user. I follow a handful of subs. And I can't name a single mod of any of them. Maybe this is more meaningful for people who spend more time on the site and are more involved in their particular subs? What, they just bash heads with mods sometimes?
  • myself248 6y ago
    > I follow a handful of subs. And I can't name a single mod of any of them. I unfollowed all of the default subs, they're just not interesting to me. I use reddit for a few technical subs, a few local subs, and a few off-the-beaten-path funny subs. None of them even made the list of top-however-many that showed how they all had a few mods in common. All these critical articles seem to assume that people consume the default reddit front page, and seem to have little relevance to the platform as a platform.
    • s9w 6y ago
      These people don't just control the big subreddits. r/programming is controlled by spez for example. Not that he would have a problem with just changing the Reddit database manually anyways.
  • Goronmon 6y ago
    Why does it matter if a few volunteer mods manage a ton of subs? The concern basically goes like this... 1) Mod/Subreddit does something a user doesn't like (literally anything, doesn't matter how reasonable or trivial or toxic the complaint is, that isn't important, what matters is that someone isn't happy). 2) They want to find evidence that the Mod/Subreddit in question is "bad" or "corrupt" in someway to support that grievence from 1. 3) Users points to mod list as evidence that a "corrupt" group of mods is actually in control of everything. 4) Now that the "corruption" has been found, the Mod/Subreddit involved in 1 has been "proven wrong" and now can be safely ridiculed and labeled as such.
  • 6y ago
• BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I downloaded Reddit Enhancement Suite and it has a feature that marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user when you see a post of theirs. It is absolutely eye-opening just how much content is posted by the same few dozens of usernames. GallowBoob is the most infamous but to focus on him would be a mistake. It's pretty clear to me that the vast majority of content on Reddit is heavily manipulated and artificial.
  • koboll 6y ago
    Or... maybe they just post good content? You yourself said the extension marks the cumulative amount of upvotes you've given a user. So, unless you yourself are engaged in this conspiracy to inflate GallowBoob's upvotes, then all this is evidence of is that GallowBoob seems uniquely skilled at finding and posting viral content.
    • nsilvestri 6y ago
      Shortly after GB's rise to fame he was offered a job at one those horrible viral licensing companies, which definitely suggests he's skilled at finding viral content.
    • BitwiseFool 6y ago
      I should have been more clear. RES keeps track of both upvotes and downvotes. Even having a single upvote or downvote will change the color of the submitter's username and make it clear you've voted on their submissions before. I tend to upvote news articles and downvote reposts. I have definitely noticed that these power users recycle a lot of content.
    • andrewzah 6y ago
      He also is paid to post on reddit. He also submits posts dozens of times, deleting them if they don't gain traction quickly. People don't dislike gallowboob and others because the content is necessarily bad... it's just inorganic and lame. I want to see content from other regular users, not power posters working for firms.
• ideals 6y ago
  The user in question is GallowBoob.
  • Supermancho 6y ago
    He earned so many imaginary points on a platform, that other people target his status and content. It's not like he couldn't make new accounts. But hey, it's the platform's responsibility to support him for the content he posts and the moderation he performs? I cannot have sympathy for his own reindeer games.
• hi41 6y ago
  Can someone please explain how doxing works at a technical level? Suppose I post something on Twitter or Youtube that someone does not like how would they dox me? For example, CNN outed a guy who did a video where Trump bashes a guy superimposed with CNN in a boxing ring. Wouldn't such attempts at doxing people also put pressure on their freedom of speech and expression?
  • ceejayoz 6y ago
    It's very difficult to not leave breadcrumbs. Maybe your personal blog had your name, address, and phone number on it back in the 1990s and there's a record of that. Maybe you made one post six months back on your main account instead of your throwaway. Maybe you've inadvertently given enough details for someone to narrow it down. One mistake is all that's needed. For example, Mitt Romney's secret Twitter account was found from just a few bits of info. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/mitt-romney-has-a-secret-twitter-account-and-it-sure-looks-like-its-this-one.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/mitt-romney-has-... > “That’s kind of what he does,” Romney said with a shrug, and then got up to retrieve an iPad from his desk. He explained that he uses a secret Twitter account—“What do they call me, a lurker?”—to keep tabs on the political conversation. “I won’t give you the name of it,” he said, but “I’m following 668 people.” Swiping at his tablet, he recited some of the accounts he follows, including journalists, late-night comedians (“What’s his name, the big redhead from Boston?”), and athletes. Trump was not among them. “He tweets so much,” Romney said, comparing the president to one of his nieces who overshares on Instagram. “I love her, but it’s like, Ah, it’s too much.”
    • rwmj 6y ago
      Reminds me of a favourite gwern post about how many bits of information there are that make you unique: https://www.gwern.net/Death-Note-Anonymity https://www.gwern.net/Death-Note-Anonymity Even analysing what times of day you post can narrow you down a lot.
  • floren 6y ago
    > Suppose I post something on Twitter or Youtube that someone does not like how would they dox me? Basically it's all about linking internet presences to, eventually, real-world information. Lots of people use the same username across different sites. Suppose I get mad about a video you post on Youtube, so I google "hi41" and find your Twitter. I don't find anything personally identifiable on there, but then I reverse image-search a vacation picture you posted and I find your instagram, which is under your real name. Now I've got your real name, which is a powerful thing to drop on someone who thinks they're anonymous.
• bredren 6y ago
  I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with trolls or stepping into stopping out of control discussions. It is actively performing anti-ban-evasion against people who are targeting the sub for disruption and then going after moderators that get in the way of these attempts. There is at least one active case number with the Portland Police Department of a person that has both attempted to doxx our moderators and has gone to the home of a moderator and vandalized property repeatedly. In this example, the person will not stop and creates new accounts every day. While there are things Reddit can be doing to help, (such as improving tools to counter ban-evasion,) I think this problem is bigger than Reddit and focuses on lack of enforcement for digital actions that would qualify as genuine crimes of harassment if translated into the physical realm.
  • ryandvm 6y ago
    Hacker News suffers from the same problem. We have folks like dang (God bless him) manually dealing with assholes. Seems like we could solve these problems with technology, but here we are two decades into the 21st century and we still have humans cleaning the pools. I'd be interested to know if actual forum moderators think that we could solve the bad actor problem with algorithms...
    • bredren 6y ago
      As I was typing this, I was thinking about moderation of HN and but was cautious to comment on meta. Speaking generally, without real-world consequences for violating community TOS on a service there are no teeth in tracking bad actors, banning them, etc. For a long time, I loathed Facebook's real-name policy. However, to some extent I suspect the amount of identity validation and attribution of comments to actions does have a limiting impact on casual trolling and harassment on that service.
      • 6y ago
• iratewizard 6y ago
  Reddit's top user in the sense that he reposts to farm karma and moderates over 1000 subreddits. He is an opportunist seeking power. Generally, he is disliked by a large portion of reddit. Spamming reddit at that scale to become self appointed "top user" has a major impact on the site, and it's for the worse when it dilutes the content on a site. Unsurprisingly, there are several accusations of him selling his influence to other companies.
  • intopieces 6y ago
    > Generally, he is disliked by a large portion of reddit. Huh? 98.1% of users don't post [0]. The user mentioned in the article has the most points of anyone, meaning their posts have the most votes. That doesn't indicate dislike. Quite the opposite, actually. Was there a poll about this user to gauge sentiment? [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/lets_hear_it_for_the_lurkers_the_vast_majority_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5f9wi/let...
    • nwsm 6y ago
      That's an incredibly naive perspective on media to take. If national news stations get high ratings does that mean people necessarily like the people generating or publishing the content? Is it impossible for a medium to generate interest and attention while actively attempting to exploit or manipulate its viewers? Most users do not notice the poster at all when upvoting a thread. Notice the top level thread [0] here talking about Reddit Enhancement Suite and the epiphany that comes with monitoring which accounts one is passively upvoting. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23258721&goto=item%3Fid%3D23258425%2323258721 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23258721&goto=item%3Fi...
      • intopieces 6y ago
        >If national news stations get high ratings does that mean people necessarily like the people generating or publishing the content? I think national news stations are not an apt comparison, since they have faces. This user, for all intents and purposes, exists only in text and non-personal image posts. For that reason -- the lack of "personal connection" that voice and face provide -- upvotes are reasonable proxy for "like" and "approval". I contend that people don't "dislike" this user specifically, but actually "dislike" the idea that the content they are consuming comes not from many original minds, but a few minds copying the same content over and over. As I pointed out in my original comment, this is the entire platform! What people dislike is not the user, but the entire system. In that regard, it is possible for a medium to generate interest and attention while actively attempting to exploit or manipulate its viewers, because that's what Reddit does. It's a classic attention merchant.
• ciguy 6y ago
  I was once banned from a travel sub for suggesting to a 19 year old woman asking about safety in Egypt that it might not be the best place to travel by herself. I had been there myself and know women who have traveled Egypt on their own who also recommended against it. My comment was seized upon by mods of the sub as: 1: Mansplaining (She didn't specifically ask for male opinions so I should shut up). 2: Racist Hate Speech (Because saying Egypt might not be perfectly safe - something I would also say about many cities in the USA - is somehow racist to Egyptians). 3: Sexist (Women can do anything that men can do and I was apparently suggesting otherwise). I was summarily banned from that sub plus a bunch of other travel subs by the same few mods. I don't know what the answer is for moderation on Reddit but whatever they are doing right now is definitely not working.
• sacks2k 6y ago
  Many people see this as moderators controlling too much, but it's what happens in a mostly free system. Some people will over-achieve and 99% will underachieve or achieve just enough to get by. This has been seen time and time again in any system involving humans. A big issue with Reddit is that it has subs dedicated to encouraging mentally ill and anti-social behavior. These things tend to eventually escalate into the real-world where someone eventually gets hurt or killed.
  • dkn775 6y ago
    Can you provide some examples of subreddits that encourage such anti-social/mentally ill behavior?
• mellosouls 6y ago
  The issue he was "outed" over (concerning alleged control of a significant portion of reddit by a small number of users) was discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018
• anewdirection 6y ago
  This is your signal to build the thing you were thinking about. So much money on the table for anyone that can reinvent, but allow easy migration from that once great site.
  • downerending 6y ago
    If someone's going after this, my killer feature would be user-driven moderation/filtering. That is, what I see should be determined by me, not some moderator or the hivemind. Almost certainly this would need an AI element to learn what I want to see. Potentially there could be a "people like you" assist to that.
• 1024core 6y ago
  Reddit just hasn't scaled well, and it looks like the operators of Reddit have no interest in scaling it properly. Case in point: the moderation system. Now, if you're passionate about some niche topic, and create a sub for it and become the moderator, then fine; you rock. Things work well for you and your subscribers. But if you're a sub of a large interest area (say, the country of India). How do you moderate there? How do you accept the diversity of thoughts and opinions, many of which run contrary to your own, but are perfectly valid in a diverse society? Currently, /r/india has a bunch of moderators with a severe political stance (I won't go into specifics here, but I've been banned from it several times). They will warn you and ultimately ban you if you don't toe their "moderation" line. So on the one hand you have the "in" group of people threatening violence and harassing people; and on the other, you have the complement set of people getting banned for using words like "naive" (happened to me). There current moderation system (whoever started the reddit, and whoever they blessed, get to be moderators; sortof like a monarchy and a feudal system) is horribly out of date in today's world. Here's how I would fix it: every year, have an election of moderators. People get votes proportional to their karma (or upvotes or some function thereof, which could heavily penalize bad posting behavior) earned since the last election. And the top N vote getters get to be moderators for a year.
  • MattGaiser 6y ago
    > Reddit just hasn't scaled well, and it looks like the operators of Reddit have no interest in scaling it properly. Has anyone scaled online moderation well? Facebook, Twitter, Stack Overflow, etc. all struggle with moderating their communities.
    • charwalker 6y ago
      This was my thought as well. There is no efficient AI like modding, even Google/YT can't get it to work well enough to leave alone, at least not yet. A responsible human tasking with modding can only scale so far before more humans must be found, and the more you need the lower quality the you are likely to drop to based on resources. When your site or system generates lifetimes of content each day the scale becomes insane.
    • 6y ago
• gwern 6y ago
  This article doesn't actually address any of the questions (eg how does he have all this time?). Note that it's on the public record that Gallowboob has worked for social media marketing companies, eg https://www.forbes.com/sites/fernandoalfonso/2016/06/01/cashing-in-karma-how-a-former-landscape-architect-turned-his-reddit-fame-into-a-career/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/fernandoalfonso/2016/06/01/cash... > The Upvoted story never materialized; Reddit administrators were still digging out from under a deluge of drama including revelations about online harassment from its former CEO Yishan Wong and the sudden departure of current CEO Ellen Pao. With no job, Allam spent the next six months crafting the following cover letter and applying to jobs. In February, Ohanian’s advice paid off. Allam, better known on Reddit as gallowboob, had landed a full-time executive gig with the United Kingdom-based media company UNILAD. He got the job thanks to his Reddit prowess. > > ...Allam is a social media executive at UNILAD, an online media organization that “amassed a Facebook following of over 12 million fans, 30 million monthly unique visitors to the website and over 1 billion video views a month,” states the company on its site.
  • ppod 6y ago
    The article is also borderline misleading, as initially I thought their real names had been posted. All that was posted was a list of which users are common moderators of large subreddits. If they are getting abuse to their accounts, the problem is the abuse, not the list.
    • arprocter 6y ago
      Agree - "Outed" implies he was doxxed, but per link in the article his name was known in 2016
    • Mirioron 6y ago
      From what I read, the guy that posted the list then got banned from plenty of those large subreddits. That probably fuelled the rage.
  • cwkoss 6y ago
    It seems the one of the fundamental problems leading to this situation is that reddit moderation is unpaid yet requires large amounts of time. So anyone who becomes a 'big' moderator has to monetize their efforts externally, leading to communities being suspicious of the motives of any big moderator.
• mycall 6y ago
  > because I don’t know if they’re trying, you know, [to] get my IP. Use a VPN, double-hop if you really care.
• Causality1 6y ago
  "Five people moderate the 92 largest subreddits." If that's true, why? How could an individual possibly have enough time and attention to moderate more than one subreddit with millions of users?
  • crankylinuxuser 6y ago
    NodeRed or Apache NiFi can help a great deal with that. Both are great at posting and reposting (on and off Reddit, or between FB, Reddit, Twitter, etc), along with controlling botfarms. edit: Seriously, why the downvotes? We had a NiFi post a week ago. And those of us who do OSINT and investigative work also use deanonymizing techniques. We automate our defenses as well using similar.
    • Causality1 6y ago
      Probably because it kind of ignored my point. For example, r/pics has thirty-six moderators. Some of them are undoubtedly inactive, but it's still obvious that moderating a single massive subreddit is an order of magnitude more work than can be done by one person and therefore giving one person moderator rights over multiple does not increase the amount or quality of moderation. One person cannot use that power to do more good for the site, so the question is what are they using that power for and why do they deserve it?
      • crankylinuxuser 6y ago
        I sait on another comment on this article that being a mod allows you to strongly astroturf and control the narrative. From there, and having loads of bots, allows you to manufacture consent or dissent. And the moderation power allows you to remove what you wish not to address. It's sheer power. It's not about the money, per se... But those with power get money, and those with money seek power. It has nothing to do with good, in most cases. (And yes, I'm a moderator of small groups. I just remove spam and malware.)
  • dorkinspace 6y ago
    It is much worse than that. Some of these mods are on the moderator list for 1000+ subreddits, many with 100,000s or millions of users. They obviously don't have time to moderate all of these subs.
• laurieg 6y ago
  Moderating a medium to large sub is a thankless task. I moderated a sub with 100,000 subscribers for a couple of years. Most of the work was removing obviously bad content. There was a user who would make a new account every few weeks, post various comments to make it legit, and then start posting legitimate comments with links to hardcore pornography disguised as normal links. Users once rebelled because I removed 100% illegal content. Users and mods on the subreddit started to get hit with SLAPP lawsuits at one point. I was always very careful to hide my real identity but that was the final straw. I stepped down from modding shortly after. Modding is a near impossible task and as a subreddit gets bigger it gets exponentially harder.
• md224 6y ago
  It seems to me like the main purpose of moderation is to make sure posts conform to the theme of the subreddit... to keep things on topic. Almost everything else can be taken care of by the downvotes of the community members. A subreddit is like a community where every citizen has a gun. They can police themselves by downvoting each other... the only thing mods need to do is make sure the theme of the community stays on track. I'm the sole mod of a subreddit with over 600k subscribers and I basically do nothing. My case is admittedly special because the subreddit is a weird kind of "game" with very specific, well-defined rules about how to reply to posts (and a bot that deletes replies that violate this rule), but in general I feel like people don't have enough faith in the ability of a community to handle itself. Occasionally I've had to ban people who are spamming /new with disturbing content, and I did end up setting some useful automoderator rules, but otherwise I find that the community runs itself. I've gotten a few messages from people over the years saying they're unsubscribing because they wanted me to take a more involved role in moderating the content posted to the subreddit, removing posts they thought were "low quality". That's fair, but I don't think it should be up to me what counts as "low quality"... I'm just one person. The beauty of a community is watching it develop organically from the actions of thousands of people, not molding it into some shape you happen to prefer. It's like an organism, and it has a mechanism to achieve homeostasis: upvotes and downvotes.
  • xigency 6y ago
    AskOuija? I appreciate your take on moderation. I think what happened on WorldPolitics with IAmanAnonymousCoward shows that at least a small bit of work is needed to keep things on topic, but overall I think free speech and self-moderation is better. What seems unacceptable for moderators to do, which seems to happen a lot, is banning users from multiple subreddits due to comments or behavior in a different subreddit. That's really a power trip and it sounds like something that a lot of moderators on 'the list' have done.
  • SL61 6y ago
    This was my experience on a couple of subreddits which were a bit smaller than yours. One of the subreddits even covered a topic that often gets a lot of drama and high-strung people. But outside of the occasional obvious troll, the communities managed themselves. “Low-quality” posts like memes were effectively disallowed by the community itself, i.e. they would always be downvoted - but if they became popular, so be it. We never got abusive modmail, no one was ever mad at us. If two users started arguing, we’d stay out unless there were actual threats or slurs, which only happened a few times. I do think the situation is different for subreddits that aren’t really “communities” such as /r/pics or a meme subreddit, where most traffic comes from the front page. But the same general philosophy probably still applies to some extent.
• pphysch 6y ago
  Is he done "after being outed", or done after finding a comfy job in social media management?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• MildlySerious 6y ago
  While this whole situation is a mess and nowhere near black and white I'm sure, painting Allam in particular as a victim is leaving out a lot of detail. He is not only known for being a reddit power user, he's also infamous for abusing his mod powers, and being provocative and elitist towards people calling him out, mocking, trolling or banning them. He took over and wiped out a sub that tracked his abuse of mod powers. On the big subs he's controlling people got banned frequently for calling him out, long before this more recent drama. These whole theatrics have been going on for years. I've been targeted by him in the past, sadly I can't dig it up because reddit's comment history only goes back so far.
  • arbitrage 6y ago
    Yup. A long time ago I was mouthing off in a sub about gallowboob. He threw a shit fit and had the admins ban me. The whole site is rotten, and completely opaque. They say one thing, and do another. Fresh blood is something reddit sorely needs.
  • Invictus0 6y ago
    I've been a member of centuryclub for a long time, which is for Reddit users with over 100k karma. Gallowboob has been posting photos of his ass on that sub for years and was open about the city he lived in and what he did for work. Its hard to feel bad for him here; he should have known what he was getting himself into.
  • dorkinspace 6y ago
    Additionally, much of that "precious" karma he has is from gaming reddit. He will (re)post something and if it doesn't gain traction in a short amount of time, he'll delete it and repost it. He does this over and over until the post takes off. In the past, it would be fun to watch his profile and see posts jump from "posted 30 min ago" to "posted just now" over and over again.
    • MildlySerious 6y ago
      Case in point. I was digging around a bit after my initial comment and found this post[1] It's crazy how little I found about well known stuff. When trolling and provoking he also deletes his own comments once they get downvoted too much, and I could hardly find anything that documents it, even though it's far from a secret [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Against_Astroturfing/comments/ans1hf/daily_submission_history_for_one_selfdescribed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Against_Astroturfing/comments/ans1h...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mirimir 6y ago
  GallowBoob tells a sad story, but the fact remains that they and a few others had far too much power. They were arguably also spread far too thin. So altogether, I'm not sad to see them go. Also, their behavior deleting posts and banning users over discussion of this issue has been egregious.
• dionian 6y ago
  The 'spam filter' enabled on most large subreddits greatly adds to the 'echo chamber' nature of Reddit and leads to a tyrannical majority. If you get downvotes in a major sub due to not agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you are rate-limited and you can only post once every 10 minutes. Imagine being in a debate with dozens of people and being rate-limited to only posting every 10 minutes because your opinion wasn't agreed to by people doing voting.
• subpixel 6y ago
  Jim Leff, who founded and ran Chowhound long ago, has a lot to say about the perils of moderating an online community: https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2008/08/always-talk-to-mask.html https://jimleff.blogspot.com/2008/08/always-talk-to-mask.htm...
• LoSboccacc 6y ago
  GallowBoob is a scourge, I'm sad to see a human being harassed and I hope he'll see justice, but he's also all it's wrong with reddit moderation and two wrongs don't cancel out to make one a saint. I encourage you to dig into the threads of the alleged post that made him 'flip' https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/to_have_independently_moderated_subreddits/ https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/t... some are straight up harassment, which is sad. some describe however all the many things he did to ruin other people enjoyment to the site, most common of which was banning users to steal good content and repost it for karma, to fuel his own agenda, which include for example being paid from netflix to run advertisements as normal posts trough the subs he mods. he's not the good, loving moderator that the article describes.
• zahma 6y ago
  Reddit has turned into a cesspool. I’m sure the majority of users are great, honest and open minded, but you can’t keep the internet outside the walled garden forever. And it only takes a handful of bad actors to ruin it for everyone. As frustrated as I’ve found myself on Reddit, to the point I’ve all but quit using it save for some video game stuff, I still can’t imagine how mods can be bothered to put up with bad actors, trolls, whiners, and fools. Everyone checks out at some point —- and as a normal user, I can and I feel no compunction about letting the conversation devolve, but when you rely on volunteers to do the policing, it’s going to happen more often and with harsh consequences. And you can see on many subs that absent strong moderation, discussion on anything remotely contentious devolves into an ugly free for all. Even if the thread is locked or certain comments get deleted, it’s too little too late, and the damage has been done to civil discourse. This article has me thinking more broadly about the internet and the future of online communities. Large platforms can’t thoroughly patrol every nook and cranny without unreasonable amounts of employees. And yet it’s never been more important to have fair and timely moderation on serious issues. Machine learning might have a role to play here, but it’ll require some sort of human oversight to provide a “starter” or some context within which a system can determine what can be censored. What else is left? Unmasking everyone isn’t going to happen for good reason. The internet is in dire need of a police force, and volunteerism isn’t sufficient.
• stevebmark 6y ago
  I feel sad seeing this gaining traction, when Reddit's appalling history of enabling and supporting abuse has gone unchecked for so long. Why care about it now? You didn't care before. This is a real question. Why is now the time you choose to engage?
• uncletaco 6y ago
  I was a moderator on /r/blackpeopletwitter and the amount of racist and outright vitriol we received was fucking insane. There are people out there who really have it out for BPT and we banned dozens of users daily who were legit there to only drop the n word with a hard r and make jokes about monkeys or something. I deleted my reddit account in a panic after someone sent me a DM saying they knew where I lived and I saw a guy wondering around my apartment complex with his phone out like he was recording. I never want to be highly visible on reddit again.
  • bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
    Wow... this and the stabbing story are making me happy that I only mod relatively tame subreddits.
  • dx87 6y ago
    BPT twitter also did that "April Fools joke" where only verified black people were allowed to post there, so it's not a really a suprise that an overtly racist subreddit attracts racists.
  • ativzzz 6y ago
    I feel the safest way to use Reddit is to create a new account for every subreddit/community/subculture that is in any way tied to real life, and absolutely minimize the amount of information you give out in each one by keeping it relevant to that particular topic. If you have some niche gaming/entertainment/etc interests, use an account specifically for those without ever delving into personal details. Have a separate account for BPT, where again, you minimize sharing personal details. If you have a hobby that has more real life interaction (for instance is location based, or is small and you use personally identifiable information), use a separate account and minimize sharing anything not related to the topics. Obviously if reddit gets hacked/info is leaked good luck, but controlling available information about yourself seems increasingly mandatory to protect yourself from the crazies if you want to participate in online discussions.
    • uncletaco 6y ago
      My solution was just to not use reddit interactively anymore. I used the site for about 10 years before I got tired of wasting afternoons browsing or arguing past other users. Stuff I want to discuss usually gets linked in a discord channel and I talk about it with my friends. When I browse now I just skim a few subreddits I like and refrain from interacting.
• ranger207 6y ago
  I think the biggest problem with reddit is that the simplest subreddit name is going to attract the largest audience, and if you don't like the moderators or community there, then there's nothing you can do about it. There's only one /r/politics, and if you don't like it then you'll have to move to, say, /r/notpolitics, which is going to have less visibility and a smaller community simply because of its name. What would help would be, for lack of a better term, "namespaced" subreddits. There wouldn't be a /r/politics, there'd be a /r/namespace1/politics and a /r/namespace2/politics, and there'd effectively be no problem with visibility: if someone's looking for a subreddit to discuss politics, then there isn't a default, and you'll have to explicitly choose which community and moderation style you want. The best way to implement this would be a federated reddit, with each server being it's own namespace. If you don't like federated-reddit1.com/r/politics, then move to federated-reddit2.com/r/politics. There'd be a problem with bubbles, but that wouldn't be any worse than what already exists.
• s_dev 6y ago
  Big/default subs are fast becoming outright mainstream trash on reddit. Fortunately like small businesses in the economy the smaller subs are holding the whole show together. This is a positive change -- that one user account had too much power over too many subs. I refuse to believe money wasn't becoming involved. Size breeds skepticism and the GallowBoob account (whomever was using it) just got too big.
• diebeforei485 6y ago
  Good riddance, IMO
• organicfigs 6y ago
  There is definitely an anomalous uptick with reddit harassment these days. I posted a positive article to /r/Coronavirus and I was immediately harassed in the dumbest way possible (someone trying to counter an article I posted but their argument was actually restating the article thesis). He ended up getting a ton of traction because he probably sounded confident. It left me confused and saddened- I owe a lot of what I learned in the last few years through great discussions on reddit and hn, hopefully reddit's deterioration by bored/malicious actors is stopped.
  • ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
    Well the coronavirus really does bring out the worse part of Reddit. If your article at all suggested that cases are decreasing/it's not going to lead to the end of the world, that sub is going to attack you.
• xigency 6y ago
  Just five months ago users were getting permanently suspended from Reddit for mildly criticizing GallowBoob. You can see it here: https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstKarmaWhores/comments/eb146l/gallowboob_removed_a_mod_from_rfreecompliments/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstKarmaWhores/comments/eb146l/... I doubt that he would walk away from the website even though a number of users would be happier. There are hundreds of fantastic moderators on Reddit that genuinely help people and there are also a few people who want to feel powerful by manipulating others.
  • Mirioron 6y ago
    He's probably just going to make a new account.
• wnevets 6y ago
  Oh good. Blocking him made reddit much more enjoyable.
• bergstromm466 6y ago
  'top user' - who gives a fuck? Kind of like me claiming i'm the 'top user' in GTA V?
• tartrate 6y ago
  I'm sure there's an article in there somewhere: https://i.imgur.com/GqQCnVG.jpg https://i.imgur.com/GqQCnVG.jpg For some reason it even crashed my mobile browser. As I was scrolling, more ads loaded and kept moving the text around.
• uoaei 6y ago
  Moderation is akin to public service. Taking on the duty means putting yourself in a place of visibility and accountability. It is no surprise that the pressure is too much for some.
• tinus_hn 6y ago
  Oddly enough there is nothing to be seen about this on the reddit frontpage.
• thepangolino 6y ago
  Thank god he left. He’s a pathetic excuse for a human being. That being said, a great number of the active mods on that platform seems to be a couple steps away from becoming power tripping maniacs. It’s one thing to stop spam and illegal content. It’s another to censor discussions because whatever content was posted can be interpreted as against rule 4.1B §2. How hard is it to leave the content up and let users downvote it if it’s not so relevant?
• Grue3 6y ago
  The worst spammer on reddit leaves the site? Good riddance. Though I'm sure he has a few spare accounts to post his stuff.
• tripzilch 6y ago
  I'm sorry but I don't know what to make of this. Of course harassment is terrible, but what the hell is going on? Last week a reddit thread discussing this list was linked on HN, someone linked to a site where you could see deleted comments. There were a lot. But it was mainly people asking very reasonable questions and wondering out loud whether these "power mods" got paid, perhaps by advertisers or influencer agencies, because doing this kind of moderation is clearly way more than a full time job. Other deleted comments were wondering if those accounts were perhaps shared (again super sensible question given the amount of time it would cost). At the very worst some of the deletions devolved into wild speculations (as reddit is wont to). Point is, obviously they do get protection from the site. And apparently sometimes unreasonably so. Some stinky stuff is going on below the surface, is my feeling. Doesn't mean that person gets to be harassed, of course. Also, I don't really buy the mental health comparison to FB moderators. The latter is an absolute shit job, and it's done by anonymous teams of paid people. That doesn't really rhyme with being the most upvoted Reddit celebrity of all time, with their seemingly superhuman sense to post the juiciest meme at the most opportune time.