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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, i

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the reddit, and whoever they blessed, get to be moderators; sortof like a monarchy and a feudal system) is horribly out of date in today's world.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.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  People blame FB for social media woes, but I feel that FB is different from the other social networks in that it’s the world you fully curate and manage. If FB is giving you grief, that’s people on your green list giving you grief. If you need FB to come in to manage that, then you’re basically saying you can’t even handle the agency involved in freedom of association.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    I half agree with you. If the "grief" that Facebook is giving you is from you not liking the posts you're seeing, then yeah, unfriend some people and move on. Censoring private chats (among plenty of other sketch practices) is something entirely different though. I never foresee myself wanting to send "joebiden.info" to a friend on Messenger, but the fact that Facebook has decided I'm not allowed to seems problematic.
- president 6y ago
  Any community with unvetted and anonymous users end up being gamed and filled with various bad actors. I have always thought that a community where people were vetted through multiple forms of verification (e.g. government ID, drivers license, etc) and posted using their real names would instantly improve quality of discourse to some degree. In this way, people would self moderate through shame and real-life reputation. Unfortunately, with this type of system, you wouldn't get a critical mass of users since most people don't want to associate their controversial views/comments with their real identity. On the other hand, the discussions that do take place might be more valuable since they could be trusted and you could get some degree of guarantee that there wouldn't be astroturfing or bot activity.
- ahaferburg 6y ago
  Hacker News?
as1mov 6y ago
If anyone wants an example of the kind of moderation that goes in r/India, any comment just referencing the moderators is removed automatically by the automod. Any criticism of the subreddit is not tolerated at all. (This was told to me by a moderator of the sub, as I know them IRL)
- 1024core 6y ago
  That's the irony: the mods in /r/india decry Modi, but follow the same tactics that they accuse him of in their own moderation!
nromiun 6y ago
The naming system in reddit is very misleading. For example /r/india is as much related to India as /r/politics to US politics. The toxicity is so much that they can give 4chan a run for their money.
- jason0597 6y ago
  It's funny that 4chan has fallen victim to bad growth as well. The gamergate controversies and the 2016 election really brought out the worst of the people there. I remember years ago it wasn't nearly as toxic and you could sometimes have a good time there. Some boards are trying to cling on to those times
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
>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. This is the worst part for me, though truly unfixable in my opinion. Reddit has taken over forums for many topics, but the entire mod team is chosen by the person who thought up the name first in 2011, which hardly has the same barrier of entry as running and hosting a forum (generally you can assume someone who goes to that much effort is invested in the hobby). >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. We both know this wouldn't fix the /r/india issue, they would simply vote for the mods that lean the way they agree with, and since the current mod team has pushed out those who don't, it'll likely remain that way. And I also think this could even hurt many reddits, as the lowest-common-user would likely vote to allow things they really shouldn't such as meme posts (many a sub has banned this, though generally at the dismay of many of the community).

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.
threatofrain 6y ago
People blame FB for social media woes, but I feel that FB is different from the other social networks in that it’s the world you fully curate and manage. If FB is giving you grief, that’s people on your green list giving you grief. If you need FB to come in to manage that, then you’re basically saying you can’t even handle the agency involved in freedom of association.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  I half agree with you. If the "grief" that Facebook is giving you is from you not liking the posts you're seeing, then yeah, unfriend some people and move on. Censoring private chats (among plenty of other sketch practices) is something entirely different though. I never foresee myself wanting to send "joebiden.info" to a friend on Messenger, but the fact that Facebook has decided I'm not allowed to seems problematic.
president 6y ago
Any community with unvetted and anonymous users end up being gamed and filled with various bad actors. I have always thought that a community where people were vetted through multiple forms of verification (e.g. government ID, drivers license, etc) and posted using their real names would instantly improve quality of discourse to some degree. In this way, people would self moderate through shame and real-life reputation. Unfortunately, with this type of system, you wouldn't get a critical mass of users since most people don't want to associate their controversial views/comments with their real identity. On the other hand, the discussions that do take place might be more valuable since they could be trusted and you could get some degree of guarantee that there wouldn't be astroturfing or bot activity.
ahaferburg 6y ago
Hacker News?

as1mov 6y ago

If anyone wants an example of the kind of moderation that goes in r/India, any comment just referencing the moderators is removed automatically by the automod. Any criticism of the subreddit is not tolerated at all. (This was told to me by a moderator of the sub, as I know them IRL)

1024core 6y ago
That's the irony: the mods in /r/india decry Modi, but follow the same tactics that they accuse him of in their own moderation!

nromiun 6y ago

The naming system in reddit is very misleading. For example /r/india is as much related to India as /r/politics to US politics. The toxicity is so much that they can give 4chan a run for their money.

jason0597 6y ago
It's funny that 4chan has fallen victim to bad growth as well. The gamergate controversies and the 2016 election really brought out the worst of the people there. I remember years ago it wasn't nearly as toxic and you could sometimes have a good time there. Some boards are trying to cling on to those times

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

>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. This is the worst part for me, though truly unfixable in my opinion. Reddit has taken over forums for many topics, but the entire mod team is chosen by the person who thought up the name first in 2011, which hardly has the same barrier of entry as running and hosting a forum (generally you can assume someone who goes to that much effort is invested in the hobby). >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. We both know this wouldn't fix the /r/india issue, they would simply vote for the mods that lean the way they agree with, and since the current mod team has pushed out those who don't, it'll likely remain that way. And I also think this could even hurt many reddits, as the lowest-common-user would likely vote to allow things they really shouldn't such as meme posts (many a sub has banned this, though generally at the dismay of many of the community).