17 ms·

Reddit started banning accounts that voted for content “against their policies”

420 points by s9w 6y ago

hn_check 6y ago
Of course "voting" should be something you are accountable for. If you are pushing nonsense and banned content up, you become a part of the problem. Even on HN there have been many anti-science nonsense stories on the front-page where the site would benefit from letting people indicate that they want anyone who enabled it to have no weighting in the curation of their own personal view. This may be a sort of filter bubble, but it's an anti-idiot filter bubble. I don't need to have my world clouded by the noise of conspiracy fanatics and idiots.
manfredo 6y ago
Reddit admin message: > Your account has been suspended from for breaking the rules. Your account has been suspended for 3 day(s). >> You recently upvoted a post or comment that was determined to be against our policies. Abusive content is not acceptable on Reddit nor is engaging with it. Please be thoughful about the content that you interact with. Interestingly nothing in the Reddit policies seems to mention voting or engaging with content: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
- Simulacra 6y ago
  As well, punishing someone for Engagement without malice, which you later determined to violate policy to, is a bit obtuse.
- s9w 6y ago
  They officially announced this three months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/spring_forward_into_reddits_2019_transparency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/sprin... > Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. Until now that has mostly been warnings for posting in "bad" subs. Now after most of those are gone I guess it's time for the next phase.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    Full message: > I’d like to share an update about our thinking around quarantined communities. > When we expanded our quarantine policy, we created an appeals process for sanctioned communities. One of the goals was to “force subscribers to reconsider their behavior and incentivize moderators to make changes.” While the policy attempted to hold moderators more accountable for enforcing healthier rules and norms, it didn’t address the role that each member plays in the health of their community. > Today, we’re making an update to address this gap: Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. This seems strange to me. If this content is violating reddit's policies then why don't they ban them? It seems awkward to have this middle ground of "semi-banned" content where users get suspensions if they interact with it too much. Why create these invisible land-mines for users? I imagine it's because banning this content outright would make Reddit admins appear even more biased, or because the content doesn't actually violate any policies but puts off advertisers.
    - ketzu 6y ago
      One of the easiest reasons is the order of these things: post being made, post being upvoted, post being recognized as tos violation
- abtom 6y ago
  This is super stupid. If they're so against the content why allow it to exist in the first place?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - defertoreptar 6y ago
    Whether they intended it this way or not, users will now be worried they're upvoting the "wrong" thing and will be less likely to vote unpopular opinions and political views, just in case.
    - downerending 6y ago
      Arguably in 2020, you should be very careful about expressing any opinion that is in any way unpopular. Or that even could be construed as such.
      - csunbird 6y ago
        I feel like people have forgotten what free speech is.
        downerending 6y ago
        I grew up in a very fundamentalist (Christian) area, so the lack of it feels very familiar.
    - rabuse 6y ago
      Wrongthink is becoming a reality.
  - jdashg 6y ago
    I imagine this is reactive, since they can't proactively moderate their content. When they do get around to moderating (like checking reported comments), they can then penalize people who promoted the unacceptable content. I think there should indeed be penalties for upvoting e.g. death threats.
- NietTim 6y ago
  That message is so stupid. What's there to learn from the punishment if you don't know what you did wrong?
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    This actually strikes me as an intelligent (albeit Orwellian) approach to rules enforcement. If Reddit's goal is to encourage broader self-censorship of wrong-think, the message makes perfect sense. If Reddit informed a user that they broke Rule A, a rational user would learn a specific lesson. They would learn that they can avoid punishment by not interacting with content that breaks (or might break) Rule A. By punishing without an explicit explanation, a rational user must conclude that, to avoid punishment, they cannot risk interacting with content that breaks (or might break) any of the rules on the website.
  - folmar 6y ago
    You learn that you are on the mercy of the platform owner. And that if you withhold enough details of the punishment you can play afool with courts.
- SauciestGNU 6y ago
  I got one of these warnings, and I've narrowed down what I engaged with to a Hard Times article. Strange times when reddit finds satire too spicy for their site.
- UhDev 6y ago
  You can make as many accounts as you want, no need to use an email address.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
    This actually changed in the last few years.
    - UhDev 6y ago
      No it didn't, just click next when it asks for an email adddress.
deleted 6y ago
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akho 6y ago
On the one hand, I can understand them not wanting to be a platform for content they do not like (find offensive, believe legally dangerous, &c). On the other hand, presence of porn and nazis is an indicator of a healthy community — banning these things leads to decline in other areas (see Tumblr). You can’t have partial freedom of speech. At least the porn is still there. The problem with ‘social’ sites is that they allow cross-contamination between the seedy bits, and r/woodworking and the like. The open web — with separately hosted forums — is a lot better, but less convenient. I hope to see a solution sometime, but the odds are not good.
newacct583 6y ago
This isn't a ban, it's a 3 day suspension. And we don't know what content was upvoted, or why it was a against Reddit policy. We do know, however, that Reddit indeed has policies about acceptable content, and most of us seem to agree they're fairly reasonable. So I don't understand the use of the scare quotes in the title. Why exactly should an upvote, which is publicly visible approval, be different than a comment? I mean... they're both content posted to the site. It's not unreasonable that they be subject to the same rules. Is the outrage here that votes are supposed to be "anonymous" and this feels like an unmasking of something people felt more comfortable doing "in private"? Is that something we want to protect per se? This seems like more outrage than meat, honestly. I'd really like to know what the comment was before deciding.
- s9w 6y ago
  The title wasn't meant to be a scare. The quote from Reddit is "against out policies" which was changed to "against their policies". I believe that's fair. And they already announced that these bans will be permanent in the announcement way back (see other comment for link)
- ng12 6y ago
  Well for one it makes every user individually responsible for identifying content that breaks the rules, and this is very hard given Reddit's history of arbitrarily enforcing the rules.
zeveb 6y ago
So, if people don't vote the way the Reddit admins want, the Reddit admins will replace the voters. That is definitely a way to get only the things the Reddit admins want upvoted, upvoted. But it seems to me to be the opposite of free discourse. I can sympathise with the admins, because a) there are a lot of terrible, toxic people b) there are a lot of bot armies. The latter is probably easiest to combat, but it is still a tough nut to crack. The former is even worse: I imagine that the most engaged users are quite often the users one wishes were least engaged. It's a tough problem, but Orwellian punishment of wrongthink seems the wrong direction.
- btmiller 6y ago
  Eh but there's a couple reasons in my mind why this might be reasonable. First, Reddit isn't a 1st Amendment platform; they make the site, they make the rules. Like it or not, that's how it is today. Second, you have to stop toxicity somewhere; there are a few universal goods we can generally agree upon, things like abuse of animals, underage content, etc. and as long as the slope isn't too slippery beyond that, I think this is an acceptable form of moderation.
- tw04 6y ago
  How so? Calling for someone to be murdered is understandably against their policy. As is doxxing someone. The user accounts that upvote the call for murder or upvote the doxxing details KNOW that the post is against their policy and decided to participate anyway. I hate how these conversations always devolve to "well they're just trying to control what everyone says!" as if it's black and white and not shades of gray. No, they're trying to prevent assholes from spilling over into people's real lives, because the alternative is becoming 4chan. Where all that "upvoted" content results in ACTUAL PEOPLE BEING KILLED. I hope most people on HN don't agree with the train of thought that websites have no duty to their fellow man to not normalize hate speech. "Where does it stop" - it stops at not doxxing people and not calling for people to be murdered, per their TOS.
  - chippy 6y ago
    Yes, it's shades of gray. For example, lets compare a similar service. Twitter is currently censoring some of the President of the US's tweets. They were not doing that a few months ago. So it's not black and white where twitter and acceptability is, and, like with society, it changes over time. Thus, people are concerned that merely interacting with something is enough to be labelled anathema, because of the shades of gray.
deleted 6y ago
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walrus01 6y ago
Eventually reddit will go the way of digg and fade into irrelevance.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  I see people writing this for years now. I guess at some point in history it will become true but I don't see a steep decline that would justify it atm.
- godzillabrennus 6y ago
  They’ve been working hard at that for a while. The last I heard they still weren’t profitable.
- justaman 6y ago
  Can't happen soon enough. The days where forums were the defacto place for discussion were just better. The communities would self-police and alternative opinions weren't suppressed nearly as easily. Reddit is a meme slideshow, not a place for discussion.
  - ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
    The biggest hit against reddit is that every large sub has to resort to weekly discussion posts/tagging every post so people can filter, simply because of the way subreddits are forced to be laid out. A normal forum will have different sections to discuss everything even mildly related to the overarching topic, and a number of areas to talk about things not related to the topic. But Reddit doesn't have those features, so subs have to resort to these half measures or allow multiple daily posts about the same 5 topics.
    - simion314 6y ago
      A solution is creating more niche subs, As an example the main Star Trek sub is very relax, so you get a variety of posts there and the comments vary in quality from very informed ones to just memes , hare and entitlement. So there are sister sub-reddits , I like r/DaystromInstitute because if has a narrow scope and the moderation is strong no lazy comments allowed. There are subreddits for each Star Trek series(even the old one get hate and low effort meme comments) so you can discuss your favorite show and keep out the hate and meme comments. IMO this is the best thing, I seen it in gaming too, because fans will not agree which version of the game is good and which one is trash so they make smaller sub-reddits to talk in peace. Though you need someone to kickstart things and force moderation, then the community grows a bit and it can self moderate.
dmart 6y ago
I don't understand why you would even publicize this. Just stop counting those users' votes, if that's what you want to do? There's enough fuzz in the vote counts that no one would notice, and you wouldn't have any controversy on your hands.
- jaywalk 6y ago
  I can think of a few reasons to publicize this, but none of them have anything to do with avoiding controversy.
  - tedajax 6y ago
    I don't think avoiding controversy should be the goal.
- psychometry 6y ago
  The point is that the users who are upvoting this kind of content will stay on the site if they think their votes matter. Reddit clearly would rather they leave entirely, and this is a good way to encourage racists/misogynists/incels/whoever to find another platform.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    It happens for far left content as well. I don’t think it’s limited to hateful content. At least, that’s what I’ve read from the chapotraphouse subreddit. Example being upvoting some far left stuff in r/politics.
    - jlawson 6y ago
      'Far-left content' and 'hateful content' are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite, really. It is amazing how people will redefine hating Trump supporters, men, white people, "the 1%", western civilization etc as somehow 'not hateful'. "My hate isn't hate, I just dislike things that are bad." Right.
godzillabrennus 6y ago
There is an alternative to the group think/hive mind called https://gab.com/ https://gab.com/ but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. Not sure what makes sense.
- psychometry 6y ago
  This is exactly what reddit would become if they weren't taking steps to deal with racism and other forms of hate speech.
- s3r3nity 6y ago
  > it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. I tend to follow Voltaire's ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' I agree with your assessment of the quality of ideas thrown around there, but I'd prefer a world where the internet allowed sites like that to exist, rather than one that's increasingly owned & distributed by giant corporate conglomerates with significant oversight into the discussion of its members, lest you get assigned to "re-education camps" or some BS like that. And let's not pretend that Reddit doesn't want to be one of those giant conglomerates...
  - cthalupa 6y ago
    There's nothing wrong with Reddit not wanting to facilitate and provide a platform for that sort of content, though. It's a massively popular site with mainstream appeal. They don't want to let that popularity and audience be taken advantage of to spread ideas that are hateful and likely to incite violence. Quarantined subreddits are dumb, but it's a sign that their afraid of the backlash of outright banning them - they are already getting accused of heavy handed censorship. If people want to talk about that stuff, then yeah, go to gab and voat and ruqqus or 8chan or other sites that allow for it. There's no shortage of places on the internet to talk about anything you want. Reddit doesn't have to be one of them.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
root_axis 6y ago
Seems a little extreme, but the overall logic seems sound from a moderation perspective. If you have users that consistently upvote content that violates the TOS inside of quarantined subreddits its probably a sign that they're a trouble-maker with respect to the site guidelines.
kace91 6y ago
I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest reason for them existing. Once you've deemed a community so harmful that you don't want people accidentally stumbling into it, why go out of your way to allow it to exist behind a curtain, instead of just outright banning it (unless you want to support it discreetly). To be clear, I'm not accusing reddit admins of shadily supporting horrible communities. I'm just saying that, from the perspective of a user that sees them fight the battle, they're doing it so badly that it almost seems they don't want to win, and I wonder what's happening behind the scenes for that to happen.
- deleted 6y ago
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- unethical_ban 6y ago
  If you let a bad community be bad in their dark corner, they won't spread as easily to the rest of the site. You can easily see that the accounts are toxic by seeing that they participate in garbage communities. And it's a great honeypot for authorities, be it for political astroturfing and nationstate stuff, or for borderline-illegal content.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    >If you let a bad community be bad in their dark corner, they won't spread as easily to the rest of the site. I suspect this is the reason. I observed the opposite, a certain type of content disappearing after a separate comunity was created for it.
- buboard 6y ago
  Because competitors exist
  - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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kache_ 6y ago
Reddit has been compromised with actors who do not have free speech in their best interest. The other day there was an illuminating ask reddit post about transexuals who decided to transition back and their experiences. That post got promptly removed by moderators; even though there was no hateful content within it at all. They effectively silenced the transexual population due to an ever so slight conflict of ideology. To think that the reddit administrators would go so far as to ban people for even interacting with content that THEY deem problematic. Reddit is dead and no one I know uses it anymore. EDIT: - In case anyone is interested; here is the censored post that I was referring to https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/h9ctho/serious_are_there_people_within_the_trans/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/h9ctho/serious_a...
- dageshi 6y ago
  I imagine the mods have a fairly finely tuned sense of which threads will turn into a shitstorm and don't give a fuck about pre-emptively killing them. And honestly I WISH nobody used reddit anymore, maybe it could roll back 10 years when it was frankly more fun, but it sure seems like more people than ever are using it.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    I imagine the mods have a fairly finely tuned sense of which threads will turn into a shitstorm and don't give a fuck about pre-emptively killing them. How do we feel about pre-emptive moderation? Is it warranted? Is it warranted every time? Only certain topics?
    - dageshi 6y ago
      Ultimately the mods are volunteers, they get to do what they want? More precisely I would imagine they don't care about facilitating/refereeing culture wars inside their subs, cause lord only knows how much work that would be.
      - dvtrn 6y ago
crazypython 6y ago
This seems like a good way to suppress bots that upvote posts that incite violence or severe verbal abuse or gingoist. However, I am afraid if they start doing this for discussion on COVID-19.
deleted 6y ago
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mey 6y ago
Is this any different than making Shadow Banning visible to the user who has been Shadow Banned?
gruez 6y ago
My long time reddit account (same name as my hn account) was shadowbanned 2 weeks ago. I sent them an appeal and they responded really quick (it was sunday night I believe) saying that my account "got caught by Reddit's spam filter" and unbanned the account. A few days later my account was banned again. I sent an appeal and this time they haven't responded in over a week. Is this possibly related?
- dannyw 6y ago
  Probably not, but my reddit account of 10+ years have been shadowbanned too with no explanation. As a Digg immigrant, I can't wait to migrate away to the next reddit.
troughway 6y ago
jedberg is here, I'm sure he's preening to pipe up about this like he usually does. Or is the shoe on the other foot this time around?
marricks 6y ago
An obvious concern of this would be just silencing content which isn't violent or morally wrong but just not wanted in a large commercially viable website. This is obviously polarizing but something I'll be watching is what happens to /r/chapotraphouse. CTH has some posts that violated a rule but most don't, the admins claim their quarantining was never well communicated and intentionally vague, posting screenshots of lack of communication from mods. If people get suspended for just participating there without any clear violations of calling for violence/brigading/etc then that's not really a great sign for transparency.
- cthalupa 6y ago
  >CTH has some posts that violated a rule but most don't I'm not familiar with the CTH situation, or super familiar with CTH in general besides knowing them to be pretty far left on the political spectrum. But based solely on this line, if their admins are not making enough of an effort in Reddit's eyes to clean up and discourage people from making these rule breaking posts, then the quarantine makes sense. Even if only 1% of .1% of the posts are violating the rules, if the subreddit isn't policing that small minority of posts, what is Reddit supposed to do? Ignore it because most posts aren't breaking rules?
  - marricks 6y ago
    I don't follow them enough to personally have an opinion on if they warranted that treatment or not, but did follow enough to know it really couldn't have been most posts. So really can't argue with you on the validity of the banning. but... that if the fraction of bad posts lead to mass suspensions on CTH then I'd say it is a creepy/not-good direction for Reddit.
    - cthalupa 6y ago
      I pulled the fractions out of thin air, so I have no idea what they actually are. But you have to do something about people refusing to enforce site policy, even if it's only on a small portion of the content. For an extreme example (and to be clear I am not saying anything like this happened at CTH), if 99 posts out of 100 on subreddit fall within the rules, but that 1 post that doesn't is promoting killing everyone of a certain race, and the subreddit moderators refuse to do anything about that one post, then they 100% need to have something happen. And that doesn't change if it's 999 out of 1000, etc., either. Now, it's unlikely that anything on CTH was at that level of toxic and hateful, but the same overall concept applies - they have to take care of posts that are against policy, even if they're a small minority. If not, it seems like getting quarantined or even removed completely is a reasonable course of action.
motohagiography 6y ago
There seems to be a divide between people who think discourse is a progressive art of the exchange of ideas, and those who use language as a pretext for political struggle where the role of ideas is to act as provocations that yield a persons "true," alignment and identity. The latter view means engaging ideas compromises your ethical purity, where the former one means people can express abhorrent ideas without physical consequences. There isn't a short answer to what's probably an eternal conflict, but I do know a lot of people in tech who might benefit from reflecting on the question of, "are we the baddies?"
- bt4u2 6y ago
  Yes. Especially the sjw crowd in tech should reflect on this question. But they won't
- mtgp1000 6y ago
  The dichotomy is seems to be reflected in the growing divide between rational, scientific inquiry, and modern progressive liberal arts which are rooted in critical theory.
mullingitover 6y ago
> Abusive content is not acceptable on Reddit nor is engaging with it. This is such a fail for Reddit. If the content isn't allowed on the site, it's on Reddit to remove it. The existence of the content on the site implies Reddit's approval of the content, so engaging with that content is a wholly innocent act.
- fwip 6y ago
  Do you think that every post and comment on Reddit is pre-approved by an employee before it becomes visible?
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  Please explain by what mechanism you would expect abusive content to be unengagable before being recognized (and treated) as such. Preferably one that does not involve Reddit having to travel back in time.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    I don't have a way to programmatically detect abusive content, and for users the content's presence on the site implies it's legitimate. Just remove it when it's found, and shadowban the people who posted it. It isn't rocket surgery.
Jonnax 6y ago
I used Reddit a lot back in 2013ish but went off of it. Looking at it now, it feels like that in general the site is really mean spirited. Also upvoting means that you're just seeing whatever the majority of voters want you to see. It works on a smaller community like HN because comments get 10s of upvotes at most. It's not a site for good discourse. However there's communities where there is interesting discussion still and often if you want an opinion of a product or an issue you might find a thread on it from a real user. But generally they've done nothing to stop the nurturing of racist/sexist/bullying content over the years. Now you can argue about free speech being important for an internet platform. But Reddit trying to change the community attitudes of their site now seems a little late. Also there is a real sense that some users believe that Reddit is the Sheppard of society and they're fighting on the forefront of society. Which I think stems from the millions of apparent subscribers to subreddits. But it's just a fancy internet forum. Like this linked post is on a subreddit called Watch Reddit Die. Apparently something about free speech being stifled in Reddit. People need to realise they shouldn't waste their life on a website they don't like. The internet hasn't been fully consolidated by Facebook and Google just yet, they can find or make a different community.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  > It works on a smaller community like HN because comments get 10s of upvotes at most. I think you underestimate the size of this place. It’s basically a busy Subreddit.
- Taylor_OD 6y ago
  Reddit's issue is the issue of so many ad supported websites. Clicks sell ads and controversy draws more clicks than anything else. It's been clear over the last few years that the popular subreddits are the ones that have the most dramatic content. Smaller subreddit do tend to have better discourse though until eventually, they get large enough to become popular and start to become the same echo chambers.
  - shostack 6y ago
    First, big brands don't want controversy displayed next to their ads. This is likely behind some moves Reddit has made in the past to clean things up. Second, I'm curious what % of revenue comes from user-purchased post and comment awards from gold. I've noticed those in use quite a bit in some more inflammatory subs like /r/politics. I wonder how they vet payments from users to avoid providing a way for hostile actors to buy visibility while flying under the radar. Ie. Avoiding conflicts of interest from accidentally monetizing trolls.
nend 6y ago
Is there any evidence this is real? The image specifies /r/reddit.com, which was discontinued about a decade ago. Obviously this practice is/would be awful. But it's really surprising and the image seems a little fishy.
- edoceo 6y ago
  It's real. Reddit is doing a ban based on what you up-doot
- euroclear 6y ago
  /r/reddit.com is still used for admin communications; if you want to contact the site admins, you are encouraged to use the contact the moderators link on /r/reddit.com.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  From 24 February 2020: "Reddit Will Start to Punish Users for Upvotes as It Eyes Ad Cash" https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-upvotes-as-it-eye-1841907899 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-up... "Spring forward… into Reddit’s 2019 transparency report" Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/spring_forward_into_reddits_2019_transparency/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/sprin...
cwhiz 6y ago
I don't think Reddit should be able to censor lawful content and also claim protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If they want to police lawful content that is fine but then they are no longer an open platform and they should forfeit their Section 230 protections. I dislike the ability for online platforms to have their cake of protection against lawsuits and also eat their cake of policing lawful content they don't like.
- cma 6y ago
  I hope you realize the entire site, and every site, would be full of 99.99% commercial spam if this went into place.
- anarazel 6y ago
  The aim of 230 was explicitly to allow doing so. And how would you even imagine this working? Have a bunch of conlaw students judge posts against complex tests?
- root_axis 6y ago
  Without section 230 protection it would be impossible for the site to stay open, so in effect you're saying sites that moderate user content should be shut down. Does that seem like an accurate interpretation of your position?
  - alacombe 6y ago
    I'm fine with that. They decide to take a political stance, they shall deal with the legal consequence of their actions.
    - root_axis 6y ago
      Ok. In my view that's unreasonable. Website operators should have the freedom to moderate their sites without fear of being shut down. Moderation is part of the product, they should have the freedom to create online communities that cater to specific audiences, including with respect to political partisanship if that is where their values lie. It seems unreasonable that all the users that enjoy the site as is should lose access to it because of some users who disagree with the site's moderation policies.
duxup 6y ago
They've got so many moderation related issues. Amidst all this accounts that randomly spam the site with collections of articles and etc run free. They don't participate in discussion (maybe a handful of actual comments... with more links), they just push a particular point of view and inundate every sub they can find with article after article.... A simple query "hey is this user just spamming submissions" could deal with some of them. If you search new you're presented with repost after repost of these spammers, sometimes reposing their own content, just from another news source. If you're part of a location based sub that is in the news, it's just an AVALANCHE of distantly cause related submitters spamming it up.
- unholythree 6y ago
  That’s the most obviously problem I see with section 230 freedom of speech maximalists arguments. Who’s right is it to curtail the freedom of someone to announce their love of a some sexual performance enhancing supplement in every thread and comment section on the internet?
wnevets 6y ago
For years reddit stood by and did nothing while certain groups exploited and spammed the front page with their hate speech, im glad to see they're finally doing something about it.
antishatter 6y ago
The main issue is asymmetric rule enforcement more so than the rules themselves. This is probably true for most if not all social media platforms.
zarkov99 6y ago
I feel safer already. Thank you Reddit for protecting me from my bad opinions.
ru552 6y ago
I'm a daily redditor. On Saturday I logged into reddit and found "Your account has been permanently suspended from Reddit." across the top banner. The mod message says I was permanently suspended for repeated violations of the content policy. The last time I posted ANYTHING on reddit was 21 days ago when I commented on a Schwarzenegger post and said I'd love for him to be president. I appealed it and haven't heard anything.
- NietTim 6y ago
  Do you share your internet? I read today that someone got banned because his roommate got banned
  - ru552 6y ago
    I don't. I'm not sure what the reason is. I generally only post nerd stuff in r/sysadmin or r/networking. Oh well.
spacephysics 6y ago
Reddit once being a haven away from large corporate interests, has continually succumbed to the mainstream narrative of what’s appropriate. Sure, there are communities that are horrid, but then there are those that are on the line. And inch by inch that line moves from moral goodness, to corporate interest. Reddit is no different than Twitter/YouTube/Facebook, only they haven’t covered the same amount of ground. Given another few years, if that, we’ll see the same censorship practices on Reddit, with the same magnitude, as youtube, facebook, and twitter. This is essentially account entrapment. Show content they know is in bad faith, then punish them. Or, once a post is deemed in bad faith, retroactively punish them for not having the correct opinion. 1984
- qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
  > 1984 1984 and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race. Read another book
  - minkzilla 6y ago
    I’ve read many books in my time and I liked 1984 both for its entertainment value and as a warning about government power and limiting free speech. What is wrong with 1984? Is there a similar but better book I should read?
    - jodrellblank 6y ago
      What’s wrong with 1984 is people sign up for a private service, post something against the ToS, get their account banned by a volunteer user-moderator, then call it “punishment” and cite 1984 as if “piss off, troll” from JimBob moderator of /r/WhippetFanciers is exactly the same as living in North Korea and being forced to speak NewSpeak on threat of having caged rats eat your face in Room 101.
- snapetom 6y ago
  It's interesting. I was just looking at a user account that had a gazillion post karma, but -10 comment karma. It also created a few subreddits. It's so obvious a content farmer. People moved away from Digg because they implemented an algorithm to suggest news, and de-emphasised user submitted stories. Now, essentially the same thing is happening with reddit via these farmers. It's not as obvious and might not be sanctioned, but at the end of the day, a few select bots are also pushing content to the front.
cde-v 6y ago
This was announced back in February.... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8044337/Reddit-start-suspending-users-consistently-upvote-rule-breaking-content.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8044337/Redd...
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Gizmodo is cited, and gives better info: https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-upvotes-as-it-eye-1841907899 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-up...
scythe 6y ago
Reddit has two conflicting aims. First, it tries to be a "community hub", like Forumer in the old days, where anyone can set up an "autonomous" messageboard (subreddit) to support discussion among a particular subculture. Consider e.g. /r/smashbros. Second, it tries to be a "community-in-itself", complete with its own demonym "redditor", and a shared set of values, etiquette, and jokes/memes. These goals are fundamentally at odds. A community of competing factions -- some of which openly hate each other -- is hardly a community. A board for Super Smash Brothers players which must hew to the diktat of reddit at large is not really a community of Smashers. When a norm on Reddit at large is violated by a subreddit, the general population is incensed. When a rule is handed down from the admins to the moderators of a subcommunity, the members of that community feel they are being manipulated by outsiders -- even if they might have decided to enforce that rule on their own, if they had been left to their own devices. Reddit splits the baby and nobody's happy.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Interesting approach. Assuming no bots, doesn't that change actual sentiment among the population. How can you measure what people are thinking if dissenting voices are banned?
sunseb 6y ago
Just closed my Reddit account. I am so tired of these vocal minorities bullying others. If social justice is so important to them, I suggest to go help homeless people or to go taking care of the elderly instead of posting on social networks.
braythwayt 6y ago
Every time we have a conversation about why Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit shouldn't be allowed to"censor" content, I ask what would become of Hacker News if it was not permitted to moderate spam or threads that do not follow the HN guidelines. I think it would quickly devolve into 4Chan. Almost all of the current community would decamp, and the trolls that infest other sites would take over.
- qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
  "Devolve into"? This website is just the "sounds educated" arm of imageboard users. HN is entirely filled with right-wing to far-right sheltered techbros. Half the accounts here that are constantly complaining about "free speech" and "consequences to their actions" are really one bad day away from calling everyone they disagree with various slurs, and the other half are so insulated from any sort of actual injustice in the world that they sit atop of their smug towers of indifference, cawing at the peasants below who have things such as "opinions" (that disagree with theirs, of course) or "motivations".
  - compuguy 6y ago
    You're not wrong about this. There is a very vocal right-wing population of commenters here on HN that show their true colors in more polarizing submissions.
  - braythwayt 6y ago
    You are not wrong, but don't forget Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is CRUD." What makes something valuable is the 10% of the thing that is not CRUD, and whatever measures put into place to make sure that the 90% CRUD doesn't poison the 10% that's worthwhile. To me, that's having clear guidelines that are consistently applied through moderation.
- jlawson 6y ago
  For structural reasons this comparison makes no sense. HN has one homepage; one sub-community. Reddit has an infinite number of subreddits. Similar for facebook. Even with no moderation, in no case would anyone be exposed to content that wasn't posted and allowed in a community that they deliberately subscribed to. Reddit polices what kinds of communities are allowed. HN is one kind of community.
dogma1138 6y ago
Nice I wonder how many comments that go against Reddit’s policies I’ve upvoted over the years unintentionally on the mobile app. I up/downvote posts/comments at least couple of times a day when trying to scroll on my phone or just hitting the screen to wake it up after being distracted. This is ridiculous policy.
deleted 6y ago
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UweSchmidt 6y ago
The idea that the "vote" is not just counted but judged is new, it seems. It is the next step in the trend of hyper precise tracking of peoples thoughts and actions, and their judgement in a transparent and opinionated global social sphere with extreme consequences. Overall, a worrying trend.
hogFeast 6y ago
You can vote any way you want. As long as you vote the right way.
mtgp1000 6y ago
At this point reddit is arguably a social danger, in that it is made to look like organic content, while in truth everything is heavily censored and opinions are implicitly and explicitly approved in an absolute top down manner. Opaque vote display and ranking algorithms, keyword based shadowbanning, ideological mods and admin - combined with an organic facade you have a platform to manufacture consensus and push propaganda onto millions of unsuspecting users, young and old alike. Frankly it's scummy and I hope they fail.
Natsu 6y ago
What would it take to bring back pre-Eternal September Usenet?
mherdeg 6y ago
Considering how much of Internet culture is currently being formed on reddit it's amazing how opaque the site is to history. The archival is low-quality and missing a lot. I sometimes browse by /r/all/gilded, which gives you a weird, weird, WEIRD cross section of the Internet. One time I found a heavily gilded post memorializing a recently deceased contributor to /r/cripplingalcoholism -- which appears to be an important but saddening community for people with a serious medical problem -- then followed a few links on the profile of the deceased and their associated until, a few minutes later, I ended up at /r/opiaterollcall. Wow oh wow, what a subreddit that was: https://web.archive.org/web/20130904195509/www.reddit.com/r/opiaterollcall https://web.archive.org/web/20130904195509/www.reddit.com/r/... That forum died pretty soon after I found it (and got national press coverage at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/opioid-reddit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/opioid-reddit.html ) but wow, oh wow, there was a lot going on there which is now essentially lost to readers of history, because existing archives don't go deep into posts and comments.
isatty 6y ago
No jedberg comments on this post?
iron0013 6y ago
For those of you who aren’t familiar, the “watchredditdie” subreddit is a “safe space” for alt-right users to whine about not being able to brigade, astroturf, and otherwise manipulate reddit to their own political ends the way they did in the run-up to the 2016 election.
surround 6y ago
If this submission gets flagged/killed (it’s already gone from the front page) will I be penalized for upvoting it?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
colordrops 6y ago
If you told a reddit user from 5 years ago that you would be banned for upvoting content, they'd call you a nut job.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Gizmodo addressed this in February, though just as Covid-19 news coverage began overwhelming everything: Yesterday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (or “Spez,” as Redditors affectionately know him) published the platform’s annual transparency report, highlighting how the platform took down more than 200,000 pieces of offending content over 2019, along with nearly 56,000 accounts and nearly 22,000 subreddits—the site’s communities, most of which are moderated by volunteer users. He also flagged a “company update” regarding the way Reddit thinks about “quarantined” communities... https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-upvotes-as-it-eye-1841907899 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-up... That policy, in a Reddit post by Huffman: When we expanded our quarantine policy, we created an appeals process for sanctioned communities. One of the goals was to “force subscribers to reconsider their behavior and incentivize moderators to make changes.” While the policy attempted to hold moderators more accountable for enforcing healthier rules and norms, it didn’t address the role that each member plays in the health of their community. Today, we’re making an update to address this gap: Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/spring_forward_into_reddits_2019_transparency/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/sprin... According to that statement, bans (apparently temporary) are for voting only in already quarantined subreddits. WatchRedditDie's discussion is not especially nuanced, considered, or balanced.
kilo_bravo_3 6y ago
Why do SO MANY pretend-libertarian tech bros pretending to be libertarians and liberty-loving freedom fans think that free speech applies to private property? And why have they let themselves be tricked into spewing the Section-230 nonsense that conservative hate-mongers are using to threaten online service providers? Section 230 protection is irrelevant to service providers policing their site. It is very relevant to service providers who are being told by conservative hate-mongering politicians “hey we’ll strip your protections unless you allow our hateful content even though the protections are unrelated to our content and comments”. You’re carrying water for malicious actors who don’t care about you. By your own logic, not mine (I think it’s bullshit) YOURS if you downvote this comment to the point that it is hidden or automodded then you are infringing on my “FREEZE PEECH RAIGHTS” because you are “removing” constitutionally-protected freeze peach from the public sphere.
fulldecent2 6y ago
Here is what people mean when we say we don't like Section 230. And we mean it whether or not Section 230 is actually responsible. - Advertiser uses our trademark on Google Ads? Google makes money and has editorial control. But we can't sue them. - Somebody posts something libelous about us on Twitter? Twitter makes serious money and has editorial control. But we can't sue them. - Fakes on eBay? Can't stop them. eBay not liable. If Twitter is going to have a "fact checking" department, then they also need a "retractions" department. And if retraction aren't forthcoming when reasonable, then we need a cause of action against them.
lenkite 6y ago
No one complained when folks voting on an unpopular forum were kicked out late last year. Everyone laughed and said "good riddance" then. Now the chickens have come home to roost. The adage of the "fascists will next come for you" continues to remain true.
zaro 6y ago
The thought police strikes again. It's not anymore about simply censoring unwanted content, punishing the users for engaging with will be way more effective in the long run.

420 points by s9w 6y ago

Of course "voting" should be something you are accountable for. If you are pushing nonsense and banned content up, you become a part of the problem. Even on HN there have been many anti-science nonsense stories on the front-page where the site would benefit from letting people indicate that they want anyone who enabled it to have no weighting in the curation of their own personal view. This may be a sort of filter bubble, but it's an anti-idiot filter bubble. I don't need to have my world clouded by the noise of conspiracy fanatics and idiots.

manfredo 6y ago

Reddit admin message: > Your account has been suspended from for breaking the rules. Your account has been suspended for 3 day(s). >> You recently upvoted a post or comment that was determined to be against our policies. Abusive content is not acceptable on Reddit nor is engaging with it. Please be thoughful about the content that you interact with. Interestingly nothing in the Reddit policies seems to mention voting or engaging with content: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy

Simulacra 6y ago
As well, punishing someone for Engagement without malice, which you later determined to violate policy to, is a bit obtuse.
s9w 6y ago
They officially announced this three months ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/spring_forward_into_reddits_2019_transparency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/sprin... > Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. Until now that has mostly been warnings for posting in "bad" subs. Now after most of those are gone I guess it's time for the next phase.
- manfredo 6y ago
  Full message: > I’d like to share an update about our thinking around quarantined communities. > When we expanded our quarantine policy, we created an appeals process for sanctioned communities. One of the goals was to “force subscribers to reconsider their behavior and incentivize moderators to make changes.” While the policy attempted to hold moderators more accountable for enforcing healthier rules and norms, it didn’t address the role that each member plays in the health of their community. > Today, we’re making an update to address this gap: Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. This seems strange to me. If this content is violating reddit's policies then why don't they ban them? It seems awkward to have this middle ground of "semi-banned" content where users get suspensions if they interact with it too much. Why create these invisible land-mines for users? I imagine it's because banning this content outright would make Reddit admins appear even more biased, or because the content doesn't actually violate any policies but puts off advertisers.
  - ketzu 6y ago
    One of the easiest reasons is the order of these things: post being made, post being upvoted, post being recognized as tos violation
abtom 6y ago
This is super stupid. If they're so against the content why allow it to exist in the first place?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- defertoreptar 6y ago
  Whether they intended it this way or not, users will now be worried they're upvoting the "wrong" thing and will be less likely to vote unpopular opinions and political views, just in case.
  - downerending 6y ago
    Arguably in 2020, you should be very careful about expressing any opinion that is in any way unpopular. Or that even could be construed as such.
    - csunbird 6y ago
      I feel like people have forgotten what free speech is.
      - downerending 6y ago
        I grew up in a very fundamentalist (Christian) area, so the lack of it feels very familiar.
  - rabuse 6y ago
    Wrongthink is becoming a reality.
- jdashg 6y ago
  I imagine this is reactive, since they can't proactively moderate their content. When they do get around to moderating (like checking reported comments), they can then penalize people who promoted the unacceptable content. I think there should indeed be penalties for upvoting e.g. death threats.
NietTim 6y ago
That message is so stupid. What's there to learn from the punishment if you don't know what you did wrong?
- marcusverus 6y ago
  This actually strikes me as an intelligent (albeit Orwellian) approach to rules enforcement. If Reddit's goal is to encourage broader self-censorship of wrong-think, the message makes perfect sense. If Reddit informed a user that they broke Rule A, a rational user would learn a specific lesson. They would learn that they can avoid punishment by not interacting with content that breaks (or might break) Rule A. By punishing without an explicit explanation, a rational user must conclude that, to avoid punishment, they cannot risk interacting with content that breaks (or might break) any of the rules on the website.
- folmar 6y ago
  You learn that you are on the mercy of the platform owner. And that if you withhold enough details of the punishment you can play afool with courts.
SauciestGNU 6y ago
I got one of these warnings, and I've narrowed down what I engaged with to a Hard Times article. Strange times when reddit finds satire too spicy for their site.
UhDev 6y ago
You can make as many accounts as you want, no need to use an email address.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
  This actually changed in the last few years.
  - UhDev 6y ago
    No it didn't, just click next when it asks for an email adddress.

deleted 6y ago

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akho 6y ago

On the one hand, I can understand them not wanting to be a platform for content they do not like (find offensive, believe legally dangerous, &c). On the other hand, presence of porn and nazis is an indicator of a healthy community — banning these things leads to decline in other areas (see Tumblr). You can’t have partial freedom of speech. At least the porn is still there. The problem with ‘social’ sites is that they allow cross-contamination between the seedy bits, and r/woodworking and the like. The open web — with separately hosted forums — is a lot better, but less convenient. I hope to see a solution sometime, but the odds are not good.

newacct583 6y ago

This isn't a ban, it's a 3 day suspension. And we don't know what content was upvoted, or why it was a against Reddit policy. We do know, however, that Reddit indeed has policies about acceptable content, and most of us seem to agree they're fairly reasonable. So I don't understand the use of the scare quotes in the title. Why exactly should an upvote, which is publicly visible approval, be different than a comment? I mean... they're both content posted to the site. It's not unreasonable that they be subject to the same rules. Is the outrage here that votes are supposed to be "anonymous" and this feels like an unmasking of something people felt more comfortable doing "in private"? Is that something we want to protect per se? This seems like more outrage than meat, honestly. I'd really like to know what the comment was before deciding.

s9w 6y ago
The title wasn't meant to be a scare. The quote from Reddit is "against out policies" which was changed to "against their policies". I believe that's fair. And they already announced that these bans will be permanent in the announcement way back (see other comment for link)
ng12 6y ago
Well for one it makes every user individually responsible for identifying content that breaks the rules, and this is very hard given Reddit's history of arbitrarily enforcing the rules.

zeveb 6y ago

So, if people don't vote the way the Reddit admins want, the Reddit admins will replace the voters. That is definitely a way to get only the things the Reddit admins want upvoted, upvoted. But it seems to me to be the opposite of free discourse. I can sympathise with the admins, because a) there are a lot of terrible, toxic people b) there are a lot of bot armies. The latter is probably easiest to combat, but it is still a tough nut to crack. The former is even worse: I imagine that the most engaged users are quite often the users one wishes were least engaged. It's a tough problem, but Orwellian punishment of wrongthink seems the wrong direction.

btmiller 6y ago
Eh but there's a couple reasons in my mind why this might be reasonable. First, Reddit isn't a 1st Amendment platform; they make the site, they make the rules. Like it or not, that's how it is today. Second, you have to stop toxicity somewhere; there are a few universal goods we can generally agree upon, things like abuse of animals, underage content, etc. and as long as the slope isn't too slippery beyond that, I think this is an acceptable form of moderation.
tw04 6y ago
How so? Calling for someone to be murdered is understandably against their policy. As is doxxing someone. The user accounts that upvote the call for murder or upvote the doxxing details KNOW that the post is against their policy and decided to participate anyway. I hate how these conversations always devolve to "well they're just trying to control what everyone says!" as if it's black and white and not shades of gray. No, they're trying to prevent assholes from spilling over into people's real lives, because the alternative is becoming 4chan. Where all that "upvoted" content results in ACTUAL PEOPLE BEING KILLED. I hope most people on HN don't agree with the train of thought that websites have no duty to their fellow man to not normalize hate speech. "Where does it stop" - it stops at not doxxing people and not calling for people to be murdered, per their TOS.
- chippy 6y ago
  Yes, it's shades of gray. For example, lets compare a similar service. Twitter is currently censoring some of the President of the US's tweets. They were not doing that a few months ago. So it's not black and white where twitter and acceptability is, and, like with society, it changes over time. Thus, people are concerned that merely interacting with something is enough to be labelled anathema, because of the shades of gray.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

walrus01 6y ago

Eventually reddit will go the way of digg and fade into irrelevance.

Krasnol 6y ago
I see people writing this for years now. I guess at some point in history it will become true but I don't see a steep decline that would justify it atm.
godzillabrennus 6y ago
They’ve been working hard at that for a while. The last I heard they still weren’t profitable.
justaman 6y ago
Can't happen soon enough. The days where forums were the defacto place for discussion were just better. The communities would self-police and alternative opinions weren't suppressed nearly as easily. Reddit is a meme slideshow, not a place for discussion.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
  The biggest hit against reddit is that every large sub has to resort to weekly discussion posts/tagging every post so people can filter, simply because of the way subreddits are forced to be laid out. A normal forum will have different sections to discuss everything even mildly related to the overarching topic, and a number of areas to talk about things not related to the topic. But Reddit doesn't have those features, so subs have to resort to these half measures or allow multiple daily posts about the same 5 topics.
  - simion314 6y ago
    A solution is creating more niche subs, As an example the main Star Trek sub is very relax, so you get a variety of posts there and the comments vary in quality from very informed ones to just memes , hare and entitlement. So there are sister sub-reddits , I like r/DaystromInstitute because if has a narrow scope and the moderation is strong no lazy comments allowed. There are subreddits for each Star Trek series(even the old one get hate and low effort meme comments) so you can discuss your favorite show and keep out the hate and meme comments. IMO this is the best thing, I seen it in gaming too, because fans will not agree which version of the game is good and which one is trash so they make smaller sub-reddits to talk in peace. Though you need someone to kickstart things and force moderation, then the community grows a bit and it can self moderate.

dmart 6y ago

I don't understand why you would even publicize this. Just stop counting those users' votes, if that's what you want to do? There's enough fuzz in the vote counts that no one would notice, and you wouldn't have any controversy on your hands.

jaywalk 6y ago
I can think of a few reasons to publicize this, but none of them have anything to do with avoiding controversy.
- tedajax 6y ago
  I don't think avoiding controversy should be the goal.
psychometry 6y ago
The point is that the users who are upvoting this kind of content will stay on the site if they think their votes matter. Reddit clearly would rather they leave entirely, and this is a good way to encourage racists/misogynists/incels/whoever to find another platform.
- bradlys 6y ago
  It happens for far left content as well. I don’t think it’s limited to hateful content. At least, that’s what I’ve read from the chapotraphouse subreddit. Example being upvoting some far left stuff in r/politics.
  - jlawson 6y ago
    'Far-left content' and 'hateful content' are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite, really. It is amazing how people will redefine hating Trump supporters, men, white people, "the 1%", western civilization etc as somehow 'not hateful'. "My hate isn't hate, I just dislike things that are bad." Right.

godzillabrennus 6y ago

There is an alternative to the group think/hive mind called https://gab.com/ https://gab.com/ but it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. Not sure what makes sense.

psychometry 6y ago
This is exactly what reddit would become if they weren't taking steps to deal with racism and other forms of hate speech.
s3r3nity 6y ago
> it’s also a cesspool or horrible people sharing horrible ideas. I tend to follow Voltaire's ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' I agree with your assessment of the quality of ideas thrown around there, but I'd prefer a world where the internet allowed sites like that to exist, rather than one that's increasingly owned & distributed by giant corporate conglomerates with significant oversight into the discussion of its members, lest you get assigned to "re-education camps" or some BS like that. And let's not pretend that Reddit doesn't want to be one of those giant conglomerates...
- cthalupa 6y ago
  There's nothing wrong with Reddit not wanting to facilitate and provide a platform for that sort of content, though. It's a massively popular site with mainstream appeal. They don't want to let that popularity and audience be taken advantage of to spread ideas that are hateful and likely to incite violence. Quarantined subreddits are dumb, but it's a sign that their afraid of the backlash of outright banning them - they are already getting accused of heavy handed censorship. If people want to talk about that stuff, then yeah, go to gab and voat and ruqqus or 8chan or other sites that allow for it. There's no shortage of places on the internet to talk about anything you want. Reddit doesn't have to be one of them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

root_axis 6y ago

Seems a little extreme, but the overall logic seems sound from a moderation perspective. If you have users that consistently upvote content that violates the TOS inside of quarantined subreddits its probably a sign that they're a trouble-maker with respect to the site guidelines.

kace91 6y ago

I don't really get reddit's efforts to clean their site. They sometimes come up with measures like this, while routinely ignoring the development of horrible communities that they're aware of (since some users take any possible opportunity to mention them to the admins and are met with silence or half measures). They even came up with the concept of quarantined subreddits. I honestly can't think of a single honest reason for them existing. Once you've deemed a community so harmful that you don't want people accidentally stumbling into it, why go out of your way to allow it to exist behind a curtain, instead of just outright banning it (unless you want to support it discreetly). To be clear, I'm not accusing reddit admins of shadily supporting horrible communities. I'm just saying that, from the perspective of a user that sees them fight the battle, they're doing it so badly that it almost seems they don't want to win, and I wonder what's happening behind the scenes for that to happen.

deleted 6y ago
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unethical_ban 6y ago
If you let a bad community be bad in their dark corner, they won't spread as easily to the rest of the site. You can easily see that the accounts are toxic by seeing that they participate in garbage communities. And it's a great honeypot for authorities, be it for political astroturfing and nationstate stuff, or for borderline-illegal content.
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  >If you let a bad community be bad in their dark corner, they won't spread as easily to the rest of the site. I suspect this is the reason. I observed the opposite, a certain type of content disappearing after a separate comunity was created for it.
buboard 6y ago
Because competitors exist
- 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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kache_ 6y ago

Reddit has been compromised with actors who do not have free speech in their best interest. The other day there was an illuminating ask reddit post about transexuals who decided to transition back and their experiences. That post got promptly removed by moderators; even though there was no hateful content within it at all. They effectively silenced the transexual population due to an ever so slight conflict of ideology. To think that the reddit administrators would go so far as to ban people for even interacting with content that THEY deem problematic. Reddit is dead and no one I know uses it anymore. EDIT: - In case anyone is interested; here is the censored post that I was referring to https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/h9ctho/serious_are_there_people_within_the_trans/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/h9ctho/serious_a...

dageshi 6y ago
I imagine the mods have a fairly finely tuned sense of which threads will turn into a shitstorm and don't give a fuck about pre-emptively killing them. And honestly I WISH nobody used reddit anymore, maybe it could roll back 10 years when it was frankly more fun, but it sure seems like more people than ever are using it.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  I imagine the mods have a fairly finely tuned sense of which threads will turn into a shitstorm and don't give a fuck about pre-emptively killing them. How do we feel about pre-emptive moderation? Is it warranted? Is it warranted every time? Only certain topics?
  - dageshi 6y ago
    Ultimately the mods are volunteers, they get to do what they want? More precisely I would imagine they don't care about facilitating/refereeing culture wars inside their subs, cause lord only knows how much work that would be.
    - dvtrn 6y ago

crazypython 6y ago

This seems like a good way to suppress bots that upvote posts that incite violence or severe verbal abuse or gingoist. However, I am afraid if they start doing this for discussion on COVID-19.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mey 6y ago

Is this any different than making Shadow Banning visible to the user who has been Shadow Banned?

gruez 6y ago

My long time reddit account (same name as my hn account) was shadowbanned 2 weeks ago. I sent them an appeal and they responded really quick (it was sunday night I believe) saying that my account "got caught by Reddit's spam filter" and unbanned the account. A few days later my account was banned again. I sent an appeal and this time they haven't responded in over a week. Is this possibly related?

dannyw 6y ago
Probably not, but my reddit account of 10+ years have been shadowbanned too with no explanation. As a Digg immigrant, I can't wait to migrate away to the next reddit.

troughway 6y ago

jedberg is here, I'm sure he's preening to pipe up about this like he usually does. Or is the shoe on the other foot this time around?

marricks 6y ago

An obvious concern of this would be just silencing content which isn't violent or morally wrong but just not wanted in a large commercially viable website. This is obviously polarizing but something I'll be watching is what happens to /r/chapotraphouse. CTH has some posts that violated a rule but most don't, the admins claim their quarantining was never well communicated and intentionally vague, posting screenshots of lack of communication from mods. If people get suspended for just participating there without any clear violations of calling for violence/brigading/etc then that's not really a great sign for transparency.

cthalupa 6y ago
>CTH has some posts that violated a rule but most don't I'm not familiar with the CTH situation, or super familiar with CTH in general besides knowing them to be pretty far left on the political spectrum. But based solely on this line, if their admins are not making enough of an effort in Reddit's eyes to clean up and discourage people from making these rule breaking posts, then the quarantine makes sense. Even if only 1% of .1% of the posts are violating the rules, if the subreddit isn't policing that small minority of posts, what is Reddit supposed to do? Ignore it because most posts aren't breaking rules?
- marricks 6y ago
  I don't follow them enough to personally have an opinion on if they warranted that treatment or not, but did follow enough to know it really couldn't have been most posts. So really can't argue with you on the validity of the banning. but... that if the fraction of bad posts lead to mass suspensions on CTH then I'd say it is a creepy/not-good direction for Reddit.
  - cthalupa 6y ago
    I pulled the fractions out of thin air, so I have no idea what they actually are. But you have to do something about people refusing to enforce site policy, even if it's only on a small portion of the content. For an extreme example (and to be clear I am not saying anything like this happened at CTH), if 99 posts out of 100 on subreddit fall within the rules, but that 1 post that doesn't is promoting killing everyone of a certain race, and the subreddit moderators refuse to do anything about that one post, then they 100% need to have something happen. And that doesn't change if it's 999 out of 1000, etc., either. Now, it's unlikely that anything on CTH was at that level of toxic and hateful, but the same overall concept applies - they have to take care of posts that are against policy, even if they're a small minority. If not, it seems like getting quarantined or even removed completely is a reasonable course of action.

motohagiography 6y ago

There seems to be a divide between people who think discourse is a progressive art of the exchange of ideas, and those who use language as a pretext for political struggle where the role of ideas is to act as provocations that yield a persons "true," alignment and identity. The latter view means engaging ideas compromises your ethical purity, where the former one means people can express abhorrent ideas without physical consequences. There isn't a short answer to what's probably an eternal conflict, but I do know a lot of people in tech who might benefit from reflecting on the question of, "are we the baddies?"

bt4u2 6y ago
Yes. Especially the sjw crowd in tech should reflect on this question. But they won't
mtgp1000 6y ago
The dichotomy is seems to be reflected in the growing divide between rational, scientific inquiry, and modern progressive liberal arts which are rooted in critical theory.

mullingitover 6y ago

> Abusive content is not acceptable on Reddit nor is engaging with it. This is such a fail for Reddit. If the content isn't allowed on the site, it's on Reddit to remove it. The existence of the content on the site implies Reddit's approval of the content, so engaging with that content is a wholly innocent act.

fwip 6y ago
Do you think that every post and comment on Reddit is pre-approved by an employee before it becomes visible?
MauranKilom 6y ago
Please explain by what mechanism you would expect abusive content to be unengagable before being recognized (and treated) as such. Preferably one that does not involve Reddit having to travel back in time.
- mullingitover 6y ago
  I don't have a way to programmatically detect abusive content, and for users the content's presence on the site implies it's legitimate. Just remove it when it's found, and shadowban the people who posted it. It isn't rocket surgery.

Jonnax 6y ago

I used Reddit a lot back in 2013ish but went off of it. Looking at it now, it feels like that in general the site is really mean spirited. Also upvoting means that you're just seeing whatever the majority of voters want you to see. It works on a smaller community like HN because comments get 10s of upvotes at most. It's not a site for good discourse. However there's communities where there is interesting discussion still and often if you want an opinion of a product or an issue you might find a thread on it from a real user. But generally they've done nothing to stop the nurturing of racist/sexist/bullying content over the years. Now you can argue about free speech being important for an internet platform. But Reddit trying to change the community attitudes of their site now seems a little late. Also there is a real sense that some users believe that Reddit is the Sheppard of society and they're fighting on the forefront of society. Which I think stems from the millions of apparent subscribers to subreddits. But it's just a fancy internet forum. Like this linked post is on a subreddit called Watch Reddit Die. Apparently something about free speech being stifled in Reddit. People need to realise they shouldn't waste their life on a website they don't like. The internet hasn't been fully consolidated by Facebook and Google just yet, they can find or make a different community.

Scoundreller 6y ago
> It works on a smaller community like HN because comments get 10s of upvotes at most. I think you underestimate the size of this place. It’s basically a busy Subreddit.
Taylor_OD 6y ago
Reddit's issue is the issue of so many ad supported websites. Clicks sell ads and controversy draws more clicks than anything else. It's been clear over the last few years that the popular subreddits are the ones that have the most dramatic content. Smaller subreddit do tend to have better discourse though until eventually, they get large enough to become popular and start to become the same echo chambers.
- shostack 6y ago
  First, big brands don't want controversy displayed next to their ads. This is likely behind some moves Reddit has made in the past to clean things up. Second, I'm curious what % of revenue comes from user-purchased post and comment awards from gold. I've noticed those in use quite a bit in some more inflammatory subs like /r/politics. I wonder how they vet payments from users to avoid providing a way for hostile actors to buy visibility while flying under the radar. Ie. Avoiding conflicts of interest from accidentally monetizing trolls.

nend 6y ago

Is there any evidence this is real? The image specifies /r/reddit.com, which was discontinued about a decade ago. Obviously this practice is/would be awful. But it's really surprising and the image seems a little fishy.

edoceo 6y ago
It's real. Reddit is doing a ban based on what you up-doot
euroclear 6y ago
/r/reddit.com is still used for admin communications; if you want to contact the site admins, you are encouraged to use the contact the moderators link on /r/reddit.com.
dredmorbius 6y ago
From 24 February 2020: "Reddit Will Start to Punish Users for Upvotes as It Eyes Ad Cash" https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-upvotes-as-it-eye-1841907899 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-up... "Spring forward… into Reddit’s 2019 transparency report" Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/spring_forward_into_reddits_2019_transparency/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/sprin...

cwhiz 6y ago

I don't think Reddit should be able to censor lawful content and also claim protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If they want to police lawful content that is fine but then they are no longer an open platform and they should forfeit their Section 230 protections. I dislike the ability for online platforms to have their cake of protection against lawsuits and also eat their cake of policing lawful content they don't like.

cma 6y ago
I hope you realize the entire site, and every site, would be full of 99.99% commercial spam if this went into place.
anarazel 6y ago
The aim of 230 was explicitly to allow doing so. And how would you even imagine this working? Have a bunch of conlaw students judge posts against complex tests?
root_axis 6y ago
Without section 230 protection it would be impossible for the site to stay open, so in effect you're saying sites that moderate user content should be shut down. Does that seem like an accurate interpretation of your position?
- alacombe 6y ago
  I'm fine with that. They decide to take a political stance, they shall deal with the legal consequence of their actions.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    Ok. In my view that's unreasonable. Website operators should have the freedom to moderate their sites without fear of being shut down. Moderation is part of the product, they should have the freedom to create online communities that cater to specific audiences, including with respect to political partisanship if that is where their values lie. It seems unreasonable that all the users that enjoy the site as is should lose access to it because of some users who disagree with the site's moderation policies.

duxup 6y ago

They've got so many moderation related issues. Amidst all this accounts that randomly spam the site with collections of articles and etc run free. They don't participate in discussion (maybe a handful of actual comments... with more links), they just push a particular point of view and inundate every sub they can find with article after article.... A simple query "hey is this user just spamming submissions" could deal with some of them. If you search new you're presented with repost after repost of these spammers, sometimes reposing their own content, just from another news source. If you're part of a location based sub that is in the news, it's just an AVALANCHE of distantly cause related submitters spamming it up.

unholythree 6y ago
That’s the most obviously problem I see with section 230 freedom of speech maximalists arguments. Who’s right is it to curtail the freedom of someone to announce their love of a some sexual performance enhancing supplement in every thread and comment section on the internet?

wnevets 6y ago

For years reddit stood by and did nothing while certain groups exploited and spammed the front page with their hate speech, im glad to see they're finally doing something about it.

antishatter 6y ago

The main issue is asymmetric rule enforcement more so than the rules themselves. This is probably true for most if not all social media platforms.

zarkov99 6y ago

I feel safer already. Thank you Reddit for protecting me from my bad opinions.

ru552 6y ago

I'm a daily redditor. On Saturday I logged into reddit and found "Your account has been permanently suspended from Reddit." across the top banner. The mod message says I was permanently suspended for repeated violations of the content policy. The last time I posted ANYTHING on reddit was 21 days ago when I commented on a Schwarzenegger post and said I'd love for him to be president. I appealed it and haven't heard anything.

NietTim 6y ago
Do you share your internet? I read today that someone got banned because his roommate got banned
- ru552 6y ago
  I don't. I'm not sure what the reason is. I generally only post nerd stuff in r/sysadmin or r/networking. Oh well.

spacephysics 6y ago

Reddit once being a haven away from large corporate interests, has continually succumbed to the mainstream narrative of what’s appropriate. Sure, there are communities that are horrid, but then there are those that are on the line. And inch by inch that line moves from moral goodness, to corporate interest. Reddit is no different than Twitter/YouTube/Facebook, only they haven’t covered the same amount of ground. Given another few years, if that, we’ll see the same censorship practices on Reddit, with the same magnitude, as youtube, facebook, and twitter. This is essentially account entrapment. Show content they know is in bad faith, then punish them. Or, once a post is deemed in bad faith, retroactively punish them for not having the correct opinion. 1984

qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
> 1984 1984 and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race. Read another book
- minkzilla 6y ago
  I’ve read many books in my time and I liked 1984 both for its entertainment value and as a warning about government power and limiting free speech. What is wrong with 1984? Is there a similar but better book I should read?
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    What’s wrong with 1984 is people sign up for a private service, post something against the ToS, get their account banned by a volunteer user-moderator, then call it “punishment” and cite 1984 as if “piss off, troll” from JimBob moderator of /r/WhippetFanciers is exactly the same as living in North Korea and being forced to speak NewSpeak on threat of having caged rats eat your face in Room 101.
snapetom 6y ago
It's interesting. I was just looking at a user account that had a gazillion post karma, but -10 comment karma. It also created a few subreddits. It's so obvious a content farmer. People moved away from Digg because they implemented an algorithm to suggest news, and de-emphasised user submitted stories. Now, essentially the same thing is happening with reddit via these farmers. It's not as obvious and might not be sanctioned, but at the end of the day, a few select bots are also pushing content to the front.

cde-v 6y ago

This was announced back in February.... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8044337/Reddit-start-suspending-users-consistently-upvote-rule-breaking-content.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8044337/Redd...

dredmorbius 6y ago
Gizmodo is cited, and gives better info: https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-upvotes-as-it-eye-1841907899 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-up...

scythe 6y ago

Reddit has two conflicting aims. First, it tries to be a "community hub", like Forumer in the old days, where anyone can set up an "autonomous" messageboard (subreddit) to support discussion among a particular subculture. Consider e.g. /r/smashbros. Second, it tries to be a "community-in-itself", complete with its own demonym "redditor", and a shared set of values, etiquette, and jokes/memes. These goals are fundamentally at odds. A community of competing factions -- some of which openly hate each other -- is hardly a community. A board for Super Smash Brothers players which must hew to the diktat of reddit at large is not really a community of Smashers. When a norm on Reddit at large is violated by a subreddit, the general population is incensed. When a rule is handed down from the admins to the moderators of a subcommunity, the members of that community feel they are being manipulated by outsiders -- even if they might have decided to enforce that rule on their own, if they had been left to their own devices. Reddit splits the baby and nobody's happy.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

Interesting approach. Assuming no bots, doesn't that change actual sentiment among the population. How can you measure what people are thinking if dissenting voices are banned?

sunseb 6y ago

Just closed my Reddit account. I am so tired of these vocal minorities bullying others. If social justice is so important to them, I suggest to go help homeless people or to go taking care of the elderly instead of posting on social networks.

braythwayt 6y ago

Every time we have a conversation about why Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit shouldn't be allowed to"censor" content, I ask what would become of Hacker News if it was not permitted to moderate spam or threads that do not follow the HN guidelines. I think it would quickly devolve into 4Chan. Almost all of the current community would decamp, and the trolls that infest other sites would take over.

qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
"Devolve into"? This website is just the "sounds educated" arm of imageboard users. HN is entirely filled with right-wing to far-right sheltered techbros. Half the accounts here that are constantly complaining about "free speech" and "consequences to their actions" are really one bad day away from calling everyone they disagree with various slurs, and the other half are so insulated from any sort of actual injustice in the world that they sit atop of their smug towers of indifference, cawing at the peasants below who have things such as "opinions" (that disagree with theirs, of course) or "motivations".
- compuguy 6y ago
  You're not wrong about this. There is a very vocal right-wing population of commenters here on HN that show their true colors in more polarizing submissions.
- braythwayt 6y ago
  You are not wrong, but don't forget Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is CRUD." What makes something valuable is the 10% of the thing that is not CRUD, and whatever measures put into place to make sure that the 90% CRUD doesn't poison the 10% that's worthwhile. To me, that's having clear guidelines that are consistently applied through moderation.
jlawson 6y ago
For structural reasons this comparison makes no sense. HN has one homepage; one sub-community. Reddit has an infinite number of subreddits. Similar for facebook. Even with no moderation, in no case would anyone be exposed to content that wasn't posted and allowed in a community that they deliberately subscribed to. Reddit polices what kinds of communities are allowed. HN is one kind of community.

dogma1138 6y ago

Nice I wonder how many comments that go against Reddit’s policies I’ve upvoted over the years unintentionally on the mobile app. I up/downvote posts/comments at least couple of times a day when trying to scroll on my phone or just hitting the screen to wake it up after being distracted. This is ridiculous policy.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

UweSchmidt 6y ago

The idea that the "vote" is not just counted but judged is new, it seems. It is the next step in the trend of hyper precise tracking of peoples thoughts and actions, and their judgement in a transparent and opinionated global social sphere with extreme consequences. Overall, a worrying trend.

hogFeast 6y ago

You can vote any way you want. As long as you vote the right way.

mtgp1000 6y ago

At this point reddit is arguably a social danger, in that it is made to look like organic content, while in truth everything is heavily censored and opinions are implicitly and explicitly approved in an absolute top down manner. Opaque vote display and ranking algorithms, keyword based shadowbanning, ideological mods and admin - combined with an organic facade you have a platform to manufacture consensus and push propaganda onto millions of unsuspecting users, young and old alike. Frankly it's scummy and I hope they fail.

Natsu 6y ago

What would it take to bring back pre-Eternal September Usenet?

mherdeg 6y ago

Considering how much of Internet culture is currently being formed on reddit it's amazing how opaque the site is to history. The archival is low-quality and missing a lot. I sometimes browse by /r/all/gilded, which gives you a weird, weird, WEIRD cross section of the Internet. One time I found a heavily gilded post memorializing a recently deceased contributor to /r/cripplingalcoholism -- which appears to be an important but saddening community for people with a serious medical problem -- then followed a few links on the profile of the deceased and their associated until, a few minutes later, I ended up at /r/opiaterollcall. Wow oh wow, what a subreddit that was: https://web.archive.org/web/20130904195509/www.reddit.com/r/opiaterollcall https://web.archive.org/web/20130904195509/www.reddit.com/r/... That forum died pretty soon after I found it (and got national press coverage at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/opioid-reddit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/us/opioid-reddit.html ) but wow, oh wow, there was a lot going on there which is now essentially lost to readers of history, because existing archives don't go deep into posts and comments.

isatty 6y ago

No jedberg comments on this post?

iron0013 6y ago

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the “watchredditdie” subreddit is a “safe space” for alt-right users to whine about not being able to brigade, astroturf, and otherwise manipulate reddit to their own political ends the way they did in the run-up to the 2016 election.

surround 6y ago

If this submission gets flagged/killed (it’s already gone from the front page) will I be penalized for upvoting it?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

colordrops 6y ago

If you told a reddit user from 5 years ago that you would be banned for upvoting content, they'd call you a nut job.

dredmorbius 6y ago

Gizmodo addressed this in February, though just as Covid-19 news coverage began overwhelming everything: Yesterday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (or “Spez,” as Redditors affectionately know him) published the platform’s annual transparency report, highlighting how the platform took down more than 200,000 pieces of offending content over 2019, along with nearly 56,000 accounts and nearly 22,000 subreddits—the site’s communities, most of which are moderated by volunteer users. He also flagged a “company update” regarding the way Reddit thinks about “quarantined” communities... https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-upvotes-as-it-eye-1841907899 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-will-start-to-punish-users-for-up... That policy, in a Reddit post by Huffman: When we expanded our quarantine policy, we created an appeals process for sanctioned communities. One of the goals was to “force subscribers to reconsider their behavior and incentivize moderators to make changes.” While the policy attempted to hold moderators more accountable for enforcing healthier rules and norms, it didn’t address the role that each member plays in the health of their community. Today, we’re making an update to address this gap: Users who consistently upvote policy-breaking content within quarantined communities will receive automated warnings, followed by further consequences like a temporary or permanent suspension. We hope this will encourage healthier behavior across these communities. https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/spring_forward_into_reddits_2019_transparency/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/sprin... According to that statement, bans (apparently temporary) are for voting only in already quarantined subreddits. WatchRedditDie's discussion is not especially nuanced, considered, or balanced.

kilo_bravo_3 6y ago

Why do SO MANY pretend-libertarian tech bros pretending to be libertarians and liberty-loving freedom fans think that free speech applies to private property? And why have they let themselves be tricked into spewing the Section-230 nonsense that conservative hate-mongers are using to threaten online service providers? Section 230 protection is irrelevant to service providers policing their site. It is very relevant to service providers who are being told by conservative hate-mongering politicians “hey we’ll strip your protections unless you allow our hateful content even though the protections are unrelated to our content and comments”. You’re carrying water for malicious actors who don’t care about you. By your own logic, not mine (I think it’s bullshit) YOURS if you downvote this comment to the point that it is hidden or automodded then you are infringing on my “FREEZE PEECH RAIGHTS” because you are “removing” constitutionally-protected freeze peach from the public sphere.

fulldecent2 6y ago

Here is what people mean when we say we don't like Section 230. And we mean it whether or not Section 230 is actually responsible. - Advertiser uses our trademark on Google Ads? Google makes money and has editorial control. But we can't sue them. - Somebody posts something libelous about us on Twitter? Twitter makes serious money and has editorial control. But we can't sue them. - Fakes on eBay? Can't stop them. eBay not liable. If Twitter is going to have a "fact checking" department, then they also need a "retractions" department. And if retraction aren't forthcoming when reasonable, then we need a cause of action against them.

lenkite 6y ago

No one complained when folks voting on an unpopular forum were kicked out late last year. Everyone laughed and said "good riddance" then. Now the chickens have come home to roost. The adage of the "fascists will next come for you" continues to remain true.

zaro 6y ago

The thought police strikes again. It's not anymore about simply censoring unwanted content, punishing the users for engaging with will be way more effective in the long run.