8 ms·

I'm confused by the article. My understanding was that reddit replaced the moderators of /r/The_Donald months ago after initially making in quarantined. The W

by nullc 6y ago

I'm confused by the article. My understanding was that reddit replaced the moderators of /r/The_Donald months ago after initially making in quarantined. The Wikipedia article seems to agree with my understanding: > In February 26, 2020, Reddit administrators removed a number of r/The_Donald moderators "that were approving, stickying, and generally supporting content in this subreddit that breaks [Reddit's] content policy" and called the remaining moderators to choose new ones from a list of Reddit-approved individuals.[77] About the same time, Reddit placed r/The_Donald in "Restricted mode", removing the ability to create new posts from most of its users. Since then, the subreddit's community has moved to thedonald.win, an independently hosted site based on Reddit's old user interface. Which all sounds fine to me, but the article's quote "We’re not the ones who shut down the community. The moderators are the ones who shut down that community." seems disingenuous to me. What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules?

john-shaffer 6y ago
> What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? 1) They don't want to alienate people who care about free speech. 2) A lot of people liked reddit because it was user-driven, and don't like it when the content they see is selected by admins and mods. They want to keep the illusion of being user-driven as long as they can.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  Let's give them user driven reddit then. Open the floodgates, remove all filters and moderators and bans and locks. Turn off the firewall. Let them see reality. They'll be back.
- filoleg 6y ago
  Fully agreed. I think people get up in arms over "but they have the rights to do it", making it look like those opposing decisions of admins believe that admins don't have those rights. Admins own the platform and they totally have the right to set whatever rules they want. No one is debating that. The thing that people point out is that despite admins having those rights, they might be exercising those rights in a way that people disagree with (for whatever reasons), which might ultimately lead to the demise of that platform. I, personally, find your reasons against the ham-fisted approach they have been taking to be very compelling. While r/The_Donald ban was probably warranted, and I have nothing against that ban, the overall vibe of reddit definitely feels like it has changed over the past 10 years. It feels like it went from "user-driven content under the umbrella of basic global reddit rules" to "heavily-directed content that admins seem to approve of or content that they cannot justify getting rid of just yet (but probably will soon enough)".
  - Rebles 6y ago
    There is waaaaay too much content generated on Reddit for the admins to approve or curate. And the success of Reddit is in user-driven communities and content. Admins do not want to be in the business of content curation. Reddit is updating its content policy.
    - john-shaffer 6y ago
      Admins tell the moderators how to act, and remove mods when they don't comply. Most content is effectively invisible unless it's heavily upvoted, so mods only really need to act on a small subset of posts. Some subreddits are moderated pretty heavily, while others remain mostly user-driven.
bmarquez 6y ago
You're right. The_Donald has been dead for months due to the above-mentioned restrictions on submissions, moderator removal, and moving to a different site. If they're getting banned now it's for something that was done months ago.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  I think it’s worth mentioning the Reddit reason for initial quarantine was “anti police” comments. MediaMatters / ShareBlue wrote an article about how anti police the sub was referencing two downvoted but not deleted comments. The entire sub was always pro law and order. Reddit put very heavy limits on the sub for that. Which is pretty damn funny to me - because right now on every single popular sub there are “all cops are bastards”, “kill all police”, “the only good cop is a dead cop” in any thread that even sort of tangentially references police. I don’t care much either way. But the massive hypocrisy is there. No one has the balls to say “we just don’t want this on our platform”. A couple months after the quarantine, Reddit admins changed the reason on the disclaimer before entering from “anti police comments” to “rule breaking”. It shows me the weak moral character of the people in charge... and why I don’t want these people getting to decide what is right and wrong. Edit: initial warning, later chased for ambiguous “rule breaking” https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-26-at-3.03.56-PM.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1 https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Scree...
  - belltaco 6y ago
    This is quite not correct. What triggered the quarantine was the violent threats against Oregon state police for this: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/oregon-senate-republicans-have-walked-out-in-protest-over-cap-and-trade-bill-according-to-reports/283-3a3d22d5-7a51-424c-8fe1-1645b8516306 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/oregon-senate-repu... And it wasn't just two comments, and they weren't downvoted. Proof here https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/pro-trump-subreddit-full-calls-violence-support-oregon-republicans https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/pro-trump-subreddi...
    - 6y ago
teej 6y ago
Here is what Reddit said directly, vs through a media outlet - https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
  The inactive claim is hilarious, let's remove all the mods so you have to close the community so we can claim you are inactive... The funny thing was they removed mods because of the lack of moderation... which was unfounded as they never said what content went unmoderated. It's annoying to be persecuted based on political ideology, but we all know what Reddit is now, the most extreme liberal echo-chamber on the internet. It's their site they can do what they want (see their terrible redesign), just like Digg. For anyone interested you can find T_D here: https://thedonald.win https://thedonald.win ---- Replies embedded below due to HN restrictions ---- ---- @Rebles --- > They weren't banned for political ideology, they were banned for doxxing, fear mongering, and generally being a community full of toxic posts. There was never any proof of said doxxing, which I'm sure happens on all subs across the board in small instances. Fear mongering and generally being toxic? I didn't see anything like that, I saw people supporting their president and voicing their disdain of liberals and Dems. I'm sure it's good riddance for you, but you're talking about hundreds of thousands of supporters of the President of the United States. Good riddance to Reddit, it's a toxic PoS now, T_D was the only good thing about it, glad they have their own site and I don't have to visit Reddit. I really enjoyed Reddit before it was hijacked by MediaMatters and ShareBlue. ---- @noir_lord ---- > At this point been pro-Trump isn't really an ideology, it's a cult in all but name. I can see how you would think that if you listened to liberal propaganda all day. What makes you think that you're not in the cult and the other side is right? Trump supporters come from all political spectrums of the right, I'm a libertarian, not a conservative. ---- @Rebles #2 ---- > This is a strategy imposed against racism and violence. If conservative voices include a lot of racism, then, yes, I guess they should stop being racists. That's how they label the right when they don't have anything else to say. We're terrible people with terrible ideas, don't listen to us. No, we live together with races, many of us have mixed families, like myself, and there is no mainstream racism. Racism exists on both sides in a minority and has nothing to do with political ideology. Labeling someone a racist is #1 in the Democratic playbook, fake sexual allegations is #2.
Miner49er 6y ago
Yeah, the ban of T_D is only symbolic; it has been dead for months. I think the real news here is the ban of /r/ChapoTrapHouse, (arguably) the most active leftist subreddit there was.
- shakezula 6y ago
  ChapoTrapHouse has been laughing for months about their incoming ban, though. They knew it was coming and they've been preparing for it by migrating to other subs, moving to Discord, etc... T_D users are probably doing the exact same.
  - fernandotakai 6y ago
    the donald users are already on a another site (which i won't link because i do not remember the url lol) and have been for a while now.
    - ComputerGuru 6y ago
      For posterity’s sake, I believe the commenter is referring to thedonald.win, which I’m purposely leaving un-linkified.
  - SauciestGNU 6y ago
    I posted on cth periodically and while I think it was banned largely so the admins could claim "balance" I don't care at all. Nothing serious happened there, the daily chat threads were fun, but it was clearly eventually going to be banned and I knew that and didn't get invested.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      +1 to this. Chapo wasn't bad at all, in terms of breaking actual rules. I saw people on the announcement thread claiming it was full of tankies, and that was reason enough to ban it, but it really wasn't. You wouldn't get very far on Chapo by unironically talking about what a great man Stalin or Mao was -- though, guillotine jokes, including applying them to the necks of landlords, would certainly get you upvotes. I never saw any actual brigading on the sub itself. Others talk about "organizing brigades through Twitter," and I think it's kind of BS to punish people for that. Reddit doesn't get to police Twitter, and vice versa. Never saw any actual advocacy of violence against any specific person, either. Sure, there were "kill the landlords" type jokes and memes, but the closest I think I ever saw it get to actual incitement of violence was stuff like "Kissinger needs to fucking die already," or "I would prefer that Trump exit the White House feet first, in a box." You can call that whatever you like, but it's certainly not advocating violence against anyone. Meanwhile, there's literally a Stalin meme on the front page of r/fullcommunism that says "death to capitalism." Then, there's r/latestagecapitalism, which is a toxic shithole of a sub where you literally can't say "that idea is crazy and will never work because $REASONS," because they have a blacklist of words that are "slurs" of one sort of another that they don't publish, and which will get your post removed if you try and use them.
belltaco 6y ago
>About the same time, Reddit placed r/The_Donald in "Restricted mode", removing the ability to create new posts from most of its users. I think this is wrong, IIRC it was the mods who chose to do that, not Reddit admins. The mods wouldn't choose other mods even though the rules made sense, like having a certain karma threshold in t_d etc.
- ww520 6y ago
  The mods were put in place by the admins so effectively it's Reddit doing it.
  - belltaco 6y ago
    No, those mods weren't put in place by Reddit, they were hired a while ago by the top mods, some of who got banned thus making those the top mods. Reddit admins added zero mods to the t_d.
    - ww520 6y ago
      No. The lower level mods were forced in by the Reddit admin a while back. There were warnings about these sock mods long ago. The subsequent banning of the top mods effectively put these sock mods in control.
      - belltaco 6y ago
        I don't think that was the case but I am open to sources.
        ww520 6y ago
        I am also open to the sources that the low level mods were "hired" by the top mods.
        belltaco 6y ago
        That's the default of how it works on Reddit. https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004273892-Moderators-and-Permissions-on-mobile#:~:text=To%20invite%20a%20new%20mod,click%20the%20%22add%22%20button https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004273892-M.... You made the claim that the admins added mods, what made you think so?
Rebles 6y ago
Since the donald moderators removed the new moderators that Reddit added (that was selected from and voting on in the donald subreddit), it was clear the moderators weren't interested in rescuing their subreddit to Reddit's standards. I think Reddit is trying to avoid appearing capricious when it banned subreddits. Reddit users do want a rythme or reason to Reddit admins actions, otherwise, there'd be further user discontent.
el_cujo 6y ago
The_Donald was neutered a long time ago. The real story is the 200 other subs getting shut down and Reddit essentially saying the wild west days on their site are actually over now. Several publications have focused on The_Donald at least in the headline because I assume it makes for a sexier, more political story than about a website cracking down on moderation.
intopieces 6y ago
> What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? That would be a major shift in strategy for the site. It has always been billed a freewheeling place that belonged to the users, with the company that owns it being something of a benevolent overlord that keeps the lights on. That is what attracts users and content. But of course that version of the web is dead. Any website that relies on advertisers for revenue will necessarily be limited in its tolerance for controversy. In the end, though, I doubt it matters too much for the site’s revenue. Reddit has been dying for years according to many of the posters and yet it sees growth YoY.
SmokeyHamster 6y ago
>What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? Because the admins still need people to believe they're the "good guys". And we all know the good guys don't censor people. That's what evil fascist governments do. I would routinely visit the_donald. It was definitely a ruckus pro-Trump circle jerk, but it was hardly racist or abusive. It was mostly just silly pro-Trump memes. There's far more black Trump supporters than most people realize. The media does everything they can to hide them, so a lot of people would love to post photos of them with funny captions like "Oh look, another white supremacist Trump supporter!" The admins couldn't have that, but they couldn't outright ban them without appearing draconian. So they instead tried just banning most of the mods, hoping the remaining mod would agree to the admin's terms of appointing only admin-approved puppet mods. Of course, the mod balked at that and just locked the sub and forwarded everyone to thedonald.win, the backup site. So the admins ended up with the worst of both worlds. They still looked like the bad guys who shut down a sub on a whim, but now there's still a huge trove of funny non-racist pro-Trump memes sitting on their site for any Google searcher to stumble upon, which will only reinforce just how draconian the admins have become. By banning the sub outright, all that content gets deleted and hidden from search engines, so now when they vaguely label it "hate", you can't refute it. Orwell nailed it. We've always been at war with ~~Eastasia~~ Eurasia.

by nullc 6y ago

john-shaffer 6y ago

> What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? 1) They don't want to alienate people who care about free speech. 2) A lot of people liked reddit because it was user-driven, and don't like it when the content they see is selected by admins and mods. They want to keep the illusion of being user-driven as long as they can.

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
Let's give them user driven reddit then. Open the floodgates, remove all filters and moderators and bans and locks. Turn off the firewall. Let them see reality. They'll be back.
filoleg 6y ago
Fully agreed. I think people get up in arms over "but they have the rights to do it", making it look like those opposing decisions of admins believe that admins don't have those rights. Admins own the platform and they totally have the right to set whatever rules they want. No one is debating that. The thing that people point out is that despite admins having those rights, they might be exercising those rights in a way that people disagree with (for whatever reasons), which might ultimately lead to the demise of that platform. I, personally, find your reasons against the ham-fisted approach they have been taking to be very compelling. While r/The_Donald ban was probably warranted, and I have nothing against that ban, the overall vibe of reddit definitely feels like it has changed over the past 10 years. It feels like it went from "user-driven content under the umbrella of basic global reddit rules" to "heavily-directed content that admins seem to approve of or content that they cannot justify getting rid of just yet (but probably will soon enough)".
- Rebles 6y ago
  There is waaaaay too much content generated on Reddit for the admins to approve or curate. And the success of Reddit is in user-driven communities and content. Admins do not want to be in the business of content curation. Reddit is updating its content policy.
  - john-shaffer 6y ago
    Admins tell the moderators how to act, and remove mods when they don't comply. Most content is effectively invisible unless it's heavily upvoted, so mods only really need to act on a small subset of posts. Some subreddits are moderated pretty heavily, while others remain mostly user-driven.

bmarquez 6y ago

You're right. The_Donald has been dead for months due to the above-mentioned restrictions on submissions, moderator removal, and moving to a different site. If they're getting banned now it's for something that was done months ago.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
I think it’s worth mentioning the Reddit reason for initial quarantine was “anti police” comments. MediaMatters / ShareBlue wrote an article about how anti police the sub was referencing two downvoted but not deleted comments. The entire sub was always pro law and order. Reddit put very heavy limits on the sub for that. Which is pretty damn funny to me - because right now on every single popular sub there are “all cops are bastards”, “kill all police”, “the only good cop is a dead cop” in any thread that even sort of tangentially references police. I don’t care much either way. But the massive hypocrisy is there. No one has the balls to say “we just don’t want this on our platform”. A couple months after the quarantine, Reddit admins changed the reason on the disclaimer before entering from “anti police comments” to “rule breaking”. It shows me the weak moral character of the people in charge... and why I don’t want these people getting to decide what is right and wrong. Edit: initial warning, later chased for ambiguous “rule breaking” https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-26-at-3.03.56-PM.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1 https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Scree...
- belltaco 6y ago
  This is quite not correct. What triggered the quarantine was the violent threats against Oregon state police for this: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/oregon-senate-republicans-have-walked-out-in-protest-over-cap-and-trade-bill-according-to-reports/283-3a3d22d5-7a51-424c-8fe1-1645b8516306 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/politics/oregon-senate-repu... And it wasn't just two comments, and they weren't downvoted. Proof here https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/pro-trump-subreddit-full-calls-violence-support-oregon-republicans https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/pro-trump-subreddi...
  - 6y ago

teej 6y ago

Here is what Reddit said directly, vs through a media outlet - https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...

s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
The inactive claim is hilarious, let's remove all the mods so you have to close the community so we can claim you are inactive... The funny thing was they removed mods because of the lack of moderation... which was unfounded as they never said what content went unmoderated. It's annoying to be persecuted based on political ideology, but we all know what Reddit is now, the most extreme liberal echo-chamber on the internet. It's their site they can do what they want (see their terrible redesign), just like Digg. For anyone interested you can find T_D here: https://thedonald.win https://thedonald.win ---- Replies embedded below due to HN restrictions ---- ---- @Rebles --- > They weren't banned for political ideology, they were banned for doxxing, fear mongering, and generally being a community full of toxic posts. There was never any proof of said doxxing, which I'm sure happens on all subs across the board in small instances. Fear mongering and generally being toxic? I didn't see anything like that, I saw people supporting their president and voicing their disdain of liberals and Dems. I'm sure it's good riddance for you, but you're talking about hundreds of thousands of supporters of the President of the United States. Good riddance to Reddit, it's a toxic PoS now, T_D was the only good thing about it, glad they have their own site and I don't have to visit Reddit. I really enjoyed Reddit before it was hijacked by MediaMatters and ShareBlue. ---- @noir_lord ---- > At this point been pro-Trump isn't really an ideology, it's a cult in all but name. I can see how you would think that if you listened to liberal propaganda all day. What makes you think that you're not in the cult and the other side is right? Trump supporters come from all political spectrums of the right, I'm a libertarian, not a conservative. ---- @Rebles #2 ---- > This is a strategy imposed against racism and violence. If conservative voices include a lot of racism, then, yes, I guess they should stop being racists. That's how they label the right when they don't have anything else to say. We're terrible people with terrible ideas, don't listen to us. No, we live together with races, many of us have mixed families, like myself, and there is no mainstream racism. Racism exists on both sides in a minority and has nothing to do with political ideology. Labeling someone a racist is #1 in the Democratic playbook, fake sexual allegations is #2.

Miner49er 6y ago

Yeah, the ban of T_D is only symbolic; it has been dead for months. I think the real news here is the ban of /r/ChapoTrapHouse, (arguably) the most active leftist subreddit there was.

shakezula 6y ago
ChapoTrapHouse has been laughing for months about their incoming ban, though. They knew it was coming and they've been preparing for it by migrating to other subs, moving to Discord, etc... T_D users are probably doing the exact same.
- fernandotakai 6y ago
  the donald users are already on a another site (which i won't link because i do not remember the url lol) and have been for a while now.
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    For posterity’s sake, I believe the commenter is referring to thedonald.win, which I’m purposely leaving un-linkified.
- SauciestGNU 6y ago
  I posted on cth periodically and while I think it was banned largely so the admins could claim "balance" I don't care at all. Nothing serious happened there, the daily chat threads were fun, but it was clearly eventually going to be banned and I knew that and didn't get invested.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    +1 to this. Chapo wasn't bad at all, in terms of breaking actual rules. I saw people on the announcement thread claiming it was full of tankies, and that was reason enough to ban it, but it really wasn't. You wouldn't get very far on Chapo by unironically talking about what a great man Stalin or Mao was -- though, guillotine jokes, including applying them to the necks of landlords, would certainly get you upvotes. I never saw any actual brigading on the sub itself. Others talk about "organizing brigades through Twitter," and I think it's kind of BS to punish people for that. Reddit doesn't get to police Twitter, and vice versa. Never saw any actual advocacy of violence against any specific person, either. Sure, there were "kill the landlords" type jokes and memes, but the closest I think I ever saw it get to actual incitement of violence was stuff like "Kissinger needs to fucking die already," or "I would prefer that Trump exit the White House feet first, in a box." You can call that whatever you like, but it's certainly not advocating violence against anyone. Meanwhile, there's literally a Stalin meme on the front page of r/fullcommunism that says "death to capitalism." Then, there's r/latestagecapitalism, which is a toxic shithole of a sub where you literally can't say "that idea is crazy and will never work because $REASONS," because they have a blacklist of words that are "slurs" of one sort of another that they don't publish, and which will get your post removed if you try and use them.

belltaco 6y ago

>About the same time, Reddit placed r/The_Donald in "Restricted mode", removing the ability to create new posts from most of its users. I think this is wrong, IIRC it was the mods who chose to do that, not Reddit admins. The mods wouldn't choose other mods even though the rules made sense, like having a certain karma threshold in t_d etc.

ww520 6y ago
The mods were put in place by the admins so effectively it's Reddit doing it.
- belltaco 6y ago
  No, those mods weren't put in place by Reddit, they were hired a while ago by the top mods, some of who got banned thus making those the top mods. Reddit admins added zero mods to the t_d.
  - ww520 6y ago
    No. The lower level mods were forced in by the Reddit admin a while back. There were warnings about these sock mods long ago. The subsequent banning of the top mods effectively put these sock mods in control.
    - belltaco 6y ago
      I don't think that was the case but I am open to sources.
      - ww520 6y ago
        I am also open to the sources that the low level mods were "hired" by the top mods.
        belltaco 6y ago
        That's the default of how it works on Reddit. https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004273892-Moderators-and-Permissions-on-mobile#:~:text=To%20invite%20a%20new%20mod,click%20the%20%22add%22%20button https://mods.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004273892-M.... You made the claim that the admins added mods, what made you think so?

Rebles 6y ago

Since the donald moderators removed the new moderators that Reddit added (that was selected from and voting on in the donald subreddit), it was clear the moderators weren't interested in rescuing their subreddit to Reddit's standards. I think Reddit is trying to avoid appearing capricious when it banned subreddits. Reddit users do want a rythme or reason to Reddit admins actions, otherwise, there'd be further user discontent.

el_cujo 6y ago

The_Donald was neutered a long time ago. The real story is the 200 other subs getting shut down and Reddit essentially saying the wild west days on their site are actually over now. Several publications have focused on The_Donald at least in the headline because I assume it makes for a sexier, more political story than about a website cracking down on moderation.

intopieces 6y ago

> What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? That would be a major shift in strategy for the site. It has always been billed a freewheeling place that belonged to the users, with the company that owns it being something of a benevolent overlord that keeps the lights on. That is what attracts users and content. But of course that version of the web is dead. Any website that relies on advertisers for revenue will necessarily be limited in its tolerance for controversy. In the end, though, I doubt it matters too much for the site’s revenue. Reddit has been dying for years according to many of the posters and yet it sees growth YoY.

SmokeyHamster 6y ago

>What's wrong with just saying that it's their platform and they have the right to set the rules? Because the admins still need people to believe they're the "good guys". And we all know the good guys don't censor people. That's what evil fascist governments do. I would routinely visit the_donald. It was definitely a ruckus pro-Trump circle jerk, but it was hardly racist or abusive. It was mostly just silly pro-Trump memes. There's far more black Trump supporters than most people realize. The media does everything they can to hide them, so a lot of people would love to post photos of them with funny captions like "Oh look, another white supremacist Trump supporter!" The admins couldn't have that, but they couldn't outright ban them without appearing draconian. So they instead tried just banning most of the mods, hoping the remaining mod would agree to the admin's terms of appointing only admin-approved puppet mods. Of course, the mod balked at that and just locked the sub and forwarded everyone to thedonald.win, the backup site. So the admins ended up with the worst of both worlds. They still looked like the bad guys who shut down a sub on a whim, but now there's still a huge trove of funny non-racist pro-Trump memes sitting on their site for any Google searcher to stumble upon, which will only reinforce just how draconian the admins have become. By banning the sub outright, all that content gets deleted and hidden from search engines, so now when they vaguely label it "hate", you can't refute it. Orwell nailed it. We've always been at war with ~~Eastasia~~ Eurasia.