6 ms·

r/UKPolitics sub-Reddit targeted by Reddit admins

73 points by vesinisa 6y ago

isnotheimposter 6y ago
I'd appreciate if this wasn't discussed. Thanks.
bengale 6y ago
Seemed a little bit of an over the top reaction to take the whole ukpol subreddit offline because a mod had a problem with his account.
- cstross 6y ago
  Not if it relates to a superinjunction in effect: it could potentially render Reddit and/or Conde Nast liable for criminal sanctions/contempt of court proceedings.
  - vesinisa 6y ago
    Superinjunction? Any more info on this?
    - toyg 6y ago
      It's referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English_l... It's sadly fairly common to see them employed for situations where it is alleged that libel or slander could result from press coverage.
      - vesinisa 6y ago
        Right. Interesting thing with those is we wouldn't indeed know if it was the grounds for suppression.
        toyg 6y ago
        Which is abhorrent from a democratic-oversight perspective, but the UK system can be like that...
- dale_glass 6y ago
  Reddit suspended one of ukpol's mods. The rest of them had no clue what was going on, so they hit the big red button hoping that would give them time to figure out what was happening. Seems like a reasonable precaution to me.
  - bengale 6y ago
    A precaution for what though?
    - dale_glass 6y ago
      More mods getting banned. They didn't know what the banned one did, so the precaution is to ensure nobody does anything until they figure out what got reddit angry.
mindslight 6y ago
Orwell wasn't wrong, that's for sure. It was always obvious that centralizing web middlemen were going to end up as totalitarian failures, but seeing it actually play out is chilling. Does anybody have pointers to forums where this topic can be freely discussed, just on principle? edit: if I click on the two bitly links in this reddit post, I get articles about a specific person. Is she the Voldemort, or is it someone else?
- toyg 6y ago
  > Is she the Voldemort Lol. Yes. From the tone of the post, it looks like the subs' admins are not happy with the mothership's censoring activity, and are effectively skirting around it.
phpnode 6y ago
This thread (23 points in ~30 mins) has disappeared from the frontpage, exactly as the previous, now flagged thread did at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 Dear HN users, if you flagged this or the previous thread, what was your reasoning? I'm curious about what's going on.
- curtisblaine 6y ago
  As the other one, this will be included in today's HN Rejected Newsletter: https://rejected.substack.com/ https://rejected.substack.com/
  - dang 6y ago
    One thing that people who compile these lists never seem to take into account is that the flagged discussions are only interesting to the extent that HN remains an interesting community, and that would not be the case if the site weren't moderated and users didn't flag off-topic submissions and flamewars. The better HN does at fulfilling its mandate, the higher-quality the audience becomes, and the more people want to use it for other things (usually a marketing agenda or a political/ideological agenda). Often these people complain that the site isn't available to them for these purposes and demand that the filtration system be dismantled (censorship! suppression!). But if the filtration system didn't exist, HN wouldn't be a desirable target in the first place. It would in fact suck, because the best users—who come here to avoid getting barraged by marketing and political/ideological agendas—would have left. In other words, if you understand the dynamics correctly then these arguments refute themselves.
    - esja 6y ago
      Firstly, thank you for doing such a great job here. A couple of questions, as I worry that "flagging" can be abused by small groups of motivated people who are not representative of the broader user base. Do you have ways to prevent "flagging abuse"? e.g. Do you review why things were flagged, and reinstate them if for example the thread has a lot of upvotes and isn't a total flamewar, or if the flaggers weren't particularly good citizens?
s9w 6y ago
It's about a tranny. Hurt the feelings of him and kiss goodbye to your account. Business as usual
mellosouls 6y ago
I've vouched for this (then dead thread) and a reminder to others that if you see a thread that you think has been unfairly killed, check to see if you have a "vouch" option under the title. If so, please use it. More: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/mb1vpb/rukpolitics_goes_private_moderators_suspended/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/mb1vpb/rukp...
- dang 6y ago
  If you're linking to a URL that includes "SubredditDrama", that's a pretty strong indication of offtopicness for HN.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    Always good to go by the content though rather than your assumption of it from the URL :). The title and content would be of interest to anybody who cares about the freedom of speech on dominant platforms, which is certainly a frequent subject here. Obviously if there is a neutral article on it on a third party platform that might be better, but this seems a good substitute in the meantime as it's external to the origin of the issue (which has a habit of disappearing), and contains a clear summary of what's going on. However, I shall bear your admonition in mind for future (no snark).
    - dang 6y ago
      > Always good to go by the content though rather than your assumption of it from the URL That's true! (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) > The title and content would be of interest to anybody who cares about the freedom of speech on dominant platforms, That's not true. It's clear from the comments in these threads that this isn't a story that HN is going to have an interesting discussion of. If there's anything here other than Reddit drama and HN metadrama, I missed it.
      - 6y ago

73 points by vesinisa 6y ago

I'd appreciate if this wasn't discussed. Thanks.

Seemed a little bit of an over the top reaction to take the whole ukpol subreddit offline because a mod had a problem with his account.

cstross 6y ago
Not if it relates to a superinjunction in effect: it could potentially render Reddit and/or Conde Nast liable for criminal sanctions/contempt of court proceedings.
- vesinisa 6y ago
  Superinjunction? Any more info on this?
  - toyg 6y ago
    It's referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-injunctions_in_English_l... It's sadly fairly common to see them employed for situations where it is alleged that libel or slander could result from press coverage.
    - vesinisa 6y ago
      Right. Interesting thing with those is we wouldn't indeed know if it was the grounds for suppression.
      - toyg 6y ago
        Which is abhorrent from a democratic-oversight perspective, but the UK system can be like that...
dale_glass 6y ago
Reddit suspended one of ukpol's mods. The rest of them had no clue what was going on, so they hit the big red button hoping that would give them time to figure out what was happening. Seems like a reasonable precaution to me.
- bengale 6y ago
  A precaution for what though?
  - dale_glass 6y ago
    More mods getting banned. They didn't know what the banned one did, so the precaution is to ensure nobody does anything until they figure out what got reddit angry.

mindslight 6y ago

Orwell wasn't wrong, that's for sure. It was always obvious that centralizing web middlemen were going to end up as totalitarian failures, but seeing it actually play out is chilling. Does anybody have pointers to forums where this topic can be freely discussed, just on principle? edit: if I click on the two bitly links in this reddit post, I get articles about a specific person. Is she the Voldemort, or is it someone else?

toyg 6y ago
> Is she the Voldemort Lol. Yes. From the tone of the post, it looks like the subs' admins are not happy with the mothership's censoring activity, and are effectively skirting around it.

phpnode 6y ago

This thread (23 points in ~30 mins) has disappeared from the frontpage, exactly as the previous, now flagged thread did at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26554697 Dear HN users, if you flagged this or the previous thread, what was your reasoning? I'm curious about what's going on.

curtisblaine 6y ago
As the other one, this will be included in today's HN Rejected Newsletter: https://rejected.substack.com/ https://rejected.substack.com/
- dang 6y ago
  One thing that people who compile these lists never seem to take into account is that the flagged discussions are only interesting to the extent that HN remains an interesting community, and that would not be the case if the site weren't moderated and users didn't flag off-topic submissions and flamewars. The better HN does at fulfilling its mandate, the higher-quality the audience becomes, and the more people want to use it for other things (usually a marketing agenda or a political/ideological agenda). Often these people complain that the site isn't available to them for these purposes and demand that the filtration system be dismantled (censorship! suppression!). But if the filtration system didn't exist, HN wouldn't be a desirable target in the first place. It would in fact suck, because the best users—who come here to avoid getting barraged by marketing and political/ideological agendas—would have left. In other words, if you understand the dynamics correctly then these arguments refute themselves.
  - esja 6y ago
    Firstly, thank you for doing such a great job here. A couple of questions, as I worry that "flagging" can be abused by small groups of motivated people who are not representative of the broader user base. Do you have ways to prevent "flagging abuse"? e.g. Do you review why things were flagged, and reinstate them if for example the thread has a lot of upvotes and isn't a total flamewar, or if the flaggers weren't particularly good citizens?

s9w 6y ago

It's about a tranny. Hurt the feelings of him and kiss goodbye to your account. Business as usual

mellosouls 6y ago

I've vouched for this (then dead thread) and a reminder to others that if you see a thread that you think has been unfairly killed, check to see if you have a "vouch" option under the title. If so, please use it. More: https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/mb1vpb/rukpolitics_goes_private_moderators_suspended/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/mb1vpb/rukp...

dang 6y ago
If you're linking to a URL that includes "SubredditDrama", that's a pretty strong indication of offtopicness for HN.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Always good to go by the content though rather than your assumption of it from the URL :). The title and content would be of interest to anybody who cares about the freedom of speech on dominant platforms, which is certainly a frequent subject here. Obviously if there is a neutral article on it on a third party platform that might be better, but this seems a good substitute in the meantime as it's external to the origin of the issue (which has a habit of disappearing), and contains a clear summary of what's going on. However, I shall bear your admonition in mind for future (no snark).
  - dang 6y ago
    > Always good to go by the content though rather than your assumption of it from the URL That's true! (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) > The title and content would be of interest to anybody who cares about the freedom of speech on dominant platforms, That's not true. It's clear from the comments in these threads that this isn't a story that HN is going to have an interesting discussion of. If there's anything here other than Reddit drama and HN metadrama, I missed it.
    - 6y ago