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It's fascinating to look at the thread about this on r/ModSupport (https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/mbqgx2/a_clarification_on_actioning_and_employee

by slibhb 6y ago

It's fascinating to look at the thread about this on r/ModSupport (https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/mbqgx2/a_clarification_on_actioning_and_employee_names/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/mbqgx2/a_clarif...). Highly upvoted comments condemning Reddit with 50+ awards. But note that many of the posters edited their posts saying "don't give me awards". This shows a contradiction in trying to do the right thing while in public. We have reasonably good solutions for problems like this: they are democratic, representative ideals. They involve anonymously measuring everyone's opinion (voting). Or randomly selecting from within a population (juries). The internet is creating an unregulated situation with none of these safeguards. If there is a solution to this problem, I don't think it is top-down control, I think it is the spreading of our democratic, representative ideals to the internet and into, yes, private companies. Not all of them, but certainly Reddit.

dv_dt 6y ago
I think much of the reason that these kinds of discussions are chaotic is that we are so unaccustomed to thinking about what formal principles and tools that self-governed communities might decide to use. In the case of reddit, there is a tension between Reddit the company and it's use of the top-down power it has, and Reddit the admin community, and the general user community.
epivosism 6y ago
Yeah, I've always thought it weird that in addition to the ideas of democratic decision making (juries, voting) we don't apply the known standards of jurisprudence online - rules of evidence, right to representation, right to trail, right to confront your accuser, no ex post facto laws etc. For all their faults, these are the best that the world's been able to come up with for keeping the peace and resolving conflict. Not saying they should be imposed from without by law, but that even from Reddit's own perspective it could be beneficial to be known as a fair site. It just requires high distribution of knowledge and information, without much manipulation for a population to consistently see and hold to these complex values.
stonesweep 6y ago
> But note that many of the posters edited their posts saying "don't give me awards". This shows a contradiction between trying to do the right thing while in public. This is a phenomenon all over reddit and not unique to this situation in subreddit comments sections, it's been going on ever since reddit rolled out the paid gold concept. A non-zero number of people edit their comments (when they get popular) to the like of "stop giving me awards, go donate to this charity instead" to try and get readers to spend their money on a good cause related to the post subject matter. (I love animals subreddits, so see it a lot in the various places "go donate to this shelter / coservation" or similar attempt to redirect money)
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  In this case people are saying "don't give me awards, you're sending the subject of my complaint money"
  - stonesweep 6y ago
    Same thing happens when someone rants about the New reddit (redesign) or some other "I don't like this at all" post/comment about reddit itself - people start giving it awards if they agree. shakes head like Foghorn Leghorn
- freeflight 6y ago
  I find that whole thing a bit odd considering the "award spam" only got as extreme as it's now when Reddit started handing out temporary free awards to users for them to give away in addition to the occasional gold coins. Case in point: I never spend money on Reddit yet I have given out a whole bunch of awards. Organizing this with a bunch of alt accounts should make it trivial to just hand out mass-awards for free.
  - stonesweep 6y ago
    My take is it applies to a certain personality type (not sure what kind, not my specialty - just see the patterns) - on last year's profile I got some sort of award for just joining a sub or making a comment or some other no-value low-effort action. shrug It maybe ties into whether giving away awards for any reason was part of your school/childhood? Wasn't part of mine so not embedded in my psyche? (just pondering)
asdff 6y ago
If anything the last two decades have taught me to question putting all the eggs in the raw democracy basket. The baseline contributer doesn't invest a lot of thinking into the often quite significant stakes at hand. The opportunist knows this, and exploits these populations for their vote. In the end the system is still controlled by a small influential few, but now their actions are sanctified by being supported by the democratic vote and it is now much more difficult to get rid of these opportunists when so many blindly support them against their own interests. Using an internet example, if we didn't like the bent of the admin team of a site today, we find another website maintained by someone with shared interests. If we remove top down control and enable the masses to control a site like reddit, then you really are handing the keys directly to the opportunists, and every site will have the same voices eventually churn to the top. Organic democratic voices simply don't exist on this for profit commercialized internet we've constructed over the last two decades. SEO wins, virality wins, pandering to xenophobic fears and conspiracy theories wins over data and facts. We are a far cry from the learned men of Athens discussing the affairs of the city from the Pnyx; democracy today is like the dirty rowdy bar by the city gate where people are complaining about immigrants speaking foreign languages coming to the docks.
- slibhb 6y ago
  I am contrasting juries and representative systems (republican ideas) with "raw democracy," which is fundamentally mob rule. We haven't always viewed the Athenians as "learned men". Polybius judged Athens negatively: he saw the Athenians as an example of mob rule. We also have ancient commentators like the Old Oligarch, who was critical of Athenian democracy (though he saw its utility). Of course the measures I mentioned to curtail mob rule are not completely effective. What I'm saying is, we seem to be in the process of reinventing the wheel and so let's take look at our existing vehicles, which function fairly well.

by slibhb 6y ago

dv_dt 6y ago

I think much of the reason that these kinds of discussions are chaotic is that we are so unaccustomed to thinking about what formal principles and tools that self-governed communities might decide to use. In the case of reddit, there is a tension between Reddit the company and it's use of the top-down power it has, and Reddit the admin community, and the general user community.

epivosism 6y ago

Yeah, I've always thought it weird that in addition to the ideas of democratic decision making (juries, voting) we don't apply the known standards of jurisprudence online - rules of evidence, right to representation, right to trail, right to confront your accuser, no ex post facto laws etc. For all their faults, these are the best that the world's been able to come up with for keeping the peace and resolving conflict. Not saying they should be imposed from without by law, but that even from Reddit's own perspective it could be beneficial to be known as a fair site. It just requires high distribution of knowledge and information, without much manipulation for a population to consistently see and hold to these complex values.

stonesweep 6y ago

> But note that many of the posters edited their posts saying "don't give me awards". This shows a contradiction between trying to do the right thing while in public. This is a phenomenon all over reddit and not unique to this situation in subreddit comments sections, it's been going on ever since reddit rolled out the paid gold concept. A non-zero number of people edit their comments (when they get popular) to the like of "stop giving me awards, go donate to this charity instead" to try and get readers to spend their money on a good cause related to the post subject matter. (I love animals subreddits, so see it a lot in the various places "go donate to this shelter / coservation" or similar attempt to redirect money)

wutbrodo 6y ago
In this case people are saying "don't give me awards, you're sending the subject of my complaint money"
- stonesweep 6y ago
  Same thing happens when someone rants about the New reddit (redesign) or some other "I don't like this at all" post/comment about reddit itself - people start giving it awards if they agree. shakes head like Foghorn Leghorn
freeflight 6y ago
I find that whole thing a bit odd considering the "award spam" only got as extreme as it's now when Reddit started handing out temporary free awards to users for them to give away in addition to the occasional gold coins. Case in point: I never spend money on Reddit yet I have given out a whole bunch of awards. Organizing this with a bunch of alt accounts should make it trivial to just hand out mass-awards for free.
- stonesweep 6y ago
  My take is it applies to a certain personality type (not sure what kind, not my specialty - just see the patterns) - on last year's profile I got some sort of award for just joining a sub or making a comment or some other no-value low-effort action. shrug It maybe ties into whether giving away awards for any reason was part of your school/childhood? Wasn't part of mine so not embedded in my psyche? (just pondering)

asdff 6y ago

If anything the last two decades have taught me to question putting all the eggs in the raw democracy basket. The baseline contributer doesn't invest a lot of thinking into the often quite significant stakes at hand. The opportunist knows this, and exploits these populations for their vote. In the end the system is still controlled by a small influential few, but now their actions are sanctified by being supported by the democratic vote and it is now much more difficult to get rid of these opportunists when so many blindly support them against their own interests. Using an internet example, if we didn't like the bent of the admin team of a site today, we find another website maintained by someone with shared interests. If we remove top down control and enable the masses to control a site like reddit, then you really are handing the keys directly to the opportunists, and every site will have the same voices eventually churn to the top. Organic democratic voices simply don't exist on this for profit commercialized internet we've constructed over the last two decades. SEO wins, virality wins, pandering to xenophobic fears and conspiracy theories wins over data and facts. We are a far cry from the learned men of Athens discussing the affairs of the city from the Pnyx; democracy today is like the dirty rowdy bar by the city gate where people are complaining about immigrants speaking foreign languages coming to the docks.

slibhb 6y ago
I am contrasting juries and representative systems (republican ideas) with "raw democracy," which is fundamentally mob rule. We haven't always viewed the Athenians as "learned men". Polybius judged Athens negatively: he saw the Athenians as an example of mob rule. We also have ancient commentators like the Old Oligarch, who was critical of Athenian democracy (though he saw its utility). Of course the measures I mentioned to curtail mob rule are not completely effective. What I'm saying is, we seem to be in the process of reinventing the wheel and so let's take look at our existing vehicles, which function fairly well.