19 ms·

Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people

357 points by quickthrower2 5y ago

tsjq 5y ago
are these the list of users who created the subs, or are these users who joined after the sub was created and then made to mods? one is fine. other is crazy. funny angle is: even if the usernames were different, we wouldn't know whether those are same persons or indeed different persons. reddit is certainly a very biased / skewed place with respect to "moderation"
ddalex 5y ago
Also see https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Cabal/ https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Cabal/ I also filter, using RES, all posters and commenters with over 100k karma, and it's like taking a trip back in time when the internet wasn't tuned to inane content and advertisers
- qmmmur 5y ago
  Nice to see the usual suspects on The Cabal. People who believe ivermectin is some kind of miracle covid drug (even the manufacturers say its ineffective) and those who deny COVID even exists. Quality people. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111678 https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w
  - ddalex 5y ago
    Ehrm we already know niche communities attract lunatics - or, better said, make lunatics more visible; the noise to signal ratio of the content is way worse because idiots are louder. But if you filter through the noise you can get some interesting insights.
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    > Quality people. A bit trigger happy with the ad hominem there considering you probably think of yourself as the rational side. > ivermectin From the first link: > The use of ivermectin, among others repurposed drugs for prophylaxis or treatment for COVID-19, should be done based on trustable evidence, without conflicts of interest, with proven safety and efficacy in patient-consented, ethically approved, randomised clinical trials. But there are over 30 RCTs with positive results. Second link is about one particular study. Again there are over 30 RCTs.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    Maybe you should not go into details¹. Because if you presented that evidence to specialists disagreeing with you, they would have their say. And this thread is unlikely to lure them specifically. Here, you are just making statements that cannot be tackled directly. But for the "there exist people who do not clearly appear as non-«quality people» and nonetheless disagree on some points". (Just to give an example: I have heard about a plausible argument about that «manufacturers say it[']s ineffective», and I do not think the matter should not be discussed in this context, but arguments exist. Good or bad: that is for the analysis table, not the "I just had two minutes available". If matters were clear-cut, the whole problem would not exist.) -- ¹Edit: for clarity: with «go[ing] into details» I meant that I invite the poster against introducing statements like «people who believe [whatever is controversial]», and especially because this thread is not here have us stuck in those controversies, and because they would not be solved with two sentences, surely, since there are apparent non-lunatics defending those positions.
    - qmmmur 5y ago
      It's actually pretty simple to read the evidence and come to the conclusion its not suitable to be used in the treatment of COVID. Unfortunately the issue is plagued by misinformation and those who profit from peddling it.
      - mdp2021 5y ago
        Which evidence do you find simple - those two links you posted? (Non rhetorical question - in case of doubt.) People who will read that evidence without full contextual intellectual preparation will not be able to be certain of their evaluation; they are not competent to review it ("review" as in the expression "peer review"). On the other hand, yesterday I started exploring the material of a medical doctor who publishes interesting conferences - found as I was looking for other material, and to my surprise, from what he practices on himself I am sure he would disagree with your previous post. Who to trust? On the other hand, if I see censorship, few exceptions aside it will be very clear that the censorship will help approaching truth. And for this, one name I will give: Lex Fridman, who denounced the matter a few weeks ago, while interviewing for this podcast one of the notable censored voices.
  - swader999 5y ago
    The manufacturer of ivermectin, Merck, has in trial a patented and very similar formula that is doing quite well. Ivermectin is off patent. IVM cured my long covid and r/ivermectin was helpful when my regular doctor said to just wait it out. Much of that sub is real people describing their success with it.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    NIH says ivermectin is effective. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/
    - a_f 5y ago
      That appears to be a meta review done by Newcastle Uni (amongsth others), rather than any endorsement of Ivermectin by the NIH? PubMed is a resource for scientific publications hosted by the NIH, and is a repository of work. It is not the publishing arm of the NIH. Unless I am missing something?!
  - defaultprimate 5y ago
    Regarding Ivermectin: Tell that to India, whose states that adopted it into their treatment regimen had a >95% reduction in death and infection in less than five weeks in a population <5% vaccinated, while the states that didn't continued to sky rocket. https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout/article_e3db8f46-f942-11eb-9eea-77d5e2519364.html https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-iv...
- narrator 5y ago
  Thanks for the tip. I gave up on Reddit because its just full of astroturf these days. There's no disagreement allowed on most topics. There's a ridiculous amount of threads where 80 percent of the comments are deleted.
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  That filter idea sounds very good. Gonna try. Thank you. edit: come to think of it. Can RES hide points?
- xdennis 5y ago
  How do you filter out by karma?
- technofiend 5y ago
  Yes! It's entirely too easy to karma farm by either posting me-too or deeply controversial comments because if people disagree you might get downvoted slightly past zero for a given comment, but if you hit a winner you'll get hundreds or even thousands of upvotes. Detecting and blocking every one of those high noise low signal people would really help. At least until they adapt.
- aqouta 5y ago
  Comment or post karma? I have 200k comment karma just because I have a 9 year old account and post semi-frequently.
TomGullen 5y ago
On the face of it seems strange why anyone would want to moderate popular subreddits, just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. Younger me might of been excited to do it from the perceived status perhaps. I do wonder how many off-site deals are done with moderators and third parties. There’s a lot of traffic these people are able to steward and influence I imagine.
- retSava 5y ago
  Some see "internet points" as "payment". But are you sure they aren't paid, ie employed by Reddit? Would totally make sense to either hide an army of moderating "grunts" behind a single user, or moderating bots. Reddit is large, lots to moderate.
  - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
    Internet points are a form of validation, also the notifications and responses play on our dopamine circuits, namely, on our desire for novelty.
- fnord77 5y ago
  I'm convinced the political subs are run by people employed by the two large US political groups
  - josephwegner 5y ago
    Just as an anecdote, I used to moderate one of the more popular political subreddits. It was a difficult task and burnout on the team was common. I can say that the mod team was not just shills for a particular party (unless they were undercover even to me). The entire mod team, even to this day, is there for altruistic reasons - we felt we were doing a service to our fellow Americans by fostering healthy political discussion. I moderated that sub through election season and then stepped down in January. At the end of the day the death threats and constant insults aren't what drove me away, but the organizational chaos. No one could figure out how to lead that team, and leaning on practiced organizational structures was apparently too hard for a group of redditors.
deorder 5y ago
Same with the coronavirus related subs last year: https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1582202873483.jpg https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1582202873483.jpg It was discovered and some of the mods removed themselves. Honestly I just think they go by another name.
- asutekku 5y ago
  That screenshot is from /pol/ so I'm curious if the complaints about "censorship" were that people couldn't call it a china flu.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Of course, because for some reason this is suddenly unacceptable but it is ok to have an Indian variant or a Brazilian variant.
    - asutekku 5y ago
      There's a semantic difference with "X virus" and "Y variant". "X virus" denotes the virus was caused by country X and is behind it all, whereas "Y variant" denotes it was mutated in there but is not the root cause of it all.
      - nemo44x 5y ago
        But yet “Havana Syndrome” is freely used everywhere.
        Seanambers 5y ago
        Yeah, at a certain point back in 2020 it suddenly was very bad to have variants with geographic origin in the naming. Although that was how it had been done in many other cases.
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        I don't think that's true. West Nile Virus wasn't caused by people West of the Nile, the Spanish Flu wasn't caused by Spain, MERS is called that because it was discovered in the Middle East, not because people in the Middle East caused it, etc. The form "X virus" does not at all imply that the virus was caused by X. Then, of course, there is the very real possibility that China literally did cause the virus.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
huibf 5y ago
I am convinced that moderating the top subreddits is a very mentally taxing job, not to mention the amount of time that must be spent. Someone who does that kind of work for free is either paid by someone or mentally unbalanced. Neither option seems good for the community.
fnord77 5y ago
I wish there were more transparency in who the moderators of news and political subs, what their day jobs are and who pays them.
- josephwegner 5y ago
  This could only happen if Reddit actually took some responsibility for the safety of their moderators. Death threats are commonplace for mods of political subs. They're mostly empty threats, but it'd be a much more significant risk if names/employers were public.
  - CompMan411 5y ago
    I was a mod and drew the line when I got a death threat. Most mods work as volunteers to keep a sub clean of spam and porn. When the only ‘thanks’ you receive is, ‘we know where you live, watch your back’ I’m done. The cherry on tip is when you notify the admins that there is nefarious activity and they literally don’t return a response for 3 weeks. Reddit’s voting system enforces group-think, the users think it’s a ‘democracy’ in that they get to make the rules and mods should just follow orders, then mods need help due to an uprising, admins are no where to be found. The meme subs aren’t funny any more, pics of cats and dogs are tired. The anti-mask, anti-vax, the_donald, and so much more all incubated in Reddit under the watch of the mods, the admins, and Condi Nast themselves for nothing more than advertising dollars. I understand Reddit serves a purpose for some but it, in part, is assisting in the downfall of society. By allowing people to downvote without thinking critically, without thinking about the affects of polarizing endlessly until right and wrong don’t matter as long as everyone is in agreement. And if someone isn’t in agreement, downvote them in to oblivion.
    - CountDrewku 5y ago
      >The anti-mask, anti-vax, the_donald, and so much more all incubated in Reddit under the watch of the mods, the admins Those subs are by far in the minority and are always on the line of getting quarantined or outright shutdown. r/politics is the poster child of what 90% of Reddit is. Reddit is by FAR an echo chamber for leftist ideas than it is for "alt-right" anything.
UncleSlacky 5y ago
(In)famously, the account widely believed to belong to Ghislaine Maxwell is a moderator of several major subs: https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill (moderator of r/worldnews, r/environment, r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, r/cyberlaws, r/enviroaction and r/greed)
- cdstyh 5y ago
  If you were to run covert intelligence operations, you would want to embed yourself in the all forms of the media so you can suppress any stories before they come out.
  - tome 5y ago
    Bit strange to do it under your actual name though.
    - cdstyh 5y ago
      Well the entire Epstein thing was laughably poorly run.
    - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
      Sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight.
      - nmeofthestate 5y ago
        Yes, hiding in plain sight worked masterfully in this case. Nobody suspects anything about socialite Maxwell's secret reddit-moderating account that she named after herself. It's never even come up as a daft conspiracy theory.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      but it's not under her own name, it is a name that is close to her name. The account is suspected of being hers but as I understand it not proven to be hers. So that seems a good practice to me - use a name that could be arguably yours so that you are not hiding anything if caught out but enough not yours so there is plausible deniability. Then make a bunch of deeper cover names that you run that are harder to pin on you, if anyone is looking they are looking at the one that is close to your name. but then maybe I've just read too many books.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
runarb 5y ago
For some more context: https://www.protocol.com/reddit-powermods-war https://www.protocol.com/reddit-powermods-war This list is at best deeply misleading; those subreddits often have dozens of moderators.
swiley 5y ago
You'll be happier if you just don't use Reddit.
- WesleyHale 5y ago
  It's sad to see reddit fall to such low a low level. Aaron Schwartz is rolling in his grave.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I refuse to have it bookmarked, but I do end up there once a day. It's a mindless escape. I did enjoy the Wallstreetbets drama with the short. And there's the boobies. (I still have testosterone?)
  - swiley 5y ago
    Again, you'll be happier with real ones rather than images. Also the more I look into it the more some of the WSB stuff looks fake. Some was certainly real but there was a lot of manipulation going on there.
- dgellow 5y ago
  Just avoid the main subreddits, and use an alternative client like teddit.net (no ads, fast to load, no tracking). Reddit still has lot of niche communities that are interesting to follow.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  I agree! For years I frequented Reddit many times a day. No I don't go there at all. What worked for me was slowly unsubing until it was so boring, it just kind of lost the dopamine hitting effect. Eventually, I never returned.
- cenkozan 5y ago
  I've been using reddit just for funs for a long time so all.reddit.com/top - and that's it.
- Tenoke 5y ago
krono 5y ago
There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages to the modteam are being ignored and Reddit support won't help because "moderators are free to run their communities as they see fit". I have been locked out of engaging with the communities I was most interested and active in, for no apparent reason and likely forever. And this is just one of many reasons for why having so few moderators control so many communities, is such a bad thing. Allowing them to operate without oversight or accountability is not helping the situation either.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  > I have been locked out of engaging with the communities I was most interested and active in, for no apparent reason and likely forever. Just make a new account. Screw their "ban circumvention" rule. What are they gonna do, ban you again?
- lloydatkinson 5y ago
  How do you check if you are shadowbanned?
  - kubb 5y ago
    Look at your posts from a different account?
  - krono 5y ago
    When a moderator deletes one of your posts, it will show up normally for you, but as having been deleted for everyone else. Easiest way to check is opening your posts in context after logging out or in an incognito window. If many of your posts show as deleted, the subs mods have likely added you to their automoderator blacklist.
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
schleck8 5y ago
Of course the post gets removed with some obscure Automod/Review pending flair. Awful people doing awful business, no surprises here
zibzab 5y ago
What I really want is a big list of subs with actual useful stuff. No memes, no hate or soft-hate [1] but useful things like electronics or how to play the piano. [1] have you noticed that many of top subs are about either watching others humiliation or judging people? idiotsincar, iamatotalpieceofshit, maliciouscompliance, etc. Do I actually become a better person by following these?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Beware of the Murray Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Based on my experience with the subjects I know intimately my experience is that Reddit advice is roughly equivalent to asking a teenager to Google something for you. I fully agree that any sub that's core content involves shitting on people has terrible inhabitants and all the quality of commentary that follows from that. Some of the more lighthearted ones are a little better (e.g. holdmybeer vs idiotsincars) when the content is conducive to such but only in the sense that someone with a crippling mental illness might have a good-ish day here and there.
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  the world of reaction is bigger than the world of action. any sub that’s practical is inherently less active. There’s only so much good base knowledge. Reacting to base knowledge is endless low value content.
- 1_2__5 5y ago
  The level of hateful, spiteful, and bitter disdain I see in comments across all of Reddit have led me to believe it’s not just popular subs and it’s not even just Reddit: this is where the younger generations in America are right now, emotionally. People are looking for someone or something to judge and hate. It’s not limited to any particular political cohort or socioeconomic strata either. I see it here on HN quite a bit too, even in more anodyne discussions you can read it prowling around the edges of the discourse. It’s not just that there’s people who make these comments - of course there’s always going to be - but that fact that they’re typically so highly upvoted anywhere there’s a voting/likes system. Anything that attempts to reflect nuance or lower the temperature has no boosters, while anything that reflects the worst, most reductive or least honest take is what bubbles to the top.
supperburg 5y ago
Does anyone know what happened to /u/beethy? He was one of the coolest and most prolific posters and he just disappeared one day.
dunco 5y ago
Idiots. We all know that Dang is the only moderator required.
lazyninja987 5y ago
why not use digital election to select mods ?
vimy 5y ago
I think the Aether model is better. Users can revert mod actions and even dispose of the mods if they misbehave or go in a different direction than what the community wants. https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/
- Kinrany 5y ago
  How does it protect against fake users taking over voting?
- nichos 5y ago
  Bern waiting to check this out, but they've been "working" on their android app for what seems like 2 years.
- potamic 5y ago
  It's asked me to sign up and then says login not allowed
MrPowers 5y ago
I highly recommend unsubscribing from all the default subreddits and only subbing to the programming related subreddits. It'll make your Reddit newsfeed more programming-oriented than HN and completely changes your experience with the site.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I just go to the subreddits I like: the main feed has too much crypto stuff.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  Do you have a list of good programming related subs? Most of the ones I've joined seem to be dead or nearly dead.
  - dgellow 5y ago
    I personally enjoy r/cpp a lot. Even if I myself rarely use C++.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    r/experienceddevs is good for career advice etc.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- acomjean 5y ago
  Reddit puppy and dog forums seem pretty good as well.
- jmuguy 5y ago
  Except for r/ProgrammerHumor unless you like the same 3 jokes about javascript and awkward screenshots from Tinder showing that a developer somehow, against all odds, got a date with the opposite sex.
valprop1 5y ago
I am not surprised that even this post has been removed from Reddit. It is strange to know that even these platforms that are popular to reject the capitalistic agenda and the industrial monopolistic behaviour themselves carry this hypocrisy of controlling the communities and the content being posted on it.
elevenoh 5y ago
reddit tends to moderated by folks who've been wearing a mask around the clock for 1.5 years & rarely leave their comfort-zone. the comments are slowly reflecting the result of this^ sjw-ish, anti-capitalism, anti personal growth etc.
- zpeti 5y ago
  Try retalk.
- dannyw 5y ago
  reddit died when they removed /r/reddit.com that marked the demise of reddit (in terms of quality, not in terms of revenue)
- CompMan411 5y ago
  I wore a mask and don’t leave the house, but other wise agree with you, Reddit is mostly an echo chamber for the worst aspects of both the left and right socio-economic ideas.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
The worst echo/bot chambers are the Cryptocurrency subs, including the exchange subs.
- h0h0h0h0111 5y ago
  Generally low quality content too: "[some person with an obvious vested interest] announces that [some cryptocurrency] will be extremely valuable and fix all the world's problems"
- stiltzkin 5y ago
  r/cryptocurrency got worse with the addition of moons and moon farming.
gerdesj 5y ago
"Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/ThatsInsane."
ciarcode 5y ago
What would happen if I block the mods? I won’t see anymore stuff from their subreddit or anything?
captainmuon 5y ago
Funny that the post is deleted. THAT will convince people that there is no conspiracy going on.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Funny thing is there is actually no conspiracy, it 's just the way people behave when they have the power to do so. It's impossible to have power and be mother Teresa at the same time, yet people irrationally believe in wise leaders.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    > It's impossible to have power and be mother Teresa at the same time, yet people irrationally believe in wise leaders. It's not impossible but it's rare enough you shouldn't bet anything of value on it.
nabla9 5y ago
There should be an option to automatically block anyone with over 1 million in karma.
supperburg 5y ago
Even if you took away all controversy and politics, I hate Reddit. The search function sucks. They shoved their own harebrained video player down everyone’s throats and it constantly plays by itself without opening. And when you do open it it doesn’t fucking play half the time. They also foisted their eye-bleeding updated user interface upon our innocent souls and forever corrupted us. It can only be described as Fischer price from hell. And also the idea of Reddit sucks on a structural level. There are tons of subs that are cool but too narrow to gain a large following. They can’t fill in the template subreddit community. You see overly specific subreddits like “praise the camera man” or “public freak outs” or “woah dude” and they invariably all cycle through the same videos and pictures, the ones getting the most traction, violating the whole premise of having specific communities. It should have been something like you can tag a post “woah dude” or “videos that end too soon” and just submit it to the universal page. People could still track tags of interest and do everything without the whole mess and insanity of subreddits and also without assholes turning subreddits into little fiefdoms.
- mabub24 5y ago
  I still like some parts of Reddit. I can only do so, though, because I exclusively force old.reddit styling instead of the new repulsive design, and I only visit 4ish subreddits with generally smaller subscriber numbers and more niche interests. All of the main/general subreddits are just endlessly repeating the same thing over and over again. Once the subreddit gets too big or seems to be annoying, jump ship or try and find a smaller new version. Also, I like subreddits outside of the bubble/echo chamber of the main subs. Even if I don't really align with some of the opinions or positions of some of the other subs, it at least feels more like interacting with actual human beings with differing interests. I also just don't use reddit that much. It's good for trying to solve a question, and maybe having a laugh for 15 mins, but after that it usually overstays its welcome and you can go somewhere else.
  - fho 5y ago
    I tried to get of my reddit addiction several times now ... going "cold turkey" or easing it of over time. I did that with 9gag a decade ago and never went back since, but with reddit it's hard because there is actually good content on there. Especially in the niche communities with small subscriber numbers. (very evident in the /r/battletech subreddit that just got overrun by a recent games workshop exodus. Subscriber counts increased, but /r/battletech turned into a meme channel ...)
brightstep 5y ago
The online platforms that were supposed to provide us a democratic free space to communicate are in fact governed by a tyrannical and unaccountable minority. We see the same situation on Facebook with group moderators and on Twitter (albeit less so) with high follower count blue-check accounts. Not to mention the companies themselves having the power to ban any speech they want.
- BoiledCabbage 5y ago
  It's almost as if this utopian techno-ararchism is a naive fantasy. And it simply creates digital societies with all of the downsides of their real world equivalents, and none of the checks to power and even more susceptible to manipulation. And yet it's only a matter of time until another 20 something will announce that they can solve the problems of the world and human nature by creating yet another digital environment free from the rules (and responsibilities) of the real world. And we'll all act shocked when it somehow backfires into unintended consequences and recreates a worse version of the thing it was trying to replace.
  - brightstep 5y ago
    A ha! I've found a way to change the world without needing to engage in political or cultural struggle! Surely this will benefit the people and not be co-opted by the powerful!
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Old news, unfortunately: https://old.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/to_have_independently_moderated_subreddits/ https://old.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/t...
GDC7 5y ago
Power Law is everywhere, even where you least expect it.
kostyal 5y ago
We live in a power law universe
cblconfederate 5y ago
There are subreddits with the same mods for 15 years now. People get old and so do their ideas but subreddit audiences are consistently young. This is problematic for national subreddits (which gain their audience automatically) and other "noun-word" subreddits that are people's first guesses when researching a subject. This is a major reason for bad subreddit culture. Reddit didn't foresee that its business would last for > 5 years . They need to set expiration dates for mod positions. In democracies we do that every 4-5 years.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Accounts are bought and sold. Just because the mod account has been the same for years doesn't mean it's the same person behind the keyboard. Mod accounts for popular subject and location subs are highly valued and sought after by people looking to move the overton window of discourse on those topics.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
Why aren't there censorship free blockchain-based solutions to public message boards?
effingwewt 5y ago
None of this is new, we tried telling people this what 8-10 years ago? Someone not too long ago even made a diagram showing this. This has been since before the first ban wave, when I quit the site. No one cared, nor did they care about the China astroturfing/censorship, but every so often someone raises the points, makes a stink, a few people leave reddit and it continues with business as usual.
pessimizer 5y ago
Reddit modding is a network of cartels; this post is just pointing out the one that controls the front page. There are cartels that control most groups of closely related (by subject or theme) subs as far as I can tell, and subs that are closely related primarily because they are modded by a particular cartel. There's also constant mod drama, with intra-cartel disputes developing into schisms, and inter-cartel disputes developing into wars complete with invasions. A real problem is that I don't think that the process of becoming a mod is particularly exclusionary, and anyone with ambition can eventually work their way into any cartel they want through flattery and constant online presence. This sounds democratic, so the opposite of a problem, right? But it's not actually democratic, there's no votes, it's appointments all the way down. The only way you can vote on reddit is to leave a sub as a group of users, and move to another sub together, hopefully with enough posting force and shady knowledge of mod tricks to attract more incoming readers/posters than the sub you've left (by "incoming" I mean people encountering that group of related subs for the first time, either through search or through chance.) Again, why is that bad? Because it's so easy to game. The people who mod subs are not exceptional at modding subs in terms of fairness and cultivation of interesting dialogues, they're exceptional in their degree of motivation to be mods. An easy way to create exceptional motivation is through paying people. Another way to be exceptionally motivated is to be irrationally motivated, e.g. mental illness. The motivation that we hope people have is the intrinsic motivation to facilitate/provide pleasure/information to others, but to also do that for free while Reddit gets rich. Not only do I think that borders on irrational, but I also think that in the fight between the intrinsic motivation to help and collaborate with others, and the simple economic utility headwinds, you 1) can't expect many people to be of the type we want, and we 2) certainly shouldn't expect them to remain for very long if they are. And even worse, the interaction between the paid and the irrationally motivated will always benefit the paid. The paid have a mission, and if they see no means of accomplishing that mission, they leave. For the irrationally motivated, modding is the end, not the means, so if being an enabler of the paid gets them appointed or promoted, they're going to be the best enablers you could ask for. Reddit, and most forums, need tools that facilitate real democracy (or some sort of open political process), and in certain cases the requirement to use them. This dictatorship of the appointed and the "people willing to do the work (for free)" is just M-L style vanguardism and results in rule by apparatchik.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Yep. Why I left Reddit and haven't missed it.
echopurity 5y ago
Most of the "free and open" internet is centrally controlled. HN quickly shadow bans anybody who goes against the dominant ideology.
- wesleywt 5y ago
  What is your idealogy? Racist? Homophobic?
- mdp2021 5y ago
  I don't think my ideas are uncontroversial, but for the small amount of time I have been in these pages I have found a good deal of respect. Is it possible that the ban trigger was in the way of expression of said ideas?
- dang 5y ago
  We ban accounts that post tedious ideological boilerplate and get into lame flamewars. People like to flatter themselves with "goes against the dominant ideology" rhetoric (I, the noble freethinker, unjustly suppressed by the servile mods, etc. - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20noble%20freethink&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), but really it's just tawdry internet stuff that we've all heard countless times. That's why comments like this never come with links - because readers could then see for themselves and make up their own minds - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22make%20up%20their%20own%20minds%22%20link&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
  - mapgrep 5y ago
    For a moderator you sure love to put down people and call them names. I think it’s really vicious and inappropriate.
arepublicadoceu 5y ago
Funnily enough, I was shadowbanned from the only community in reddit that I was active and cared about (/r/firefox) after respectfully complaining about the redesign in 2 different posts. Maybe there's a threshold of how many times we're allowed to complain over there? This was my first shadowban and teached me: a) It's not worth to invest time in these communities. b) To be shadow-banned is extremely insulting, especially if you didn't engaged in inflammatory or abusive behavior. c) I will not engage in a community that shadow-ban people even if they have inflammatory or abusive behavior, everyone should, at the very least, understand why they we're banned and learn from it. Thankfully, nothing of value was lost and now I simply don't care enough about Firefox or Reddit anymore.
- exhilaration 5y ago
  I will not engage in a community that shadow-ban people even if they have inflammatory or abusive behavior I just wanted to point out that hacker news shadow bans...
  - ddtaylor 5y ago
    Yup! It shadowbans some domains too. If you're unlucky enough to write blog posts on the shadowbanned domains you won't be notified in any way at all and your submissions will still appear in the listings while you're logged in. Very frustrating.
    - swiley 5y ago
      Can you email me a domain? I'd like to try this. My email is in my bio. Thanks.
      - ddtaylor 5y ago
        The domain is read.cash
        swiley 5y ago
lamontcg 5y ago
It ain't even about the moderators, though, half the content and comments seem to be pushed by astroturfers and bots.
observantpigeon 5y ago
I recently joined r/afghanistan to get better real time updates on the situation there. I'm not the only one; the forum has basically doubled in size in the past week. Turns out the mods are conservative-leaning think tanks like the Westminster Institute and Hoover Institute. They self-promote their own content by pinning it to the top of the page, and censor criticism of their orgs. I don't see why Reddit tolerates this behavior on what should be a neutral forum.
- DoItToMe81 5y ago
  Reddit hasn't been a neutral forum for at least a decade. It's explicitly a commercial astroturfing zone.
chaircher 5y ago
Worrying, nonetheless I am suspicious of why this message is being pushed again just as subreddits have banded together to speak out against anti-vax propaganda.
pope_meat 5y ago
I deleted all my accounts. The non-stop ads disguised as content, and the consorship of posts critical of xi and ccp were the final nails in the coffin. I recall a story breaking about China and human rights, and it was chilling to watch shit disappear every second as I refreshed the comment thread. I do not miss it, in the rare case of quality content/discussion that's relevant to my interests is often posted to here or some other aggregate. 10+ years I spent in that place, watched it get worse and worse. I quit reddit 2 years ago, and I do not miss it, at least not what it is now.

357 points by quickthrower2 5y ago

tsjq 5y ago

are these the list of users who created the subs, or are these users who joined after the sub was created and then made to mods? one is fine. other is crazy. funny angle is: even if the usernames were different, we wouldn't know whether those are same persons or indeed different persons. reddit is certainly a very biased / skewed place with respect to "moderation"

ddalex 5y ago

Also see https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Cabal/ https://old.reddit.com/r/The_Cabal/ I also filter, using RES, all posters and commenters with over 100k karma, and it's like taking a trip back in time when the internet wasn't tuned to inane content and advertisers

qmmmur 5y ago
Nice to see the usual suspects on The Cabal. People who believe ivermectin is some kind of miracle covid drug (even the manufacturers say its ineffective) and those who deny COVID even exists. Quality people. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111678 https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02081-w
- ddalex 5y ago
  Ehrm we already know niche communities attract lunatics - or, better said, make lunatics more visible; the noise to signal ratio of the content is way worse because idiots are louder. But if you filter through the noise you can get some interesting insights.
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  > Quality people. A bit trigger happy with the ad hominem there considering you probably think of yourself as the rational side. > ivermectin From the first link: > The use of ivermectin, among others repurposed drugs for prophylaxis or treatment for COVID-19, should be done based on trustable evidence, without conflicts of interest, with proven safety and efficacy in patient-consented, ethically approved, randomised clinical trials. But there are over 30 RCTs with positive results. Second link is about one particular study. Again there are over 30 RCTs.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Maybe you should not go into details¹. Because if you presented that evidence to specialists disagreeing with you, they would have their say. And this thread is unlikely to lure them specifically. Here, you are just making statements that cannot be tackled directly. But for the "there exist people who do not clearly appear as non-«quality people» and nonetheless disagree on some points". (Just to give an example: I have heard about a plausible argument about that «manufacturers say it[']s ineffective», and I do not think the matter should not be discussed in this context, but arguments exist. Good or bad: that is for the analysis table, not the "I just had two minutes available". If matters were clear-cut, the whole problem would not exist.) -- ¹Edit: for clarity: with «go[ing] into details» I meant that I invite the poster against introducing statements like «people who believe [whatever is controversial]», and especially because this thread is not here have us stuck in those controversies, and because they would not be solved with two sentences, surely, since there are apparent non-lunatics defending those positions.
  - qmmmur 5y ago
    It's actually pretty simple to read the evidence and come to the conclusion its not suitable to be used in the treatment of COVID. Unfortunately the issue is plagued by misinformation and those who profit from peddling it.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      Which evidence do you find simple - those two links you posted? (Non rhetorical question - in case of doubt.) People who will read that evidence without full contextual intellectual preparation will not be able to be certain of their evaluation; they are not competent to review it ("review" as in the expression "peer review"). On the other hand, yesterday I started exploring the material of a medical doctor who publishes interesting conferences - found as I was looking for other material, and to my surprise, from what he practices on himself I am sure he would disagree with your previous post. Who to trust? On the other hand, if I see censorship, few exceptions aside it will be very clear that the censorship will help approaching truth. And for this, one name I will give: Lex Fridman, who denounced the matter a few weeks ago, while interviewing for this podcast one of the notable censored voices.
- swader999 5y ago
  The manufacturer of ivermectin, Merck, has in trial a patented and very similar formula that is doing quite well. Ivermectin is off patent. IVM cured my long covid and r/ivermectin was helpful when my regular doctor said to just wait it out. Much of that sub is real people describing their success with it.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  NIH says ivermectin is effective. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/
  - a_f 5y ago
    That appears to be a meta review done by Newcastle Uni (amongsth others), rather than any endorsement of Ivermectin by the NIH? PubMed is a resource for scientific publications hosted by the NIH, and is a repository of work. It is not the publishing arm of the NIH. Unless I am missing something?!
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  Regarding Ivermectin: Tell that to India, whose states that adopted it into their treatment regimen had a >95% reduction in death and infection in less than five weeks in a population <5% vaccinated, while the states that didn't continued to sky rocket. https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout/article_e3db8f46-f942-11eb-9eea-77d5e2519364.html https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-iv...
narrator 5y ago
Thanks for the tip. I gave up on Reddit because its just full of astroturf these days. There's no disagreement allowed on most topics. There's a ridiculous amount of threads where 80 percent of the comments are deleted.
read_if_gay_ 5y ago
That filter idea sounds very good. Gonna try. Thank you. edit: come to think of it. Can RES hide points?
xdennis 5y ago
How do you filter out by karma?
technofiend 5y ago
Yes! It's entirely too easy to karma farm by either posting me-too or deeply controversial comments because if people disagree you might get downvoted slightly past zero for a given comment, but if you hit a winner you'll get hundreds or even thousands of upvotes. Detecting and blocking every one of those high noise low signal people would really help. At least until they adapt.
aqouta 5y ago
Comment or post karma? I have 200k comment karma just because I have a 9 year old account and post semi-frequently.

TomGullen 5y ago

On the face of it seems strange why anyone would want to moderate popular subreddits, just seems like a lot of unpaid mundane and never ending work. Younger me might of been excited to do it from the perceived status perhaps. I do wonder how many off-site deals are done with moderators and third parties. There’s a lot of traffic these people are able to steward and influence I imagine.

retSava 5y ago
Some see "internet points" as "payment". But are you sure they aren't paid, ie employed by Reddit? Would totally make sense to either hide an army of moderating "grunts" behind a single user, or moderating bots. Reddit is large, lots to moderate.
- PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  Internet points are a form of validation, also the notifications and responses play on our dopamine circuits, namely, on our desire for novelty.
fnord77 5y ago
I'm convinced the political subs are run by people employed by the two large US political groups
- josephwegner 5y ago
  Just as an anecdote, I used to moderate one of the more popular political subreddits. It was a difficult task and burnout on the team was common. I can say that the mod team was not just shills for a particular party (unless they were undercover even to me). The entire mod team, even to this day, is there for altruistic reasons - we felt we were doing a service to our fellow Americans by fostering healthy political discussion. I moderated that sub through election season and then stepped down in January. At the end of the day the death threats and constant insults aren't what drove me away, but the organizational chaos. No one could figure out how to lead that team, and leaning on practiced organizational structures was apparently too hard for a group of redditors.

deorder 5y ago

Same with the coronavirus related subs last year: https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1582202873483.jpg https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1582202873483.jpg It was discovered and some of the mods removed themselves. Honestly I just think they go by another name.

asutekku 5y ago
That screenshot is from /pol/ so I'm curious if the complaints about "censorship" were that people couldn't call it a china flu.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Of course, because for some reason this is suddenly unacceptable but it is ok to have an Indian variant or a Brazilian variant.
  - asutekku 5y ago
    There's a semantic difference with "X virus" and "Y variant". "X virus" denotes the virus was caused by country X and is behind it all, whereas "Y variant" denotes it was mutated in there but is not the root cause of it all.
    - nemo44x 5y ago
      But yet “Havana Syndrome” is freely used everywhere.
      - Seanambers 5y ago
        Yeah, at a certain point back in 2020 it suddenly was very bad to have variants with geographic origin in the naming. Although that was how it had been done in many other cases.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      I don't think that's true. West Nile Virus wasn't caused by people West of the Nile, the Spanish Flu wasn't caused by Spain, MERS is called that because it was discovered in the Middle East, not because people in the Middle East caused it, etc. The form "X virus" does not at all imply that the virus was caused by X. Then, of course, there is the very real possibility that China literally did cause the virus.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

huibf 5y ago

I am convinced that moderating the top subreddits is a very mentally taxing job, not to mention the amount of time that must be spent. Someone who does that kind of work for free is either paid by someone or mentally unbalanced. Neither option seems good for the community.

fnord77 5y ago

I wish there were more transparency in who the moderators of news and political subs, what their day jobs are and who pays them.

josephwegner 5y ago
This could only happen if Reddit actually took some responsibility for the safety of their moderators. Death threats are commonplace for mods of political subs. They're mostly empty threats, but it'd be a much more significant risk if names/employers were public.
- CompMan411 5y ago
  I was a mod and drew the line when I got a death threat. Most mods work as volunteers to keep a sub clean of spam and porn. When the only ‘thanks’ you receive is, ‘we know where you live, watch your back’ I’m done. The cherry on tip is when you notify the admins that there is nefarious activity and they literally don’t return a response for 3 weeks. Reddit’s voting system enforces group-think, the users think it’s a ‘democracy’ in that they get to make the rules and mods should just follow orders, then mods need help due to an uprising, admins are no where to be found. The meme subs aren’t funny any more, pics of cats and dogs are tired. The anti-mask, anti-vax, the_donald, and so much more all incubated in Reddit under the watch of the mods, the admins, and Condi Nast themselves for nothing more than advertising dollars. I understand Reddit serves a purpose for some but it, in part, is assisting in the downfall of society. By allowing people to downvote without thinking critically, without thinking about the affects of polarizing endlessly until right and wrong don’t matter as long as everyone is in agreement. And if someone isn’t in agreement, downvote them in to oblivion.
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    >The anti-mask, anti-vax, the_donald, and so much more all incubated in Reddit under the watch of the mods, the admins Those subs are by far in the minority and are always on the line of getting quarantined or outright shutdown. r/politics is the poster child of what 90% of Reddit is. Reddit is by FAR an echo chamber for leftist ideas than it is for "alt-right" anything.

UncleSlacky 5y ago

(In)famously, the account widely believed to belong to Ghislaine Maxwell is a moderator of several major subs: https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill https://www.reddit.com/user/maxwellhill (moderator of r/worldnews, r/environment, r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, r/cyberlaws, r/enviroaction and r/greed)

cdstyh 5y ago
If you were to run covert intelligence operations, you would want to embed yourself in the all forms of the media so you can suppress any stories before they come out.
- tome 5y ago
  Bit strange to do it under your actual name though.
  - cdstyh 5y ago
    Well the entire Epstein thing was laughably poorly run.
  - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
    Sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight.
    - nmeofthestate 5y ago
      Yes, hiding in plain sight worked masterfully in this case. Nobody suspects anything about socialite Maxwell's secret reddit-moderating account that she named after herself. It's never even come up as a daft conspiracy theory.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    but it's not under her own name, it is a name that is close to her name. The account is suspected of being hers but as I understand it not proven to be hers. So that seems a good practice to me - use a name that could be arguably yours so that you are not hiding anything if caught out but enough not yours so there is plausible deniability. Then make a bunch of deeper cover names that you run that are harder to pin on you, if anyone is looking they are looking at the one that is close to your name. but then maybe I've just read too many books.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

runarb 5y ago

For some more context: https://www.protocol.com/reddit-powermods-war https://www.protocol.com/reddit-powermods-war This list is at best deeply misleading; those subreddits often have dozens of moderators.

swiley 5y ago

You'll be happier if you just don't use Reddit.

WesleyHale 5y ago
It's sad to see reddit fall to such low a low level. Aaron Schwartz is rolling in his grave.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I refuse to have it bookmarked, but I do end up there once a day. It's a mindless escape. I did enjoy the Wallstreetbets drama with the short. And there's the boobies. (I still have testosterone?)
- swiley 5y ago
  Again, you'll be happier with real ones rather than images. Also the more I look into it the more some of the WSB stuff looks fake. Some was certainly real but there was a lot of manipulation going on there.
dgellow 5y ago
Just avoid the main subreddits, and use an alternative client like teddit.net (no ads, fast to load, no tracking). Reddit still has lot of niche communities that are interesting to follow.
kilroy123 5y ago
I agree! For years I frequented Reddit many times a day. No I don't go there at all. What worked for me was slowly unsubing until it was so boring, it just kind of lost the dopamine hitting effect. Eventually, I never returned.
cenkozan 5y ago
I've been using reddit just for funs for a long time so all.reddit.com/top - and that's it.
Tenoke 5y ago

krono 5y ago

There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages to the modteam are being ignored and Reddit support won't help because "moderators are free to run their communities as they see fit". I have been locked out of engaging with the communities I was most interested and active in, for no apparent reason and likely forever. And this is just one of many reasons for why having so few moderators control so many communities, is such a bad thing. Allowing them to operate without oversight or accountability is not helping the situation either.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
> I have been locked out of engaging with the communities I was most interested and active in, for no apparent reason and likely forever. Just make a new account. Screw their "ban circumvention" rule. What are they gonna do, ban you again?
lloydatkinson 5y ago
How do you check if you are shadowbanned?
- kubb 5y ago
  Look at your posts from a different account?
- krono 5y ago
  When a moderator deletes one of your posts, it will show up normally for you, but as having been deleted for everyone else. Easiest way to check is opening your posts in context after logging out or in an incognito window. If many of your posts show as deleted, the subs mods have likely added you to their automoderator blacklist.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago

schleck8 5y ago

Of course the post gets removed with some obscure Automod/Review pending flair. Awful people doing awful business, no surprises here

zibzab 5y ago

What I really want is a big list of subs with actual useful stuff. No memes, no hate or soft-hate [1] but useful things like electronics or how to play the piano. [1] have you noticed that many of top subs are about either watching others humiliation or judging people? idiotsincar, iamatotalpieceofshit, maliciouscompliance, etc. Do I actually become a better person by following these?

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Beware of the Murray Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Based on my experience with the subjects I know intimately my experience is that Reddit advice is roughly equivalent to asking a teenager to Google something for you. I fully agree that any sub that's core content involves shitting on people has terrible inhabitants and all the quality of commentary that follows from that. Some of the more lighthearted ones are a little better (e.g. holdmybeer vs idiotsincars) when the content is conducive to such but only in the sense that someone with a crippling mental illness might have a good-ish day here and there.
throwaway98797 5y ago
the world of reaction is bigger than the world of action. any sub that’s practical is inherently less active. There’s only so much good base knowledge. Reacting to base knowledge is endless low value content.
1_2__5 5y ago
The level of hateful, spiteful, and bitter disdain I see in comments across all of Reddit have led me to believe it’s not just popular subs and it’s not even just Reddit: this is where the younger generations in America are right now, emotionally. People are looking for someone or something to judge and hate. It’s not limited to any particular political cohort or socioeconomic strata either. I see it here on HN quite a bit too, even in more anodyne discussions you can read it prowling around the edges of the discourse. It’s not just that there’s people who make these comments - of course there’s always going to be - but that fact that they’re typically so highly upvoted anywhere there’s a voting/likes system. Anything that attempts to reflect nuance or lower the temperature has no boosters, while anything that reflects the worst, most reductive or least honest take is what bubbles to the top.

supperburg 5y ago

Does anyone know what happened to /u/beethy? He was one of the coolest and most prolific posters and he just disappeared one day.

dunco 5y ago

Idiots. We all know that Dang is the only moderator required.

lazyninja987 5y ago

why not use digital election to select mods ?

vimy 5y ago

I think the Aether model is better. Users can revert mod actions and even dispose of the mods if they misbehave or go in a different direction than what the community wants. https://getaether.net/ https://getaether.net/

Kinrany 5y ago
How does it protect against fake users taking over voting?
nichos 5y ago
Bern waiting to check this out, but they've been "working" on their android app for what seems like 2 years.
potamic 5y ago
It's asked me to sign up and then says login not allowed

MrPowers 5y ago

I highly recommend unsubscribing from all the default subreddits and only subbing to the programming related subreddits. It'll make your Reddit newsfeed more programming-oriented than HN and completely changes your experience with the site.

quickthrower2 5y ago
I just go to the subreddits I like: the main feed has too much crypto stuff.
perryizgr8 5y ago
Do you have a list of good programming related subs? Most of the ones I've joined seem to be dead or nearly dead.
- dgellow 5y ago
  I personally enjoy r/cpp a lot. Even if I myself rarely use C++.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  r/experienceddevs is good for career advice etc.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
acomjean 5y ago
Reddit puppy and dog forums seem pretty good as well.
jmuguy 5y ago
Except for r/ProgrammerHumor unless you like the same 3 jokes about javascript and awkward screenshots from Tinder showing that a developer somehow, against all odds, got a date with the opposite sex.

valprop1 5y ago

I am not surprised that even this post has been removed from Reddit. It is strange to know that even these platforms that are popular to reject the capitalistic agenda and the industrial monopolistic behaviour themselves carry this hypocrisy of controlling the communities and the content being posted on it.

elevenoh 5y ago

reddit tends to moderated by folks who've been wearing a mask around the clock for 1.5 years & rarely leave their comfort-zone. the comments are slowly reflecting the result of this^ sjw-ish, anti-capitalism, anti personal growth etc.

zpeti 5y ago
Try retalk.
dannyw 5y ago
reddit died when they removed /r/reddit.com that marked the demise of reddit (in terms of quality, not in terms of revenue)
CompMan411 5y ago
I wore a mask and don’t leave the house, but other wise agree with you, Reddit is mostly an echo chamber for the worst aspects of both the left and right socio-economic ideas.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

The worst echo/bot chambers are the Cryptocurrency subs, including the exchange subs.

h0h0h0h0111 5y ago
Generally low quality content too: "[some person with an obvious vested interest] announces that [some cryptocurrency] will be extremely valuable and fix all the world's problems"
stiltzkin 5y ago
r/cryptocurrency got worse with the addition of moons and moon farming.

gerdesj 5y ago

"Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/ThatsInsane."

ciarcode 5y ago

What would happen if I block the mods? I won’t see anymore stuff from their subreddit or anything?

captainmuon 5y ago

Funny that the post is deleted. THAT will convince people that there is no conspiracy going on.

cblconfederate 5y ago
Funny thing is there is actually no conspiracy, it 's just the way people behave when they have the power to do so. It's impossible to have power and be mother Teresa at the same time, yet people irrationally believe in wise leaders.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  > It's impossible to have power and be mother Teresa at the same time, yet people irrationally believe in wise leaders. It's not impossible but it's rare enough you shouldn't bet anything of value on it.

nabla9 5y ago

There should be an option to automatically block anyone with over 1 million in karma.

supperburg 5y ago

Even if you took away all controversy and politics, I hate Reddit. The search function sucks. They shoved their own harebrained video player down everyone’s throats and it constantly plays by itself without opening. And when you do open it it doesn’t fucking play half the time. They also foisted their eye-bleeding updated user interface upon our innocent souls and forever corrupted us. It can only be described as Fischer price from hell. And also the idea of Reddit sucks on a structural level. There are tons of subs that are cool but too narrow to gain a large following. They can’t fill in the template subreddit community. You see overly specific subreddits like “praise the camera man” or “public freak outs” or “woah dude” and they invariably all cycle through the same videos and pictures, the ones getting the most traction, violating the whole premise of having specific communities. It should have been something like you can tag a post “woah dude” or “videos that end too soon” and just submit it to the universal page. People could still track tags of interest and do everything without the whole mess and insanity of subreddits and also without assholes turning subreddits into little fiefdoms.

mabub24 5y ago
I still like some parts of Reddit. I can only do so, though, because I exclusively force old.reddit styling instead of the new repulsive design, and I only visit 4ish subreddits with generally smaller subscriber numbers and more niche interests. All of the main/general subreddits are just endlessly repeating the same thing over and over again. Once the subreddit gets too big or seems to be annoying, jump ship or try and find a smaller new version. Also, I like subreddits outside of the bubble/echo chamber of the main subs. Even if I don't really align with some of the opinions or positions of some of the other subs, it at least feels more like interacting with actual human beings with differing interests. I also just don't use reddit that much. It's good for trying to solve a question, and maybe having a laugh for 15 mins, but after that it usually overstays its welcome and you can go somewhere else.
- fho 5y ago
  I tried to get of my reddit addiction several times now ... going "cold turkey" or easing it of over time. I did that with 9gag a decade ago and never went back since, but with reddit it's hard because there is actually good content on there. Especially in the niche communities with small subscriber numbers. (very evident in the /r/battletech subreddit that just got overrun by a recent games workshop exodus. Subscriber counts increased, but /r/battletech turned into a meme channel ...)

brightstep 5y ago

The online platforms that were supposed to provide us a democratic free space to communicate are in fact governed by a tyrannical and unaccountable minority. We see the same situation on Facebook with group moderators and on Twitter (albeit less so) with high follower count blue-check accounts. Not to mention the companies themselves having the power to ban any speech they want.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago
It's almost as if this utopian techno-ararchism is a naive fantasy. And it simply creates digital societies with all of the downsides of their real world equivalents, and none of the checks to power and even more susceptible to manipulation. And yet it's only a matter of time until another 20 something will announce that they can solve the problems of the world and human nature by creating yet another digital environment free from the rules (and responsibilities) of the real world. And we'll all act shocked when it somehow backfires into unintended consequences and recreates a worse version of the thing it was trying to replace.
- brightstep 5y ago
  A ha! I've found a way to change the world without needing to engage in political or cultural struggle! Surely this will benefit the people and not be co-opted by the powerful!

actually_a_dog 5y ago

Old news, unfortunately: https://old.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/to_have_independently_moderated_subreddits/ https://old.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/gk0w4c/t...

GDC7 5y ago

Power Law is everywhere, even where you least expect it.

kostyal 5y ago

We live in a power law universe

cblconfederate 5y ago

There are subreddits with the same mods for 15 years now. People get old and so do their ideas but subreddit audiences are consistently young. This is problematic for national subreddits (which gain their audience automatically) and other "noun-word" subreddits that are people's first guesses when researching a subject. This is a major reason for bad subreddit culture. Reddit didn't foresee that its business would last for > 5 years . They need to set expiration dates for mod positions. In democracies we do that every 4-5 years.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Accounts are bought and sold. Just because the mod account has been the same for years doesn't mean it's the same person behind the keyboard. Mod accounts for popular subject and location subs are highly valued and sought after by people looking to move the overton window of discourse on those topics.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

Why aren't there censorship free blockchain-based solutions to public message boards?

effingwewt 5y ago

None of this is new, we tried telling people this what 8-10 years ago? Someone not too long ago even made a diagram showing this. This has been since before the first ban wave, when I quit the site. No one cared, nor did they care about the China astroturfing/censorship, but every so often someone raises the points, makes a stink, a few people leave reddit and it continues with business as usual.

pessimizer 5y ago

Reddit modding is a network of cartels; this post is just pointing out the one that controls the front page. There are cartels that control most groups of closely related (by subject or theme) subs as far as I can tell, and subs that are closely related primarily because they are modded by a particular cartel. There's also constant mod drama, with intra-cartel disputes developing into schisms, and inter-cartel disputes developing into wars complete with invasions. A real problem is that I don't think that the process of becoming a mod is particularly exclusionary, and anyone with ambition can eventually work their way into any cartel they want through flattery and constant online presence. This sounds democratic, so the opposite of a problem, right? But it's not actually democratic, there's no votes, it's appointments all the way down. The only way you can vote on reddit is to leave a sub as a group of users, and move to another sub together, hopefully with enough posting force and shady knowledge of mod tricks to attract more incoming readers/posters than the sub you've left (by "incoming" I mean people encountering that group of related subs for the first time, either through search or through chance.) Again, why is that bad? Because it's so easy to game. The people who mod subs are not exceptional at modding subs in terms of fairness and cultivation of interesting dialogues, they're exceptional in their degree of motivation to be mods. An easy way to create exceptional motivation is through paying people. Another way to be exceptionally motivated is to be irrationally motivated, e.g. mental illness. The motivation that we hope people have is the intrinsic motivation to facilitate/provide pleasure/information to others, but to also do that for free while Reddit gets rich. Not only do I think that borders on irrational, but I also think that in the fight between the intrinsic motivation to help and collaborate with others, and the simple economic utility headwinds, you 1) can't expect many people to be of the type we want, and we 2) certainly shouldn't expect them to remain for very long if they are. And even worse, the interaction between the paid and the irrationally motivated will always benefit the paid. The paid have a mission, and if they see no means of accomplishing that mission, they leave. For the irrationally motivated, modding is the end, not the means, so if being an enabler of the paid gets them appointed or promoted, they're going to be the best enablers you could ask for. Reddit, and most forums, need tools that facilitate real democracy (or some sort of open political process), and in certain cases the requirement to use them. This dictatorship of the appointed and the "people willing to do the work (for free)" is just M-L style vanguardism and results in rule by apparatchik.

xyzzy21 5y ago

Yep. Why I left Reddit and haven't missed it.

echopurity 5y ago

Most of the "free and open" internet is centrally controlled. HN quickly shadow bans anybody who goes against the dominant ideology.

wesleywt 5y ago
What is your idealogy? Racist? Homophobic?
mdp2021 5y ago
I don't think my ideas are uncontroversial, but for the small amount of time I have been in these pages I have found a good deal of respect. Is it possible that the ban trigger was in the way of expression of said ideas?
dang 5y ago
We ban accounts that post tedious ideological boilerplate and get into lame flamewars. People like to flatter themselves with "goes against the dominant ideology" rhetoric (I, the noble freethinker, unjustly suppressed by the servile mods, etc. - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20noble%20freethink&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), but really it's just tawdry internet stuff that we've all heard countless times. That's why comments like this never come with links - because readers could then see for themselves and make up their own minds - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22make%20up%20their%20own%20minds%22%20link&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
- mapgrep 5y ago
  For a moderator you sure love to put down people and call them names. I think it’s really vicious and inappropriate.

arepublicadoceu 5y ago

Funnily enough, I was shadowbanned from the only community in reddit that I was active and cared about (/r/firefox) after respectfully complaining about the redesign in 2 different posts. Maybe there's a threshold of how many times we're allowed to complain over there? This was my first shadowban and teached me: a) It's not worth to invest time in these communities. b) To be shadow-banned is extremely insulting, especially if you didn't engaged in inflammatory or abusive behavior. c) I will not engage in a community that shadow-ban people even if they have inflammatory or abusive behavior, everyone should, at the very least, understand why they we're banned and learn from it. Thankfully, nothing of value was lost and now I simply don't care enough about Firefox or Reddit anymore.

exhilaration 5y ago
I will not engage in a community that shadow-ban people even if they have inflammatory or abusive behavior I just wanted to point out that hacker news shadow bans...
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  Yup! It shadowbans some domains too. If you're unlucky enough to write blog posts on the shadowbanned domains you won't be notified in any way at all and your submissions will still appear in the listings while you're logged in. Very frustrating.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Can you email me a domain? I'd like to try this. My email is in my bio. Thanks.
    - ddtaylor 5y ago
      The domain is read.cash
      - swiley 5y ago

lamontcg 5y ago

It ain't even about the moderators, though, half the content and comments seem to be pushed by astroturfers and bots.

observantpigeon 5y ago

I recently joined r/afghanistan to get better real time updates on the situation there. I'm not the only one; the forum has basically doubled in size in the past week. Turns out the mods are conservative-leaning think tanks like the Westminster Institute and Hoover Institute. They self-promote their own content by pinning it to the top of the page, and censor criticism of their orgs. I don't see why Reddit tolerates this behavior on what should be a neutral forum.

DoItToMe81 5y ago
Reddit hasn't been a neutral forum for at least a decade. It's explicitly a commercial astroturfing zone.

chaircher 5y ago

Worrying, nonetheless I am suspicious of why this message is being pushed again just as subreddits have banded together to speak out against anti-vax propaganda.

pope_meat 5y ago

I deleted all my accounts. The non-stop ads disguised as content, and the consorship of posts critical of xi and ccp were the final nails in the coffin. I recall a story breaking about China and human rights, and it was chilling to watch shit disappear every second as I refreshed the comment thread. I do not miss it, in the rare case of quality content/discussion that's relevant to my interests is often posted to here or some other aggregate. 10+ years I spent in that place, watched it get worse and worse. I quit reddit 2 years ago, and I do not miss it, at least not what it is now.