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The only real news here is that Reddit mods are power mad tyrants, which is nothing new at all. AI generated art has just given them newer, funnier ways to be

• richbell 4y ago
  "Power" moderators, that is people who moderate a large number of subreddits, are untenable. It is not possible to effectively or fairly moderate dozens of communities, even if you were to spend all your waking moments doing so. This is, in part, why it's so common for popular submissions to be locked or deleted because "y'all can't behave". The people that do so are largely doing it for their own self-gain (e.g., self-promotion) or because it makes them feel important. I had a very low stress job for a few years and ended up as a moderator for over a dozen large subreddits, including a few defaults. Socializing with Reddit's prominent moderators was enlightening.
  • Y_Y 4y ago
    Please tell us more about what you learned from socialising with these "power mods", I think it would be enlightening to us too.
  • Mezzie 4y ago
    I wonder if/how a hard limit on number of communities moderated would work? Make it so one person could only mod 2-3 subreddits. Unfortunately, this would require some work from Reddit the company to keep those same powermods from just making new accounts so probably won't happen.
    • hbn 4y ago
      They already have rules about making secondary accounts to evade bans, upvote yourself, etc. If anything it'd probably be easier to enforce a "no moderating a bunch of subreddits across multiple accounts" rule since it's mainly bigger subreddits that matter, and "mod teams of big subreddits" is a smaller group of people to monitor. And if there was really some big conspiracy to skirt around this system they'd have to organize on a platform outside of reddit, ensure everyone is always accessing through VPNs so reddit doesn't notice multiple accounts modding from the same IP, and hope no one ever defects and exposes the underground moderation ring.
      • Mezzie 4y ago
        It'd be logistically easier, I just doubt Reddit is going to put forth the money and staff time required to enforce it. Current enforcement is based on reporting, I believe, and don't reports go to mods first. And they definitely will organize off site. Discord is huge for this. I also bet they would use VPNs since a lot of them have the barest hint of tech knowledge and a burning ideological conviction they're doing something important. > hope no one ever defects and exposes the underground moderation ring. Man, whoever had the balls or ovaries to do that would be immediately smeared and mobbed.
      • greggarious 4y ago
        >They already have rules about making secondary accounts to evade bans, upvote yourself, etc. If that rule was enforced, huge swathes of the so called power mods (and admins) would be removed. That's probably why, much like Twitter, they declined to hire me on to work on anti-abuse technology. The so called humans in the loop are evil and replaceable.
    • awillen 4y ago
      Reddit just doesn't have any incentive to do this - you're talking about people who are doing free labor for them. Maybe it's got problems, but if you get rid of the power mods (and don't change the structure to add any incentives like pay), you probably just end up with a bunch of unmoderated communities that then die off.
      • Mezzie 4y ago
        Yes. This is why I doubt it will happen.
    • jimbob45 4y ago
      I would suggest that they follow the US system of government where users can vote out corrupt or useless moderators via referendum.
  • vikingerik 4y ago
    Why do Reddit moderators do their work? They are paid in power. They get to decide what viewpoints are seen or not by others. That is a very compelling wage. And of course they all think they're doing a service by advancing their ideology because of course their ideology is the right one.
    • jknoepfler 4y ago
      That's an extremely reductive claim. Can you really not think of more mundane reasons someone might find themselves moderating reddit? It's hard to imagine "ideology" being relevant to the vast majority of reddit... Do you really think the moderators of ELI5 or PeopleFuckingDying or some obscure porn reddit or whatever are primarily concerned with "ideology"? I used to help moderate a poker forum. I was a professional poker player, and an extremely active user of the forums. I don't recall pushing an ideology beyond "keep discussions constructive and topical." The person you just replied to was a mod. Are you implying that their work was somehow about pushing an ideology?
      • aliqot 4y ago
        > It's hard to imagine "ideology" being relevant to the vast majority of reddit... This is egregiously incorrect.
        • jknoepfler 4y ago
          In what sense? Would tipping that scale entail that "all reddit moderators are only and exclusively motivated by ideology?"
      • bitwize 4y ago
        It's common knowledge now that abstaining from politics is taking the side of the oppressor. This has the effect of giving many subreddits and other topical communities a political orientation even if politics is nominally offtopic. To give an example, it is increasingly hard to find an online knitting community that tolerates conservative viewpoints; most have followed the lead of Ravelry.
  • ilyt 4y ago
    > This is, in part, why it's so common for popular submissions to be locked or deleted because "y'all can't behave". But they have no problem digging into downvoted comments and deleting them, even if the system already did the job for them (put the downvoted stuff at bottom and hidden).
    • 13of40 4y ago
      Maybe this is already well-known, but I saw another behavior recently on some subrreddits where a lot of new posts are seemingly getting a single downvote to a score of zero. I suspected there was some troll doing it, so I went down the line and gave about 20 or 30 of them a single up vote back to one, refreshed the page, and most of them had immediately gone back to zero. I think the mods must have a button for squashing a post without actually deleting it, and on some subs they use it for a huge number of the posts.
      • traverseda 4y ago
        /r/3Dprinting has no such button for what it's worth. If there is they haven't given it to me.
        • richbell 4y ago
          They've added custom CSS to hide it, it isn't actually removed. You can easily bypass this by disabling custom CSS or using a mobile app.
          • Seattle3503 4y ago
            13of40 was talking about a single button that mass downvotes multiple comments. None of the default (nor popular) clients support this functionality, but you could script your own version using the reddit API.
            • richbell 4y ago
              Oh, I guess I misinterpreted that because it's a bizarre speculation. Shwartzworld is correct, the votes are fuzzed and deliberately fluctuate so that it's difficult for bots to tell whether they've been detected.
  • counttheforks 4y ago
    Reddit allowing moderators to lock threads was a mistake. It just enables lazy mods to be even lazier.
    • watwut 4y ago
      The laziest thing to do is to not do anything and let someone else moderate. While the disagreements over moderation are normal, complains about volunteers being "lazy" for not doing impossible are absurd.
      • counttheforks 4y ago
        Hardly. Volunteer positions come with responsibilities. No one is forcing them to waste their time on moderating an internet forum, but they chose to do it for whatever reason and then chose to be lazy and actively harmful.
        • watwut 4y ago
          The complaint here is about moderation tactic that is not actively harmful or abusive to people and ease their own load when threads become too much. Complaining about that is absurd.
          • counttheforks 4y ago
            No. The purpose of a subreddit is to let users engage. Excessive locking decreases user engagement and is harmful, not to mention that it punishes users (who are no longer able to continue a already started conversation in the comments) for violations of others.
  • greggarious 4y ago
    >"Power" moderators, that is people who moderate a large number of subreddits, are untenable. At least you know it's just one person, spread across multiple contexts. I had a string of unusual behaviors when I ran /u/dontbenebby, culminating in being involuntarily being made the moderator of several Snapchat related subreddits around the time that Reddit let you view analytics and things I was posting were getting six or seven figure views as I dodged literal assassination attempts every time I tried to take a peaceful walk in the woods. For context, I was (in)famous for not logging IPs, or even numbers of pageviews as far back as when I dropped that Facebook zero day on my blog and virtually planted myself in the middle of the protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and then went on to lecture class full of CMU students they should use strong anonymity tools and careful opsec if organizing protests in oppressive regimes like Tehran or Times Square as I threw up an image of a dead protester on the screen. I meant what I said then, and I mean it now. And maybe I spoke offline with whoever made me the moderator of a subreddit I never visited, for an application I have never used? In that case, let's share it with the whole class the three core points my art was intended to drive home: 1.) They are going to nuke Penn Quarter, not Pittsburgh. 2.) It is not my problem if you drop dead of a heart attack because you fucked around and found out. 3.) I am an alumni -- that means I can do whatever I want. Anyways, I'm off to read a book and "do email". Cheers!! - Greg.
• jdc0589 4y ago
  proof: I was a mod of a small hobby subreddit for a while, and I'm an idiot.
  • seanw444 4y ago
    Small hobby subreddits are the best subreddits, and among the only ones I visit. I don't usually have problems with those mods. Anything front-page, or remotely popular to a wide audience, are where the worst mods (and posts / commenters) are.
• hbn 4y ago
  The amount of great discussions I've seen shut down because a moderator removed the post on some stupid minor infraction is infuriating.
• generalizations 4y ago
  I wonder if the simple solution is to prevent mod accounts from interacting on the subreddits they moderate.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    I'm almost in favor, but I would worry that for really small communities that deprives the sub of its biggest contributor
    • Mezzie 4y ago
      Maybe implement it once the community reaches a certain size/certain volume of posts?
  • Sebb767 4y ago
    This would probably make the situation worse. You'd remove the incentive for people who moderate for the good of their own community, leaving only those who do so for the power they get (which are probably worse mods, though I don't have a citation for that).
  • squarefoot 4y ago
    Not sure if that would not create more problems, but there should be some accountability when they behave like a-holes. The mod in question could have asked for proof (draw live on webcam? - not an expert, just wondering) or peer analysis instead of just silencing the artist. Then another user contacted the mod to complain, and got this reply: https://nitter.bird.froth.zone/MeaririForever/status/1607826931516596227#m https://nitter.bird.froth.zone/MeaririForever/status/1607826... That mod has become toxic and imho should either apologize or be removed asap.
  • kibwen 4y ago
    That's the opposite of what you want. Good mods are those that are invested in the community and are well-known and respected participants.
• Sebb767 4y ago
  HN is really lucky to have dang. Although he is a payed mod, so it's not 100% comparable.
• spacemadness 4y ago
  Reddit mods are ineffective or harmful a lot of the time, but so is Reddit itself in how it incentivizes thankless moderation and oversized and noisy communities for the purpose of ads and their upcoming IPO. Most non-niche subreddits could be replaced by ChatGPT at this point.
  • ilyt 4y ago
    Many just look like RSS feed of news outlets, except moderated by morons. And obligatory wide reaching TOS where the discussion about say how fighting games could be more accessible to new players gets removed under "no content for fun or entertainment allowed" TOS point...
  • ok123456 4y ago
    > Most non-niche subreddits could be replaced by ChatGPT at this point. According to the "dead internet theory" they already are. I'm inclined to believe that a lot of the political discourse on there is bot driven.
    • rightbyte 4y ago
      It feels like it. It is so single minded compared to any real group of people I know.
• crazygringo 4y ago
  For real. From the headline I thought this was going to be a "ban" from an art department or marketplace or something of actual value, which would actually be news. Being banned from a subreddit for an arbitrary/idiotic reason is just reddit as usual.
• tibanne 4y ago
  Came here to say this.
• jtbayly 4y ago
  But in this case, the mods can't win. If they let AI art take over, HN will be condemning them for putting artists out of business. If they refuse to allow AI art, HN condemns them anyway.
  • cat_plus_plus 4y ago
    On the contrary, AI will put a lot more artists in business by drastically expanding the range of artistic works than can be created and kinds of people who can create great works. Hanging a rectangle still painting on the wall is of limited appeal in the age of smartphones and VR. Imagining being able to paint walls and ceiling of entire house with aesthetically appealing, one of a kind art, for the same effort as currently required for a small still painting. A lot more people will be interested in paying for that and they will be willing to pay a lot more.
• ilyt 4y ago
  That's not news and applies to pretty much any moderators, especially the non-paid kind.
• seattle_spring 4y ago
  Fun fact: there's a popular car sub that will ban you for mentioning dealer markups in a disparaging way. That's right: if you say that Joe's Toyota tried to upcharge you $15k for a Camry, you'll be banned for life!
  • ilyt 4y ago
    If it is the one I think they have both automatically blocking comments containing "stealership" too.
  • weregiraffe 4y ago
    >you'll be banned for life! Or for the 30 seconds it will take you to make a new account.
  • millzlane 4y ago
    is it /r/cars?
• jasonkolb 4y ago
  Reddit is a worse echo chamber than Twitter ever was. I gave up on it when I got banned from certain subreddits for posting quotes from congressional testimony. If you post anything that deviates in the slightest from the moderator's viewpoint, you get banned. The end result is an echo chamber that's getting tighter and smaller, excluding any diversity of opinion. It's no way to run a business.
  • thechao 4y ago
    Reddit's business is to house all of the echo-chambers, though, isn't it? That seems like a great business to be in, during this Heyday of Echo Chamber Construction™.
    • BitwiseFool 4y ago
      >"all of the echo-chambers" All of the like-minded echo-chambers. They seem to have no appetite for certain heresies and have walked back Aaron Swartz' original emphasis on free speech as a virtue.
      • richbell 4y ago
        > All of the like-minded echo-chambers. They seem to have no appetite for certain heresies and have walked back Aaron Swartz' original emphasis on free speech as a virtue. Reddit is ultimately amoral, despite the sensibilities of its moderators, imo. They want to sell ads and IPO, thus they've been increasingly purging communities, posts, and individuals that are either not advertiser-friendly or create trouble. Even as a casual user of the site, I have noticed a sharp increase in the number of submissions and comments that get Removed by Reddit (i.e., administrators) for no reason. I think they just went completely 'mask-off' after the debacle with Aimee Challenor.
  • kypro 4y ago
    It's not just the mods, the users on Reddit are equally awful and contribute more to the echo chamber imo. The UK politics subreddit used to be one of my favourite subreddits back in the early 2010s. Back then it was quite a small community and while we had differences of opinions I think it's fair to say we enjoyed each other's company. But around the time of the Brexit vote, then Trump shortly after that, the subreddit started getting flooded with reactionary, low-effort comments and anyone who tried to provide a nuanced opinion or alternative view point was typically downvoted and insulted. I along with a few other long-time commenters were mostly in favour of Brexit at the time so we would constantly be downvoted and insulted whenever we wrote anything in favour of Brexit. And the worst was when a post made it to /r/all because then you'd an even larger flood of low-effort commenters just downvoting and insulting everyone with a different opinion. And this wasn't even just minor insults, this was people telling me to kill myself and that I'm a horrible person literally everyday. I'm not sure how much this was a political subreddit thing vs Reddit generally, but it was honestly ridiculous the stuff people would say to me there. Needless to say, I obviously left the community shortly after 2016, but I've seen similar things play across the site since. There seems to be no room for a difference of opinion there anymore. The mods if anything are just an amalgamation of the average Redditor.
• robotnikman 4y ago
  Reddit mods fully convinced me that most of what we read on the internet is written by insane people. And I include most Reddit mods in that. See previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827
• shoulderfake 4y ago
  [dead]
• smsm42 4y ago
  It is still surprising - at least for me, I've been using Reddit for years but mostly niche subs, nothing popular - how such a petty power warps people's minds. I dread to think what a real power does then.