5 ms·

Don't be so sure that some of the mods don't work for Reddit. Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the millions of subscribers, and they se

Don't be so sure that some of the mods don't work for Reddit. Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the millions of subscribers, and they seem to be able to get their way instantly with anything they want. Pretty lucky of Reddit to have people who can mod multiple huge subs for years for "free". Not only that, but Reddit wants to do a public IPO to raise more money. So let's see how that's going to go with the investors.. "we have vAlUe FoR tHe ShArEhOlDeR by not paying staff, but these are capricious little creatures who we have no idea who they are and they have control over user engagement and the user experience but don't worry about it". How well is that going to go? Not very well. At the very least, it'll be required to be published in the financial statements how much of the Reddit budget goes to PAY mods, and this will finally put an end the oft-repeated claim that all the mods are volunteers. I hope the supreme court takes away section 230 from these people. They have abused their power so much by permanently banning people who simply have an opinion that is not the same as theirs, that they deserve to lose it.

tptacek 4y ago
People are entitled to run their own private sites in ways that restrict you from sharing your opinions that are not the same as theirs. The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent for anyone who wants to stand up a site of their own. Get a blog.
- Sunspark 4y ago
  Sorry, but if you have control over 5, 10, 20+ million subscribers, it's not your own private site. You're either a paid employee or you're a freeloader riding on someone's carriage, in which case they should be paying Reddit for allowing them a platform and bandwidth in which they can shape and control the narrative by controlling what speech is allowed. It goes beyond just controlling the speech or opinions of people who disagree with you such as I am doing here, there is also money involved such as in controlling which links get published. Those links drive traffic to specific sites which host ads. Surely you do not believe that all the links to specific sites over and over is simply because they are "fast to publish" or something do you?
  - tptacek 4y ago
    No, that's not a thing, we don't nationalize websites because they become popular.
- swayvil 4y ago
  But when you have 1000 people having a conversation there, it literally is not a private site.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    When the 1001st patron at Philips Crab House in Ocean City is seated, the Crab House does not suddenly become publicly owned or operated.
    - lmm 4y ago
      Maybe it should. There are plenty of similar laws (e.g. when you sell shares to your 2001st investor you're suddenly subject to a much stricter disclosure regime, and this is widely considered a good thing).
      - tptacek 4y ago
        That law is an OTC anti-fraud measure. The Constitution has something to say about the ability of Congress to nationalize and impose its own speech controls on private websites that happen to become popular. Congress also doesn't get a say in who performs the Super Bowl Halftime Show, despite its immense audience.
        lmm 4y ago
        "Private" corporations exist on the people's, via Congress', sufferance. Any entity benefitting from limited liability is not fully private and does not deserve the same rights as private individuals.
        tptacek 4y ago
        Yeah, that's not how any of this works.
        yellowapple 4y ago
        > "Private" corporations exist on the people's, via Congress', sufferance. All aspects of a capitalist socioeconomic system exist on the people's, via Congress', sufferance. The very land on which you stand is - at the end of the day - the territory of some government (unless you live in international waters, in space, or in Bir Tawil), and said government carves off subsets of that land for its people to use as they see fit. Fortunately, we the people here in the US have already long decided that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Those rights are not conditional on whether an entity is an individual person or a limited-liability corporation or an anarcho-syndicalist commune or what have you.
- brhsagain 4y ago
  Calling sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc "private sites" is a bit of an intuition pump, even if the terminology is legally correct. You're basically evoking an image of Bob's Diner where a guy runs a restaurant and kicks out rowdy patrons. The story changes when these websites are massively popular, have majority market share in their space, have taken massive amounts of funding, etc. Any successful social network is also almost by definition a pseudo-monopology (I'm using this word loosely, not legally) simply due to the massive advantages you get from network effects. Reddit is pretty much the first place people go to start and join niche communities of likeminded people. You can say "go start your own website" but now you are competing with, well, Reddit. The basic counterargument to what you're saying is that possession of that kind of market-leader advantage should come with some level of responsibility. > The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent for anyone who wants to stand up a site of their own. Couldn't you use this formulation to say that anti-discrimination laws make it so that, simply by dint of providing a service, you take on an obligation to provide that service to everyone? That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a... you get it. We accept government intervention when we believe it benefits society. The argument being made here is that it would benefit society if these massive pipes of information that in practice everyone uses were similarly regulated in the types of discrimination they can engage in. There's a calculus to be made about what level of control platforms having over their content would best serve the interests of society. It might be that despite all the things I listed above, the result of that calculus remains the same, but it is not immediately obvious that that is the case, as your "private sites can do what they want" formulation would have one believe.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > The story changes when these websites are massively popular, have majority market share in their space, have taken massive amounts of funding, etc. Not really. The only substantial change is that getting thrown out of such a large and all-encompassing diner is a lot less convenient. The fundamental reality is still there: no website (maybe unless it's owned by your government, and even then) no matter how large is obligated to carry your message, and it is increasingly affordable and trivial to start your own website if other websites exercise their inherent rights of refusal to carry your message. > Couldn't you use this formulation to say that anti-discrimination laws make it so that, simply by dint of providing a service, you take on an obligation to provide that service to everyone? The obligation is to not make membership in a protected class or lack thereof a condition of providing a service. Bob can't throw you out of his diner on the basis of you being some race he doesn't like; he can nonetheless throw you out if you're shouting advertisements at everyone else in the diner. Same deal for a website. There is no implication there of any obligation to serve everyone: only an explication of constraints on the reasons someone can refuse to serve someone. Marketers are, in short, not a protected class.
johnnyanmac 4y ago
>Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the millions of subscribers, and they seem to be able to get their way instantly with anything they want. they don't work for reddit, it's even worse than that. They are very profitable for reddit despite not being employed so admins look the other way. That work they do may or may not be monetized in other such ways. >I hope the supreme court takes away section 230 from these people that's slashing your face to spite the zit. There are undoubtedly unfair moderation practives, but the implications of 230 go far beyond that. Also, even if I agreed with 230, the issue of international boundaries will make it hard to enforce. No one's going to extradite some kid in brazil because they banned an American user on r/Art over an accusation that the American's art was AI. And that's even before going into how hard it is to win a Libel case in the US.

tptacek 4y ago

People are entitled to run their own private sites in ways that restrict you from sharing your opinions that are not the same as theirs. The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent for anyone who wants to stand up a site of their own. Get a blog.

Sunspark 4y ago
Sorry, but if you have control over 5, 10, 20+ million subscribers, it's not your own private site. You're either a paid employee or you're a freeloader riding on someone's carriage, in which case they should be paying Reddit for allowing them a platform and bandwidth in which they can shape and control the narrative by controlling what speech is allowed. It goes beyond just controlling the speech or opinions of people who disagree with you such as I am doing here, there is also money involved such as in controlling which links get published. Those links drive traffic to specific sites which host ads. Surely you do not believe that all the links to specific sites over and over is simply because they are "fast to publish" or something do you?
- tptacek 4y ago
  No, that's not a thing, we don't nationalize websites because they become popular.
swayvil 4y ago
But when you have 1000 people having a conversation there, it literally is not a private site.
- tptacek 4y ago
  When the 1001st patron at Philips Crab House in Ocean City is seated, the Crab House does not suddenly become publicly owned or operated.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Maybe it should. There are plenty of similar laws (e.g. when you sell shares to your 2001st investor you're suddenly subject to a much stricter disclosure regime, and this is widely considered a good thing).
    - tptacek 4y ago
      That law is an OTC anti-fraud measure. The Constitution has something to say about the ability of Congress to nationalize and impose its own speech controls on private websites that happen to become popular. Congress also doesn't get a say in who performs the Super Bowl Halftime Show, despite its immense audience.
      - lmm 4y ago
        "Private" corporations exist on the people's, via Congress', sufferance. Any entity benefitting from limited liability is not fully private and does not deserve the same rights as private individuals.
        tptacek 4y ago
        Yeah, that's not how any of this works.
        yellowapple 4y ago
        > "Private" corporations exist on the people's, via Congress', sufferance. All aspects of a capitalist socioeconomic system exist on the people's, via Congress', sufferance. The very land on which you stand is - at the end of the day - the territory of some government (unless you live in international waters, in space, or in Bir Tawil), and said government carves off subsets of that land for its people to use as they see fit. Fortunately, we the people here in the US have already long decided that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Those rights are not conditional on whether an entity is an individual person or a limited-liability corporation or an anarcho-syndicalist commune or what have you.
brhsagain 4y ago
Calling sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc "private sites" is a bit of an intuition pump, even if the terminology is legally correct. You're basically evoking an image of Bob's Diner where a guy runs a restaurant and kicks out rowdy patrons. The story changes when these websites are massively popular, have majority market share in their space, have taken massive amounts of funding, etc. Any successful social network is also almost by definition a pseudo-monopology (I'm using this word loosely, not legally) simply due to the massive advantages you get from network effects. Reddit is pretty much the first place people go to start and join niche communities of likeminded people. You can say "go start your own website" but now you are competing with, well, Reddit. The basic counterargument to what you're saying is that possession of that kind of market-leader advantage should come with some level of responsibility. > The view of the law that you're espousing is one where, simply by dint of letting people sign up to a service you run, you take on an obligation to carry their messages. That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a stultifying precedent for anyone who wants to stand up a site of their own. Couldn't you use this formulation to say that anti-discrimination laws make it so that, simply by dint of providing a service, you take on an obligation to provide that service to everyone? That's an intense amount of authority to give the government over private enterprise, and a... you get it. We accept government intervention when we believe it benefits society. The argument being made here is that it would benefit society if these massive pipes of information that in practice everyone uses were similarly regulated in the types of discrimination they can engage in. There's a calculus to be made about what level of control platforms having over their content would best serve the interests of society. It might be that despite all the things I listed above, the result of that calculus remains the same, but it is not immediately obvious that that is the case, as your "private sites can do what they want" formulation would have one believe.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > The story changes when these websites are massively popular, have majority market share in their space, have taken massive amounts of funding, etc. Not really. The only substantial change is that getting thrown out of such a large and all-encompassing diner is a lot less convenient. The fundamental reality is still there: no website (maybe unless it's owned by your government, and even then) no matter how large is obligated to carry your message, and it is increasingly affordable and trivial to start your own website if other websites exercise their inherent rights of refusal to carry your message. > Couldn't you use this formulation to say that anti-discrimination laws make it so that, simply by dint of providing a service, you take on an obligation to provide that service to everyone? The obligation is to not make membership in a protected class or lack thereof a condition of providing a service. Bob can't throw you out of his diner on the basis of you being some race he doesn't like; he can nonetheless throw you out if you're shouting advertisements at everyone else in the diner. Same deal for a website. There is no implication there of any obligation to serve everyone: only an explication of constraints on the reasons someone can refuse to serve someone. Marketers are, in short, not a protected class.

johnnyanmac 4y ago

>Some of them are powermods modding multiple large subs in the millions of subscribers, and they seem to be able to get their way instantly with anything they want. they don't work for reddit, it's even worse than that. They are very profitable for reddit despite not being employed so admins look the other way. That work they do may or may not be monetized in other such ways. >I hope the supreme court takes away section 230 from these people that's slashing your face to spite the zit. There are undoubtedly unfair moderation practives, but the implications of 230 go far beyond that. Also, even if I agreed with 230, the issue of international boundaries will make it hard to enforce. No one's going to extradite some kid in brazil because they banned an American user on r/Art over an accusation that the American's art was AI. And that's even before going into how hard it is to win a Libel case in the US.