8 ms·

> 92 of top 500 subreddits controlled by same 5 people https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173018

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jamilton 3y ago
The other million subreddits are most of the good part of reddit, IMO.
- nbar1 3y ago
  Until you get automatically banned from the top subreddit simply for commenting in a completely separate subreddit the mods don't like.
  - WeylandYutani 3y ago
    Maybe I have nostalgia glasses on but when I grew up on the internet forums only deleted posts that had illegal content. They did not remove unpopular opinions. Reddit is were actual discussion goes to die. Comes with the downvote ability I suppose.
    - nbar1 3y ago
      10 years ago we seen a lot of open-discussion platforms. That all died when picking a side became profitable.
    - scrollaway 3y ago
      You don’t have nostalgia glasses on. You have a nostalgia blindfold on. Mods on the “old forums” routinely deleted posts and banned users because they don’t like their opinion or hell even just as a “fuck why not it’s funny”. Source: was a mod and active participant of such forums and saw it all the time. Did my fair share too.
      - StanislavPetrov 3y ago
        This is true but I vastly prefer having my post arbitrarily deleted by a random mod than the current climate of ubiquitous narrative enforcement.
      - celdon25 3y ago
        I got a forum admin fired once for crap like that. Filed a BBB complaint.
    - officeplant 3y ago
      instantly reminds me of two moments in the early 2000s. 17yo me got banned from the then largest synthesizer forum in 2004 just because I called a mod named Angus "Mr. Beef" one too many times. :) And another particularly niche forum dedicated to a specific range of car chassis with a specific set of engine swaps that would permaban anyone who asked a question that could be answered via forum search. Which was at least mentioned in the forum rules you had to read before joining. Forum mods were notorious power trippers on any forum I've been on. Sometimes it was worth it just to keep order. Other times it led to flame wars and forum splinters where a few people would start their own in competition to try and pick up the unhappy crowd. So really nothing has changed because this is exactly how most discord/telegram servers, forums, subreddits, etc still function.
      - technothrasher 3y ago
        > Forum mods were notorious power trippers on any forum I've been on. Back about 10-15 years ago I agreed to be a mod on a pretty large and popular forum, naively thinking I could help keep the place decent and useful for the users. What I discovered instantly were hidden mod forums where they made fun of all the users, laughed about arbitrarily banning people, and discussed about how they banned posts about illegal stuff mostly because it gave away their secrets. I gave that up quickly and decided I was all set with modding.
        officeplant 3y ago
        Just reminded me of another mod power trip. Local buy/trade/sell car forum got sold when the owner got approached with a cash offer. The way the forum worked was it took mod approval before your listing would go live. Kept out spam/trash posts and helped keep the forum organized. It was eventually discovered that he was screening the listings for things he could make a first offer on and flip somewhere else for profit. Caused the whole place to implode and everyone moved to a handful of splintered facebook swap shop groups.
    - EdwardDiego 3y ago
      Never went to SomethingAwful forums then.
  - seattle_spring 3y ago
    <comment removed as it was devolving into a flame war>
    - confoundcofound 3y ago
      Congrats, you are the problem. Half of my hardworking, law-abiding immigrant community of doctors, engineers, and scientists were on the_donald. These are people who’ve actually faced hate in this country and who likely have way more exposure to people of different races & backgrounds than the average American. If that does nothing to make you reevaluate your opinion, then you are sadly and ironically a victim of divisive indoctrination. Edit: For context, the parent advocated banning users from an entire subreddit as a sound moderation strategy.
      - seattle_spring 3y ago
        <comment removed as it was devolving into a flame war>
        confoundcofound 3y ago
        Its worst content was no worse than what you saw (and still see) on other subreddits. You would be disingenuous to not acknowledge the political forces at play. Mods were on high alert because they knew admins were waiting for the most microscopic of reasons to ban the sub. And we know these forces exist. Twitter is proof positive of political bias in content moderation. People of all backgrounds were on the_donald, which should make you question why they were tolerant of much of the content you likely perceived as hateful. If your answer is simply that they’re bigots, then I suggest you have more conversations.
        seattle_spring 3y ago
        Which political subreddit calls their opponents “fucking cuck” or equivalent with extreme regularity? For the record, this is devolving into a flame war and that wasn’t my intention. I suggest this stops here.
  - jamilton 3y ago
    I'm saying getting banned from the top subreddits deprives you of very little value.
nostromo 3y ago
For the record, I'm not a fan of Reddit. But there is something to be said about having the censor cabal out in the open for everyone to see. Compare that with Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, where there is no record of who is determining what is and isn't ok to say.
- HaZeust 3y ago
  Why do I care? That it's 0.0001% more transparent of its top-operators? If anything, I at least can see who works under the VP of Integrity at Facebook via LinkedIn - I have no idea who GallowBoob would be if he didn't make it explicitly known.
Eisenstein 3y ago
You linked to an HN thread which linked to a reddit thread as proof of this. I would like you to know that is absurd since the reddit thread makes an accusation with no proof. The 'proof' is a screenshot of a post that was called '92 of the top 100 subbreddits controlled by the same 5 people' that got removed. Why did it get removed? Who knows? Do better. If you want to be better than reddit don't do the same dumb shit that it does and check your sources.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bspammer 3y ago
  Given that reddit surprisingly still has a working API, this isn't actually a hard thing to check. Here's a script that works courtesy of ChatGPT: https://gist.github.com/bspammer/6b5eff6670e4b839ffea89ceaed1aa0f https://gist.github.com/bspammer/6b5eff6670e4b839ffea89ceaed... The highest non-bot user moderates 12 subreddits in the top 100. There's quite a few users who moderate more than 5. I believe the situation was much worse a few years ago, and reddit the company put pressure on them to give up some of their subs.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Can you provide the data that is output?
    - bspammer 3y ago
      https://gist.github.com/bspammer/d6059d2bfa222a0f340353ae0be6e151 https://gist.github.com/bspammer/d6059d2bfa222a0f340353ae0be...
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        The highest person on there that isn't a bot moderates 13 subreddits. The second 12, and down from there. Doesn't look like anywhere near '92' for any 5 people.
Karawebnetwork 3y ago
Being very active in the Facebook groups/pages scene, I can tell you that very similar situations happens there. Same thing for Discord. Even back in the 90's, it was common for people who enjoy being a moderator or admin to be all over the place.
eganist 3y ago
current lead on r/relationship_advice here - none of these people actually "control" anything, and gallowboob (for instance) has largely stepped away from modding. There's value in any information-sharing they do in that they share trends across subreddits that reddit themselves are opaque about, but the subs still operate autonomously.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jamilton 3y ago

The other million subreddits are most of the good part of reddit, IMO.

nbar1 3y ago
Until you get automatically banned from the top subreddit simply for commenting in a completely separate subreddit the mods don't like.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  Maybe I have nostalgia glasses on but when I grew up on the internet forums only deleted posts that had illegal content. They did not remove unpopular opinions. Reddit is were actual discussion goes to die. Comes with the downvote ability I suppose.
  - nbar1 3y ago
    10 years ago we seen a lot of open-discussion platforms. That all died when picking a side became profitable.
  - scrollaway 3y ago
    You don’t have nostalgia glasses on. You have a nostalgia blindfold on. Mods on the “old forums” routinely deleted posts and banned users because they don’t like their opinion or hell even just as a “fuck why not it’s funny”. Source: was a mod and active participant of such forums and saw it all the time. Did my fair share too.
    - StanislavPetrov 3y ago
      This is true but I vastly prefer having my post arbitrarily deleted by a random mod than the current climate of ubiquitous narrative enforcement.
    - celdon25 3y ago
      I got a forum admin fired once for crap like that. Filed a BBB complaint.
  - officeplant 3y ago
    instantly reminds me of two moments in the early 2000s. 17yo me got banned from the then largest synthesizer forum in 2004 just because I called a mod named Angus "Mr. Beef" one too many times. :) And another particularly niche forum dedicated to a specific range of car chassis with a specific set of engine swaps that would permaban anyone who asked a question that could be answered via forum search. Which was at least mentioned in the forum rules you had to read before joining. Forum mods were notorious power trippers on any forum I've been on. Sometimes it was worth it just to keep order. Other times it led to flame wars and forum splinters where a few people would start their own in competition to try and pick up the unhappy crowd. So really nothing has changed because this is exactly how most discord/telegram servers, forums, subreddits, etc still function.
    - technothrasher 3y ago
      > Forum mods were notorious power trippers on any forum I've been on. Back about 10-15 years ago I agreed to be a mod on a pretty large and popular forum, naively thinking I could help keep the place decent and useful for the users. What I discovered instantly were hidden mod forums where they made fun of all the users, laughed about arbitrarily banning people, and discussed about how they banned posts about illegal stuff mostly because it gave away their secrets. I gave that up quickly and decided I was all set with modding.
      - officeplant 3y ago
        Just reminded me of another mod power trip. Local buy/trade/sell car forum got sold when the owner got approached with a cash offer. The way the forum worked was it took mod approval before your listing would go live. Kept out spam/trash posts and helped keep the forum organized. It was eventually discovered that he was screening the listings for things he could make a first offer on and flip somewhere else for profit. Caused the whole place to implode and everyone moved to a handful of splintered facebook swap shop groups.
  - EdwardDiego 3y ago
    Never went to SomethingAwful forums then.
- seattle_spring 3y ago
  <comment removed as it was devolving into a flame war>
  - confoundcofound 3y ago
    Congrats, you are the problem. Half of my hardworking, law-abiding immigrant community of doctors, engineers, and scientists were on the_donald. These are people who’ve actually faced hate in this country and who likely have way more exposure to people of different races & backgrounds than the average American. If that does nothing to make you reevaluate your opinion, then you are sadly and ironically a victim of divisive indoctrination. Edit: For context, the parent advocated banning users from an entire subreddit as a sound moderation strategy.
    - seattle_spring 3y ago
      <comment removed as it was devolving into a flame war>
      - confoundcofound 3y ago
        Its worst content was no worse than what you saw (and still see) on other subreddits. You would be disingenuous to not acknowledge the political forces at play. Mods were on high alert because they knew admins were waiting for the most microscopic of reasons to ban the sub. And we know these forces exist. Twitter is proof positive of political bias in content moderation. People of all backgrounds were on the_donald, which should make you question why they were tolerant of much of the content you likely perceived as hateful. If your answer is simply that they’re bigots, then I suggest you have more conversations.
        seattle_spring 3y ago
        Which political subreddit calls their opponents “fucking cuck” or equivalent with extreme regularity? For the record, this is devolving into a flame war and that wasn’t my intention. I suggest this stops here.
- jamilton 3y ago
  I'm saying getting banned from the top subreddits deprives you of very little value.

nostromo 3y ago

For the record, I'm not a fan of Reddit. But there is something to be said about having the censor cabal out in the open for everyone to see. Compare that with Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, where there is no record of who is determining what is and isn't ok to say.

HaZeust 3y ago
Why do I care? That it's 0.0001% more transparent of its top-operators? If anything, I at least can see who works under the VP of Integrity at Facebook via LinkedIn - I have no idea who GallowBoob would be if he didn't make it explicitly known.

Eisenstein 3y ago

You linked to an HN thread which linked to a reddit thread as proof of this. I would like you to know that is absurd since the reddit thread makes an accusation with no proof. The 'proof' is a screenshot of a post that was called '92 of the top 100 subbreddits controlled by the same 5 people' that got removed. Why did it get removed? Who knows? Do better. If you want to be better than reddit don't do the same dumb shit that it does and check your sources.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bspammer 3y ago
Given that reddit surprisingly still has a working API, this isn't actually a hard thing to check. Here's a script that works courtesy of ChatGPT: https://gist.github.com/bspammer/6b5eff6670e4b839ffea89ceaed1aa0f https://gist.github.com/bspammer/6b5eff6670e4b839ffea89ceaed... The highest non-bot user moderates 12 subreddits in the top 100. There's quite a few users who moderate more than 5. I believe the situation was much worse a few years ago, and reddit the company put pressure on them to give up some of their subs.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Can you provide the data that is output?
  - bspammer 3y ago
    https://gist.github.com/bspammer/d6059d2bfa222a0f340353ae0be6e151 https://gist.github.com/bspammer/d6059d2bfa222a0f340353ae0be...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      The highest person on there that isn't a bot moderates 13 subreddits. The second 12, and down from there. Doesn't look like anywhere near '92' for any 5 people.

Karawebnetwork 3y ago

Being very active in the Facebook groups/pages scene, I can tell you that very similar situations happens there. Same thing for Discord. Even back in the 90's, it was common for people who enjoy being a moderator or admin to be all over the place.

eganist 3y ago

current lead on r/relationship_advice here - none of these people actually "control" anything, and gallowboob (for instance) has largely stepped away from modding. There's value in any information-sharing they do in that they share trends across subreddits that reddit themselves are opaque about, but the subs still operate autonomously.