4 ms·

I really don't get why so many posts need to be removed. Other than bullying and harassment, isn't that what the vote buttons are for?

beefman 3y ago
Funny enough, this post was initially shadow-blocked here. But I noticed I couldn't comment on it and wrote to dang asking why. He unblocked it and explained that submissions pointing to redd.it are automatically shadow-blocked.
130e13a 3y ago
they're actively trying to make the site more "family-friendly" (i.e., advertiser-friendly), since they have their IPO coming up later this year.
- zirgs 3y ago
  And yet they still have porn subreddits. Also I've bern hearing about that "upcoming IPO" for like 5 years now and it still doesn't happen.
  - account42 3y ago
    Not on /r/all anymore though. Reddit is probably aware that removing those parts in one stroke is likely going to spawn a competitor that might eventually overtake Reddit and has chosen to kill them slowly instead with more and more restrictions.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  once reddit get's bought, it's on a trajectory to irrelevance, because nobody will buy that cesspit w/o a massive "betterment agenda".
- red_admiral 3y ago
  I think the general direction you're describing is correct, but it might also be that occasionally someone at reddit looks at the front page of voat and thinks "let's not become that".
  - account42 3y ago
    Voat and and similar sites came into existence because of the moderation on reddit, not the other way around.
    - hnbad 3y ago
      If anything, reddit's moderation policies were an attempt to curtail the channification brought by edgelord subreddits like "fat people hate", "jailbait" and eventually "The Donald". Going down that route is an entirely plausible decision but it not only alienates most normies (not to mention the demographics typically on the receiving hand of the hate and harassment embraced by these groups) but also makes a site much less appealing to advertisers or investors. Of course Voat promoting itself as a "free speech alternative to reddit" predictably led to it mostly attracting those affected by the reddit moderation policies, which led to them becoming exactly what reddit wanted to avoid and predictably failing eventually.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Natsu 3y ago
There's a lot of power in shaping how people see the world, and with more of our experience of the world being virtual, it's easier to shape than ever before.
- zirgs 3y ago
  Thankfully I can go outside, talk to people and find out that they don't have the same opinions as reddit mods/admins.
  - geraldhh 3y ago
    not that covid demonstrated how fragile this Privilege is rooted
    - zirgs 3y ago
      Even during peak-covid I could still communicate with my friends and family members using uncensored means of communication.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - account42 3y ago
        This time yes. Legislation in most countries seems to be moving only in one direction: More surveillance of all communication methods. We've already had people being arrested/charged for private gatherings among a small number of friends just because the government(s) decided to impose arbitrary restrictions on who you could meet. We are also seening more and more arrests and fines for public speech that happens to offend someone. You can bet that once the capability is there this will eventually also happen with private digital communications.
      - suddenclarity 3y ago
        Hence governments are trying to ban Signal/Telegram and there was a leak yesterday from Spain about the government trying to ban encrypted messages all together. Newspapers losing control over the narrative over the last 15 years have been "extremely dangerous for our democracy" and it's no surprise politicians are pushing back against Internet in an attempt to regain the control. At the moment it seems impossible to predict what the future will look like, but it doesn't look promising in my view.
tsss 3y ago
You ever been to reddit? Practically all of the large subreddits have been taking over by power moderators who are either karma whores and obviously paid to push ads or hobby political commissars who ban anything and everything not fitting into their ideological agenda.
DharmaPolice 3y ago
I'm often skeptical about Reddit moderators but one of the things the voting system doesn't handle very well is near duplicate submissions. On /r/soccer for example when there is a big story (e.g. Messi leaving Barcelona) there will be hundreds of submissions of essentially the same story (with different sources). There is some benefit in having discussion of the topic confined to a few threads (or maybe just one), rather than the entire subreddit be temporarily unusable until this storm passes. On traditional forums threads could be merged together - which was often confusing but it at least allowed comments made up to that point to be retained. Reddit doesn't seem to have that functionality (or at least I've never seen it).
- account42 3y ago
  Merging is really the best solution here as ideally that would allow retaining not just all comments but also all aternative sources. HN kind of does this by moving comments and then referencing the duplicate discussion in a comment. But its also not always uncontroversial what should and shouldn't be merged. E.g. this allows moderators to select the article most favorable to their views and then give it all the comments, effectively boosting one viewpoint while hiding others.
- mhh__ 3y ago
  Moderators (/r/soccer ones get accused repeatedly, no comment either way from me) get accused of removing posts so they can get the "scoop" too, rather than being solely due censorship.
dale_glass 3y ago
Because 99% of what people submit is crap. Any insufficiently moderated subreddit quickly devolves into spam, low effort content and memes. And when big events happen you'll have 20 people submitting the same thing, then 15 follow-up posts about "Why am I being censored?" Reddit is kinda crap at deduplication. It compares URLs exactly, and still doesn't know that youtube.com and youtu.be are the same place, or that the junk appended to a youtube URL is mostly irrelevant.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  >Any insufficiently moderated subreddit quickly devolves into spam, low effort content and memes. Any sufficiently large subreddit, regardless of moderation. Once a subreddit reaches critical mass, its inundated with low quality posts as mentioned. One can argue that is due to poor moderation, which would be part of it, but I find it’s mostly just the Reddit “culture” to create stale memes of the same formats but with subreddit-specific things tacked on, instead of interesting discussion. The only times I don’t see this is in subreddits where posting is reserved to people who have to prove their worth in some degree, which naturally isn’t an ideal system either.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    There are rare exceptions, like r/AskHistorians, where mods rule it with an iron fist. But that takes serious dedication, organization and effort, so it's rare to see.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  It seems strange to me that things like Reddit, Twitter, YouTube etc seem to be treated as inviolable constants, both by users and by their owners. It's kind of taken for granted that they just fell from the sky like that and need to be worked around. Which, yes, I suppose they kind of do, and even a million people wanting something is a rounding error, but it's very different to collaborative projects.
unixhero 3y ago
Remember that Reddit is trying to monetize. This drives them away from meme culture, and tries more and more to be politically correct with measures such as quarantined subreddits.

beefman 3y ago

Funny enough, this post was initially shadow-blocked here. But I noticed I couldn't comment on it and wrote to dang asking why. He unblocked it and explained that submissions pointing to redd.it are automatically shadow-blocked.

130e13a 3y ago

they're actively trying to make the site more "family-friendly" (i.e., advertiser-friendly), since they have their IPO coming up later this year.

zirgs 3y ago
And yet they still have porn subreddits. Also I've bern hearing about that "upcoming IPO" for like 5 years now and it still doesn't happen.
- account42 3y ago
  Not on /r/all anymore though. Reddit is probably aware that removing those parts in one stroke is likely going to spawn a competitor that might eventually overtake Reddit and has chosen to kill them slowly instead with more and more restrictions.
geraldhh 3y ago
once reddit get's bought, it's on a trajectory to irrelevance, because nobody will buy that cesspit w/o a massive "betterment agenda".
red_admiral 3y ago
I think the general direction you're describing is correct, but it might also be that occasionally someone at reddit looks at the front page of voat and thinks "let's not become that".
- account42 3y ago
  Voat and and similar sites came into existence because of the moderation on reddit, not the other way around.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    If anything, reddit's moderation policies were an attempt to curtail the channification brought by edgelord subreddits like "fat people hate", "jailbait" and eventually "The Donald". Going down that route is an entirely plausible decision but it not only alienates most normies (not to mention the demographics typically on the receiving hand of the hate and harassment embraced by these groups) but also makes a site much less appealing to advertisers or investors. Of course Voat promoting itself as a "free speech alternative to reddit" predictably led to it mostly attracting those affected by the reddit moderation policies, which led to them becoming exactly what reddit wanted to avoid and predictably failing eventually.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Natsu 3y ago

There's a lot of power in shaping how people see the world, and with more of our experience of the world being virtual, it's easier to shape than ever before.

zirgs 3y ago
Thankfully I can go outside, talk to people and find out that they don't have the same opinions as reddit mods/admins.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  not that covid demonstrated how fragile this Privilege is rooted
  - zirgs 3y ago
    Even during peak-covid I could still communicate with my friends and family members using uncensored means of communication.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - account42 3y ago
      This time yes. Legislation in most countries seems to be moving only in one direction: More surveillance of all communication methods. We've already had people being arrested/charged for private gatherings among a small number of friends just because the government(s) decided to impose arbitrary restrictions on who you could meet. We are also seening more and more arrests and fines for public speech that happens to offend someone. You can bet that once the capability is there this will eventually also happen with private digital communications.
    - suddenclarity 3y ago
      Hence governments are trying to ban Signal/Telegram and there was a leak yesterday from Spain about the government trying to ban encrypted messages all together. Newspapers losing control over the narrative over the last 15 years have been "extremely dangerous for our democracy" and it's no surprise politicians are pushing back against Internet in an attempt to regain the control. At the moment it seems impossible to predict what the future will look like, but it doesn't look promising in my view.

tsss 3y ago

You ever been to reddit? Practically all of the large subreddits have been taking over by power moderators who are either karma whores and obviously paid to push ads or hobby political commissars who ban anything and everything not fitting into their ideological agenda.

DharmaPolice 3y ago

I'm often skeptical about Reddit moderators but one of the things the voting system doesn't handle very well is near duplicate submissions. On /r/soccer for example when there is a big story (e.g. Messi leaving Barcelona) there will be hundreds of submissions of essentially the same story (with different sources). There is some benefit in having discussion of the topic confined to a few threads (or maybe just one), rather than the entire subreddit be temporarily unusable until this storm passes. On traditional forums threads could be merged together - which was often confusing but it at least allowed comments made up to that point to be retained. Reddit doesn't seem to have that functionality (or at least I've never seen it).

account42 3y ago
Merging is really the best solution here as ideally that would allow retaining not just all comments but also all aternative sources. HN kind of does this by moving comments and then referencing the duplicate discussion in a comment. But its also not always uncontroversial what should and shouldn't be merged. E.g. this allows moderators to select the article most favorable to their views and then give it all the comments, effectively boosting one viewpoint while hiding others.
mhh__ 3y ago
Moderators (/r/soccer ones get accused repeatedly, no comment either way from me) get accused of removing posts so they can get the "scoop" too, rather than being solely due censorship.

dale_glass 3y ago

Because 99% of what people submit is crap. Any insufficiently moderated subreddit quickly devolves into spam, low effort content and memes. And when big events happen you'll have 20 people submitting the same thing, then 15 follow-up posts about "Why am I being censored?" Reddit is kinda crap at deduplication. It compares URLs exactly, and still doesn't know that youtube.com and youtu.be are the same place, or that the junk appended to a youtube URL is mostly irrelevant.

tourmalinetaco 3y ago
>Any insufficiently moderated subreddit quickly devolves into spam, low effort content and memes. Any sufficiently large subreddit, regardless of moderation. Once a subreddit reaches critical mass, its inundated with low quality posts as mentioned. One can argue that is due to poor moderation, which would be part of it, but I find it’s mostly just the Reddit “culture” to create stale memes of the same formats but with subreddit-specific things tacked on, instead of interesting discussion. The only times I don’t see this is in subreddits where posting is reserved to people who have to prove their worth in some degree, which naturally isn’t an ideal system either.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  There are rare exceptions, like r/AskHistorians, where mods rule it with an iron fist. But that takes serious dedication, organization and effort, so it's rare to see.
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
It seems strange to me that things like Reddit, Twitter, YouTube etc seem to be treated as inviolable constants, both by users and by their owners. It's kind of taken for granted that they just fell from the sky like that and need to be worked around. Which, yes, I suppose they kind of do, and even a million people wanting something is a rounding error, but it's very different to collaborative projects.

unixhero 3y ago

Remember that Reddit is trying to monetize. This drives them away from meme culture, and tries more and more to be politically correct with measures such as quarantined subreddits.