9 ms·

Warning users that upvote violent content

32 points by codetrotter 2y ago

politelemon 2y ago
Looking at the language around "upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies will begin to receive a warning", and comments from the admin, it is quite clear that the definition will remain subjective and can change over time.
- jfengel 2y ago
  Of course. I can't imagine how you'd define such a thing objectively. But a fair bit of content is more-or-less unanimously off limits, and it doesn't seem useful to say "I can't define it rigorously so I guess we have to allow the child torture porn". Communities are best-effort activities.
mft_ 2y ago
I assume this is relates to the posts in recent days suggesting Reddit is now penalising users for interacting with some posts about Luigi Mangione. As we’ve seen previously, Reddit will continue to slowly evolve in a direction that suits its corporate owners, and protests may feel empowering in the short but fail to change anything in the longer term. In the meantime, it would be a shame[0] if this was protested using the John Oliver approach[1] only with pictures of Luigi. [0] not really [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65949412.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65949412.amp
- Teever 2y ago
  It's wild to me the blatant double standard that Reddit admins and mods have regarding violence in comments. You can crack jokes left and right about Russian soldiers getting blown up by drones or Russian oligarchs and bureaucrats being pushed out of windows and 'falling onto bullets' but if someone says the same thing about American oligarchs the ban hammer comes out.
  - mft_ 2y ago
    The closest I've seen to a class consciousness in America in recent times was the brief unity shown in response to the killing of Brian Thompson. People from both sides of the politcal spectrum who had suffered due to the Health Insurance industry didn't want to condemn what had happened, or outright supported it. I can fully understand how some people would be terrified by the current political divide being relaced by a genuine class divide. It would be very interesting to understand the chain of cause-and-effect that led to Reddit implmenting this policy, and directing it specifically (it seems) at posts related to Luigi.
    - trod1234 2y ago
      > The closest I've seen to a class consiousness in America ... You are mistaken. You can no longer consider the vast majority of trending content on social media to be crafted by actual people. LLM has made sock puppetry and the accompanying distorted reflected appraisal, both cost effective at scale and ruinous. The cause of the policy change is an escalation of what naturally follows their exploitation of both the original unpaid moderators that left in the exodus as well as the unpaid volunteers who have left or were driven out leading to the Cooling Effect on Social Media. The moderators they have that remained are for the most part subverted, and have turned to Anaconda in the Chandelier-like strategies to rule their kingdom like their own personal feifdom driving the core elements that made the community valuable in the first place away. Reddit is starting to notice this too, because accounts are using the karma system in conjunction with large amounts of sock puppets are acting as sybil attack vectors where extreme content stays up, and they take a stock market hit every time the trusted news initiative brings it up on-air. Collectivism trends towards destruction every time its embraced by a large number of people. It may be slower or faster depending on certain things, but inevitably it comes up against an out-of-context problem couched in existential crisis that the members of such cannot recognize or foresee. The consequences vanish along with all those people, to the sands of time and chaos. Bronze-age collapse, Greece, Rome, etc. History is important, and when the ignorant in privileged positions take their flocks along for the ride, the destruction that follows is quite sinful and evil. The simple fact of the matter is, when the pillars of society fail and unwind, it falls back to a rule of violence and the natural world. This is well studied under social contract theory and aspects on the history of political economy. This isn't a political divide, its a ruinous cycle of spiraling madness where business thinks it wins, but they win so much that they destroy themselves and lose everything, and it was able to happen because necessity and urgency was decoupled from the funding, through money printing. There are several pillars to society, one of the pivotal ones is a rule of law which requires several components that themselves are interdependent, and which have objectively failed today. The purpose of law is non-violent conflict resolution. When you have it, violence isn't acceptable, when you don't it naturally happens as abuses become egregious. In such disadvantaged environments, it is about what one can or can't do, not whether it should or ought to happen. Natural law certainly doesn't follow Tolstoy's pacifism or nihilism except to extinction.
xucian 2y ago
rip
ty6853 2y ago
As reddit became more commercialized, somehow it turned into a place where mere opinions resulted in bans. Sometimes directly, but more often what happens is moderators allowed users with sanctioned opinions to relentlessly verbally deride those with unsanctioned opinions and then ban the target as soon as they reflected even one iota of the lashing back. It has gotten to the point where even HN, a place full of progressive coastie techies, looks like a free speech bastion of thought diversity by comparison. I miss the pre ~2015s internet where even though everyone might hate you, you had the right to your opinion.
- rmholt 2y ago
  In contrary to modern popular belief, this is not the case (at least on reddit). Have a look at Banned Subreddits at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communi... Unless you are advocating genocide, murder, outright advocating for ethnic cleansing, or are violently sexist/racist, you're fine.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - survirtual 2y ago
    This is not true. When I was active on reddit, I advocated for nuclear energy using math and physics. One time, I wrote a comment calculating energy vs used land vs used infrastructure, including mining and logistics, to show how radically more efficient nuclear is than any other power source. It got little / no engagement. That comment triggered me to check pushshift and see if I was banned for some reason. Turns out, every comment I had ever made about nuclear technology was shadow banned, even relatively innocuous ones. This was universally across all of reddit. They don't allow advocating for nuclear energy, what else don't they allow? One time, I wrote a historical warning about how the rich don't generally do well with massive wealth inequality during times of revolution. This was flag as violent content and I got a warning saying I would be banned if I did it again. This was roughly ~5 years ago. How much do you think the noose has tightened since then? Keep in mind, my comments were well thought out, posted in good faith, and respectful. I was not trying to hurt people or prove them wrong, just truth seeking and truth sharing. It became clear to me truth is no longer allowed on mass platforms.
everdrive 2y ago
Reddit has been dead for a while. There is still a lot of great information hidden along the noise, but it’s very much not a community that you can belong to. Your comments will almost never be taken seriously, or even be noticed. There’s almost no point in taking part in actual discourse on Reddit. People might think this is about politics, but I really don’t discuss politics on Reddit. Instead, any topic on Reddit gets this treatment, even when the topics are mundane. Smaller subreddits do still manage to avoid this, to be fair. But at any moment any small subreddit could get new mods, get banned, or even just see an influx of new users which permanently changes its character.
- Mo3 2y ago
  And the astroturfing and bots. So much in the bigger subs.
weard_beard 2y ago
I recently got selected to take a survey on changes they are rolling out. I took the survey on a lark. They are turning it into Digg. Giant ads after the first result of every content listing page pushing most results far below the fold. Its going to cause a mass exodus.
fmxsh 2y ago
Did I just read: > "This will begin with [targeting clearly objectionable content], but we may consider expanding this in the future [to opinions we do not like]." And further down: > "It is everyone’s collective responsibility [to ensure no one disagrees with us] ..." I do see the problem of moderation, but don't think this in itself is a good solution long-term.

32 points by codetrotter 2y ago

Looking at the language around "upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies will begin to receive a warning", and comments from the admin, it is quite clear that the definition will remain subjective and can change over time.

jfengel 2y ago
Of course. I can't imagine how you'd define such a thing objectively. But a fair bit of content is more-or-less unanimously off limits, and it doesn't seem useful to say "I can't define it rigorously so I guess we have to allow the child torture porn". Communities are best-effort activities.

mft_ 2y ago

I assume this is relates to the posts in recent days suggesting Reddit is now penalising users for interacting with some posts about Luigi Mangione. As we’ve seen previously, Reddit will continue to slowly evolve in a direction that suits its corporate owners, and protests may feel empowering in the short but fail to change anything in the longer term. In the meantime, it would be a shame[0] if this was protested using the John Oliver approach[1] only with pictures of Luigi. [0] not really [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65949412.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65949412.amp

Teever 2y ago
It's wild to me the blatant double standard that Reddit admins and mods have regarding violence in comments. You can crack jokes left and right about Russian soldiers getting blown up by drones or Russian oligarchs and bureaucrats being pushed out of windows and 'falling onto bullets' but if someone says the same thing about American oligarchs the ban hammer comes out.
- mft_ 2y ago
  The closest I've seen to a class consciousness in America in recent times was the brief unity shown in response to the killing of Brian Thompson. People from both sides of the politcal spectrum who had suffered due to the Health Insurance industry didn't want to condemn what had happened, or outright supported it. I can fully understand how some people would be terrified by the current political divide being relaced by a genuine class divide. It would be very interesting to understand the chain of cause-and-effect that led to Reddit implmenting this policy, and directing it specifically (it seems) at posts related to Luigi.
  - trod1234 2y ago
    > The closest I've seen to a class consiousness in America ... You are mistaken. You can no longer consider the vast majority of trending content on social media to be crafted by actual people. LLM has made sock puppetry and the accompanying distorted reflected appraisal, both cost effective at scale and ruinous. The cause of the policy change is an escalation of what naturally follows their exploitation of both the original unpaid moderators that left in the exodus as well as the unpaid volunteers who have left or were driven out leading to the Cooling Effect on Social Media. The moderators they have that remained are for the most part subverted, and have turned to Anaconda in the Chandelier-like strategies to rule their kingdom like their own personal feifdom driving the core elements that made the community valuable in the first place away. Reddit is starting to notice this too, because accounts are using the karma system in conjunction with large amounts of sock puppets are acting as sybil attack vectors where extreme content stays up, and they take a stock market hit every time the trusted news initiative brings it up on-air. Collectivism trends towards destruction every time its embraced by a large number of people. It may be slower or faster depending on certain things, but inevitably it comes up against an out-of-context problem couched in existential crisis that the members of such cannot recognize or foresee. The consequences vanish along with all those people, to the sands of time and chaos. Bronze-age collapse, Greece, Rome, etc. History is important, and when the ignorant in privileged positions take their flocks along for the ride, the destruction that follows is quite sinful and evil. The simple fact of the matter is, when the pillars of society fail and unwind, it falls back to a rule of violence and the natural world. This is well studied under social contract theory and aspects on the history of political economy. This isn't a political divide, its a ruinous cycle of spiraling madness where business thinks it wins, but they win so much that they destroy themselves and lose everything, and it was able to happen because necessity and urgency was decoupled from the funding, through money printing. There are several pillars to society, one of the pivotal ones is a rule of law which requires several components that themselves are interdependent, and which have objectively failed today. The purpose of law is non-violent conflict resolution. When you have it, violence isn't acceptable, when you don't it naturally happens as abuses become egregious. In such disadvantaged environments, it is about what one can or can't do, not whether it should or ought to happen. Natural law certainly doesn't follow Tolstoy's pacifism or nihilism except to extinction.

xucian 2y ago

rip

ty6853 2y ago

As reddit became more commercialized, somehow it turned into a place where mere opinions resulted in bans. Sometimes directly, but more often what happens is moderators allowed users with sanctioned opinions to relentlessly verbally deride those with unsanctioned opinions and then ban the target as soon as they reflected even one iota of the lashing back. It has gotten to the point where even HN, a place full of progressive coastie techies, looks like a free speech bastion of thought diversity by comparison. I miss the pre ~2015s internet where even though everyone might hate you, you had the right to your opinion.

rmholt 2y ago
In contrary to modern popular belief, this is not the case (at least on reddit). Have a look at Banned Subreddits at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communi... Unless you are advocating genocide, murder, outright advocating for ethnic cleansing, or are violently sexist/racist, you're fine.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- survirtual 2y ago
  This is not true. When I was active on reddit, I advocated for nuclear energy using math and physics. One time, I wrote a comment calculating energy vs used land vs used infrastructure, including mining and logistics, to show how radically more efficient nuclear is than any other power source. It got little / no engagement. That comment triggered me to check pushshift and see if I was banned for some reason. Turns out, every comment I had ever made about nuclear technology was shadow banned, even relatively innocuous ones. This was universally across all of reddit. They don't allow advocating for nuclear energy, what else don't they allow? One time, I wrote a historical warning about how the rich don't generally do well with massive wealth inequality during times of revolution. This was flag as violent content and I got a warning saying I would be banned if I did it again. This was roughly ~5 years ago. How much do you think the noose has tightened since then? Keep in mind, my comments were well thought out, posted in good faith, and respectful. I was not trying to hurt people or prove them wrong, just truth seeking and truth sharing. It became clear to me truth is no longer allowed on mass platforms.

everdrive 2y ago

Reddit has been dead for a while. There is still a lot of great information hidden along the noise, but it’s very much not a community that you can belong to. Your comments will almost never be taken seriously, or even be noticed. There’s almost no point in taking part in actual discourse on Reddit. People might think this is about politics, but I really don’t discuss politics on Reddit. Instead, any topic on Reddit gets this treatment, even when the topics are mundane. Smaller subreddits do still manage to avoid this, to be fair. But at any moment any small subreddit could get new mods, get banned, or even just see an influx of new users which permanently changes its character.

Mo3 2y ago
And the astroturfing and bots. So much in the bigger subs.

weard_beard 2y ago

I recently got selected to take a survey on changes they are rolling out. I took the survey on a lark. They are turning it into Digg. Giant ads after the first result of every content listing page pushing most results far below the fold. Its going to cause a mass exodus.

fmxsh 2y ago

Did I just read: > "This will begin with [targeting clearly objectionable content], but we may consider expanding this in the future [to opinions we do not like]." And further down: > "It is everyone’s collective responsibility [to ensure no one disagrees with us] ..." I do see the problem of moderation, but don't think this in itself is a good solution long-term.