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I don't know about this particular case, but, generally... bad actor subreddit moderators have been an occasional thing for well over a decade. And it's also b

• SilverElfin 1y ago
  > A bad actor mod of a popular subreddit can persist for years, visibly, without people managing either to oust the mod, or to take down the sub's influence. This happens because the regular users have no power. I remember seeing some article that said a small number of mods control most of the popular subreddits. Many of them put their own bias into the system by banning users, banning sources, deleting content based on ideology, shadow banning, etc. The other issue is as these mods linger for a while, they drive away or ban everyone who might disagree with them. So then the “community” ends up not actually disagreeing with the authoritarian mod. Reddit ends up not being resilient because it doesn’t want to be. Everyone else, is gone.
  • cap11235 1y ago
    When the mods of major subs are also mods for over a hundred other subs, you have to doubt how much actual moderating they are actually doing in their holier-than-thou positions.
    • genghisjahn 1y ago
      Is there a source for this?
      • SilverElfin 1y ago
        See this Reddit discussion: “The same 5 people moderates 500 of the most popular subreddits” https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/gjl27j/the_same_5_people_moderates_500_of_the_most/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/gjl27j/the_... It appears the original post they are discussing was removed. Seems like Reddit banned the original user who collected this data and deleted their posts. Another discussion about this: “Six powermods control 118 of the top 500 subreddits” https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/gkkfg5/updated_and_sanitized_six_powermods_control_118/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/gkkfg5/upda...
      • lurk2 1y ago
        I don’t know if you can still see them without an account but even a few years ago this was well-known and you could verify it yourself by looking at the moderator list of almost any default subreddit; we’re talking about less than a few hundred users. There was no limit to how many subreddits you could moderate for most of Reddit’s history so in the early days a few users created as many subreddits as they could. A bunch of these moderators effectively shut down Reddit over changes to the API a couple of years ago. Steve Huffman compared the system to a landed gentry: > “If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders,” he said. > “And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.”
    • BurningFrog 1y ago
      Now I want to see a soap opera/reality show about the lives of Reddit Oligarchs!
    • xiixiii 1y ago
      It's also why expressing certain views is effectively forbidden across most of the site. These moderators have far too much control over the conversation.
    • harvey9 1y ago
      I think Reddit gives them some automation tools so it's not all hands on moderation.
  • wahnfrieden 1y ago
    Ghislaine Maxwell was maybe one of these powerful mods. But it is another contested conspiracy theory. Evidence pasted: The Name “Maxwellhill” The username directly references “Maxwell,” which is not a common surname. Ghislaine Maxwell grew up at Headington Hill Hall, which was nicknamed “Maxwell Hill” after her father, Robert Maxwell, bought it. This isn’t a vague reference it’s oddly specific and personal. It’s like someone using “EpsteinIsland” as a username and claiming it’s just coincidence. Posting Activity Stopped the Day of Her Arrest (actually 2 days before, when she began wrapping her phone in aluminum) u/maxwellhill posted almost every day for 14 years and was one of Reddit’s most active users. Then, with no warning, all posting stopped after June 30, 2020. Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on July 2, 2020. The timing is exact. This wasn’t a slow fade or gradual disinterest. It looks like someone was physically unable to post. Gaps in Posting Line Up with Real-Life Events There were other suspicious posting gaps during major events in Maxwell’s life. Notably, during her mother’s death in 2013 and during the 2011 Kleiner Perkins party, where she was confirmed to be present by former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao. That party shows Reddit leadership at the time was at least aware of her. Moderator of Massive Subreddits The account was a lead mod of r/worldnews, r/technology, r/politics, r/science, r/europe, r/upliftingnews, r/celebrities, and more. These are major subs that help shape Reddit’s front page and influence global discourse. Whoever had access to this account had immense control. Even after years of inactivity, Reddit auto added the account back as a moderator in 2024. That suggests the system still treats it like an active, important account. The Content Maxwellhill posted repeatedly about age of consent laws, often citing obscure countries. They also posted articles defending the legality of child exploitation material and criticized what they called “overzealous” child protection laws. These aren’t normal discussion points for the average Redditor. It reads like someone obsessed with legal gray areas surrounding child abuse. Auto Deletion and Censorship Mentions of “u/maxwellhill” have been automatically removed from comments in multiple subs. The Daily Dot reported on suspicious deletion behavior tied to the account. Posts about this user “vanished mysteriously,” raising real concerns about censorship. Who or what is protecting the account? No Denial from the Account If u/maxwellhill is just some random power user, where are they? Why haven’t they logged in to say anything? No posts, no comments, no denials. Nothing for five years. After 14 years of near daily activity, complete silence in the face of serious allegations is suspicious on its own. The poster also uses many British expressions in their writing, and listed British foods as their favorite foods in one post. Mods of r/WorldNews which is infamously compromised by paid agents demanded her posts be deleted from other subreddits. The name matches Maxwell’s family estate. The account vanishes the day she’s arrested. It posted about topics deeply aligned with her known behavior. It held mod control over huge parts of Reddit. It still does. And yet it hasn’t said a word in five years. If this isn’t her, it’s someone with eerily similar patterns, priorities, and timing.
  • weard_beard 1y ago
    Dang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX5ahM24o8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX5ahM24o8A
• ivape 1y ago
  Reddit has a serious abusive moderator issue. I suspect they will all be demoted to "VIP community member" soon enough and have that entire layer handled by AI. There's just too much ego involved for a human to do a job like that.
  • CSSer 1y ago
    Friendly reminder that you are on a forum with essentially one benevolent moderator.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
      Two, I think? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43558671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43558671
    • nebula8804 1y ago
      Isn't dang a paid employee? If so, incentives are different. Its a day job that he could get fired from if he deviates from his main duties. (dang you are pretty decent don't get fired please).
      • CSSer 1y ago
        Heh, according to the other guy he could get fired and replaced with AI because of his ego. For the less than subtle, I wasn't implying that it was good or bad. I was just pointing out the irony of criticizing centralized moderation on a site with centralized moderation. As for whether or not pay makes a difference, I think you probably have a point, but I'm sure there's still wiggle room there.
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
        • pixl97 1y ago
          >just pointing out the irony of criticizing centralized moderation on a site with centralized moderatio Eh? HN falls under centralized moderation for sure. Reddit not quite so much. That's more of 'middle management moderation'.
• dostick 1y ago
  Not cool you calling users “peasants”, they can’t do anything. Have you posted on Reddit, like, with actual personal opinion? You will quickly find out that it’s a moderator’s walled garden of opinions and your posts removed without explanation and notification. and complaining does not do anything.
  • rrr_oh_man 1y ago
    That literally sounds like being a medieval peasant. Or a US tv show host.
  • b112 1y ago
    I think you have it inversed. As I read it, the parent calling the users 'peasants' was to highlight precisely what you're saying. The users have no power, yes? As peasants didn't?
• safety1st 1y ago
  Reddit has a moderation problem, and it's a big one. They've now been asked to appear in front of Congress to address concerns about politically motivated violence being incited through their platform: https://oversight.house.gov/release/chairman-comer-invites-ceos-of-discord-steam-twitch-and-reddit-to-testify-on-radicalization-of-online-forum-users/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/chairman-comer-invites-c... Personally I believe I've seen more people in the past few years wish a politically motivated death on somebody else via Reddit, than I have anywhere else in my life. Now if it was "just" the incitements to violence, or if it was "just" the libeling of random businesses, that would be one thing. But the fact that BOTH types of illegal speech are becoming a problem at the same time suggests to me that Reddit's failure to moderate is systemic and total. It is becoming exhausting watching all of these tech companies commit crimes, or enable someone else to do so, and getting off with a slap on the wrist.
  • whatshisface 1y ago
    That may be a politically motivated congressional hearing. :-)
    • Meekro 1y ago
      You mean there's another kind?
  • pbhjpbhj 1y ago
    What country are you from? To "wish a politically motivated death" on someone is illegal there? Reddit set itself up as a speakeasy, people speak their minds openly because it appears in some areas to be free of thought policing. Do you think it is wrong to wish a dictator dead? Over the past decades USA has not only wished it, but made it happen, at the cost of many lives.
    • throw-10-8 1y ago
      Many people in this forum mistakenly think that violence isn’t a historically efficient way to solve political problems.
• Karrot_Kream 1y ago
  Think about a Reddit mod's incentives. They: - Don't get paid - Spend time having to do some really thankless work - Don't really have a regular work schedule So what kind of person is going to do it? Someone who is willing to do the work for no pay. For smaller subreddits and areas where the work of moderation isn't that heavy, you'll find passionate individuals. Mods that moderate more time consuming content or the power mods modding many subs are chasing some other incentive. For some that means explicitly monetizing their time by pushing products and companies who pay them. For others it's the ideological satisfaction of pushing viewpoints they want pushed and suppressing viewpoints they want suppressed. For some it's prestige. For most it's probably some mix of all three. What's absent is any incentive to surface organic, human content. That's merely a side effect of what mods do, not their main job.
  • tiku 1y ago
    But what if they do get paid, by a competitor? It's very easy to DM a mod and tell them they will get x amount if they skewer the odds in your favor or blast your biggest competitor.
    • Karrot_Kream 1y ago
      What makes you think this doesn't happen? I can almost guarantee it does. If I were willing to pay a Reddit mod off and I saw unfavorable coverage for my brand I'd absolutely try to win the mod over by paying them more than the competitor is paying.
      • pixl97 1y ago
        What's kind of crazy about this is in many lines of business you must disclose payment for advertisement. Be interesting to make this a civil law case and sue moderators for lack of disclosure.
  • marcuskane2 1y ago
    There should be a public service campaign telling users something like "Even in the best case scenario, the moderators are weirdos. Most likely they're shills". People with careers, families, friends and hobbies are mostly not going to spend their limited free time being a digital janitor for an anonymous online community. People sitting alone in their apartment with nowhere to go and nothing to do and no one to spend time with, however, might find that being a Reddit moderator gives them a hobby, a sense of purpose, and feelings of power, importance or significance that they otherwise never get in real life. Someone should make a social media site with inverted dynamics- users who only spend a few minutes per day on the site and post once every few weeks should be treated as the influential power users, while the people lurking and scrolling for 10 hours per day are deprioritized.
• Aurornis 1y ago
  > And it's also been widely known for that long that Reddit is an influential venue in which to take over a corner -- for marketing or propaganda. Capturing moderation of a subreddit has long been a strategy of marketing agencies. Even when they can’t take over the actual mod positions, they’ll shower the mods with free product and make them feel like a VIP. I watched this happen from inside one company and I couldn’t believe how easily the marketing team turned a mod into our biggest advocate by sending free products to them from time to time. > A bad actor mod of a popular subreddit can persist for years, visibly, without people managing either to oust the mod, or to take down the sub's influence. In some of the subreddits I followed, the remaining subreddit users felt some relationship with the mods over time and felt they were on the same side. There are subreddits like /r/nootropics where many users don’t realize the mod team has been captured by a supplement company (Nootropics Depot) and that they have a history of deleting some posts critical of Nootropics Depot. You would think this would be grounds for a subreddit riot, yet whenever I check it feels like everyone there is fans of Nootropics Depot and therefore they get a pass. Note that the quality of the science discussed on /r/nootropics is generally terrible and of very poor quality in recent years, which is certainly a related factor. It’s also not hard to find comments in other subreddits from people who were banned from /r/nootropics. I think this happens across a lot of subreddits. Moderators find reasons to ban the dissenters and shape the conversation until the hive mind consensus favors the mods, so any issues aren’t discussed. People who object are banned for different reasons and minor infractions, then get tired of Reddit and move on. What remains is captured by companies pushing their products to an audience who thinks the mods are doing them a favor.
  • fancyswimtime 1y ago
    this seems to be happening on city based subs as well where the split is political; creating echo chambers for each side. This feels dangerous as any potential middle ground gets eroded away.
    • SilverElfin 1y ago
      Example?
• immibis 1y ago
  > have been an occasional thing for about a decade. I'd estimate way higher. Most moderators of meaningful subreddits are corrupt. Occasionally one makes it visible.
• athrowaway3z 1y ago
  This is how the entire internet functions. We need to separate the web into data, identity, and moderation. Users need to become aware that they're not using platforms, they are subscribing to moderator control. Somebody owns ycombinator.com, can decide what is discussed, and if they ban you - us peasants can't tweak who is a moderating / recover your identity and data. I'm convinced we'll get there eventually, but it starts with recognizing that the only thing special about Reddit is its multi-level-unpaid-moderator-marketing.
• assimpleaspossi 1y ago
  A few years ago a NPR (National Public Radio) reporter called Reddit "...a Frankenstein's monster even they can't control."
• simianparrot 1y ago
  Reddit employees are also moderators that also directly influence public opinion and encourage witch hunts. It’s a systemic Reddit-the-company issue. Google “Ethan Klein vs Reddit” if you want to go down a recent rabbit hole
  • shadowgovt 1y ago
    Klein's case is about copyright (and a somewhat thin claim at that; it sure smells a lot like "I'm attempting to use copyright to quash criticism of me," and if the judge decides that's what's actually going on, he's going to lose his case). Unless I missed an update, he's suing Reddit to try and de-anonymize some people running the subreddit so that they can be properly the target of his copyright lawsuit. Worth noting: he does not appear to have filed for defamation, which would be the thing he could complain if what they were saying was materially untrue.
• themodisonHN 1y ago
  New account just to say I know this feeling very well. Tech-parallel sub has a moderator that does literally nothing other than shittalk a specific group once every 2 weeks. People have mentioned lack of moderation effort. I can't say who, because the motherfucker is on this website and will instantly deny it all.
• Lerc 1y ago
  Surely bad actors leave a fairly clear data trail. Are there no analytics being used to track this sort of behaviour? Much of the scale of this comes from being able to do it with impunity. If bad actors were exposed, even after the fact, it would be a deterrent to others.
• grafmax 1y ago
  Social media should operate under open protocols, including moderation. Choosing moderation should be client-controlled. These companies burn through VC money to build systems with network effects then turn around and effectively extract rent. Rent extraction is economically parasitic and anti-productive. This is exactly the sort of thing the government should address by mandating open protocols.
  • kevinmchugh 1y ago
    Reddit has an easy way to choose moderation, just stop going to the reddits that are poorly moderated.
  • pixl97 1y ago
    >Choosing moderation should be client-controlled. An idea mostly doomed to failure, the vast majority of people (that are viewing the ads paying for the service) don't want do deal with that bullshit. Moderation is a hard problem. You first have the flood/spam attacks that unless instantly dealt with will bring a service to its knees as there will be hundreds of bad messages for every good message creating an enormous bandwidth and filtering cost for each user. Then there is a the porn problem. Any place that doesn't instantly block porn will be flooded with porn. Then there is the flood of off topic bullshit that shows up in any given channel. And from that point there is 20+ other little things that make people feel welcome and want to come to a channel in the first place. Simply put anyone could have created and open protocol social media. No one has because it's hard and fraught with problems that your users won't want to deal with.
    • grafmax 1y ago
      That’s an issue of the front-end not the backend. The backend is where an open protocol is needed to break the parasitism of the social media companies. Whether users deal with spam depends on the moderation policies applied by this or that specific front-end. Think of it as a filter. Reddit is a filter on a walled-in social network. What you post there isn’t visible on any other social network and vice versa. But because of that lock-in you are limited to whatever crappy moderation one specific front-end sticks you with, with no alternative if you still want to interact with that social network.
• fireflash38 1y ago
  You don't have to be a moderator to poison the well. Post a shitload of bad faith attacks and slander. Not as a root comment. You don't have to actually relate to the parent at all, you're just trying to get your talking points out there. If someone calls you out? Gish gallop never actually addressing their comments. It's another opportunity for you to spew whatever bullshit you want. If they follow you around and get more engagement/up votes? Block them. Now you are free to continue to post whatever BS you want without any of those pesky fact checkers.
• willtemperley 1y ago
  There's no way to report a malicious sub as far as I can tell. I've been contacted by scammers that look very legit with the green Mod badge that shows in DMs.
• paulcole 1y ago
  > What's an equal concern to me is how insufficiently resilient Reddit collectively appears to be, in face of this. I don’t see this as a big a problem as you do. As soon as you solve this, then you have the issue of people you see as good actors being ousted and having their influence taken down. If the bad guys can be silenced then so can the good guys and then it’s just a matter of how we figure out the good guys and the bad guys!
• empath75 1y ago
  There are lots of very large subreddits that are prolific at shadowbanning people -- you might think you're participating in the conversation for quite a while and people just aren't upvoting you or responding to you for whatever reason, and your posts aren't visible at all. /r/worldnews is very free with them, for example.
• bawolff 1y ago
  Isn't the solution to "fork" the community? If the moderator is really that bad the new community takes over (yes its more complex than that, but broad strokes). Its not that different then an open source project with bad maintainers.
  • amiga386 1y ago
    Yes, but how will you get the word out? The moderator can delete all your promotion of the breakaway subreddit within their subreddit. How are you going to get eyeballs? And the truly vindictive moderators will start spamming your new subreddit with e.g. child pornography, and then immediately reporting it to the admins. You had best have your own moderator team running 24/7 to cope with intentional sabotage coming from a person who lives their whole life on Reddit, and will stop at nothing to keep control of the little power that they have. You won't be able to pin this sabotage on the moderator, unless you're in their private Discord channel where they coordinate the attack, which you obviously won't be as you're an outsider. Then they will openly gloat about doing it, because they're on the Right Side Of History, and you are Nazis and deserve everything you get. Reddit also has default subreddits, or rather had them, but they still hold significant first-mover advantage and enjoy network effects. There's a reason that /r/pics is full of insipid drivel, but there's not a more popular /r/pics2
• piltdownman 1y ago
  Reddit being Reddit wasn't a problem until it became a source of truth and subsequently afforded consensus and an unwarranted sheen of credence by Agentic AI. As the author beautifully (albeit somewhat nihilistically) summarises: "We have to remember that Reddit isn’t just Reddit anymore. The powers that be have decided that Reddit is infallible, a reliable set of training data for LLMs, and should be featured fucking everywhere."
  • 2close4comfort 1y ago
    Agreed, Reddit as a source of truth is the issue. Who in the their right mind would look at Reddit as whole and say that is an open, unbiased community focused on true and accurate information. And as the article and comments in this very thread show how moderation and its application within Reddit are "contaminated" which is a very good way to describe the situation.
  • johnnyanmac 1y ago
    That's really stupid. Anyone spending more than an hour reading reddit comments knows that reddit comments are not some bastion of truth.
    • mlrtime 1y ago
      It is true ... in a way that the truth is a needle in a haystack. And that haystack is filled with knives , needles and other garbage you have to swift through.
• aprdm 1y ago
  Yep. For example anyone can own /r/canada, which seems like a legit Canadian representation for anyone searching about Canada. And then make it a very opinionated/hatred/political avenue. Maybe of a right wing group. Not saying it has happened, or that it looks like that. But it can happen very easily.
• bryceneal 1y ago
  I'm equally confused at just how bad Reddit is at identifying and removing bad actors to the point that I'm convinced it must be an intentional. I'm not sure if the reason may be as simple as the desire to pump their user numbers for earnings, or if it's something more egregious than that. It's not clear to me how a company owned by the public which relies on advertisers for revenue has been able to carry on for so long being a propaganda farm for foreign agents and marketing bots.
  • eric_cc 1y ago
    Oh it’s deliberate. It’s been THE online platform for far left radicalization and extremist views for at least a decade now. It’s by far the most intolerant social media platform relative to the mainstream platforms.
    • mlrtime 1y ago
      It was better before they all left twitter.... twitter was far left radicalization , and reddit was mostly on-topic except /r/politics.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• vkou 1y ago
  > What's an equal concern to me is how insufficiently resilient Reddit collectively appears to be, in face of this. It's more or less an open marketplace, with only a few high-level rules. Why would it be resilient to these kinds of attacks? Human society as a whole isn't - if it were, I wouldn't have a job. > A bad actor mod of a popular subreddit can persist for years, visibly, without people managing either to oust the mod, or to take down the sub's influence. So, kind of like how bad companies persist in dominant market positions? Bad actors put in a lot more effort to protect themselves than people with lives and jobs have to take them down. Anyone can bitch about Wells Fargo and Comcast, and 'tyrranical' mods, but at the end of the day, most people aren't switching their ISP or going to a forked community.
• red-iron-pine 1y ago
  > What's an equal concern to me is how insufficiently resilient Reddit collectively appears to be, in face of this. not a bug, a feature. those who can pay for and use the API -- which makes them money -- get to influence the discussion. that's the business model. they DGAF about free speech or reasonable, well run subreddits so long as they can still get paid.
• johnnyanmac 1y ago
  >What's an equal concern to me is how insufficiently resilient Reddit collectively appears to be, in face of this. it's a three-fold issue here. 1. Admins really don't care about moderator behavior. As long as you aren't breaking reddit you'll be ignored. Events like r/wow going private is one of the few times they directly intervene. 2. Moderator rankings is seniority first. Without admin intervention, you can have a "head moderator" who only really acts once a month and they will have the final say on anything in that sub. 3. Network effects. Like anything else the soluion of "start your own subreddit" is a doomed task unless the sub is very new. People will pool around the sub with the most subscribers. So avoiding the bad mod is difficult. These are issues I was hoping in the '10's they'd attempt to address. But not much has changed to addreess this. At best the rule of only moderating 5 "high-traffic" subs may help the most extreme cases, but I'm not confident.